TSN Open Mic for the week of 5/1/2023
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to Ten Second News.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these on the Sidebar every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
Normally, I would post this on a Rufus Sunday but Sam Kriss argues that the nerd is dead, just like the hipster is dead, and tries to extrapolate what comes next in culture: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/all-the-nerds-are-dead
“Marvel is failing because they thought that most people were nerds: that mass audiences would actually want to delve deep into their joyless multiverse and slog through all its lore. Nerds like that sort of activity; nerds don’t need to actually like the things they like. But not everyone has the good fortune to be a machine: most people are not nerds. Most people will passively accept culture produced under the regime of alibidinal information-sorting algorithms, if it’s the only thing available—but only up to a point. After that point, they will simply check out, which is exactly what they’re now doing. It’s not just Marvel: nerd culture is collapsing everywhere. Sequels and franchises no longer drag as many people into the cinemas. The ecstatic boyband fans have gone quiet: increasingly, new music in general is being oucompeted by Spotify’s century-long back catalogue. Over the last year, sales of books in print went up by 4.2%—except for young adult novels, which have declined. As I’ve argued previously, algorithms in general are starting to collapse. The nerd world is dying. And since the nerds gravitate towards homogeneity and popularity, their extinction will be total. Soon, very soon, every single one of them will be dead.
What happens next? Maybe our post-nerd future will involve a return to genuine mass art. Maybe things will be good again. That would be nice! But I wouldn’t bet on it. The problem remains: we are still producing an unbearable volume of information; we still need some way to sort through it. The regime of the hipster was an inefficient way of sorting it; it died. The regime of the nerd was an overefficient way of sorting it; it is dying.”Report
The main thing that Marvel did was come up with Pretty Good Plotlines for some Pretty Good Characters (poor DC… though the last few Batman movies haven’t been awful).
The first Spider-Man movie? Spider-Man vs. The Green Goblin? The second one with Spider-Man vs. Doc Ock? And even the Iron Man and other movies up through the Infinity Gauntlet had some Pretty Good Plotlines for some Pretty Good Characters.
The problem is that there are only but so many FREAKIN AWESOME stories in the canon and they told the main ones.
So, now, you’re stuck telling the stories that people don’t talk about as much.
The Good Stuff is tapped out.Report
Do the early 2000s spider mans even count? I always thought they had a different vibe. I recall at the time me and all my idiot pot smoking, horror movie watching friends thought it was really cool Sam Raimi was getting to do something A list and got a big kick out of the Bruce Campbell cameo. Never would have connected it to the start of 20 years of IP recycling projects and digging deeper and deeper into a canon not that many people knew about.Report
Oh, yeah, I was just talking about creators whose early careers I followed, and Sam Raimi is another one. I didn’t like the second Spider-Man movie though. Basically, a retread of the first one.Report
Fair. None of them would be on my best of lists or anything. Just thought there was a little bit of a Tim Burton doing Batman movies thing going on with them. I know Jon Favreau gets a lot of love from fans for his workmanlike efforts but I think that’s more of a testament to just how bad so much of it is.Report
I would say that they do. They were the harbinger for what was to come.
I mean, in the 80’s, we had Batman score a walk-off grand slam and Hollywood immediately said “Hey! The kids today *LOVE* pulp stories from the 1930’s!” and we got Dick Tracy and The Shadow and The Phantom.
No, guys. That wasn’t the lesson that Batman was teaching.
Anyway, I see Mystery Men as probably the *TRUE* John the Baptist… but we’re going back waaaay waaaay into the the lore for that one.Report
I didn’t even realize Mystery Men had a comic book origin.Report
Flaming Carrot, bay-bay.
I didn’t consider it a harbinger because of it being a comic book movie adaptation. I considered it one because it was a superhero movie with big(ish) names and a big(ish) budget and it walked the tightrope of “we’re taking this dumb crap seriously, alright”.Report
Lack of continuality.
Plot driven actions.
Mary sue characters.
Movie #3 totally trashing the universe (Star Wars).
If you’re trying to build large plot arcs and have all the movies link together, then you really shouldn’t be hiring directors (etc) who have never done a large scale movie and/or who view their artistic work as being way more important than little things like all the other movies.
Moving past the original source material (especially GOT).
If they’d been making these kind of mistakes with “the good stuff” those movies would have been horrible.
IMHO Marvel still has lots of good stories, however taking that and turning it into a good movie is hard.
If that isn’t your first priority, then you have a big problem. That’s even true if your first priority is “your own artistic vision”, but it’s especially true if your first priority is inclusion or some political message that’s irrelevant to the original story. So you can only one top priority, and the moment you take your eyes off the ball you’re making it much harder.Report
Yes, having anybody but cis straight white men (and women, as long as they aren’t too strident about it like Brie Larson) as main characters in a comic book makes said movie more difficult.
That’s the recent issues – not bad creative choices or a bit of a rough patch after 25 mostly insanely successful movies that basically totally shifted the entirety of moviemaking, but it’s the movies are too woke!
Also, if you think comic book stories having political messages is something created by recent DEI hires or whatever, well, you’d fit in with people who were upset w/ Marvel Comics in the 60’s whn they were supposedly shoving politics down reader’s throat as well and writing letters to Stan Lee being very upset about that.
I’d also point out that the two “flops” by Marvel recently were Thor and Ant-Man, led by the two white guys.Report
Sometimes, “bad creative choices” include ham-handed political messages.
Including “politics” in a story isn’t necessarily bad. Some *AWESOME* stories include politics.
But if you can’t tell the difference between artfully telling a story and American Horror Story having a right-winger blender up cheetos and smear them all over his face in celebration of Trump’s win, you’re going to have a hard time.
Some less-media-savvy people might look at the Cheeto scene and say “why did they include politics in this?”
Then that gives you the opportunity to say “ALL STORIES ARE POLITICAL!!!!”
I think it’s more interesting to ask “why did they put off-putting politics in this? Like, stupid ones?”
“ALL POLITICS ARE STUPID!!!”Report
If your idea of “including politics” is “showcase the side you personally don’t like as irredeemably evil” then you’re also deep into “bad writing”.Report
Freddie had an interesting meditation on this awhile back related to the Candyman remake:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/prestige-disease
It’s a pretty great example, given that the political themes of the original were incredibly ‘woke’ for something made in 1992. The difference is that the whole thing is completely comfortable with its status as a slasher movie and its goal is to be a good slasher movie, not agitprop and certainly not high art.
Today you wouldn’t be able to satisfy the cultural commissars with the original because of the white lead and her redemption arc. particularly with the expectations of something by Jordan Peele. The result is a much less interesting movie, that also tends to discredit the political points it wants to make by making them look like a mess (which of course they are but that’s besides the point).Report
Being “woke” does not create lazy writing and bad story telling, but lazy writers can think being woke is enough to make a movie. It’s a symptom, not a cause.
A big way to check for good writing is the question “why is the villain doing this?” We may not agree with Thanos or Killmonger but we know where their heads are at and can see they’re the hero of their own story.
If the only answer is “he’s evil and the plot says he should do this”, then that’s a problem. Odds are very good it’s not the only one because bad writing and organization is the gift that keeps giving.Report
RE: Woke
This can introduce issues where you’re taking the plot places it doesn’t need to go or doesn’t naturally go.
Say you’re determined that women must only be portrayed as strong and you’re doing a standalone Spiderman movie. So Spiderman can’t save Mary Jane but before the movie ends she needs to save him.
That can be handled well (see below), but it’s easier to handle it (by the power of plot) poorly.
Imho best scene where the non-powered gf saves the hero was Lois Lane saving Superman from Doomsday in “The Death of Superman” (2018).
It’s a tough watch. No plot magic. She didn’t think she’d live but did it anyway.Report
It’s pretty funny that Dark Matter didn’t say anything about race or sex but that’s what you heard. Also that you track movie success by sex and race. And he didn’t even complain about political messages or say that comics lacked them.Report
Identity politics as “woke” are the problem. You can’t PLEASE these people.
Put a gay person into your story. Get yelled at anyway.
Have a black guy steal something. St. Floyd turns over in his grave, and everyone hates your show, because “That’s RACIST” is an easy label.
Have a trans person have actual, serious flaws (Dark Triad level) — it’ll hit too close to home, and people will seriously flip out.
Don’t put any of these into your universe. That’s even worse.
NoRepresentation is Wrong.
BadRepresentation is Wrong. (Why are you having all the lesbian couples break up? … Author: they’re the only solid, faithful couples.)
It leaves you with colorless, soulless people on TV and in Movies. And Those Suck. It is absolutely racist when the only way you can have a villain is by having it be White Guys. Nearly as bad as “the only villains are the Japs.”
(Yes, it also sucked when Iron Man would save someone’s life, and then give them chores to “pay him back.” Lives cost in the millions of dollars, that’s not going to get paid back by mowing the lawn).
I really, really liked MFKZ. It was real, it was authentic (and french!), and nobody could make it today.Report
Let’s drill into “Batman Returns (1992)” (Danny DeVito as Penguin)
Director wants to do “Phantom of the Opera” with Penguin (he’s said this in interviews).
So we’ve got a solitary loner… who runs the circus of crime, a large criminal organization… which doesn’t make any money in the movie.
The conflicts are because we’ve bolted “Phantom of the Opera” onto a DC character who needs/uses a large crew. So we have a loner(PoO)/not-a-loner(DC) who is a genius(PoO) not-a-genius(DC) except when it comes to penguin tech.
It’s not impossible to write a good story doing Penquin as Phantom of the Opera, but it’s certainly making the entire project harder to do well.
One massive issue in the MCU is it’s a shared universe. That implies movies don’t break each other. If you want an example on what not to do, the most recent Star Wars movie is a great example. Sidious publicly announces his plans and does little to prevent the heroes from taking advantage. You have a plot device which everyone knows about which could have trivially blown up the original Death Star.
Star Wars is also owned by Disney and should showcase where Disney’s leadership is at in terms of adult supervision.Report
Marvel ran out of crack cocaine during the Avengers movies. They had to call in script doctors with actual talent. Which meant they were no longer getting “Canon”
“Okay, so we’re doing timetravel… Check! Let me check my notes…”
Endgame was explicitly going with the “This is just a Placeholder. Write Something Better” ending. Yes, there are actual writers out there whose “This is a sorry idea” sounds and works better than certain people’s A-list material (calling Prometheus…).Report
LOL. Thomas is comically corrupt. Gonna be like 8 more of these stories just about his sh*t before we’re done.
https://www.levernews.com/thomas-helped-kill-eviction-ban-threatening-benefactors-business/?utm_source=newsletter-email&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=newsletter-articleReport
All 9 justices issued a statement pushing back:
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Letter%20to%20Chairman%20Durbin%2004.25.2023.pdfReport
Yeah i know. It’s crap. Bull crap and shame on all of them. The purpose of judical ethics is to ensure the highest standards and remove even the notion of bias. They know that. It’s Judge 101. Thomas is pissing all over that. Don’t rule on cases where there is even the perception of bias. We know Thomas and Roberts don’t give a crap since Thomas didn’t recuse when his wife’s email were involved. Now we find he is ruling in a case with his good benefactor. In other court in the land this would never happen.
I seriously hope the “lib” justices get asked very hard questions about there fawning support of this. They are people with ego’s and desires so that may be the explanation. But they should be grilled over this by their allies.Report
Pro Publica has a long history of manufacturing scandals out of whole cloth. Without having really dug into the details myself, if the Biden and Obama appointees are backing Thomas, I’m inclined to believe that this is another such case.Report
Shorter Berg: Pro Publica reports on things that go against my ideologyReport
Judges are supposed to recuse to avoid any appearance of bias. It’s really pretty frickin simple.
The Biden/Obama appointees are failing here.Report
Yes they are.Report
How are they failing? What are they failing? What can they do that they are not doing? What powers do they have to make their GOP colleagues actually recuse?Report
OK, so here’s what your team is going with: it’s wrong to view things solely through one’s own ideology, and the whole Court spoke as one but everyone but the liberals were wrong to do so.Report
What i’m saying is that what Thomas is doing is a grievous breach of Judicial Ethics that would not be tolerated at any level except the Supremes. Why is that okay? Should we not have an ethics standard for all Fed judges or state judges? The liberal judges are wrong though as noted above at least Jackson knows how to recuse.
Can you justify Thomas’s behavior based on the basic judicial ethics that every other judge in the land has to follow?
It’s so easy to say “team this” but that always applies both ways. What would happen if Sotomayor was getting sweet deals and flights from Soros. You know exactly how loud the right would yell. And they would be right.Report
They can speak out for f’s sake. Jackson recused herself in the Chevron review. She did the right thing. Next is to point at the others who aren’t. She’s a Supreme now and therefor untouchable. So use your damn voice since she obviously knows what the right thing to do it. Embarrass Thomas and Roberts.Report
This isn’t a power or ability. Judges and Justices are supposed to recuse themselves but the right-wing judges or justices simply have decided to state “make me.” There is not one neat trick for Democrats or Democratic appointed Judges and Justices to do and believing that such a trick exists is kind of maddening and counter-productive.Report
Do the right-wing justices recuse themselves less often than the left-wing justices? Has that been demonstrated?Report
This piece indicates Kagan and Alito recuse themselves the most often. Looks to me like Gorsuch is next. Justices tend to recuse themselves more in their first term or two. That makes some sense, as they are more likely to have been involved in cases at the lower levels when the justices are new. Thomas is in a class by himself as far as not recusing.Report
It’s not One Weird Trick. The justices can show less loyalty to the status quo and they’re own power and more to being above board. You know how outrageous Thomas’ behaviors is. Any court you know of where this would fly? Any court w/o any ethics at all? They can’t change it themselves but they don’t have to be mouthpieces for this shite.Report
Aside from its potential impact on my agency, the removal of administrative authority to faithfully enforce the law from the Executive Branch is a serious constitutional problem. Congress has NEVER really passed microscopically specific laws, and so the notion that only the courts get to decide what Congress really meant is ludacris. The Executive and Congressional Branches talk all the time about what Congress really means, and the Executive has an exhaustive public process to set nearly every regulation.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/01/politics/supreme-court-chevron-deference-conservatives-power-of-agencies/index.htmlReport
Well, let’s see what the case talks about:
That seems to be a reasonable complaint.Report
Just like Citizen’s United was a “reasonable complaint” about limiting the ability to show a documentary that the Court used as a reason to tear apart campaign finance law.Report
Hey, I wrote a post about that!
Here’s a teaser from the post:
I imagine that if the regulatory state didn’t abuse their power, they might still have more of it than the court decided they actually do.
Looks like we might play that game again.
Good job, fishers.Report
This is NOT the result of “Pro-life” people. This is the result of seeing women’s lives as forfeit.
“At Oklahoma Children’s Hospital, she says the medical staff told her that her condition was serious. “You at the most will last maybe two weeks,” she remembers them telling her. But still, cardiac activity was detectable, and the doctors would not provide a D&C.
“They were very sincere, they weren’t trying to be mean,” she says. “They said, ‘The best we can tell you to do is sit in the parking lot, and if anything else happens, we will be ready to help you. But we cannot touch you unless you are crashing in front of us or your blood pressure goes so high that you are fixing to have a heart attack.'”
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/01/1172973274/oklahoma-abortion-ban-exception-life-of-mother-molar-pregnancyReport
Ending Molar Pregnancies are not prohibited under Pro-Life practices.
Here’s just one article from 2012 (old regime) with a Pro-Life doctor clarifying:
https://answersingenesis.org/human-body/feedback-a-pro-life-doctors-view-on-molar-pregnancies/
Molar Pregnancies, like Ectopic Pregnancies are often (but not always) explicitly exempted in the (new) laws themselves. In fact, the law in North Dakota signed just last week:
“The [North Dakota] law allows for treatment of ectopic pregnancies, a dangerous, nonviable scenario in which a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, and molar pregnancies, a nonviable, rare complication involving a tumor forming in the uterus.”
The law in Tennessee recently signed in March also explicitly calls out Molar and Ectopic pregnancies.
Here’s the link to the OK law, which is explicit in allowing for the termination of this pregnancy under the circumstances described: Molar or Partial Molar Pregnancy:
https://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/deliverdocument.asp?id=98159&hits=493+357+336+309+256+233+218+210+179+153+145+26+9+
Specifically, this is the go-forward requirement:
“B. An unborn child shall be presumed to be viable if more than twenty-four (24) weeks have elapsed since the probable beginning of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman, based upon either information provided by her or by an examination by her attending physician. If it is the judgment of the attending physician that a particular unborn child is not viable where the presumption of viability exists as to that particular unborn child, then he shall certify in writing the precise medical criteria upon which he has determined that the particular unborn child is not viable before an abortion may be performed or induced.”
Diagnosis of Molar Pregnancies is very well defined… there’s no grey area and no particular medical or ethical angst.
It’s definitely a very alarming story of medical malpractice possibly masquerading as Medical Activism using real people as props… No OBGYN would have issues terminating a Molar or Partial Molar pregnancy.
Now, there’s one aspect of the story that made me wonder if NPR was appropriately representing the situation… was the heartbeat from the Partial Molar implantation or from a viable twin?
It turns out that very very rarely a Molar Pregnancy can also occur with a viable twin (I had no idea) … and in these cases the pregnancy risk increases, but it is possible to monitor and deliver the twin; usually the twin is delivered prematurely after 24 weeks, but some papers indicated delivery at 37 weeks.
Here are PubMed case studies:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2920964/
But, as with all increased risk pregnancies, the likelihood of miscarriage is extremely elevated, and the pregnancy has to be carefully monitored and terminated when the risk becomes too high. Again, from a pro-life perspective, no Doctor would have difficulty making that judgement call.
There’s no indication from the reporting that such is the case, but gathering the links for this comment I came across doctors referring to this rare occurrence so I bring it up in full transparence and as a possible ethical confounder.
So, back to the ‘Just So’ story by NPR… asssuming it was the (partial) Molar Pregnancy they describe, Oklahoma law already implicitly allows for the termination under section B (quoted above). There’s no story there, other than Medical Malpractice or Activism.Report
Or you know, when you make a bunch of new pro-life laws and threaten doctors with jailtime, they’re not going to want to risk the wrath of a local prosecutor who wants to be Governor someday.Report
No. Not with the facts in this story.
That’s why I’m beginning to suspect the narrative is withholding information.Report
The problem is that there are conflicting laws in Oklahoma. so while one of them MAY allow for this type of termination, the other two are being interpreted by hospitals and clinics and the doctors who staff them as not doing so. And so they are making what to them are rational, legally risk averse decisions which result in women suffering. It is not up to the doctors to figure this out – its up to the legislature and governor. Because “that’s not what we meant” is poor comfort to a doctor being sued by one of his own staff for acting – which is the implied result of the ultra sound tech objecting to doing a D&C because fetal heart activity was detected.Report
Can you point to where this is being raised in the story? Or additional reporting where the conflicting legal issues are discussed?
I’ve never even heard of an ‘Ultra-sound Tech’ having any legal standing in OBGYN care… so I’d like to see where that’s coming from.
I get the playbook of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) – but FUD is easily dispelled and rarely withstands scrutiny. No Pro-Life OBGYN would have any hesitations given the facts as described.
I suspect the story isn’t being told in full.Report
Report
Thanks… I think a lot of folks haven’t looked up what a Molar pregnancy is (I provided a link, if helpful). Which is why this story doesn’t ring true.
My wife and I had a partial molar pregnancy which ended in a D&C via one of the more famous pro-life doctors in America.
There’s no ‘future’ baby in a molar pregnancy. That’s why it isn’t even an ‘edge’ case that would require ethical debates. There isn’t a scenario where the abnormal fertilization (often 69 chromosomes) coalesce into something viable. Plus the presentation on ultrasound is very noticeable and described as ‘clusters of grapes’.
Further, *any* doctor that said the woman had only 2-weeks to live in her condition would have terminated a Molar Pregnancy without hesitation. The story itself doesn’t pass scrutiny.
Which is why I’m beginning to suspect that *maybe* the heartbeat was the viable twin.Report
But – to make it even more explicit – a Molar pregnancy is a non-issue and unambiguously covered in Section B…
The “Emergency” clause wouldn’t even be brought up … unless there was a viable twin.
p.s. I read that in the article, but that’s what I termed FUD since it isn’t relevant to the facts of this case… unless the facts of the case aren’t what we’re given.Report
given that the story describes what a partial molar pregnancy is, and fails to mention any viable twin . . .
That aside you really don’t accept that the new abortion laws create existential crises for doctors do you? Right here, in this story, we see that one law in Oklahoma – still in force – allows anyone to sue a provider for conducting an abortion that violates that law, which has no exceptions language. Another has vague exceptions language and threatens the Doctor’s licensure. Only the third law – the one the Courts partially struck – had its stringent exceptions language overturned. Which means Doctors in Oklahoma MAY face prosecution, loss of license, and law suits for performing any abortion – or they may not. And your expectation is they would regardless . . .
Nice world you live in sir.Report
When confronted with the actual outcome of Republican legislation, reasonable people of goodwill react with either outrage and disgust, or a cognitive refusal to accept reality.
So we get a string of “This can’t be really happening” handwaving.Report
In the civil rape case, Trump’s lawyer moved for a mistrial based on the judge giving him a hard time. It was denied:
https://www.aol.com/news/donald-trump-requests-mistrial-rape-152231153.html
Having appeared before Judge Kaplan a number of times, I can attest that he gives everyone a hard time, especially people who give him cause. Nothing I have read sounds any different from his usual style.
For all his gruffness, however, he is an excellent judge. And I’m not just saying that in case he reads this blog.Report
I know someone who had a drag queen perform at their child’s birthday party recently. Everyone had a blast.
Those parents and/or that perform would be violating the law in many states.
So much for “parents rights”.Report
Would they be violating the law? A home performance? Assuming it wasn’t obscene or child endangerment?Report
Are you suggesting that some drag performances — depending on the specifics — might not be obscene or child endangerment?Report
I won’t speak for Pinky. But the drag queen story hour I saw part of at a local library absolutely wasn’t obscene or child endangerment. If the Chamber of Commerce said they would have volunteer bankers in three-piece suits in every Tuesday morning to do an hour of performance readings to convince the littles that books can tell engaging stories, the libraries would be all over it. Ditto for members of the local biker gangs.Report
So one would think. But we already have obscenity and child endangerment laws. I have never seen, or heard of, an obscene drag performance but can readily imagine what one would be like. If they exist, they can, and should, be handled the same way we handle obscene performances involving performers who wear, or take off, more traditional fashions.Report
The laws I saw said that men performing as women was obscene.
It was not at a home but a party venue.Report
IANAL, and I don’t recall the specifics, but I think we were talking about Tennessee’s HB 9, and it said “prurient”, not “obscene”. I think something can be prurient without being obscene.Report
So, again, should parents rights to have a drag queen at their child’s birthday party be respected? Or should we support laws that can be used to arrest folks for such behavior (even if they end up being acquitted under a close reading of the law)?Report
Parents have the right to mess up their children in a lot of different ways in private, and some in public. They don’t have an unlimited right to do so.Report
So, again, should we respect parents’ rights to the extent that it is allowable they have a drag queen at their child’s birthday party? Or is such an act — regardless of what the drag queen actually does — so wrong that we should override parents’ rights and make doing so illegal?
It’s a pretty straightforward question… why are you unable or unwilling to answer?Report
I thought my answer covered it and anticipated a follow-up “why?”. I obviously wasn’t at the birthday party in question, so I can’t answer specifically, but generally speaking I support laws that would make it illegal to perform drag shows in the presence of children.Report
“…generally speaking I support laws that would make it illegal to perform drag shows in the presence of children.”
So… fuck parents’ rights?Report
I think we can agree that authentic performances of Shakespeare should be felonies. And much of Monty Python should be banned.Report
For those in Florida zip codes, the videos of Mrs. Doubtfire, Some Like It Hot, and Bosom Buddies are now only available on Pornhub.Report
Is Bob’s Burgers legal in Florida? Two of the main female characters are voiced by men.Report
Can something be obscene with out being prurient?Report
I don’t see how.Report
but something can be prurient and not obscene? Fascinating.Report
legal definition prurient – “The Court defined material appealing to prurient interest as material having a tendency to excite lustful thoughts, and defined prurient interest as a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion.”
legal definition obscene – “Obscenity is a category of speech unprotected by the First Amendment. Obscenity laws are concerned with prohibiting lewd, filthy, or disgusting words or pictures.”
IAStillNAL, so I went with what Google gave me.Report
so your contention this whole time is that drag is inherently designed to elicit sexual lust and is also a “shameful or morbid” interest in sex.
Got it.
Have you ever actually seen a drag show? Or Drag Queen story hour?Report
I have seen drag shows. They don’t excite sexual lust in me, but others’ mileage may vary. Which might explain a lot.Report
Me neither. And Drag Queen story hour? If a drag performer incites lust reading Dr. Seuss . . . well one might need to consult a reputable therapist.Report
My contention is that there’s a sexualized element to drag. I am (checks wall for degree) still not a lawyer, so I’m not stunned that the legal definition differs from my own. “define prurient” gets different results from “legal definition prurient”.Report
Would you argue that cheerleaders should be legally barred from performing in front of children?
Would you argue that it should be illegal for parents to take their children to Hooters?Report
I’ve never been to a Hooters, but I wouldn’t be against a restriction on children. Twenty years into my ideal society, cheerleader uniforms would be substantially different, but I don’t see that on the table today.Report
Have you been to a drag show? A drag show specifically planned and designed for children (i.e., Drag Queen Story Hour)?
We choose what is on the table. You want to talk about drag shows specifically, despite seemingly having no idea what they’re actually about.
You also want to talk about children’s best interests, despite showing little understanding of what they actually are.
But, hey, at least you’re consistent that you think the government should have a heavy hand in what fully clothed people are wearing around children, so much so that parental rights are superseded.Report
Pinky world – where the sight of a naked ankle sets hearts a flutter.
Sounds like Iran or Afghanistan.Report
The only drag show I’ve ever seen was not sexual. Other than an annoying series of references to Neil Gaiman (sp), the performances were non sexual at all. The most sexual IIRC was some guy in lighted butterfly wings dancing around flapping his wings. He wasn’t that graceful 🙂Report
Pinky assumes they are sexual because he can’t accept any reason for a biological male to wear women’s clothes that ISN’T sexual.Report
Why be an asshole? Pinky just disagrees with you on some things. He’s made an effort to have a reasonable discussion with you, too bad you aren’t able to return the favor.Report
Pinky:
Seems to me I am representing his views accurately.Report
I didn’t say it’s sexual; you said I said it’s sexual. (A) is not a good representation of (not A).Report
There’s no day light between a thing being sexual and a thing being sexual elements of a persons sexuality.Report
I never said that.Report
Please explain how a person doing something that expresses their sexuality through sexual elements is not inherently sexual.Report
There’s lots of great reasons for a man to dress up in women’s clothes. Being in a hair metal band. Going to a kick ass Halloween party. Being in a gay club (or really any kind of club) where transgressions against social norms is part of the fun. Hech just being from Britain may be its own reason since in their culture it is a golden ticket to being the funniest person ever.
Doing it, however, to lay the groundwork with impressionable children with no idea what’s going on that there’s something called ‘gender identity’ that can then be conflated with sex in all kinds of confusing, regressive, and unscientific ways? Well I’ll never tell anyone where to spend their weekends or what they can show their kids, but there’s ample reason to say ‘not for me and mine’ none of which are particularly prude.Report
The difference between you, me, Chip, and most of the left folks here and all of the right folks here is the right folks believe they have the right and the obligation to make that decision for the rest of us, whether we like it or not.Report
I’ve said there’s a sexualized element, not that it’s sexual. The performer is expressing his sexuality, even if the children don’t pick up on it. They will likely pick up on the gender ambiguity though.Report
Please explain how a drag performer is expressing his sexuality by appearing in costume and reading Dr. Seuss. Or for that matter in any place where drag is performed? And does that mean the musicians who present as the gender they were assigned at birth are also expressing their sexuality when they take the stage? Was KISS expressing their sexuality? The Beatles?Report
Its funny in all this discussion that no one has brought up the Little Miss Sunshine type of children’s beauty pageant.
I would bet money that the overlap of people wanting to ban drag shows and people pushing their kids into the lil’ strippers shows is about 90%.
In other words, I simply don’t believe them when they say they are against sexualized imagery for children.
They like it just fine when it reinforces their notions of sex and gender.Report
I’d argue that there are three reasons why a person native to a culture would dress as the opposite sex: frivolity, compulsion / delusion, or instruction. Can we agree on those? Are there any you’d want to add to the list?Report
OK, this is hilarious, I forgot “sexual expression” on the list. I was thinking three was too few.Report
Oh wow. SO many you passed right over. Tel me, when Bob Hope and Benny Hill dressed in drag which of your categories did they fit into? Or Dame Edna? I guess frivolity? Which is what all drag performers are aiming for come think of it.Report
So, what did I pass over? It’d be nice if we could organize the conversation. I think there’s an obvious difference between the person who dresses up for a part in a school play and the person who dresses up and identifies in some respect as the character. It may be hard to identify from the outside, but there’s a difference in the underlying psychology.Report
Well, protest might be a good one; treating gender dysphoria might be another good one. And entertainment apart form frivolity. Like all the men who played women in original productions of Shakespeare. Or Patrick Swayze in To Wong FU. CosPlay may or may not make your list separately.
My favorite – its not really any of your or my business.Report
I’m trying to work toward a common understanding here. You can suggest a broader term than “frivolity” to include any kind of entertainment. “Compulsion / delusion” plus dysphoria could be “psychological”. And protest and instruction have a similar theme, if you could suggest a good label for it. But all of this is to get toward an answer without the confusion that seems to have come from the terms “sex”, “sexual”, “sexuality”, although that might be unavoidable if we use the term “sexual expression”. Your feedback is welcome.Report
Well, to be honest, I ASSUME that the male wearing the female closes does it because it gives him some form of satisfaction or pleasure. One of those manifestations could be a sexual thrill.Report
SO like Pinky you don’t actually know much about Drag do you?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/political-rhetoric-false-claims-obscure-the-history-of-drag-performanceReport
Is a naked drag queen still a drag queen? Nudity in drag sort of defeats the purpose — unless you’re not advertising as a drag performance and planning a Crying Game surprise.
Obviously, you can keep kids away from performers who take their clothes off and expose their genitalia. We already have laws about that. And under those laws it makes no difference whether the clothes the performers take off are traditionally male, traditionally female, or something else entirely.Report
Kazzy, if you want to argue that parents should have absolute authority to define the themes and maturity of their childrens’ experiences, I’m sure that conservatives would be right there with you.Report
yeah except for where conservative parents want to inflict their decision authority on all the kids in a school district or all the patron in a library system.Report
Is it all right for six-year-olds to smoke?Report
No. And?Report
Yeah, because you’ve been doing a stellar job of harassing librarians about free speech.
It is impossible to read Isaac Asimov’s seminal work on satellites in the original publication, if you go into any library in America (law libraries excepted). This has been just fine for you, and will continue to be just fine for you and your conservative colleagues.
I’ve written requests for this to change. I’d write more requests for Sexual Education books, if they weren’t flat-out “put you on a registry” illegal.Report
“I’m sure that conservatives would be right there with you.”
Except the conservatives who want to outlaw this very exercise of parental rights.
It was never about parental rights. If it was about parental rights, it would be about ALL parents’ rights.Report
*Taps the sign*
“There must be one group of parents who the law protects but does not bind, and another who the law binds but does not protect.”Report
“Except the conservatives who want to outlaw this very exercise of parental rights.”
Kazzy, I’ll make you a deal. You can have drag performers come to your house if it means that the books with drawings of dudes blowing each other get put on a shelf behind the librarian’s desk and only given to the kids who ask for them. And if parents want to buy their kids books with drawings of dudes blowing each other, they are 100% allowed to do that. Sound good?Report
And where is it currently otherwise?
And where are they currently prevented from doing this?Report
Exactly. We already have all the laws we need to deal with any real-world problem relating to exposing children to inappropriate sexual content, whether hetero- or homo- or bi- or poly-. But that’s not good enough for some folks who want to outlaw drag shows or keep kids out of Hooters, even though they’ve never seen either.Report
The book”Gender Queer” seems to come up a lot — there are many stories about parents complaining about this book being in a school library or being taught, and the book variously being removed or not. Here’s a link to an article that shows a lot of pictures from it (the article takes a side but presumably they aren’t making up the content): https://theiowastandard.com/shocking-images-from-book-gender-queer-which-is-stocked-in-school-libraries-across-iowa/
So, I can see the argument for having this available in a high school library, but I can also easily understand parents not wanting this available, for reasons having nothing specifically to do with LGBT but just with the explicit nature of it.
Chelsea Clinton just tweeted objecting to “bans” on LGBT books, and this book was prominently displayed in the accompanying picture. Make of it what you will.Report
…that looks like an adult book. What age group was this written for?
[quick research]
Gender Queer initially received a small printing and was marketed toward older teens and adults.[1] It increasingly entered the collections of high school and middle school libraries after receiving an Alex Award in 2020, an award given by the American Library Association to “books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults ages 12 through 18.”
So it was desired for adults/just out of high school. That means college to me.
Having said that, I can see why the ALA thought putting it in HS makes some sense. It’s a story about his journey, and if you’re in his position then there’s probably close to zero material.Report
Well, the specifics in question were a drag performer coming to a birthday party in a public venue. Can we make that adjustment to the deal? If so, I’d sign on enthusiastically!Report
“Well, the specifics in question were a drag performer coming to a birthday party in a public venue.”
Does every parent present feel the level of content is appropriate for their children?Report
I think the appropriate reaction is for parents who don’t approve not to go, or to leave if they see something they don’t like. Probably secure in the knowledge that 20 years from now everyone will laugh at this the way we do now at stupid fads from the 70s or 80s. The boosters will of course be too embarrassed to admit they enthusiastically participated.Report
But we can’t leave people to their own devices like that, as if they have moral agency. We have to make those decisions for them. For some values of “we,” at least.Report
“I think the appropriate reaction is for parents who don’t approve not to go…”
Why should I need to leave the library if I’m bothered by a prayer session?Report
Aren’t we talking about birthday parties at rented spaces?Report
Why would a Muslim prayer session in a library bother you?Report
No one has to goto a birthday party.
My son had a party with dodgeball. Some parents don’t like dodgeball. They were free to keep their kids home.
I’m not understanding where you’re going. You want to make a deal but are ignoring or changing the specifics.
It’s almost like you’re not dealing in good faith.Report
Its a public space you don’t exclusively own which has to serve the broader public.Report
I disagree. Parental rights have to have some kind of limit beyond which Social Services intervenes.Report
And that limit SHOULD include this: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xsNNkAObbgI/maxresdefault.jpg
But SHOULD NOT include this: https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/CGF7NSXO6YI6ZH4QPHPR7MUCSY.jpg
Is that your argument?Report
I believe that parents do not have the right to destroy/chemically inhibit their children’s erogenous zones.
I am a transsexual, and I believe this.
Is that clear enough for you?!?
Debatably, it is a parent’s job to keep cultists away from their children, whether that cultist is a wokester, an Oneidan, or Black Hebrew Nationalist. (If it is a parent’s right to keep their kids away from the heathen Methodists, then yes, it is a parent’s right to keep them away from the Drag Queen. Big Deal, right?)Report
Um… what?
“I believe that parents do not have the right to destroy/chemically inhibit their children’s erogenous zones.”
Where did I talk about children’s erogenous zones?
“…it is a parent’s right to keep them away from the Drag Queen. Big Deal, right?”
Where did I argue otherwise?
My argument is that a parent should have the right to hire a drag performer for their child’s birthday party if they want to. Some states are attempting to make that illegal.
Next time try to read the conversation before jumping in.Report
Huh. Vice bankrupt?
Report
Apparently so. Not sure how it could have ever gotten a $5.7 billion valuation.Report
It reminds me of the dot com bubble, or the collapse we’re starting to see in streaming services. Valuation based on expected success from a business model that starts off losing money.Report
Also the telecom bust that happened about the same time. 20 companies getting venture funding to lay enormous amounts of long-distance fiber, each claiming that they would be profitable once they captured 20% of all the internet traffic.
A lot of it never got “lit” because it wasn’t compatible with the way technology evolved to cram in more bits per second.Report
We saw this sort of thing when railroads first came out. City X to City Y can’t use a half a dozen different railroad tracks.Report
One theory about various news websites shutting down is that if there is no significant difference between CNN and MSNBC and Vice and Buzzfeed and Vox and whathaveyou, then there’s no real fidelity lost when Vice and Buzzfeed shut down.
It’s like Burger King shutting down in a town that still has Wendy’s and McDonald’s and Carl’s Jr and Culver’s. A handful of people will miss the chicken fries and another handful will miss the breakfasts but, for the most part, you can get the same dang lunch a block up the street.Report
Speak of the devil and he will appear:
Report
Didn’t see this until today:
Hogwarts Legacy sold 256% more than predicted.
Reading the article tells me that it only sold 256% of what was predicted. Like, it quotes the linkedin post of the guy who was the marketing manager for the game:
That means that it sold 156% more than expected, right? Or 256% of what was expected?
Math is hard. Let’s go to the mall.
Let’s hope that the sequel is actually good.Report
The incessant use of “N times more” to mean “N times as much” is irritating as hell.Report
And “N times less.”
I think it means 1/N times as much, but I’m not sure.Report
Yeah, that’s even worse.Report
American innumeracy is kind of astounding.Report
I’ve said this a million times.Report
Yea but that’s only like once a day for a few weeks…Report
Biden sending 1,500 troops for Mexico border migrant surge
Someone should read him that poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty.Report
That won’t play in Peoria.Report
Let’s hope no one tells Kamala about it.
Report
Good news! Long-term costs for health care could be going down!
Report
Yesterday Oklahoma, today Florida:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/02/health/florida-abortion-term-pregnancy/index.htmlReport
The law working as intended.Report
Good news for the climate!
Report
Got to heat that building with coal then.Report
North! If you are hanging out here today this is exactly what I meant on the thread last week about DeSantis’ voice!
Report
Fascinating! Well done InMD on the example. I see what they’re and you, are referring to. I don’t ‘feel’ the vibe you’re describing but I can ‘see’ it from where I’m standing.
I remain fearful that my own subjectivity is just clouding my judgement though.Report
I have a comment in moderation most likely due to an attempt to embed a tweet that may or may not work. Requesting mod assistance. Please and thank you.Report
DoneReport
Thank you!Report
The Oklahoma Attorney General is literally begging the Supreme Court to intervene in a case where the man on death row is almost certainly the victim of malicious and wrongful prosecution but the machinery of death refuses to stop:
https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/3/23708045/supreme-court-richard-glossip-execution-gentner-drummond-stay-oklahomaReport
In any other world The state’s lead prosecutor saying “no more” would be enough. But the occasional killing of an innocent person is justified to keep a system of state sanctioned revenge in place and largely working as intended.Report
During the last days of the death penalty in the United Kingdom, the Establishment refused to admit it executed at least two men that really shouldn’t have been executed. MPs from both parties were very angry about this and pressed for answers. This was during the post-war Consensus period. Right now there is no consensus and the Republicans just want to use the death penalty on an innocent person as an exercise in raw and cruel power. Besides, they will have to pay big bucks in the subsequent lawsuit if he is freed. Killing him is easier on the state wallet.Report
Life in a post ROE world, a continuing series of horrible events that would not have happened in a world without reproductive freedom:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/02/health/florida-abortion-term-pregnancy/Report
JInx. I posted that upthread. Good to know you saw it too.Report
In the news, https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/02/health/florida-abortion-term-pregnancy/
Basically the question is whether a fetus with Potter Syndrome should/can be aborted. Law says you can abort a fetus which has abnormalities incompatible with life.
However Potter is and is not that. If you have an eye watering amount of medical intervention during and after the pregnancy, including a kidney transplant, then they have something like a 25% chance of survival.Report
Darn it. Same link as Phil.Report
Apparently I’m a trend setter.Report
This is the reason I think the pro choice side will ultimately win out in the long term. People in a modern, technologically advanced society don’t want state legislators making impossibly difficult personal medical decisions for them, nor are such people knowledgeable about the issues to begin with. The pro life side has always operated under the implicit assumption that there is certainty where in matters of medicine and reproduction there is none. Eventually peoples desire to be left alone will more or less prevail.Report
We made hypocrisy a bigger sin than whatever sin was being sinned and lied about.
This will continue to bite us in the butt.Report
I think the opposite is true. If hypocrisy were a sin, then public shame would still work. Seems to me a great many GOP politicians are no longer able to be shamed when they create situations like this.Report
I think your take on legislating sentiments is more apropos. There’s a lot of people who I think fairly look askance at truly elective abortions of healthy pregnancies, either due to their own particular morals or more likely just a vague sense that people should take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. It’s a very different type that takes that and says we not only need a bunch of black and white statutes attempting to define the instant human life begins, we also need cops and prosecutors looking into medical care and splitting hairs over what does and doesn’t cross the line, all in an almost certainly futile effort to try and stop it.
Kind of an (imperfect) parallel to your comment about it not being great to spend one’s days doing drugs and visiting the associated collateral destruction on oneself, community, and loved ones, versus deciding we are going to send in SWAT teams shooting dogs and throwing people in prison forever to try to prevent it.Report
People are uncomfortable with pro-choice absolutism, but they rightly have zero trust in the current GOP to pass reasonable limits.
Like, actual European laws (as opposed to what cons claim they are) would be broadly popular, but the issue is, the pro-life doesn’t actually want fairly easy access for the 95% of abortions that happen in the first 15 weeks or so.Report
Hey, get this, it turns out that Clarence Thoma$ is comically corrupt. Crow paid 150k for CT’s nephew to go to private school. On top of buying property which wasn’t disclosed and Crow letting Thoma$’s mom live there rent free none of which was disclosed. What’s the next expensive shoe to drop?Report
Probably free cases of coca cola delivered to his mansion every Friday under cover of darkness.Report
I’m friends with some judges. I don’t practice in their courts. But they nevertheless won’t let me pick up their check at lunch.Report
Which is exactly how it should be, everywhere and at every level.Report
On the other blog we are discussing the murder of Jordan Neel on a subway in NYC with a predictable amount of fighting about what is happening in cities. I don’t know if it is just me but the Anglophone left in general just seems to be a lot more tolerant of visible disorder and public disruption from groups they are sympathetic to compared to the Lefts in other developed democracies that have no problems expecting a certain amount of decorum from everybody in society, especially if they are out and about in the public spaces. There seems to be a call for a radical amount of compassion that doesn’t seem frankly realistic and that anybody deemed comfortable just learn to live with shoplifting, people going to the bathroom on the street, or doing drugs and yelling out ravings on transit. There hasn’t been any society to my knowledge that dealt with real or perceived visible disorder in this matter and level of compassion but the Very Online seem to believe it is a realistic response.
Political paralysis seems to be part of the reason for the calls for both radical compassion and radical cruelty. If you can’t actually do anything about an issue than you might as well go extreme in your rhetoric. The Anglophone Right also has its love of visible disorder from the groups they are sympathetic too like the MAGATs, finance bros, etc. But I am continually astounded that people who believe in the commons and cities and transit don’t understand that this requires a certain amount of decorum from everybody or most people are going to retreat into their suburban barrack homes and cars.Report
I’d say there is a fundamental problem with a society that allows this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8z8XBFNx60&ab_channel=AndyNgo
People freaking out naked in public, nothing happens.
Crazy lady blows up cars in the middle of the city when it was evident she was a danger to herself and others and nothing happens.Report
There is literally no place in America where there aren’t drunks, addicts and crazy people.
And you are correct, any society which wants to call itself civilized needs to address addiction and mental illness somehow.
One example is here in California where Governor Newsom instituted a new program which can forcibly place mentally ill people into treatment:
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/09/14/governor-newsom-signs-care-court-into-law-providing-a-new-path-forward-for-californians-struggling-with-serious-mental-illness/
Its not a panacea, but it is one idea that can help.Report
Of course Newsom’s propose solution was immediately called bad by the Left because it allowed for some element of compulsion rather than being 100% voluntary. I really think that there are large portions of the Left who being totally unrealistic in the level of compassion that most people have towards visible disorder. Other Lefts have no problem understanding that the unfortunate varyingly defined have some levels of decorum required of them or that you need a certain amount of “we will offer services and you better take them” but the American Left is calling for generous programs that are entirely voluntary and that people just deal with drug use in transit or people literally going to the bathroom on the streets. I don’t find this really possible.Report
That’s my point, that the entire conversation about solutions to societal problems is intra-left.
Whether it is immigration, homelessness, crime, poverty, addiction and mental illness or the national debt, it is only liberals and leftists who are saying anything worth listening to.
Conservatives have absolutely nothing to say or offer. They’re just standing on the sidelines making armpit fart noises.Report
I would no longer consider myself part of the category “conservative” in the conventional sense, but I see no reason why one side should continue to suggest options that the other side dismisses as not even worth considering. Ex: Immigration. Other countries can have strict policies about who comes in. I see no reason why the US can’t either.
Switzerland, as an example, seems to take a lot of effort to be a Swiss citizen.
“You need to have lived in Switzerland for a minimum of five years (in most cases, ten years) before you are eligible to apply for permanent residence. You need ten years of continuous residence in Switzerland to apply for Swiss Citizenship.”
https://visaguide.world/moving-to/switzerland/from-usa/#:~:text=You%20need%20to%20have%20lived,to%20apply%20for%20Swiss%20Citizenship.Report
One result of the US’s relatively strict policies is that we around 12 million people in the US illegally filling important base-level jobs in the economy. Their unceremonious removal would be economically disasterous, and our continued unwillingness to allow them to be here legally isn’t solving anything.Report
Seems we have strict policies about getting in, but not many once you get in illegally. Maybe we should fix that.Report
We tried the catch and throw everyone out under Donald Trump. That approach failed miserably because there weren’t and never will be enough immigration cops to catch all 12 million folks. So Biden (and Obama before him) is using his available resources to target criminals and those who pose a national security threat (like your Chinese tech spies). Seems to me to be a good solid compromise in t he absence of actual immigration law reform – which is nearly as dead as gun control.Report
I don’t know how realistic it is to look at Switzerland. The model-it-makes-no-sense-we-aren’t-following is closer to Canada. They’re stealing STEMs and other highly educated types that by every right should be ours while we pretend a bunch of people trying to get in to do low skill manual labor are asylum seekers or some nonsense.Report
Many of those folks are -and the one who aren’t are still performing vial economic roles.
I mean what sense does it make for a farmer to have to apply 18-24 months ahead of a harvest to get a guest worker pass for field hands? Its ridiculous, and yet that’s how we continue to roll.Report
“They’re stealing STEMs and other highly educated types that by every right should be ours while we pretend a bunch of people trying to get in to do low skill manual labor are asylum seekers or some nonsense”
Preach it brother. But don’t forget that we also have a problem with the Chinese coming here and stealing our tech, so you gotta balance that out.Report
True and something we need to be careful about. Still I think the goal should be for our Chinese (Americans) to be better than the Chinese’s Chinese.Report
Your Switzerland analysis is missing several important components:
1 – European union/EFTA Freedom of Movement. All citizens from EU/EFTA can very easily settle in Switzerland, from Polish plumbers to Swedish engineers to Spanish nurses, as long as they get a job/can sustain themselves and their dependents withing a certain (couple of months) period.
2. Most Swiss companies, and Swiss subsidiaries of foreign companies can transfer foreign employees into Switzerland without much fuss, equivalent to out H-1 and L-1 visas, but without annual quotas that expire within minutes. (1)
The EU concept of Freedom of Movement is a key element that is totally misunderstood in the USA. The idea is that most people really do not want to permanently emigrate. They want to go into another country, work for some years (or seasonally), and return to their home eventually, with enough savings to settle there. Most really do not want to become full immigrants, grow old in their new country and never go back home to old friends and family.
Being able to move in and out of countries following economic opportunities optimizes labor (just like freedom of capital movements optimizes use of capital). In the USA, until the late 50s, early 60s, seasonal workers came in from Mexico and Central America in the spring, worked the season, and returned to their families in the winter. Once they had saved enough, they bought a house, established a business, and settled in their hometown. Their families never came with them.
But once the USA stopped allowing this seasonal or temporary migration, the result was not that seasonal workers would saty away, but that seasonal workers now became permanent (legal or illegal) migrants, with their complete families. because they could not risk making the trip more than once.
Bush 43’s immigration reform including reinstating migrant workers visas. It was DOA in Bush’s own GOP Congress.
So, yes, please, let’s make it more like Switzerland. Let;’s actually make it exactly like Switzerland
(1) I was a beneficiary of both, and is how I started my path from Spain 28 years ago that made me a citizen in 2014.Report
of note, the overlap in time between the end of the guest worker program you describe and the civil rights movement is quite noticeable.Report
Your point about Bush is valid, that’s one of the reasons I stopped supporting that side.Report
We can just ignore your suggestion about “Lets duplicate Country X’s policy” because no conservatives anywhere are saying anything remotely coherent about immigration, crime, addiction, homelessness or anything else.
Look, I know I sound harsh here but the entire platform of “thoughts” from contemporary conservative movement can be expressed by a handful of memes on Twitter, all just sulking grievance and sneering.
They want to be treated like a serious political movement while acting like disturbed adolescents in detention.Report
I wasn’t suggesting we duplicate country x’s position. I stated that other countries had established laws that required a lot of work to emigrate. The inference was those states made it hard to emigrate intentionally and for a set of (what they thought) were good reasons. By example I was suggesting the US could do the same….and we could…..maybe enforce the law. Odd concept I know.
What contemporary “conservatives” think or do doesn’t really interest me.Report
I agree that this is basically a liberal-left fight and the Republican response is nothing more than a massive crack down on the cities and belief that good people live in the suburbs and drive everywhere. I am not just rather frustrated at the continual belief of the Further Left that visible disorder is not a big deal and people need to learn to shut up and deal with it. It is basically some rather magical thinking.Report
I agree with your sentiment but I think the cause has a lot to do with the particular history of American cities. We had about 2 to 2 and a half generations where they were emptied out of families and the middle class, so they really were the places of (i) wealthy people in small, semi-fortified enclaves, (ii) poor people trapped there, (iii) derelicts and drug addicts, and (iv) various flavors of radicals and social misfits (or just young people pretending to be that while they partied).
I see it as an unmitigated good that at least some cities are growing passed that but the level of disorder arising from our past just never reached cities in other rich countries and therefore no constituency ever develped to defend it.Report
That is definitely true. The suburban experiment really did two or three generations of damage to cities, although some were more damaged than others. A lot of left NIMByis mis driven by (iv) believing that if you don’t build all the bad normies will go away.
A lot of talk about the decline of transit and the street cars in the United States relates around race. There is something to that but many European countries without America’s racial issues or mass car ownership also started tearing out their street car systems after World War II and replacing them with buses even though these were municipally owned street cars. A lot of the same ills and urban renewals that American cities went through existed elsewhere even if the suburban experiment was much smaller.Report
Keep in mind that Compton, Inglewood, South Central, and every single one of the “bad” or “gang controlled” neighborhoods in Southern California is a suburb of single family homes and low rise apartments.
Lets also keep in mind that the level of crime and disorder in rural areas is every bit as bad as the “inner cities”.
This notion that somehow cities are disorderly hellscapes is every bit as much a myth as “Appalachia is a bunch of inbred hillbillies who sodomize random whitewater rafters while playing Dueling Banjos”, or the David Lynch version “White suburbs are pleasant veneer over a secret hellscape of dysfunction and psychosexual horror”.
There are no “functional” or “orderly” regions of America. For every region there are pockets where crime is higher or lower, but only to the extent that some areas are more effective at transferring their undesirables to others.Report
Both words in the phrase visible disorder are important. Cities aren’t inherently or actually more unlawful than suburbs or rural areas but things like graffiti and homelessness are more visible.Report
Metropolitan counties have a higher crime rate (at least, for violent crimes overall and in each category) than non-metropolitan counties.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-2#:~:text=Crime%20in%20the%20United%20States%2C%20by%20Community%20Type%2C%202019&text=In%20Metropolitan%20Statistical%20Areas%2C%20the,100%2C000%20inhabitants%20in%20nonmetropolitan%20counties.Report
And visibility very much relies on social media, rumor and word of mouth urban legends.
And the emphasis on “visibility” is itself an admission that some types of crime and disorder are very much acceptable, while other types are not.
Because the vast majority of “crime” discussions aren’t actually seeking solutions. They are ways to support pre-existing bigotry towards the other clans or tribes.
The discussions about zip codes and regions are really just mental redlining- drawing a boundary and declaring those people as unfit and irredeemable.
I’m not accepting the idea that liberals are somehow vulnerable on crime and disorder, or that we need to flinch anxiously anytime someone shouts “SHOPLIFTING!” because they are inevitably bullsh!tting.
Liberals are taking the lead on finding solutions for crime and disorder.Report
As long as it leads to criminals-are-victims or racism-caused-it and doesn’t lead to someone’s-culture.
And Liberals need to take the lead because the bulk of the problems are inside their territory.Report
I dunno man. I can’t speak for SoCal but on the east coast the difference between the cities and the surrounding suburbs and exurbs is significant and at times world apart. At least for the ones I’m most familiar with.Report
My friend the anthropologist says that with few exceptions, any two inner-ring suburbs west of the Great Plains are more like each other than they are like any place east of the GP.
There are generally fewer suburbs around the core city, and the suburbs are bigger. LA County has LA itself, plus 14 cities >100K in population. Most of Denver’s inner-ring suburbs are cities >100K.
The boundaries are vague. In Denver, which I’m most familiar with, if you don’t know where the boundary is, it’s generally difficult to tell that this side of the street is Denver, and that side is one of the suburbs.
The Census Bureau now makes it possible to do density calculations based on “built area”. One of the surprises that comes out of that is suburbs in the major metro areas in the CB’s western region average about twice the population density of metros in the other three regions.
Some of that density is because most western metro areas are space-constrained. Most of the major metros at least occasionally can produce a picture like this. While Denver has enormous open space to the east, there’s no reason to build out there: farther from the mountains, no water rights, weather is noticeably worse. Better to crowd in on the west side, between Denver and the foothills.Report
A guy on twitter had a great line about the modern Left. He said they are “big government libertarians.”
They want all the good parts of a Euro social democracy or just their imagined socialist society combined with the “I don’t wanna listen to you”/ leave me the hell alone of the shallowest libertarian.
Not a good combo.Report
I’d be happy to listen to anything semi-rational from the right. But what we get is run all the immigrants out and build a wall; legislate transgender folks out of existence, and prevent women from controlling their own bodies.
No thanks.Report
Oh lord no i’m not hearing much of anything from the right. But the left isn’t doing much better which is a problem. Partly because people gravitate towards the most extreme and ideological arguments.Report
Part of this is because political paralysis. If political action is nearly impossible, why not engage in rhetoric revolving around either radical cruelty or radical compassion?Report
Political action is possible. The Left could be running in school board elections or for city council or mayor of East Podunk. Lots of small things that the left has furiously avoided for decades. To much activism and not enough getting elected. To many protests against and not enough grinding through changes.Report
Agreed.Report
I meant more or less at our current political moment rather than in the near and distant past. The great skill of the Right is that they do have the discipline to actually run for all offices and implement their programs. The Further Left doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite for getting involved with local or state and government outside a few places. Their political preference seems to be to shame politicians it doing what they want because it is justice rather than going out and convincing the electorate.Report
“The great skill of the Right is that they do have the discipline to actually run for all offices and implement their programs. “
I think this might be one of those optical illusions that we’re all prone to. I’d say the Right hardly ever implements conservative policies.
But a further point is that we’re implicitly talking about non-black areas. In black areas, the political center is far to the left, and implements nearly everything a left-winger would want.Report
Is East Podunk the part of the country that needs the help that only the left can provide right now the most?Report
That’s up to the East Podunkerites to figure out. It would spiffy if the greater Left was spending a lot more effort winning elections in smaller places. For one thing lots of people have very idiosyncratic political views. Some leftie could win seats in all sorts of Podunks with a good local message.Report
Maybe we could make East Podunk more like the place where literal nazis are murdering Michael Jackson impersonators on the train.Report
Ur….well i guess it’s good to have goals. Though i prefer to target mime’s instead of MJ copies.Report
I’m just not sure that a period of worsening public order in the cities is the best time to make the play to East Podunk that “you should change your values to be more like ours”.
Physician: Heal Thyself.
Heck, make yourself a beacon and make them say “I want to be more like Manhattan!”Report
crime is going down againReport
I did not say “crime”. I said “public order”.
Indeed, I know that if I had said “crime”, someone else would have pointed out the arson numbers are MUCH lower than in 2020 and 2021 and I would have been stuck pointing out homicide and then the conversation would have turned into “oh, so you’re backtracking off of your baseless claim that crime is going down despite auto theft shrinking?”
As such, I’ve learned to discuss stuff like “homicide” instead of “crime”.
Not that it does a whole lot of good.
It’s true though: There have been fewer burglaries reported to the police over the last few years.Report
How are we defining “public order”?
I walk through NYC 5 days a week. Sometimes for miles at a time.
Sometimes I ride the subway.
Daily I ride public transit of one kind or another.
I can’t think of any recent signs of disorder amidst all that. But everyone’s definition of “disorder” will vary, I’m sure.
So… what’s yours?Report
You know the thing where homeless people get on the subway and start screaming at people?
*NOT* that.
Like, you know the topic that kicked all this stuff off?
That is *NOT* Public Order.Report
So are you willing to pay more taxes to accomplish that? And through what mechanisms?Report
Bingo.
Conservatives have nothing to offer.
They’re just standing on the sidelines making armput fart noises.
Meanwhile, liberals are crafting programs and solutions.
Some may work, some may not, but it is liberals who are engaged in the fight.
This is why the business community in NY and CA prefer to deal with the liberals because otherwise you’re just stuck in a room with a guy who wants to talk about men who wear skirts.Report
After you find a solution I’ll be happy to steal it.
Until then viewing criminals as victims may have negative side effects… like telling a subway car full of people they have to be afraid and have to let a random nut attack them.Report
Interesting how you default to the homeless, junkies and the mentally ill as criminals . . . .Report
By coincidence, I’ve been listening to Bass recently. He makes it clear in his view we need serious outreach to violent criminals. As I said, he’s worth listening to.
In his view, violent criminals should be viewed as victims of circumstance and need serious outreach to help them become less violent. He’s one of the big people creating these innovative programs.
Having said that, yes, threatening a subway car of people is a criminal action. Being mentally ill doesn’t make you a violent criminal (the mentally ill as a whole are less violent), but this guy was both.Report
Or telling children, “Sorry you have to step over the bodies of your dead classmates, but there is nothing we can do. Perhaps try wearing Fisher-Price Kevlar”
Just in the past few days I’ve posted about Governor Newsom’s programs for mandatory treatment for the mentally ill, and Mayor Bass’s programs for increased police and intervention programs for the homeless and mentally ill.
When it comes to public order, liberals are taking action and leading, while conservatives are freaking out about people wearing the wrong clothes and demanding that we just accept mass killings.Report
Let me know when you have a solution for that.
Bass is an amazing speaker and leader. His Ted Talks are worth listening to.
I’m not sure if any of that will actually work. Bass really thinks criminals are victims. It’s worth a try, I wish him/them luck.
If it works, then it’s still not a solution for your previous issue.
My zip code doesn’t have an issue with public order. This parallels liberals needing to fix the issue of breathtakingly high murder rates.Report
My zip code doesn’t have an issue with public order
Yes you do. You absolutely do.
Your community just outsources their mentally ill and violent and addicts to the cities for them to handle.
Like, when a guy in your neighborhood starts hearing voices, what do you think happens?
If a woman develops a serious addiction problem, what does she do?
At first their families try to deal with them but eventually when they can’t handle it they kick the person out to the street.
But…they don’t just pitch a tent in front of your house, right? If they do the cops come and shoo them away and they end up in the nearest big city.
Every single one of those homeless people you see came from somewhere, somewhere where there was a home and family who prided themselves on not having a problem with public disorder.Report
Big picture you’re right. Unfortunately a lot of this is going to be harder than just supplying mental health services.
(And dismantling the anti-building anti-growth approval boards and regulatory stuff. The solution sub-urbs have is to have enough land that it doesn’t matter.)
At the moment, I am dealing with two close family members who are mentally ill.
For one, we get her treated and she’s fine. “Treated” means taking her to her doc every 3 months and paying 4 cents a day for her meds. I’m glossing over a lot but the big thing was to seek treatment. I’m better organized and financed than most but imho that didn’t make a difference.
For the other, she’s been told hundreds of times she has a problem. She’s not on speaking terms with anyone else in my family. She’s still insisting everyone else needs mental health treatment, she’s fine.
She has a lot of capabilities and a lot of potential. She might end up homeless because she’s determined to make bad choices. She’s not fixable because she doesn’t want help or to change. If she becomes worthless it will be because she’s determined to be worthless.
The only solution is to not be dragged down with her.Report
To Chip’s point I think there is a bigger public policy question going far beyond the choices we make as individuals. The involuntary institutions were not shut down because they were humane centers of rehabilitation, or permanent care for those who aren’t capable of rehabilitation. However having those people free now has them running the gamut from low key nuisance to serious public danger. While there is a fundamentally unserious school of left wing thought that suggests we all need to just accept this disorder so too is the school of right wing thought that says ‘not my problem.’ At the end of the day both lead to the exact same outcome.Report
And once again, there is an often-overlooked school of liberal thought that is aggressively pursuing solutions which I have listed here numerous times.
Often overlooked, deliberately even, despite it comprising the vast majority of the Democratic legislators, mayors and governors across the country.
Overlooked in favor of finding that mysterious unnamed leftist somewhere who said something about us needing to accept disorder.
I mean, I’m not saying this leftist is as mythical as Bigfoot. I’m sure they exist, even though no one can seem to name them.
I just don’t know why people fixate on the mote of this elusive mystery man and ignore the beam of actual governments at all levels across the country.Report
Liberal government had 10 years to do something about that guy on the subway and you don’t want him dragged off by the police.
There are enough people like him on the subways that all of the reader’s comments in that linked NYT’s article were complaints about the subways and/or support for the killer. That’s school of thought one.
The other school of thought are the comments by (or cherry picked by) the editors saying the disruptive guy shouldn’t have been touched, i.e. everyone should live with the obviously insane and very hostile guy who everyone expects to attack at any moment. I.e. “live with a certain level of disorder”.
It’s worth pointing out that with the most egregious (school) shootings, the killer was on everyone’s radar as hostile and everyone expected him to attack at some point.Report
We shut down the involuntary institutions because they were magnets for abuse and because they were easily made into weapons. If I have the ability to “commit” my wife against her will, then so do other people. Worse, she’s not going to get better.
It’s a trade off. Some of them end up in the situations you describe, others get help, a lot of others never fall so far down that that they make the news.
The nasty part is it’s probably a necessary trade off. Democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the alternatives.
We can nibble around the edges and help some people, but it’s hard to picture large scale solutions.
We can do more to supply mental health services, however we have a limited budget and struggle to deal with people determined to make bad choices.
We can do more to supply housing, but the real solution is to remove NIMBY’s ability to influence the housing/zoning codes. This would be the exception to my “hard to picture large scale solutions” statement but knowing solution doesn’t give us the political will to actually do it.
Much worse, at some point we’ll find out rewarding dysfunctional behavior is also encouraging dysfunctional behavior.Report
“What is East Podunk doing about homeless people attacks on the subway? NOTHING! What is East Podunk doing about gangland shootings of toddlers on the highway? NOTHING! What is East Podunk doing about youths throwing temper tantrums and killing elderly immigrants? NOTHING! They’re just throwing people in prison!”Report
Amazing.
You have Andrew Donaldson’s twitter feed about Appalachia right there, and you post this.Report
I think NYC is probably the wrong city even if it is the city in the American consciousness. My understanding is that even with the recent uptick from a statistical perspective it is incredibly safe. But it’s also not the city most Americans experience.Report
I’d be plenty happy to run with that.
“Can you believe that a homeless man got murdered on the subway in Manhattan yesterday?!?!?”
“Hey, crime is going down. Colorado Springs is safer than ever.”Report
So your argument seems to be that, in general, in most cities, public disorder is, in general, on the rise. And that you see this as a pretty widespread trend. Do I have that right?
Can you point to anything other than one story from NYC to support this?Report
No one heard me last time. I’ll say it again though.
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/04/19/fbi-data-oregon-crime-starts-to-go-down-in-2022/#:~:text=A%20rise%20in%20crime%20during,property%20crime%20decreased%20by%202.6%25.
Crime is going down. At least, it looks that way. Article above focuses on cities in Oregon but Oregon isn’t going to be weird in this respect.Report
Oh I heard you. And then I saw Jay make some claim that he wasn’t talking about crime but disorder.
We’re really just circling his drain though.Report
And here’s where we talked about visible disorder last year.
Remember John Rocker? Man, 2000 was a lifetime ago!Report
Well, if I can talk about “homicide”, I can point to this from the BBC as well as link to this thread again.
Is that sufficient?
Would you rather talk about burglary?Report
WHtS wRonG WiTh RurAl amEriCa?
They died at the supermarket. A week before Easter, a trio of 30-somethings parked at an Erie, Pennsylvania, grocery, ingested heroin, and overdosed. For the next 12 to 18 hours, their silver minivan van idled, while they slipped toward death. Eventually, a shopper took note. Police were dispatched; the grisly scene was discovered. Two died. A third person, a 39-year-old woman, survived when paramedics administered Narcan. Mysterious to some, we in the so-called rust belt know the utter commonality, even banality, of these “deaths of despair.”
‘Deaths of despair’ among working-class white men in the rust belt: Jeff Bloodworth
https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2023/04/deaths-of-despair-among-working-class-white-men-in-the-rust-belt-jeff-bloodworth.html
In the last decade, according to the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health, nearly 2 million Ohioans have died from “deaths of despair.” That makes the Buckeye state second only to West Virginia in this category. Tragically, the Ohio Valley leads the nation in the rise of deaths for those between 25 and 65. Erie’s ghastly scene was typical. These deaths are suicides in slow motion, caused by alcoholism, addiction, and risky life choices.
Wow. I think someone needs to be a brave truthteller and speak honestly about the poor life choices made by white people, especially the white people in rural America.
Maybe people just need to start moving to safer places, like the inner city.
Or..and bear with me here I’m just spitballing- we stop using crime and disorder as a tool to wank on about our prejudices and bigotries, and behave with an attitude of compassion and a search for solutions.Report
I actually think most attempts to shine a light on these kinds of situations, far away from America’s big media and cultural centers, usually are characterized as brave, truth telling. There’s the whole ‘rednecks in the mist’ thing. Also anyone remember Seriel’s follow up to Adnan Syed, S-Town? Or basically JD Vance’s career prior to politics?
Maybe one can say those subjects unfairly get a little bit of sympathy not consistently extended to those more like the subjects of David Simon’s reporting but I don’t think anyone would say it’s racist to talk about it or that our society is so dysfunctional everywhere it’s absurd to even bring it up as its own discrete issue.Report
The problems aren’t about race, they’re about culture. White people can have dysfunctional cultures too.
Jumping from a talk about zip codes to “race” much less “an entire race” is an effort to call the argument racist and thus avoid the discussion.
(It’s also possible this was an extreme exception but whatever.)Report
What. Is. Your. Argument?Report
The root of the argument was a response to Greg’s assertion that now was a great opportunity for the Left to make inroads in traditionally conservative areas.
I think that there are some serious pre-reqs to that and they include being a better example to follow.
And, from there, we started talking about governance and whether or not the Left provides an example (like, a non-cautionary example).
Hey. Maybe those cities could be more like Chicago with the right leadership.Report
So… you didn’t mention “public order” once.
Option B: AssholeReport
I did. It was smack dab in the middle of the parenthetical.Report
“ Greg’s assertion that now was a great opportunity for the Left to make inroads in traditionally conservative areas.
I think that there are some serious pre-reqs to that and they include being a better example to follow.
And, from there, we started talking about governance and whether or not the Left provides an example (like, a non-cautionary example).
Hey. Maybe those cities could be more like Chicago with the right leadership.”
Liar.Report
And, from there, we started talking about governance and whether or not the Left provides an example (like, a non-cautionary example).
Is this one of those things where you’re reading this like an HR manager and you search for the string and if you don’t find the string it must not be in the resume?Report
I’ll ask again, slightly clarified:
What is your argument as regards public disorder?Report
Foundational Axiom: There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.
Argument: If “the Left” wants reddish areas to start voting blue, then they would be well-served to be an example worth following for people who have reddish assumptions (note: this includes how to approach “Public Disorder”).
Premise: They have not been an example worth following for people who have reddish assumptions (note: this includes how to approach “Public Disorder”).
Or, if you want the distilled version:
P -> Q
Q is false
Q.E.D.Report
I’m not interested in helping willfully ignorant people correct their misinformed assumptions about public order in cities especially those who cannot or will not have their minds changed.
Tl;dr – They — and you — are wrong about the state of public order in most major American cities. Enjoy that!Report
It is funny, how perennial it is for people to assume that Things Are Getting Worse.
As I said before, by almost every single metric, America is safer, more prosperous, more orderly and with a higher level of trust than when anyone here was a child.
Levels of ills such as teen pregnancy and drug addiction are lower.
Automobile deaths are lower, drunk driving is less common.
Fewer people smoke cigarettes than at any point.
The threat of nuclear war is lower.
The air, water, soil is cleaner, less polluted than at anytime in our lifetimes.(Thanks hippies!)
And yet there is the perennial wailing about decline. It becomes hard to discuss because it has no basis in rationality or logic. Its based on moods and feels, which are in turn based on a priori biases and bigotries.Report
Agreed that everything is getting better, but I blame the news cycle. Bad news sells betterReport
Then you are not interested in them voting ‘blue’ then ….
And you still wonder why more rural areas vote red. But at least you are right about the state of public disorder in major cities. Enjoy that if/when Trump (or like-Trump) wins in the future.Report
While I don’t travel every corner of the city, I can say that the presence/behavior of the presumed homeless population feels pretty typical. There were definitely more people sleeping on the street during Covid, largely due to shelters and other service providers being shut down, losing funding, or otherwise unable to provide services. But that was a pretty temporary blip that has preceded.
So, as a quasi-New Yorker, I do not have any sense that public disorder is on the rise in this fare city.
Now, if you want to talk about public order on the sidelines of youth sports in tony suburban towns? HOOOO-BOOOY! Yea, that is a VERY disordered public arena right now!Report
Values have very little to do with it. East Podunk doesn’t have its crazies ranting in subways because they don’t have subways for them to rant in. Homeless East Podunkers can sleep in fields, forests, or side roads where they are less likely to be noticed than in big-city streets. Cities have a lot of people crowded into smallish areas. That inevitably has consequences that East Podunkers rarely have to face.Report
A similar observation was how everybody during the COVID pandemic loved how the citizens of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and other Asian developed democracies complied with COVID restrictions without fuss but don’t consider what was necessary for that in the first place. I do think that wanting both the imagined good parts of social democracy but also liking American rowdiness is a big part of the modern American Left.Report
The Left thinks it’s correct and everyone should/will voluntarily agree with it.
This is very similar to the pro-life movement. All right thinking people will want what I want and behave like I do.Report
The left Believes it is correct. If the left thought it was correct, they could be reasoned with.
The Japanese no longer even believe that the masks work — you can ask them on the street. However, wearing a mask is a significator of “social responsibility,” so taking it off is demonstrating that you are an antisocial person — and thus setting yourself up for shunning and worse.
The masks are never going away, there’s too much social pressure for the Japanese to ever stop wearing them.
(Prior to “the outbreak” masks were worn mostly during allergy season, because the Japanese feel that sneezing into your arm/hand/tissue is gross and shouldn’t be done in public).Report
Bernie Goetz 2Report
Bernie Goetz was actually threatened directly and also didn’t perform a 15 minute choke hold. I find that the person who killed Jordan Neel acted with much more malice and did murder him.Report
Goetz shot them in the back as i remember. Though forensics was more primitive back then and that didnt’ come out for a long time.Report
A few years back, I was selecting a jury in the Bronx and I had a nagging feeling that I knew one of the prospective jurors from somewhere. I finally just told him about my nagging feeling and asked if he could think of a reason I might know him. (Yes, it was amateurish, but, as you will see, it worked.)
He told me he was Tory Canty, one of the people Bernie Goetz shot. While I had no particular objection to his being on the jury, I knew better than to try to keep him so we all agreed he could be excused.Report
They’re claiming 3 minute choke hold online. Not a lot of stations 15 minutes apart from each other but we’ll see.Report
The 15 minutes was interval before police response, not length of choke hold. Unfortunately people are so eager to be outraged, they’re not waiting for all the facts to come in.Report
The media is obviously hell bent on turning it into this newscycle’s rorschach test, regardless of what the facts are.
Our only hope is that people aren’t ready to dive into that game again just yet.Report
Yeah, I’m hoping people like AOC will find that they got way out over their skis on this one, and public sentiment will fall the other way pretty quickly once more info is out there. It doesn’t seem like there’s actually much that’s ambiguous or unknowable here (which is what allows the controversies to take off), it’s just taking a while for all the info to get out.Report
Who’s they?Report
No one I trust. Source closest to this claims it was about 15 minutes. Now supposedly it was recorded so someone + the cops know exactly how long it was.Report
Honestly, the most appalling thing about this is the existence of the video. No one thought watching someone choke a guy to death on the NY subway was anything other than social media fodder.Report
They thought this was the correct course of action. At least two others helped the guy holding him. The guy filming it talked to the media and he clearly felt threatened.
We still need a ton of info, but it’s likely this is going to be a tough case. This guy has a ten year history of being a scary nut, with a criminal record of the same, and three random people felt threatened enough to hold him down.Report
Also, I didn’t watch the video but i’m sure it wasn’t obvious at what point things changed from “he’s being restrained” to “he’s being choked to death”. Is there any sign that the death was anything other than accidental?Report
I’ve looked for the video but have not found it. At the moment we lack a lot of basic information. There’s room for anything from accidental to deliberate.
A lot is going to depend on timing after he was unconscious.
If they let him go right away after he stopped moving and he just died then that’s going to be different from them continuing to choke him for 15 minutes.Report
I was listening to local news for New York this morning and they claimed a 3 minute choke. No clue if they’re trustworthy much less correct.Report
Putting aside the fact that choke holds are always fatal if held long enough, because they block blood to the brain, so he surely would have known you can’t hold it for that long, you can hear dialogue in the video itself in which this change is made clear. I won’t go into it, but if you watch the video, or read a transcript, you’ll know. The marine certainly would have known.Report
Much of the Left , like old libertarians, are in love with being counter culture and being weirdo’s. That stuff is good but it doesn’t take the place of the vast middle of society that isn’t weird. Even worse most of the Left/Libertarians really like the pose of opposing. Being against things and fighting the power regardless of whether the power makes is a good idea. They just want to oppose and be edgy.
Doesn’t help that many americans love the idea of righteous and redemptive violence.Report
I’ve definitely noticed that the Anglophone left has big love of counter culture and being weirdos that really don’t make for good mass politics.Report
Yes, we do have a greater tolerance for visual disorder – mostly because we don’t view it as any sort of existential threat. It is a visible symptom, and I for one believe that where it exists there are significant opportunities for better helping our citizens. Frankly I thinks it naivete to expect decorum of strung out junkie and those experiencing untreated mental illness or economic driven homelessness when we as a society have chosen in ways big and small to turn out backs on such people.Report
mostly because we don’t view it as any sort of existential threat
Able-bodied white men generally say stuff like “Well, *I* don’t feel threatened!” without taking into account how privileged they are to be able to say those things.Report
I’m huge and reasonably fit. Back in HS I had a talk with a guy whose small-but-aggressive dog viewed me as something he should attack. He tried to explain to me that his dog was friendly unless someone “lured” it off his land (no leash, no fence).
I told him I didn’t view his dog as a problem for me because if it got close enough I’d just kill it.
I wasn’t upset. I was very calm and serious, but he really didn’t like that statement. I tried to drive home to him that he lived across the street from a public pool and if his aggressive dog went after a 10 year old she could get hurt of killed.
Asking people to tolerate “disorder” is asking small females to suck it up, it’s fine if they’re afraid. It’s even fine if they get killed every now and then because their fears aren’t treated seriously.Report
When looking at existential threats, I’m looking collectively. Drug addicts, the economically homeless, and those with untreated mental illness on our streets (which is what everyone cites as “visible disorder”) don’t threaten the existence of the nation. The police force required to forcibly remove them for treatment or relocation does – and would then go looking for others to “remove” once they had accomplished their missions.
Really? Got statistics to back that up? And lets be clear – I’m saying the visible disorder is the tradeoff for refusing to provide the people causing it with the services and opportunities they need. You want junkies off the streets – you have to pay to get them clean and keep them clean.
You want the economically unhoused off the streets? Then you need real affordable housing, you need job training and placement and you need moving assistance to get them to where the jobs are. You also need childcare for their younger kids and robust quality public schools for all their older kids.
You want those experiencing mental health crises off the streets and not creating “disorder?” You have to pay for first responders who aren’t cops to come to their aid; you have to pay for both acute and chronic treatment. In some cases you have to pay for housing as part f that treatment. And you have to ensure they don’t also become homeless as a result since them may well lose their jobs.
With notably rare exceptions we don’t tax ourselves to pay for these things. Certainly not as national policy.
And as to the a$$holes with a too loud boombox on the bus? Sorry folks – there’s no real way to get them out of the picture. Developing a tolerance for their music might just be your ticket.Report
Here’s a fun article from the U.S. Government Accountability Office:
However, transit agencies we’ve spoken to generally expressed concerns that the shifts in commuting and increased telework could continue long after the immediate effects of the pandemic are over. This could continue to impact transit ridership and revenues in the years to come.
Apparently, low ridership rates are an actual problem that the government finds itself involved in.
Maybe we could have PSAs on public radio about the importance of music tolerance?Report
Indeed. My former company sent everyone to WFH during the pandemic except the assemblers, who had to be in the building. Years later, 99% of those staff have no desire to return to the office. Any suggestion of by mngt is rejected.Report
We were ordered back and then there was another massive wave Covid wave… and more recently someone has pointed out that the building is seriously over capacity. They’re still thinking about it.Report
“And as to the a$$holes with a too loud boombox on the bus? Sorry folks – there’s no real way to get them out of the picture. Developing a tolerance for their music might just be your ticket.”
I mean, it’s not like he’s doing something threatening like wearing a red hat or a Confederate-Flag T-shirt.Report
Visible disorder might not be an existential threat per se but generally it isn’t really that great in advancing the liberal/social democratic world view. The most successful social democratic and liberal countries tend to be orderly places with a population with a high sense of public decorum.Report
This sounds like culture is doing the heavy lifting.Report
That’s rich. They also tend to have way more monolithic cultures and ethnic make-ups and they tax the hell out of themselves to provide the social and medical services necessary to keep visual disorder at bay. We choose to do neither, and then rail that strung out drug addicts pee in the gutter.Report
I use the term “high collaboration”, myself.
I see “high trust” as a pre-req.
But we’ve gone over this.Report
You ever been in a hurricane zone after a storm? Not only is there high collaboration there’s high trust. Once the feds and their recovery funds leave it all goes back the way it was. Ditto major floods, forest fires, and tornado outbreaks.
What does that tell you?Report
Yes and No and Yes, because?
One of the first things that happens in disaster zones are increased police presence, curfews, and active deterrence… and yet looting and violence goes up even as collaboration goes up.
https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/crime-disaster-hurricane-earthquake-research/
“Disaster researchers now look at the full range of behaviors that occur. Uplifting cooperation follows community disasters, but so do looting; sexual assaults, acts of domestic violence, and fraud.”
“After disaster strikes, special guardianship by law enforcement and related agencies can protect hard-hit areas from property crimes and sexual assaults — although this approach is less effective in heading off upticks in domestic violence.”
It seems we’ve simply lost the vocabulary to discuss what we mean by good order so that collaboration/trust can flourish…Report
That’s the hilarious irony of the “survivalist” mindset.
The absolute best way to survive is to surrender your autonomy and join a group.Report
We’re richer. In terms of absolute amount of money per person spent on social services or income, the way to bet is we spend/redistribute more. We do a lot less to prevent the truly wealthy from existing, but that inequality, not amount of income/resources per person.
Culture, especially monolithic culture, is doing the heavy lifting here.Report
in 2019 (the most recent year I can find) we spent 18.7% of GDP on broadly defined social welfare spending – placing us 21st in OECD countries. The most recent per capita spending comparison I came across is 2015 – where we are tenth. Because of our privately funded health insurance industry, Americans spent more in 2021 (again most recent) per capita then other on health care.
Spending aside, we don’t achieve nearly the positive health statistics of other countries. All of which tells me that we have serious work to do, and dealing with the visible disorder is going to be a thing until we do.Report
Re: visible disorder;
Remember the thesis of Jonah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism”?
Or any of the thousands of essays and complaints about the fascism of mask mandates, cigarette bans, ADA regulations, bike lanes, or gas stove bans.
Remember all those videos of white middle class people throwing furious violent temper tantrums at clerks asking them to wear a mask?
For that matter, Jan 6?
And the SCOTUS case right now where corporations are demanding to be free of the rules of the administrative state?
I’m going to echo Lee’s point here that most American who talk about the need for public order aren’t really thinking of the consequences when they are forced to comply with something they don’t like.
Because I think that it gets back to how all of us, yes every single one of us, has some a priori vision of the Well Ordered Society.
When the laws and regulations conform to our vision, its easy to talk about Order; When the laws conflict with our vision, we talk about Liberty and wave the Gadsden flag and say things like “Be Ungovernable”.Report
Please note: He’s not saying “THIS IS FALSE!!!”
He’s saying “But the other side does it too!”Report
American leftists are on an attempt create something that hasn’t really been done before, a low trust social democracy. The closest they have as an example is Italy.Report
Quit worrying about it.
I have been assured that things are better than ever.Report
I’m a little gunshy about using the term “the left”.
I mean, when you say it, I’m sure you have a discrete set of people- Maybe Jacobin, or the extremely online rose twitter guys. Maybe some professor somewhere.
But these people are so marginalized they scarcely even exist in the minds of the American voters and are more resembling characters in a Ben Garrison cartoon..
Really, in the 2020 and 2022 elections, which candidate for office, in any city, state or federal race, could accurately be described as wanting to create a “low trust social democracy”?
The actual liberal class has borders ranging from Manchin and Hochul on one side, to AOC on the other with Biden and Newsom being the median.Report
Everyone who ran on demonizing the other side or on forcing cultural cram downs on the other side.Report
I think the left is genuinely surprised any time they’re not trusted. In their eyes, they’re not demonizing anyone, but identifying actual demons.Report
“Are you gunshy about talking about ‘The Right’?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”Report
Would you like names?
The Right=
Former President and 2024 Republican Nominee for President Donald Trump
Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis
6 of the 9 SCOTUS justices
Every one of the Republican Senators and Congresspeople
Comb through any of my comments. These people can all be fairly and accurately described by any of my descriptions of “The Right”.
Your turn.
Name members of “the left” and tell us what office they hold and tell us how they can be described as wanting a “low trust social democracy”.Report
They’re not *TRUE* Scotsmen, Chip.
Being on the Right requires intellectual consistency.Report
Is it the “low trust” part that’s a problem or the “social democracy” part?Report
I just want to know who the people are that Lee is talking about.
I’m pretty sure I know who HE is referring to.
But when other people go around asserting that “the Left is tolerant of social disorder” I want names.
Joe Biden? Gavin Newsom? Eric Adams? Kamala “was a cop” Harris?
Some rando on TikTok?Report
Maybe he’s a secret Republican.
Frisco is full of them, I’m told.Report
Let’s start with you.
What do you want to do about guys like our subway nut this week?
Over the long term I’m sure you’d say something about mental health and more programs.
However over the short term I see two options. Live with it (i.e. tolerate social disorder), or tell the cops to do something more forceful.Report
Short term: Station police officers on subways, teams specially trained to deal with mentally ill and low level hooliganism;
Longer term: Forcibly institutionalize him and the many others like him who are a danger to themselves or others.
FWIW, these are actual, real life programs that are being instituted by big city mayors.
So back to the question:
Who are the leftists that advocate tolerance of social disorder?
I don’t doubt they exist; But I want to see how many hold elected office or wield power to make policy.Report
Yeah, why in the world have the Republicans been spending so much time undercutting the police? They need more funding and better training!Report
So…you can’t name any of the people Lee is talking about.
Is it time to pivot to low test scores in Baltimore?Report
Oh, I can. We’ve discussed them before.
One of them was at the center of a massive recall vote (and he went on to actually be recalled). Another had a recall effort fail due to not getting enough signatures but they’re trying again.
I can find you a list of DAs who are bad, if you’d like.
(You’re right, though. There are a *LOT* of massive governmental failures out there. It’s funny how often “MORE MONEY! WE NEED MORE MONEY!” is involved in explaining the failures away.)Report
OK so your examples are Chesa Boudin and George Gascon.
This is great, because now we have actual people whose actual policies and behaviors we can discuss to determine if the assertion that they want a “low trust social democracy” is accurate nor not.
And we can compare them to the larger group of Democrats and liberals to see if they are representative or anomalies.Report
My list isn’t limited to those two, Chip. Those are merely two members of the list.
Diana Becton, Monique Worrell, Kim Foxx, Jody Owens, Kim Gardner, Alvin Bragg, Larry Krasner, John Creuzot, Steve Descano… Generally, any DA who refuses to prosecute crimes.
These are prosecutors who won elections, mind.
I’d be interested in hearing why they wouldn’t be representative.
Is it because Chesa got recalled?Report
I think a reasonable case can be made for Boudin, but not Gascon.
As for the others you’ll need to make a case.
But let’s just skip the bailey of “refuse to prosecute crimes” and get the motte.Report
Chip, we’re talking about creation of low-trust.
Prosecutors who allow crime to flourish are creating low-trust.
“Refusing to prosecute crimes” is allowing crime to flourish.
There you go.Report
So if the crime rate heads downward, then, what, we can say these prosecutors are creating high trust?Report
“People stopped reporting crimes that prosecutors refused to prosecute. The crime rate went down! High trust!”
No.Report
So what metric do you want to use to make your case?Report
My case? That the people that Lee is talking about exist, that there are more than two names on the list, and refusal to do stuff like prosecute shoplifting of less than $1,000 creates low trust.
Could you explain to me that, no, refusal to do stuff like prosecute shoplifting of less than $1,000 does not, in fact, create low trust?
Make your case!Report
So your metric is shoplifting?Report
No.
Do you acknowledge that we have moved from “nobody has named any people” to “you’ve only named two people” to “okay you’ve named a lot of people but now I want to nitpick whether low trust exists at all so I will question whether visible disorder exists”?
(And for the record, I tend to prefer the framing of “moving along a continuum” to one that assumes trust is a toggle.)Report
Nitpick?
Your entire argument is that the named people are creating lower levels of trust.
I’m asking for what metric you want to use to make such an argument because I don’t see even a hint of data to support such an assertion.
If you don’t want to use violent crime rates, and you don’t want to use shoplifting rates, then what?Report
Do you acknowledge that we have moved from “nobody has named any people” to “you’ve only named two people” to “okay you’ve named a lot of people but now I want to nitpick whether low trust exists at all so I will question whether visible disorder exists”?Report
I said at the outset that I was sure who Lee was talking about, but wanted to hear names of who others were talking about.
You’ve provided names of who you are talking about. That’s great.
But you made an assertion and you can’t seem to offer any support for it.Report
That visible disorder exists?
There is no evidence that visible disorder exists?
How’s this? Folks (including politicians!) are arguing against people opposed to visible disorder by use of social shaming. Is that evidence?Report
Your bailey was that the named prosecutors are allowing crime to flourish and therefore are creating low-trust.
But now you can’t seem to back it up and are retreating to the motte of “Well visible disorder exists”.
But even here, why should anyone think that visible disorder is increasing under these people you named, much less as a result of their action?Report
I think that it has to do with stuff like prosecutors no longer charging people with crimes related to visible disorder.
Are you asking me for evidence that prosecutors were bragging about stuff like “we aren’t going to prosecute shoplifting anymore”?
“Oh, so shoplifting is your measuring stick?”
“No. Prosecutors talking about how they aren’t going to prosecute it anymore is.”
“I can’t believe you’re using shoplifting. Police data shows that shoplifting numbers are going down in these jurisdictions!”Report
So the flourishing of disorder isn’t something we can measure, its more just a sense,, based on what prosecutors are saying?Report
I think that the flourishing of disorder can be measured by stuff like “stores closing because of public disorder” at the same time as prosecutors talking about how they aren’t going to prosecute shoplifting.
You can measure stores closing because of that sort of thing, after all.
Here’s an article from two days ago. It mentions Nordstrom, Whole Foods, Saks of 5th, Anthropologie, Office Depot, Abercrombie & Fitch, H&M and Uniqlo.
Here’s CNN talking about Nordstrom:
Here’s CBS talking about Whole Foods:
Here’s the SF Chronicle talking about Saks:
Other stores either refused comment when asked for one or started talking about “new consumer habits”.
But… there are a number of stores that talked about increases in public disorder before shuttering. Less savvy PR people, I guess.
Let me guess: That doesn’t count as evidence of visible disorder and, anyway, whatabout Wage Theft?Report
Are these reports reliable?
I mean, we’ve caught a couple retailers openly lying about why they were closing stores. Like Walgreens telling everyone they were closing stores because of shoplifting then later admitting they were actually just poorly performing.
So its not a good idea to take them at face value.
But I’ll agree with you that metrics for shoplifting and petty disorder crimes like crazy people screaming on the subway are very hard to come by because a lot of it goes unreported, or wildly inflated. Its not like murder where we can count bodies.
But here’s the thing. We CAN count violent crimes, and general property crimes like burglary.
And all the evidence shows that these have been declining for decades with only a small uptick here and there.
So is it possible that overall crimes are declining while petty disorder crimes are increasing?
Yes that’s definitely possible.
So then you need to show that not only are petty crimes increasing, but that the actions of the DAs are responsible.
You need to rule out other causes of petty disorder.
Because I can think of a much stronger correlation for a rise in public disorder than the words of a DA.Report
So we have gone from “name names!” to “you have only named two names” to “okay, you’ve named a bunch of names but you haven’t shown any evidence of visible disorder” to “do we know that the evidence of the results of visible disorder accurately represents visible disorder”.
Here’s a thread from 2021 where we had 31 different local stories saying that Philadelphia, Louisville, Cincinatti, Columbus, Baltimore City, Trenton, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Austin, Memphis, Tuscon, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Portland, Jacksonville, Rochester, Tulsa, Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Colorado Springs, Albuquerque, Fort Worth, Fayetteville, Jackson, Greensboro, Wichita, Lansing, and Shreveport had record homicides.
Not “a small uptick”.
but that the actions of the DAs are responsible.
You know what? I’m content with pointing out that stores are closing and saying it’s due to shoplifting and DAs talking about how they’re not going to prosecute shoplifting and saying that I have, in fact, provided evidence.
And you can keep denying.Report
Yes, small uptick. A one or two year rise doesn’t cancel out decades of decline.
I think that public disorder, whether rising or falling, is more a measure of homelessness and mental health than weak DAs.
Because I think it explains your vague sense of decline. You might be safer than at any time in your life, but if you see a lot of homeless people and babbling lunatics, it just gives you a sense of dread, that things are falling apart.
Which just brings us right back to my point that rather than trying, as Lee noted, to urge us to get comfortable with disorder, Democratic mayors and governors are trying to address it and solve it.Report
You’re defining “record homicides” as “a small uptick”.
That’s a bad definition. It’s inaccurate. It’s false.Report
record compared to what? The multi-decade trend is down. Across the board. An uptick that lasts a year is an anomaly statistically. Even an increase sustained over two years -s et against a three decade downward trend – is not proof of anything.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myths-and-realities-understanding-recent-trends-violent-crimeReport
I think what we’re seeing here is a classic Broken Windows phenomenon.
Where someone sees some visible disorder- graffitti, a broken window, a Youtube video of a shoplifter or lunatic screaming on the subway- and gets a sense of impending chaos, that things are falling apart.
It isn’t reason, so reason won’t dispel it.
But its real, and powerful. And I think that contrary to hoary mythology, modern liberals are responding admirably by taking steps to address homelessness and mental illness.Report
“Do you have a source for your assertion?”
“Here.”
“Does your source talk about what I asked for?”
“Yes.”
“Could you read your source to me?”
“I can.”
The city of Philadelphia has now reached 501 murders, surpassing the record of 500 homicides that was set in 1990.
Louisville has seen 175 homicides in 2021, surpassing a record set in 2020.
On Saturday police confirmed Cincinnati’s 89th homicide in 2020, marking the city’s deadliest year for killings on record.
Ohio’s capital city has tallied a record number of homicides for the second straight year, with several killings reported in Columbus in this week alone.
This is the seventh consecutive year the city has had over 300 homicide victims. A five-year-old girl and a 69-year-old woman are some of Baltimore’s most recent victims.
A year after record bloodshed had people clamoring for the job of the city’s ex-police director, the capital city is on the verge of matching its third-worst murder total in history, following the double murder of two men Friday morning.
With just under two months left in 2021, Indianapolis has broken its criminal homicide record for the second consecutive year.
The city hit 185 homicides on Dec. 20, the most in a single year since 1982 when the city hit 195 homicides and when nearly 200,000 more people called the city home.
The latest cases bring the city’s homicide toll to 82 this year. Austin’s previous record for homicides in a single year was in 1984, when 59 deaths were reported.
Saint Louis hit 263 homicides in 2020. The only number on the chart that is bigger is 1970’s number of 266, when its population was more than double.
Memphis’s homicide rate in 2021 is continuing at the same deadly pace as last year’s record-breaking 332 killings.
Narcaroti’s death is one of 81 homicides that have occurred in Tucson this year: breaking the record for most homicides in a single year. The record formerly was set in 2008 with 79 homicides.
After decades of declining violent crime, Minneapolis recorded 84 murders last year, up from about 48 in 2019, and a toll not seen since a dark chapter known as the “Murderapolis” years.
The homicide was the 34th of the year in the city, matching the most on record.
There were 190 homicides in Milwaukee last year, the most on record. Through last week, the city was on pace to pass that number with already more than 160 murders so far this year.
Kansas City recorded 180 homicide victims in 2020, the highest number of killings in a single year in its history, as gun violence surged nationwide.
A man was arrested for fatally shooting another man and a woman Sunday morning; police say that makes 72 homicides, breaking a Portland record set in 1987.
According to News4Jax records, 176 men, women, teenagers and children in Jacksonville saw their lives cut short by violence in 2020. That’s up from 162 homicides reported in 2019.
Rochester police say the record for the most homicides in one year in the city has been broken following three deadly shootings Thursday..
As detectives adjusted to virus precautions and rolled with an unexpected Supreme Court ruling that upended the way Oklahoma prosecutes criminal justice, 79 Tulsans were killed. The 83 homicides recorded in 2017 stands as Tulsa’s highest annual count in the past 30 years.
New end-of-year crime statistics released by the Seattle Police Department (SPD) showed dramatic increases in the number of homicides in 2020, pushing it to the highest in over two decades.
As summer winds down, Chicago is on pace to have its highest annual murder tally in a quarter century.
In 2020, Denver recorded the highest number of homicides it has seen in at least three decades. Denver Police Department (DPD) data from late June of 2021 shows the city is on pace to beat or meet last year’s number.
Residents killed each other on more occasions than they had in any year for at least three decades, according to data released Monday by the FBI. (That’s about Colorado Springs, for the record.)
And with that, a little less than five months left in 2021, Albuquerque has had 81 suspected homicides – matching the highest annual total ever recorded in the city.
Fort Worth has surpassed 100 murders this year – a 60% jump over the same time last year and the most in 25 years, police say.
This is the Fayetteville Police Department’s 36th homicide investigation of the year. There have been three more homicide investigations in 2021 than in 2020, surpassing previous record highs for homicides in the city.
A spike in killings over the last six months made 2020 the deadliest year ever for the Capital City with 128 homicides, according to a 3 On Your Side analysis of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Murder Accountability Project and the Jackson Police Department.
In 2020, Greensboro hit a record high with 63 homicides. So far in 2021, with less than two months in the year, there have been 45 homicides.
Wichita set a record for homicides last year with 59, eclipsing the city’s 1993 record of 57 homicides.
If homicides in Greater Lansing progress at their current rate, the region is on track to double its already record-breaking 2020 totals.
Shreveport is on a record pace for homicides in 2021. The current record is 86 killings set in 1993.
I hope this answers your “record compared to what?” question!
Note: This is not one link to one story. This is one-link-per-city, linking to local coverage.Report
First of all that’s exactly how statistics work. Ask any sports fan.
But why are you suddenly back on statistics anyway?
You made it clear that your position- that liberal DAs are allowing crime to flourish by not prosecuting enough- isn’t based on crime rate, or arrest rates, clearance rates, or any other hard metric.
Instead you made it clear it is a feeling, a sense you get by comparing the comments by some DAs with press reports by retailers.Report
“But why are you suddenly back on statistics anyway?”
You asked for them?
And you’re misstating my position.
My position is that there exists visible disorder.
You are asking for evidence of visible disorder.
I have provided evidence that consists of DAs who have announced stuff like “we’re not going to prosecute shoplifting” and linked to stores closing in the wake of the new normal.
You want evidence of visible disorder, there you go. You want statistics, there you go.
You want to stick your fingers in your ears and squeeze your eyes shut and yell “LA LA LA LA”? There you go.Report
Here let me remind you what your position is:
“I’m content with pointing out that stores are closing and saying it’s due to shoplifting and DAs talking about how they’re not going to prosecute shoplifting”
And remember this exchange?
Chip: “So if the crime rate heads downward, then, what, we can say these prosecutors are creating high trust?”
Jaybird: ““People stopped reporting crimes that prosecutors refused to prosecute. The crime rate went down! High trust!”
No.”
Chip “So your metric is shoplifting?”
Jaybird: “No. Prosecutors talking about how they aren’t going to prosecute it anymore is.”
Lets skip over the part where you document prosecutors saying they “won’t prosecute shoplifting” and whether or not this is a new or changing phenomenon.
After going on and on about shoplifting, when I suggest that any rise in shoplifting can better be explained by homelessness and mental illness you suddenly pivot back to murder, from 2 years ago.Report
We have politicians on both sides routinely running on forcing cultural cramdowns on the other side. We have both sides viewing the other side as being evil.
We have the gov being used to “uplift” specific races/cultures, by strong implication at the expense of others. We have Trump misusing the machinery of gov.
None of this is suggestive of moving towards higher trust in the gov.
If we look for people who measure trust in the gov directly we have this: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/public-trust-in-government-1958-2022/
If we’re interested in increasing Trust in the gov then we need to prioritize the gov functioning (which may not be possible given the size and nature of our society), and the gov functioning in a neutral way (which both sides would view as unacceptable).
Example: If we need to get rid of Affirmative Action as the price for increasing trust in the gov, are you willing to do that? By “get rid of” I mean “outlaw all discrimination based on race and mandate that all evaluations be neutral even if the results are not”?Report
With all these murders happening, it would be damned irresponsible to deploy the massive police and prosecutors resources needed to make a dent in misdemeanor shoplifting.Report
I think they’d have to acknowledge that it’s actually happening rather than a mere “uptick”.Report
Well, obviously, nobody investigates or prosecutes homicides that aren’t happening, whatever the trend happens to be, so there’s nothing to “acknowledge” except that Smith is dead and somebody, maybe Jones, killed him, and to proceed accordingly. Whether the current rate of homicide is an uptick from a downward trend or a precursor of a change in the trend is an interesting question with interesting policy implications, but it has nothing to do with cops going about their business investigating and prosecutors going about their business prosecuting whatever homicides happen to occur.Report
I’m sorry. I miscommunicated.
The “they” was referring to the people who were calling the increase in homicides an “uptick”.
Not the prosecutors themselves.
If I were talking about the DA’s office, I’d mention stuff like their press releases about “We will no longer prosecute thefts of desperation!” or what have you.
I regret the error.Report
The current numbers of homicides are either an uptick from a downward trend or a precursor of a change in the trend. One view is right and one view is wrong, but in neither case does the argument require that anyone “acknowledge” or fail to “acknowledge” whatever the actual current numbers happen to be.Report
I think that to get someone to agree that going after petty crimes is a waste of resources that would be better used on the record-breaking homicides, they have to share your premise that the homicides are, indeed, record-breaking.
If they cannot meet you halfway on that, you’re stuck arguing for things without a shared premise in the first place.Report
Homicide is always the highest investigative and prosecutorial priority, certainly higher than misdemeanor larceny. As it should be, whether the current rate of homicides is “record-breaking” or not. No need of a “shared premise” about the significance of the current homicide rates. All we need to agree on is that murder is more important than shoplifting, and I’m pretty sure everyone agrees on that.Report
Golly, it’s a wonder that they pull people over for busted taillights, given that homicide exists.
Jeez, what do cops even do all day?Report
When you get around to having a point, I’ll address it.Report
Axiom: “Visible Disorder leads to Lower Societal Trust”
Point: “We’ve got sufficient Visible Disorder to result in Lower Societal Trust”.Report
As someone here once said, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. What felonies would you take the cops and prosecutors off of to crack down effectually on misdemeanor larceny?Report
A quick google confirms that half of all homicides go unsolved.
So I’d say that they should be pulled off of whatever the hell they’re doing that isn’t solving homicides.Report
What makes you think police will be any more motivated to investigate shoplifting when they can hardly be bothered with murder?Report
Well, if we’re in a place where “we cannot trust the police to do their jobs”, then I’d say that we’re back to wandering toward “we are in a low trust society” and we should expect more private security among the rich and more vigilantism among the non-rich.
Hurray.Report
Given the police budgets in some of the cities you’re complaining about on these pages, citizens absolutely should not be expected to throw in the towel on poor performance.Report
And the likely percentage of shoplifting cases they’d solve if we took them off rapes, robberies, and assaults is…?Report
Oh, are those going up?Report
That’s a false trade off. Murder is rare and is handled by higher level cops, disorder is handled by beat cops.
The actual trade offs are:
1) Budget.
As Chip has pointed out, if you arrest and jail everyone who is mentally ill and causing disorder, then that breaks the budget. Similarly providing them with high intensity resources is also extremely expensive.
2) Civil Rights (and training cops to misbehave)
The mentally ill who accept that they are ill and get treatment become normal people. The disorderly refuse treatment or can’t be treated. Forcing them to make better choices and/or less problematic choices instantly is a mess.
3) Having good (expensive) services will attract more clients and become more expensive.
This is true both at individual level (if you’re handing out free housing, then I’d like some), and at a city level (if your city is handing out great services, then mine can send our problematic people to you).
This is both “tragedy of the commons” and “rewarding what should be punished encourages the problem”.Report
I’m not sure we actually disagree. I don’t see a sustainable, effective police/prosecutor response to shoplifting. We can’t post cops in more than a handful of the stores vulnerable to shoplifting (the viral video shows a rent-a-cop doing nothing, not real cops) and when they’re not in the store, they are unlikely to be able to catch the perp if the rent-a-cop doesn’t do his job.
Most businesses install the security appropriate to the products they sell. You can’t walk into Tiffany’s and fill a cart with jewelry whether you intend to pay for it or not, and having to have someone unlock a display case at Safeway or Whole Foods when you want carrots or deodorant is costly and inconvenient in relation to the risk. Maybe — maybe — essentially random targeted Shoplifting Weeks in various neighborhoods would have some deterrent effect, but it can’t be a sustained enforcement program.Report
Organized crime using this as a business model suggests RICO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act
The first-ever RICO trial was conducted in May 1979 in United States v. Sam Bailey Gang by Prosecutor Mark L. Webb in San Francisco, California, Northern District of California. The case was tried successfully by use of the RICO statute in alleging that a gang of postal burglars and a Nevada fence collaborated criminally in an organized crime fashion. Report
Remember the whole thing about how “Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City last year involved just 327 people”?
Maybe we could do something about those 327 people without breaking the bank.Report
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11981695/A-NYCs-retail-theft-driven-just-327-seasoned-shoplifters.htmlReport
And yet there are so few of them. Maybe because they’re so hard to make.
And they wouldn’t do a thing about freelancers.Report
We do about 200 people a year with RICO (google).
The word “freelancer” is probably also the word “habitual”.Report
There’s probably a lot more we could be doing about organized crime, but I suspect that what people see as “visible disorder” is less Fat Tony’s crew looting a warehouse for big bucks than some deranged homeless guy snatching a Mountain Dew.
Like that guy in the viral video on a bike scooping a bagful of stuff at a drugstore.
From a legal standpoint, what was the crime, and what could be the range of possible sentences?
The take was probably less than 50 bucks, misdemeanor theft, no violence involved.
Sure we can arrest and jail him for what, 30, 60, maybe 90 days?
And if he is just a misbehaving hooligan, that may have a deterrent effect and he will go straight.
But if he is one of the tens of thousands of deranged lunatics shuffling along the street, there is no deterrent effect. The day he gets out, he will do the same thing.
I see a lot of Lawn Order people talking about how that subway guy had been arrested 43 times or something.
He wasn’t deterred by the first 43 arrests but by golly, one more oughta do the trick!
This is where I weigh in on the side of forcible institutionalization of the mentally ill, because short of some indefinite confinement, they will continue to wreak chaos.Report
He wasn’t deterred by the first 43 arrests but by golly, one more oughta do the trick!
I don’t think that the Lawnorder people think that he should have been arrested 43 times.
They think that he should have been arrested only about a dozen or so and then put in a situation where he could not have been arrested a 13th time.Report
Like what?
Like what Governor Newsom is doing?
Or is there some brilliant conservative idea we should all be listening to?Report
You can’t even comprehend “locking up habitual offenders”, can you? Like, the thought “this guy should be sequestered away from society for years at a time” doesn’t even enter your mind. It never occurs to you that someone else might conclude such a thing because such a thing never occurs to you.Report
You’re talking about Three Strikes.
We’ve had that here in California for about two decades now.
In its original form, it resulted in people being sentenced to life in prison for nonviolent crimes, even misdemeanors in some cases (there was a mechanism where prosecutors could revise misdemeanors into felonies in order to apply the rule)
It was revised in 2012 to pertain only to violent felonies.
Are conservatives seeking to change it? How?Report
He wasn’t deterred by the first 43 arrests but by golly, one more oughta do the trick!Report
We have choices other than 3 strikes over the course of your life and ignoring dozens of times a year.
However if you’re determined to ignore dozens of times a year then yes, we’re into tolerating public disorder.Report
Where did I suggest we ignore dozens of times a year?
Liberals like me and Gavin Newsom support locking up deranged shoplifters for a long time.
Are conservatives willing to agree that this is a good, if insufficient step?
Does anyone, anywhere have a proposal for what to do about non-deranged repeat petty offenders?Report
Conservatives are typically in favor of locking up habitual offenders. Tuff on crime.
On the liberal side we have “no bail” and “this one time didn’t get enough to warrant doing something serious” and “tuff on crime is absurd”.
If we assume the criminals are victims of circumstance then maybe outreach talks them into not being criminals.
If we assume criminals are bad actors and have self will, then we need to accept we’re going to need to use deterrence and punishment.Report
OK, since you made the statement, lets probe.
What, exactly, do conservatives want to do about habitual misdemeanor non-deranged offenders?
No handwaving, no vague bromides or buzzwords, cite some actual changes in policy or law that conservatives are proposing.Report
If the court finds that a defendant before the court for sentencing for a misdemeanor is a habitual misdemeanor offender, the court shall, unless the court makes a finding that an alternative disposition is in the best interests of the community and defendant, sentence the defendant as a habitual misdemeanor offender and impose one of the following sentences:
(a) A term of imprisonment of not less than 6 months, but not to exceed 1 year;
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0775/Sections/0775.0837.html
I think the State of Florida counts as “conservative”.Report
At first glance, this…doesn’t sound so unreasonable.
I think plenty of liberals could get behind a version of this especially since it includes diversion into treatment centers.Report
Team Blue is welcome to steal this one. (Giving credit to DeSantis is a bridge too far).
Punishment for the bad actors, treatment for those who need it, and a Judge gets to untangle which of those is appropriate. It has a decent chance of working.
I wouldn’t mind Bass’ experiments working either…
…although I’m doubtful. I think the wheels come off if we treat criminals as victims. Maybe he’ll find a good balance and prove me wrong.Report
I wonder if changing the prison system from penitentiary to reform might work here. If we consider the root of petty crime as a mental illness, or even caused by mental illness, then we’re working on eliminating the problem. Currently, all we’re doing is kicking the can down the road a few years at a time.Report
Depends on which crime. We’re bouncing back and forth between “things the mentally ill do” and “things professional criminals do”.
The former might respond to treatment but the later aren’t sick.Report
What I’m saying is perhaps we ought to classify this sort of anti-social behavior as a mental illness.Report
But there are a whole lot of cases where below-average intelligence and impulse control, drug and alcohol use, and mental illness all overlap. It’s hard to determine the main or the initial driver in these cases.
Also, while there’s a distinction between petty and serious crimes, there often isn’t one between petty and serious criminals.Report
“Point: “We’ve got sufficient Visible Disorder to result in Lower Societal Trust”.”
“Visible Disorder” is a single data point.
“Lower” is a vector meaning a trend downward.
Is there more, or less visible disorder than at last year, 2 years ago, 5 years ago, 10?
How do you conclude there is a trend when you have only a single data point?Report
No, Chip. My position is that there is visible disorder. You don’t believe that there is visible disorder. So I’ve been playing the “find if Chip will acknowledge that *ANYTHING* is visible disorder” game.
I’m going on and on about shoplifting because I can document stores closing in jurisdictions where prosecutors, famously!, have argued that they won’t prosecute for it anymore.
Does that count as visible disorder?
Oh, wait. “Homelessness and mental illness”. Does *THAT* count as visible disorder?
Murder spikes?
ANYTHING???Report
When did I ever say that visible disorder doesn’t exist?Report
Oh good!
Then we are in complete agreement about absolutely everything.Report
Look, its OK if you want to say that ideas about where social trust is headed are based on intuition and hunches.
Nothing wrong with that, you could even be right.
But you should at least acknowledge that other people may, reasonably, see it differently because so far your evidence for a downward trend is vaporous at best.Report
Eh, the “find me a rock” management game goes something like this:
“Find me a rock.”
“Here is a rock.”
“That rock is too big. Find me a smaller rock.”
“Here is a smaller rock.”
“That rock is too red.”
Anyway, if your assertions keep jumping from “you haven’t named names” to “you’ve only named two names” to “okay, you’ve named a bunch of names but violent crime is going down” to “okay, there might be an upward blip on homicide” to “those numbers of record homicides are two years old by now”, you’re playing the “find me a rock” game.
The evidence was given.
You moved the goalposts each time and declared that you wanted something else entirely.Report
You just keep repeating the same stuff over and over-
“A prosecutor said something about not prioritizing shoplifting and some retail stores said shoplifting is causing them to close so QED shoplifting is outta control and society is going to Helena Handbasket”.
Goalposts are right where they were to begin with. Sorry if that’s the best shot on goal you got, color me unconvinced.Report
“Here’s some footage of people walking into stores and filling up garbage bags and walking out.”
“They didn’t steal *THAT* much, all told. It’s not evidence that that’s happening to the point where stores are closing because of it!”Report
“and besides, all the footage you showed me has people of a certain skin tone doing the filling-up and walking-out. Maybe there’s a particular message you’re trying to send with this, hm? Maybe? Hm? Maybe? Maaaaaybe? Hmmmmm?”Report
My wife’s school district instituted a policy of mostly not having actual referrals of students so there was no documentation. They then claimed referrals had dropped by over 50%. It is easy to say ‘crime rates are down’ when you no longer categorize actions that were previously crimes as non-crimes.Report
How is this different from what we do now?
This is like asking which members of the GOP advocate women dying because of bad pregnancies and badly written abortion laws. It’s not that they’re openly advocating it, it’s that it’s the real world outcome.
If your longer term program is shut down, it will be by members of the Left who don’t like forcing someone to do this (and to be fair it has an ugly history).
Your shorter term program has the issue of what do the police do with him. If you put him in prison then he stops being a problem but you’ve criminalized being mentally ill. If you don’t put him in prison then he’ll be back the next month doing the same thing.
Our subway nut did his thing for ten years. He has 20+ arrests, some of them for violence.Report
You do know that it was California Governor Ronald Reagan who signed the law that emptied out the mental hospitals and put them onto the streets?
No, this isn’t a gotcha. The push to abolish old style asylums was a bipartisan affair, with advocates for greater freedom (the folks that Lee is referencing) joining with “small government” conservatives.
And here’s where your point is well taken:
The original promise was to transform the horrific asylums into decentralized neighborhood residence care with treatment and job placement and all sorts of wonderful things.
But of course, year after year, when budgets needed to be trimmed, it was those wildly expensive doctors and residential facilities that got the ax.
Leading to nutcases assaulting people on the
LA subway.
So the lesson?
We can solve the problem of societal disorder but it is wickedly expensive, more than almost anyone will dare admit.
Liberals like Newsom and Bass are attempting to address the problem head on but are running into the same buzzsaw that followed Reagan’s administration- Where will we get the money?
Even if all we did was say lets arrest the bums, that is the MOST expensive solution, one we just don’t have the money for.
This is why I say that the “Git Tough on Crime!” stuff is always, always, bullcrap, stupid preening meant to fool gullible rubes.
EVERY politician, every citizen, is “soft on crime” when they see the pricetag.Report
That. That exactly.
BTW the baby boomers are retiring and our need for social dollars will be increasing a lot… not that this will help anyone else.
The cheap and easy solutions are:
1) Make it impossible to function if you are homeless. We have a homeless shelter but it’s far away from food/transport/jobs, etc. Clearly built into the basic design of the community.
The one time I saw a mentally ill guy walking around I also saw two cop cars following him around a half hour later. To be fair he was belligerent.
2) As a class, the mentally ill are less violent than average. Arresting the violent mentally ill while leaving the rest to fester can be done within a budget. If the city is big enough then you’ll end up with homeless camps in their own areas far away from normal people.
Using the cops to police the subway and shoo away the homeless and enforce tolls (close to the same thing) is a combo of both #1 and #2. That also makes your public transportation a lot more usable.Report
“We can solve the problem of societal disorder but it is wickedly expensive, more than almost anyone will dare admit.”
We don’t know how to solve the problem of societal disorder through government, but we do know how to do it through culture and personal morals, and that’s an expense people don’t want to pay.Report
I don’t have a way to force my culture on others.
We’re multi-cultural. That means we’re going to have different price points, different values, different productiveness levels, and different levers.
So a program that has one effect in one area can have a very different effect in another. We see this in the min wage (different productivities and different costs of living).
We see this with cultural pressures. If you have tremendous cultural pressure to get married if you’re pregnant, then giving money to unmarried women with children is a good thing. Without that pressure you’re paying women to not get married.
One of my kids has talked glowingly of “van life”, i.e. “living in your van”. I’ve talked her out of it. I’ve had other children suggest other silly lifestyle choices over the years, I’ve talked to them about them too.Report
You’re thinking of petty crime and hooliganism.
But much if not most of the disorder we’re talking about here is the result of mental illness and addiction.
And even looking across the sweep of human history I doubt anyone can identify an era where drunks and lunatics were solved.
Get in a time travel machine and go to any city in any period anywhere and you will be walking down a street of ragged beggars, babbling and slurring their words.
Because to solve for that is wickedly expensive. Mark Twain noted in Huckleberry Finn that you could only reform a drunk with a shotgun.Report
Great post.
In theory (and probably in practice) over that time frame we’ve seen this problem get a lot better.
“Village idiot” disease (disorder?) has a magic once-a-day-pill. I can think of a number of mental illnesses which also have magic pills.
We’re trying to do the same thing with addiction.
In Twain’s time none of these were treatable.Report
Without touching morals, whose culture?
As an example, when I worked at a boarding school for Native American kids I was instructed that they would not look you in the eye while you were reprimanding them. This was a sign of deference to authority. In white culture this would get you a 2nd reprimand.Report
Shoot, this was meant as a reply to Pinky, above. https://ordinary-times.com/2023/05/01/tsn-open-mic-for-the-week-of-5-1-2023/#comment-3839372Report
That’s true. I’d say the difference is that the Jacobin crowd actively want a low trust social democracy while more mainstream liberals just want to power through the culture issues. But even when dealing with mainstream types, you get a lot of comfortable people just need to deal with public disorder and shrug at times.Report
The EU has a GDP of $40k per person. Ours is $80k.
So if we’re both spending 18.7% then we’re spending twice as much per person.
France spends 30% (#1), but their per person GDP is $44k so we’re higher than France.
One or two of the tiny and/or oil states might beat us but that’s it.Report
If only there were a convenient, easy-to-understand list of nations ranked by GDP per capita. (Yes, we are a wealthy nation when viewed by this index. But since when did Ireland beat us so handily! here’s the answer: some time between 1999 and 2000.)Report
Ireland is tiny (5 million people) and their economy is dominated by one industry (tax avoidance by big American multi-national software companies).
80% of their business taxes are paid by those.
A quarter of their employment comes from the same.
And my eyeball evaluation was we still have more per person for social programs/transfers than they do.
Luxembourg (population: 600k) beats us. I’d have to do math to check if anyone else does but maybe not.
Evaluations on how strong your welfare state is shouldn’t be done on percentage of GDP. Doubling the economy doesn’t mean you need to eat twice as much.Report
“They also tend to have way more monolithic cultures and ethnic make-ups and they tax the hell out of themselves to provide the social and medical services necessary to keep visual disorder at bay. We choose to do neither”
yo yo yo um
hold up
I think maybe you should’ve workshopped that post a little more before suggesting that monolithic cultural and ethnic make-ups is a choice that you approve ofReport
The thing that I find interesting is the comments section of the article about this on the NYT site.
Click on the “Reader Picks” tab.
This ain’t how I expected the NYT comment section to go.Report
The punch line is behind the paywall.Report
Well, new yorkers are probably more likely to be able to sniff out the BS from the early sensationalist reporting, given their regular experience. But also in general I find the NYT commentariat is an interesting mix of Internet-style liberals, older liberals, and a few non-liberals. While you’ll rarely see any kind words for, say, Ross Douthat, the more IDPol-ish topics often get a good mix of reactions.Report
A Reddit post from 9 years ago. The title? “Try to stay away from the Michael Jackson impersonator if you see him”
Report
LOL. Clarence and Ginni Thomas are comically corrupt chapter ??? and still counting.
Ginni Thomas given money by a supporter with business before the court. Leo specified that her name shouldn’t’ be on the paperwork.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/05/04/leonard-leo-clarence-ginni-thomas-conway/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitterReport
I don’t find it that funny.Report
I dont’ actually find it funny but it’s absurd. The defenses are the kind of bs no one is supposed to take seriously.Report
He will lie and his supporters will hail him as a good main unfairly accused. That’s been going on since 1991.Report
The current Disney vs. DeSantis conflict is fascinating to look at because you seem to have two types of liberals. The ones that really believe that Disney is a source of goodness and light in the battle against DeSantis and they people like me who see them as a Stalin type figure at best because they are still a big powerful mega-corporation unbeholden to the public servants.Report
Liberalism shouldn’t traffic in assigning hero or villain roles.
Miranda, from the Miranda rights, was a petty thug. Clarence Gideon, Norma “Roe”, and pretty much everyone else whose cases resulted in civil rights, were generally unsympathetic at best or downright unsavory.
Disney may be unsavory in a lot of things, but they are in the right here.Report
I kind of disagree. This might be a heterodox view but I believe in the existence of evil, that people and organizations could be evil, and that sometimes you need to ally yourself with a lesser evil against a greater evil.Report
Parent’s rights, Y’all!
Florida Passes Bill Allowing Trans Kids to Be Taken From Their Families
The Florida legislature passed a bill Thursday that will let the state take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care.
https://newrepublic.com/post/172444/florida-passes-bill-allowing-trans-kids-taken-familiesReport
It is going to get a lot worse before it gets better and people need to wake up about that. There are times where I get really frustrated with many people not realizing this.Report
What exactly is encompassed by “gender-affirming care”? Does this include puberty blockers and gender reassignment surgery?
Taking children away from their parents is definitely way, way on the other side of the scale, but the extent to which this “affirming care” euphemism has taken hold is really quite stunning and disturbing. Once you get into the specifics of different levels of “care”, public support changes drastically.Report
From the article:
So in Florida is making standard of care a criminal action punishable by removal, and claiming the right to do for/from children of Florida parents in other states.
Disgusting.Report
You can agree or disagree with it, but calling it “disgusting” goes way too far. Letting children make permanent body-altering decisions is a fraught topic and will of course be controversial — “standard of care” is a bullshit phrase that pretends there’s some sort of hard medical science here when there’s obviously not. For comparison’s sake, female circumcision for a minor is *illegal* in the US, regardless of consent — I’m of course not saying that this is exactly the same, but it’s similar enough that maybe people should take a breath and think through all the ramifications.Report
What “permanent body-altering decisions” are you talking about?
And when are we going to start arresting mohels?Report
No child is being allowed to make permanent decisions. None. Standard of care requires parental consent at all junctures. IF it’s not given then treatment goes no further. Period. Because that’s how medicine actually works in the US.
What is disgusting is the use of government sanction to remove children from homes where they are loved, accepted and empowered. That’s what this law seeks to do.Report
(Hmm, i replied to Philip but something in my response triggered the filter — can someone help?)Report
(Thanks — and now reading my reply, i see what probably tripped it)Report
The string sh*t, with the * replaced by i, is on the list of strings that throws a comment into moderation. It’s been on the list for a long time. WordPress’s check doesn’t care about case or embedding, so a comment that includes, “the volleyball player mish*t their serve” will go into moderation if the i is there.Report
I recall a dog breeding site that was emphatic about the proper spelling of “shih tzu”. They were fine with “b*tch” though.Report
From The New York Times: Anheuser-Busch Changes Beer Marketing Focus After Transgender Promotion
Sports and music. Who doesn’t like sports and/or music?
Anyway, the thing that I thought was interesting was this sentence here at the end of paragraph 3: “They repeatedly noted that the promotion was limited to one influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, and one social media post, and that beer cans displaying her image had not been produced for mass distribution.”
It was one post from one person, once.
And future ad campaigns will involve senior executives. None of this low-level “talking to influencers” crap anymore.
Which is weird given how strong the numbers are in paragraph number two.Report
Well, that’s because they’re cowards.Report
It always sucks to find out that one of your favorite products doesn’t have the same values that you do.Report
Indeed. And if you’re a snowflake, you melt over it.Report
Snowmelt is part of what makes Coors a much better beer than Budweiser. Fresh from the flakes to the stream to Coors to you.
The Holiday Beerman | Coors Light from Christopher Walker on Vimeo.
Report
Eh… I have always been a Bud Heavy partial, Bud Light in a pinch. Still am!Report
The amazing thing is that conservatives think this episode makes them look good.Report
They probably think that their money is, at the very least, “mid” (as the kidz say).Report
No one celebrates because they think they look good; they celebrate because they think they did the right thing and won.Report
Exactly.
They think they did the right thing and that this makes them look good.Report
I already regret breaking silence. That’s not what I said, and you can see it’s not what I said, so don’t say “exactly” then write something different.Report
Fair enough- allow me to rephrase:
Exactly. They think they did the right thing.Report
Have you bought Bud Light in the last month?Report
You’re asking Chip whether he has good taste in beer? Maybe he’ll feel like telling us, but that hardly advances the ball.Report
When *I* refuse to buy crappy beer, it’s because I have good taste.
When *YOU* refuse to buy crappy beer, it’s because you’re a snowflake.Report
Snowflakes who used to drink one crappy beer and then stop and pivot to another crappy beer are exhibiting snowflakery, not taste.Report
If people aren’t going to buy Bud Light, you can’t stop them.Report
This is pretty disingenuous.Report
It seems less disingenuous than being upset that other people change where they spend their entertainment dollars.
We go through this periodically with television shows and movies.
Now we’re doing it with beer.Report
Eh, I don’t buy, and never have, Bud Light because it’s a terrible beer.
The metaphorical you used to buy tons of Bud Light then stopped, and advertised the stoppage, because A-B had an influencer who belongs to the current out group have a picture taken holding said beer.Report
The actual me used to collect comic books, play particular video games, and watch particular movies.
I was told that I was no longer the target audience and I shrugged and stopped consuming them.
I don’t see how this reflects particularly poorly on me.
I am not obligated to purchase a product when it pivots away from seeing me as one of the people the product hopes to please.Report
When was the last time you shot a comic book with a machine gun?Report
Sadly, I own none.
But Bud Light isn’t freaking out because of the performative dorks shooting cases of Bud.
They’re freaking out because of the US sales numbers dip. The dip isn’t due to the shooters. It’s due to the people quietly not buying it.Report
Not buying it, sure. Quietly, hardly.
Ironically, now we have this: https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/05/05/chicago-gay-bars-stop-selling-bud-light-other-anheuser-busch-beers-after-brand-backs-down-to-anti-trans-critics/Report
I’m not saying that there aren’t noisy people performatively not buying it very loudly.
There are.
However, there are news reports saying that there is a double-digit dip in sales in the US.
As loud as those people are, they’re not responsible for a double-digit dip. It’s the quiet “not buying” that is doing that.
As for the bars in Chicago… I, personally, do not consider them to be snowflakes.
If a brand offendeth thee, pluck it out.Report
“Ironically, now we have this:”
What we’re seeing, here, is that while most Americans generally hate it when you get preachy, even more of us hate it when you’re a wimp.Report
You expected different? It’s not as though you’re new here.Report
I have, though I doesn’t really qualify as beer. I keep it on hand for my neighbors who wouldn’t know what to do with a porter or stout.Report
This seems like the same cohort who were the target audience for the “Trump Campaign = Galactic Empire” internet spots, so I would revise your statement by striking the phrase “did the right thing and”. What they’re celebrating is a vi tory. The moral gravity of the intent behind their actions is at most secondary.
At some level they have to know that they were bullies, but they don’t care. What feels good to them is winning.Report
One of the benefits of posting on a forum like this is this realization: no matter how much you think the other guy is wrong, it doesn’t make him think he’s wrong.Report
We can just state the facts which no one denies.
Bud Light portrayed a trans person as a spokesperson.
Conservatives were so outraged they swore to never drink the beer until it stopped.
And they did this openly, proudly.
We can state this, without making any sort of argument and let people draw their own conclusions.Report
With a ‘B’.
Report
Interesting column today in the inbox:
https://open.substack.com/pub/theliberalpatriot/p/young-voters-are-more-moderate-than?r=dy2cv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Young people (18-29) mostly identify as moderate and will adopt the “conservative” position on issues, although even after reading the column, I’m struck that a) still only 25% of The Youngz identify as overtly “conservative” and b) a large number of The Youngz identify as LGBTQA+ and are repelled by the heteronormative political agitation that has occupied so much of the online consciousness lately, including a high percentage of the comments on this page.
Which, if I were advising Republicans, would make tell them “back off on the Transgender business and explain how you’re going to get these people JOBS” but that of course would be concern trolling. Y’all rejected my advice of “No more creepy weirdos” ten years ago after Todd Akin helped re-elect Obama in a race Romney could have won. So keep on keepin’ on there, GOP friends. Don’t let me tell you what to do.Report
“Y’all rejected my advice of “No more creepy weirdos” ten years ago after Todd Akin helped re-elect Obama ”
interesting, according to Tod Kelly, Akin is totally irrelevant to anything and I’m the only one who ever brings him up for any reason
also the Republican Party was calling for him to step down and not even the voters really wanted him, his biggest contributor was McCaskill. (the only more-effective op in recent memory was getting the media to go all-in on “BernieBro”.)
“Young people (18-29) mostly identify as moderate and will adopt the “conservative” position on issues”
lol
“what’s going on here? they say they’re not on Team Red, but they like so many of these Team Red things! don’t they know that’s not ALLOWED?!”Report
“a large number of The Youngz identify as LGBTQA+ and are repelled by the heteronormative political agitation that has occupied so much of the online consciousness lately, including a high percentage of the comments on this page”
You’re ignoring the “happen to be gay but think things have gone too far”.Report
“You’re ignoring the “happen to be gay but think things have gone too far”.”
And mostly what you’re seeing in this “young persons LGBTQIA+ support” is less genuine go-out-and-demonstrate-support and more Libertarian-lite “just leave us the hell alone”.
Because Burt has decided that Team-Red-Team-Blue is a more comforting mode of thought, he can’t help but interpret “not anti-queer” as “politically pro-queer”, which is why he’s confused by this.Report
One thing that I do want to say is that the ease with which the Neely death turned into a discussion of mental health and homelessness instead of vigilantism is not a good indicator for coming elections.
You know the whole “Law & Order” vs. “Perry Mason” thing?
This is a “Death Wish” thing.Report
The amusing thing about a modern remake of “Death Wish” is that you could make it twice, and make both of them basically the same movie with the same shots and the same dialogue, but in one case make the street thugs be shoplifters and in the other case make them Tiki-torch racist demonstrators, and people would insist that the movies had totally different political messages.Report
The Bruce Willis Death Wish remake achieved mediocrity (is it going to be on TBS? Good flick to have in the background for a couple of hours if you’re doing taxes or something).
They went out of their way to make sure that Bruce Willis achieved equity when he shot people.Report
As a Native American myself, this is infuriating.
Report
The New York Times has a story about Liz Holmes.
Mistakes were made.
Report
She hits the radar as a master manipulator. For all the talk about how her older ex-boyfriend was in charge, she trained herself to lie, change her voice, and so on. How she did that and why she did that has never been explained.
Her idea, and her company, and thus her fraud, predate her ex-boyfriend.Report
I have come across other people in the tech world who to varying degrees attempt to adopt the mannerisms of Steve Jobs and/or present themselves as inscrutable, sage-like visionaries. And that’s on the east coast. I can only imagine what it’s like out west.
Point being that in an industry full of odd people faking it til they make it she wouldn’t necessarily stand out as much as she does to the average person. Investors also just aren’t as smart as they think they are. Their trick is to have so much money diversified it doesn’t really matter, though it is maybe unusual to have embarrassed themselves to quite the way they did with her. Even then a lot of that is a result of the media giving her such a high public profile.Report
“Fake it till you make it” is fraud when applied to perpetual motion machines and similar ideas. Her idea and her tech were bad. As you make the measurement size smaller the error rate increases dramatically.
Rather than fail and move on to another idea, she decided to fake that her idea worked.
While running her company she behaved as though she darn well knew that her stuff didn’t work and that it was all a scheme. Thus not putting medical experts on her board, thus faking medical results, etc.Report
Oh I have no sympathy for her at all. I’m just saying the strange manner and persona she cultivated isn’t unique to her.Report
I can watch her interviews all day. It’s like Anthony Weiner for me. I don’t know if it’s because I know the punch line, but the hypnotic part for me isn’t the interviewee, it’s the interviewer. It’s like watching Jamie Lee Curtis not notice Michael stand back up.Report
Yea, one of the more significant issues with the national media is how few of them have ever done anything other than be in the media. There’s a million mundane things they haven’t experienced. The Holmes episode illustrates that among them is sitting in a shiny bright conference room somewhere listening to sales pitches from people saying things that don’t add up. All anyone had to do was follow up with some sources with expertise in chemistry, including those that told Holmes from the beginning that what she was attempting was probably not possible.
But they haven’t. So she has a sales pitch. And there’s a female empowerment angle. And she’s naturally pretty enough to look both serious and beautiful on a magazine cover. Brain switches to off mode. Goodnight.Report
This is actually a good example of what people mean when they say that the practice of journalism has degraded. Because even if you don’t know a damn thing about chemistry, you should know enough to go out to someone not involved and say “what’s your opinion of this” and cross-check the answers.
But most of these people working in journalism think that their mission is to be press-release passer-onners, because Asking Too Many Questions is just being an annoying busybody who’s Making Everybody Nervous and Killing The Mood and Giving Aid And Comfort To The Enemy.Report
There are different kinds of journalism. I don’t expect the 2-minute-segment guy to uncover something. But I expect way more out of the Forbes cover story author. Interviewers are in the middle; they don’t have to try for a gotcha, but an interview should at least yield some insights.Report
What do you expect from someone who got a journalism degree? They probably didn’t take Chemistry or other science classes in high school or college. The days of journalists knowing something about the field they cover are long gone.Report
But you don’t need to know science to notice that something was off. That’s what strikes me.
I’ve often said about the press: “Stupid, lazy, biased. Pick three.” In this case, they didn’t know the science, they didn’t dig into the business, and they nodded along with the powerful smart girl. If it’d been some man bullying his employees and not producing a working product, they might have even googled “blood test” and read a bit. And if they had any science reporters or even decent business reporters, they would have seen the incongruities.Report
In one of the documentaries out there about Holmes they have a segment with her professor at Stanford who knew her well and to whom she had pitched the basics of her idea. That professor (per google I believe her name is Phyllis Gardner but not certain its the same person) laid out here are the x, y, z reasons this won’t work. Holmes then drops out and tries it anyway. Not talking to the faculty where she went to school is total malpractice.Report
The malpractice part is ANY subject matter expert would have known this couldn’t be done. Her corp board was filled with people who didn’t know anything about her field.Report
“[I]n an industry full of odd people faking it til they make it [Holmes] wouldn’t necessarily stand out as much as she does to the average person.”
And besides, when she did the demo she said it was the real thing. And when people said “is it, like, really real?” she said “yes”. Because for her, intent was reality, and she really did intend for it to be a real thing. And besides, it was almost there, it just had a few niggling little technical issues that could definitely be sorted out by engineers properly motivated to solve the damn problems instead of whining about doing work.Report
At some point she would have talked to someone who would have explained that, because of physics, as the sample size goes down the margin of error goes up.
So either she never hired anyone knowledgeable in the blood chemistry field (which would have to be deliberate), or she ignored what they had to say.
Not understanding that her thing doesn’t work and can’t work is like the Founder of Ford not understanding that cars have four wheels. This is one of the basic, basic facts of her company.
The moment we start wondering what she knew and when she knew it, we have the problem that she should have known really early on that this wasn’t workable.
Further, her entire company and corporate culture was constructed to avoid that fact. Everything from not putting anyone who knows something about chemistry on her board to the R&D people not sharing info with anyone.
She’s building one wheel cars and putting them on a four wheel car frame. Her whole company is designed to hide that. Her public statements are fraudulent.
After we’re in “everything she says is a lie” territory, then it’s really hard to get away from that habit. Her children may have been created as human shields.Report
I was in Berkeley for the Bay Area Book Festival yesterday. Revolution Books, a far left bookstore in Berkeley, had a poster up for a talk on the differences between “woke” lunacy (their scare quotes) and real revolution. The inability of the Further Left/Jacobin Crowd to understand why this framing might not be acceptable to the people most sympathetic to their overall goals is astounding.Report
The Times in all of their infinite wisdom decided Elizabeth Holmes needed a puff piece: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/05/amy-chozick-whitewashes-elizabeth-holmes-with-the-help-of-the-nyt-photography-staffReport
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