Open Mic for the week of 9/18/2023
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 the front page.
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 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.
Interesting: “California and Florida have become the first states to require later public school start times, a response to reams of research showing significant advantages for high school students who can get more sleep by beginning their day at 8:30 a.m. or later.
But such changes come with difficult ripple effects — upended bus schedules, later starts for extracurriculars and new schedules for teachers and staff — making many other states and localities hesitant to change.”
https://westvirginiawatch.com/2023/09/18/hit-the-snooze-button-states-debate-later-high-school-start-times/Report
I see the covid situation as kind of a missed opportunity to reconsider how we structure education. It’s clear that students need to be there in person. It is not clear to me that the current way we do education where it aligns to a traditional 9-5 work schedule is the best way to do things. Unfortunately I suspect we will have more of a regression to the mean caused by inertia than looking into what might work better.Report
Ditto all the inane back to office power dynamics crap. It’s needless and yet here we are.Report
Yea it’s definitely a problem and it would be really annoying if the entire issue is ultimately decided by paranoid corporate leadership, consideration for leased commercial spaces, and the vagaries of the downtown restaurant and retail economy.
To me it’s obvious that the little kids need super, super intensive immersion to get the foundation right. What’s less clear is that the older kids need to be bussed to centralized locations for an approximation of the pre-remote revolution commuting and work schedule. It seems like by high school we should be tracking in different directions. Some might still need something closer to what we do for young children but I’d like to think many could be channeled in directions that are more useful to their development into adults.Report
I have a friend who is a guidance counselor in high school and she definitely reports that high school aged kids did not do well emotionally or socially through remote learning. Other reports have been similar. Plus in the current method is the only method that scales well.Report
Different does not necessarily mean remote.Report
As Jaybird likes to point out, part of schooling is keeping kids occupied while adults do adult things. This is why it matches the 9 to 5 work schedule with maybe extracurriculars to extend those hours. Elementary and lower middle school kids will need adult supervision if parents still at work.Report
Absolutely agree about elementary and lower. The link Andrew shared was about high schoolers though.Report
I would like this.Report
As if we needed further proof the GOP is the dog that caught the care, they are no longer willing to purge their won, less the loose their personal political power. Party of Law and Order my left buttcheek:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/16/politics/ken-paxton-impeachment-trial/index.htmlReport
I’ll order your left buttcheek with a side of fries and a large Diet Coke.Report
Victory over Covid was never going to look like victory over Polio.
It’s going to look something like this:
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Yes and?Report
We inch closer to victory over Covid.
2020 was year 1, 2023 is year 4… looks like we’re doing what they did back with the Spanish Flu.
Which is good.Report
Philip, I’m surprised to find you on the side of the eugenicists.Report
you lost me man. I’m not that meta I guess.Report
It’s a talking point from the zero-COVID crew: Learning to live with COVID instead of just masking and socially isolating forever is eugenics, because it will result in the deaths of those who are especially vulnerable.Report
Ah yes ok – I don’t hang with those folks so never heard that. We no longer have to mask or socially isolate forever (and it was never forever). We have good workable treatments and regular vaccinations that will help protect the most vulnerable – so long as we continue to encourage them to take advantage of both. At present the GOP is not doing stellar work in that encouragement area.
And frankly if what we are doing is eugenics, so is treating for flu. Which is the model most expected us to arrive at.Report
IMHO, genetic manipulation will hit the point where we can make people immune to covid and a bunch of other things. That’s more of a “post-humanism” thing rather than eugenicists.Report
On intersectionality (and, heck, this applies to CRT and DEI and socialism and pretty much everything).
Bertrand Russell has a quotation that is good to start food fights: “A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
Kimberlé Crenshaw said: “Intersectionality is about capturing dynamics and converging patterns of advantage and disadvantage. Those are going to change from context to context. Our way of thinking about what discrimination looks like is flattened, and it says, race discrimination is the same for everyone. We’re thinking Black women experience racism the same way Black men do or that Latinas experienced sexism the same way that white women do, but there are millions of different ways that power converges. We’re telling some of those stories to disrupt the false assumption that there is only one story, or a couple, and that intersectionality is just a number. It’s not a number. It’s a set of experiences. The podcast tries to tell those experiences.”
Now if you take that and chew it down into what a stupid person can understand, what do you get at the end of that game of telephone?
I submit, you get something like modern business DEI training.
This flyer might be a good way to start a food fight too. I find myself picking and choosing from its myriad bullet points about what’s “white” and what’s more culturally transcendent and what’s just plain incorrect.
But of course just because one DEI trainer came up with this doesn’t mean all DEI training teaches this content in this way.Report
That was handed out by The Smithsonian until enough of the right people talked to enough of the right people and it was pulled. And there are additional examples of stuff that got handed out in earnest and was retracted in shame and that stuff probably isn’t representative either.
And we’re stuck in a place where only the clever can properly report on what these things are because the moment that the stupid try to report on them, they turn what is truly representative into something that we all agree should not be representative.
But the stuff that we all agree should not be representative is the stuff that makes it into the powerpoint.Report
Huh. Remember when we met up in D.C. and we were all sort of disappointed we couldn’t get into the Museum of African-American history? That line was wrapped, like, all the way around the building.
I wonder if we’d have been given this flyer.Report
I’m pretty sure it had been pulled and apologized for by then.Report
What do you think is wrong with the flyer?Report
Well, the political answer is “they retracted it and apologized and, thus, communicated that saying such things was a mistake”.
My own take is that many of the arguments made by the flyer are, themselves, not particularly “white”.
You remember how we have arguments from time to time about movies and television shows and whether a particular show is “conservative” or “liberal” or “universal”? Like, we say “X is a conservative show because it has two married people who love each other” and someone else points out “THAT’S A UNIVERSAL VALUE!”
If you have never heard of people discussing such things, you can peruse this comment thread here and see that it’s not a strawman.
If I said “Let’s make a Conservative television show. The show would have the following traits…” and let’s go through that flyer. We can pick, oh, half of the stuff on it.
Can you imagine someone saying “That’s not a Conservative show! That’s a Universal show!”
Now imagine if I had said “Let’s make a show about white people.”
Anyway, that’s what’s wrong with the flyer.Report
Well, I’d argue that is the conversation the folks behind the flyer are pushing to have. Are those truly universal values? Or are those values of the dominant culture and thus have become universal as a result?
I’m paraphrasing but John Dewey once said it was no coincidence that in America the kids grow up to embrace capitalist values and in Russia the kids grow up to embrace communist values. This was in response to the question of if/when/how schools should be indoctrinating kids with values. In both countries, folks tended to think, “We don’t need to indoctrinate! Certain values are merely universal and inherent to humans! See? Our kids naturally come to them.”
If the values on this chart were truly universal, there would be no such thing as culture.Report
This sounds great but it’s the motte. Why is the poster calling this “White” culture? Why bring race into it at all? These values are neither universal to nor exclusive to white people in America.
Also, there’s an implicit criticism for anything Team Blue associates with “white people” yet some of of these cultural values seem like obvious positives and would be a sign of racism if their opposite was associated with POC. E.g. do non-whites in America not plan for the future or delay gratification?? Sounds pretty insulting to me.Report
Racism is a power dynamic. It is thus fueled by “values” since the dominate culture (in this case white America) uses oppressive violence to both inculcate its values in others AND prevent those other from obtaining equal status no matter how close they hew to the dominate culture.
In this context white people associating what they consider negative values with a certain racial or ethnic group while only recognizing “positive” values in white people is the racist angle you are looking for. Non-whites due indeed express the vales you highlight through their actions (makes them often better citizens then whites) but they don’t get social or cultural credit for those actions because doing so makes them equals, and white society as a whole still feels threatened by equality for other races.Report
Yes and No. You clearly think that. I agree.
However if you believe that racism is the only acceptable answer for why outcomes aren’t equal, then there are no positive or negative cultural values.Report
Sure there are. Take work ethic and delayed gratification – our undocumented Hispanic migrants hew to those values in spades and yet they are actively hunted by law enforcement because they don’t have their papers in order – and couldn’t get them in order because we built an immigration system that doesn’t recognize their economic or cultural contributions. They have unequal outcomes based on who they are, not what they do.
And bluntly – hollowing out America’s cities as economic engines (a pernicious and ongoing impact of cross-border free trade) makes it extremely difficult for young black men to be heads of households who provide for their families legally since the no longer have access to the jobs their grandfathers and fathers did. They can’t work hard, provide and save for a rainy day because there’s no work and little to no way for them to get to work. and White culture holds them accountable for that situation through mass incarceration because White men decided moving factories to Vietnam, Mexico and China to goose their bottomlines was a good thing.Report
So work ethic and delayed gratification are important for most people but their lack doesn’t affect the inner city because they were going to fail anyway because of racism?
And 2+ years ago I moved to Florida because there were jobs there. Local availability of jobs is an issue but there is a solution.Report
How can you have, much less express work ethic in a place where there’s little work and what work there is is not economically sufficient for living, to say nothing of there being fewer jobs then there is demand for them? NYC and Chicago succeed because they are big enough and old enough to have become cities where the city is the economy. Detroit is going through a slow and agonizing evolution in that direction because for a century the Auto industry was the economy and the city was secondary. That evolution was forced on Detroit by old white men who started making cars in Mexico and Canada because it was cheaper.
Its only a solution if you have both the financial and emotional wherewithal to make it happen. Moving costs money. It can also sever deep family and community ties, which may be the only thing some people have left emotionally to cling to.Report
My expectation is what you said is a bit player compared to culture.
One of the big tells is technology has made location and distance less of a thing as time has gone on. So the issues you laid out, if they had causal value, should be less of a thing now and we should be seeing improvements.Report
Keep drinking that Kool-aid man.Report
NYC and Chicago succeed because they are big enough and old enough to have become cities where the city is the economy.
Now explain Denver, much newer and much smaller, but has grown jobs at a furious rate for the last 50 years.Report
Denver got onto the City is an economy unto itself program and it took off. much to the chagrin of the communities running north up the Flatirons.Report
So did a number of other western cities. So, since age and size are not necessary conditions, what are? Are there policy choices that can be made to push a city in that direction?Report
You live closer to that then I do. I would think its a great basis for a full blown OT article . . . .Report
“How can you have, much less express work ethic in a place where there’s little work and what work there is is not economically sufficient for living, to say nothing of there being fewer jobs then there is demand for them?”
Well, “the proles need work to discipline them” is a common liberal concept, so, I guess you’re being consistent here!Report
Heh yea, imagine being the black guy at the office learning that your culture is in opposition to heinous things like the ‘scientific method’ or ‘planning for the future’ or ‘working hard(!).’ But hey at least you can eat spicy food!
It’s almost as if they key to being anti-racist is having your head so far up your ass you can keep a straight face while reciting David Duke’s platform, but with a positive spin.Report
“Jaybird, you’re late!”
“I’m decentering whiteness.”Report
‘Boss says the 401(k) is going away. Turns out deferring the gratification we could be getting from that money is reinforcing white supremacist power structures.’Report
Re your second paragraph, there’s a classic video bit along those lines.Report
Well, I’d argue that is the conversation the folks behind the flyer are pushing to have.
Not anymore. They pulled it and said that including it was an error.Report
This subthread seems filled with…fragility.Report
“But is it false?”
“Why are you so sensitive?”
“But is it *FALSE*?”
“Why do you care?”
“But is it *FALSE*?”
“Why in the hell do you make every conversation about you?”Report
Some parts of it are absolutely true, other parts questionable, and some parts just speculative and rooted in a particular subculture.
None of it seems particularly worth getting incensed or upset by.
Its almost like if Daniel Patrick Moynihan was black and wrote about the pathologies of white culture.Report
Besides my criticism of how it throws Jews under the bus as DEI is want to do, the flyer is really trying to contrast “White” culture with what perceives to be “African-American and Hispanic-American culture” without exactly coming out loud and saying so.
In communications, it says that being polite and avoiding conflict and intimacy is part of White culture. This also describes how communication is done in many Asian countries. But the assumption is that Too True People of Color (TM) are always intimate and kind of rude but in a good way.
Wealth equals worth seems to be a pretty universal constant and a lot of hip-hop is all about the bling.Report
Yes, this is why I made the reference to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, where this is in the tradition of half-assed anthropology.
As you note, it is rooted in a very specific and particular differences between American subcultures and even then compresses complex traditions into simple flashcard metrics.Report
Do you agree with them that it was a mistake to release this?Report
Sure.Report
We might recognize the stupidity of this all but this is what is being presented in DEI seminars in corporations across the United States. It doesn’t make a compelling argument for our side.Report
I don’t share the nervous handwringing over the shanda.
As we can see right here on this thread, the only arguments against this flyer are from the progressive orientation.
If the criticism is “Those DEI progressives are not behaving in a tolerant manner!” my response would be, “Your offer is accepted.”Report
“Those DEI progressives are not behaving in a tolerant manner!”
This was how you interpreted the criticism?
Anyway, here’s a fun headline from about 20 minutes ago:
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Jaybird, all this means is that the there is a fear that the people handling the weapon detectors will be more quick to find something suspicious in Black and Hispanic students than in White and Asian students. It will be nothing but they will find a reason for extra invasive searches.Report
Is this true? Will the machine discriminate?Report
The machine has to be operated by a human who can always find something suspicious.Report
If the machine beeping is dependent not only on detecting something but also on whether the guard presses a button then the statement was false.Report
The question is how they handle a Beep.
Like, does a white kid get “Uh-oh, could you please step this way with me” while a black kid gets” *eyeroll* *sigh* AWRIGHT, C’MERE”? Does a white kid get his bag carefully gone through item-by-item while a black kid has his bag is dumped out from a height carefully calculated to break his phone? If they find, like, a pair of scissors or a fork with tines longer than two inches, does the white kid get “well he’s probably good” while the black kid gets “call your mom, you little punk, you ain’t goin’ to school today”?
And this is legit, y’know. The thing about Zero Tolerance policies, “we expelled the valedictorian because he had a Bowie knife in the trunk of his car”, that exists because of situations like I’ve just described.Report
Suspending someone who brought brownies and a butter knife to cut them is a thing.Report
They aren’t worried that the person handling the machine is racist.
They’re worried that the underlying reality is racist. That the reality doesn’t match their “everyone is equal” narrative and they’ll be forced to deal with that.Report
That’s 100% what we are worried about. That the people operating the systems will give white people the pass and black people not the pass.Report
And the evidence to judge whether or not he’s doing that will be percentage of population, and after that the solution will be to get rid of the machine.Report
Does that mean someone can’t always guess what another person thinks about race-related topics? Or just that Dark Matter can’t?Report
Most of the comments here seem to be along this line:
Now if you take [ complex set of thoughts] and chew it down into what a stupid person can understand, what do you get at the end of that game of telephone?
I submit, you get something like modern business DEI training.
Which I agree with, unreservedly.Report
DEI is graft for liberals although lot of people will never recognize this. I’m a remember of a business group and DEI constantly comes in last in terms of what people like about the group. There is an issue on how to manage a diverse workforce in fair manner but DEI seems to do it with no subtlety at all.Report
I’m not sure that the problem is the lack of subtlety.Report
Actually, let me take that back.
Going back to Bertrand Russell, part of the problem is the lack of subtleties and nuances in the report of what was said.
But it’s not merely that.
But, yeah, that is part of it.Report
Our corporate overlords always impose a variety of petty exactions on us. In the past week alone, I have taken mandatory training on cybersecurity, sexual harassment (as my former office-mate, once the runner-up in the Miss West Virginia pageant, used to say: “You already know how to do that.”), workplace violence, and EEO. (This last is particularly silly for me, as I am an experienced employment lawyer and it is my damn job to know this stuff.) There will be more soon. The DEI stuff is no better, and no worse, than all the other BS we have to put up with.Report
Well, I was ready to make a nerdy joke over on Bluesky and then did a quick google to make sure I was getting the joke right and came across this, which apparently soft-opened three days ago:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2518960/Wizardry_Proving_Grounds_of_the_Mad_Overlord/
It ain’t Starfield or Baldur’s Gate but it is remarkable that it exists at all.Report
Who is the target audience for this?!
I mean, other than me.Report
I still remember reading the game manual (remember those!) in 7th period study hall. I couldn’t believe the golden era that was dawning upon us.
Wait, you have a cleric and a bishop? [I’m remembering correctly, no?]
But yes, probably only for you. As much as I yearn for another Blades of Cuisanart… I doubt I’ll play a nostalgia reskin.Report
Also, this article is dated December of 2011. So it’s been known for a dozen years now. But I was only Today Years Old when I learned that the orange juice is a lie.Report
Just a job musing but the opposition lawyers that I deal with always work for the Federal government. They sometimes go hard against my clients. Many times I can see the logic in a particular case on why they are going hard against a particular client. I don’t like it but it is obvious that my client isn’t exactly the world’s best future American system and there is a logic behind going hard against that particular client.
Other times they go hard against a client and it just seems like bullying a poor person who is in a desperate situation. They don’t have to agree with me for a grant of status or relief but they can just say we feel sympathy for person X but are against a grant of relief because of reason A, B, and C but they can’t do that. They have to grand stand and argue somebody who is not really all that powerful and never committed a crime anywhere in the world is the worst person in the world. The federal government lawyer’s just can’t help themselves from getting self-righteous against weak people. I don’t like this. Take your position and argue what you want but just don’t bully.Report
“Our Tesla insurance is DOUBLE what we pay for our gas car!’ Married couple is shocked to discover high cost of covering electric vehicles”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/electric-vehicles/article-12509077/Tesla-electric-vehicle-insurance-DOUBLE-gas-car.html
“‘If an electric vehicle is involved in a car crash, the likelihood of it being declared totaled is sometimes greater than a gas-powered vehicle because the cost of that battery can be half the price of the car,’ she said. ‘That’s where the cost comes in.’
According to data from The Zebra, the average cost of insurance for a Tesla is $3,000 per year, well above the national average.
And for almost every class of vehicle, the approximate average cost of insurance on an electric car was more expensive than that of equally expensive and capable gas counterparts.”
All the other reasons for the EVs costing more to insure, like sensors in the windshields are issues with newer ICE cars, or will be. Nah it’s the cost of the damn battery that’s the issue. Tell me, you going to buy a used EV that’s been in a crash and the batter has NOT been replaced?Report
Tell me you don’t believe in market capitalism or the climate crisis without telling me you don’t believe in market capitalism or the climate crisis.Report
Don’t Be Surprised by China’s Collapse || Peter Zeihan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqA5NODRnQI&list=TLPQMTkwOTIwMjMA3DeWjZDGgwReport
A review of _Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber_.
It’s interesting. I liked this part:
Will make a great Christmas gift. Get it for $23 here.Report
At Phillip: Market capitalism? Since when has that actually existed in the West? Not since companies realized they could lobby gov’t to make laws to actually benefit themselves at the expense of the public. Tell me how much lower the cost of a car would be if I could tell the dealer I didn’t want all the mandatory add ons: lane departure, back up cameras, auto stop, etc.
Tell me how the public was SAFER during the Takata air bag recall when it was, and still is, ILLEGAL to disable an airbag, giving the choice to the affected car owner of: continue to drive the car and risk their life, or sell it and buy a different car.
Tell me how mining lithium and cobalt and processing it to make ev batteries is a net benefit to the environment when child labor is used and those kids get sick and die, water supplies in the desert are drained, making indigenous people’s wells useless in South America, and that the primary power to charge those EVs is fossil fuels not renewals.
I’m listening…Report
Those things are not things added to cars because car makers wanted to make more money. They were inflicted on car makers by government because in a lot of cases – especially with the proliferation of device use cases in a car – they do actually make driving safer.
When the driver becomes the only person bearing the financial consequences of that risk, I suppose we can have that conversation. But drivers choosing to increase their risk of serious injury and or death increases my insurance costs, as well as the burdens to hospitals, fire companies, ambulance services etc to respond and treat injuries from that sort of decision. And that increased cost gets transferred to the rest of us in our current system. Plus medical bill based bankruptcy is a thing in the US, which also has significant impacts for the rest of us. I really don’t want to subsidize your high level ( and frankly idiotic) risk tolerance, but in the current system I have to.
This is my singular concern with EVs – and there are some ways to ameliorate it (including recycling of the components periodically). But the economic damage that are being wrought by the global climate crisis are large enough (both domestically and internationally) to offset those concerns.
Only because the fossil fuel lobby makes it so through lobbying in the US. Texas – which is the largest generator of wind based terrestrial electricity – is ACTIVELY campaigning to keep offshore windfarm leases out of federal waters off Texas. Which tells me that we are leaving opportunities by the wayside to increase the pace of the shift. And that’s just as idiotic.Report
“Those things are not things added to cars because car makers wanted to make more money” Of course they do, which is why they don’t lobby against most of these efforts-it boots their net profits and the consumer CANNOT refuse them for “safety”. Nice little cartel we got here.
“But drivers choosing to increase their risk of serious injury and or death increases my insurance costs,” Not in the case of the Takata airbags, there was NO choice.
“there are some ways to ameliorate it (including recycling of the components periodically)” There is no current method to recycle lithium ion batteries in any economical way…They are just scrapped. But we rush pel mel to EVs and worry about the problem later when we could have transitioned to hybrids and an intermediate step. And lets not forget that the current electrical grid cannot handle a total ev replacement of ICEs
“Only because the fossil fuel lobby” Right, it’s got nothing to do with the fact that the demand for electricity cannot be handled by renewables currently, not to mention the cost difference, without taking into consideration an all EV fleet.Report
The demand can be handled by renewables, especially when we get to a national approach and a better grid that can actually move electricity around. But we have to make a concerted national effort to move in that direction. Texas made it through the hottest summer on record without major grid disasters because of its wind energy capacity. We can get there – we just have to choose to get there.
And on EVs – there are still a lot of hybrids being built and purchased, and they can absolutely be part of the solution. We aren’t going to turn off the spigot on ICEs and expect EVS to pick up the slack. That you think its binary choice means you are paying more attention to your priors then what’s actually happening.Report
“The demand can be handled by renewables, especially when we get to a national approach and a better grid that can actually move electricity around.”
Yeah, I see congress and the administration announcing improvements in the area ALL THE TIME. I see actual funding being given to communities for this all the time…
Where’s the legislation? Where’s the grants? Where’s the actual work being done?Report
The Inflation Reduction Act provides for an increase in the energy investment credit for solar and wind facilities that apply for and receive an allocation of environmental justice solar and wind capacity limitation. Taxpayers that receive an allocation and properly place the facility in service may then claim the increased energy investment credit in the year that the facility is placed in service.
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-and-treasury-issue-guidance-for-owners-of-solar-and-wind-powered-energy-facilities-in-low-income-communities-for-increased-energy-credit-under-the-inflation-reduction-actReport
https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/summary-inflation-reduction-act-provisions-related-renewable-energyReport
https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2023/08/16/fact-sheet-marking-one-year-inflation-reduction-actReport
By my rough calc that 12 B dollars. It will likely take 125 Billion, so that’s .1% is. Yeah, we’re moving toward an all electric fleet at a speedy process.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/13/electric-vehicles-grid-upgrade/Report
Where’s the legislation? Where’s the grants? Where’s the actual work being done?
Some days I feel like I live in a different country. Why is legislation and federal funding necessary? Xcel is well along on a $2B AC transmission system that will let wind and solar pretty much anywhere on the Colorado eastern plains sell power to the Front Range. The Transwest Express 3GW HVDC project has broken ground, and will carry Wyoming wind power to the big switch yards near the Hoover Dam where it can feed any of Southern California, Nevada, or Phoenix. Parts of the 3GW wind farm for that are already operating.
I’m sure the owners will be happy to take free federal money if it turns out to be available without too many strings, but the projects are being built with private money even if the feds don’t come through.Report
The demand can be handled by renewables, especially when we get to a national approach and a better grid that can actually move electricity around.
I’m willing to make a small wager that the Eastern and Western Interconnects will never share power at a level that would allow anyone to talk about “a national grid” in a meaningful way.Report
If we’re interesting in going green, then the first priority needs to be passing a bunch of laws at the federal level which make the grid more national. That’s everything from stepping on NIMBYs to outlawing states playing regional control games. We need to be able to have Texas with it’s green energy ship that energy to the East coast where it will be used.
Do that and big empty places in Texas will build green power, as it is they couldn’t ship it anywhere useful.Report
Semafor is a news website founded in 2022 by Ben Smith, a former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News and media columnist at The New York Times, and Justin B. Smith, the former CEO of Bloomberg Media Group.
Anyway.
Semafor is reporting that Ibram X. Kendi’s antiracism center is laying off staff.
One of the folks being laid off has strong opinions about it:
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As he should because he’s right.Report
Good news! There’s going to be an inquiry!
Following layoffs, Boston University announces ‘inquiry’ into Ibram Kendi’s Antiracist Center.
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Oh, so it’s “Tropes Versus Women In Video Gaming”?Report
Do something for love and you’ll work nights. Weekends. You’ll think about it in the shower.
Do something after people have given you millions to do it and you will find excuses to not go to work.Report
the Social Justice version is “Tropes Versus Women”, the book version is George Martin and Patrick RothfussReport
A Black student was suspended for his hairstyle. The school says it wasn’t discrimination
Summary- a school district suspends a black student for wearing dreadlocks, but defends the decision because it applies to everybody.
A representative for the family:
For Black people, hairstyles are more than just a fashion statement. Hair has always played an important role across the Black diaspora, said Candice Matthews, national minister of politics for the New Black Panther Nation. (Her group is not affiliated with another New Black Panther organization widely considered antisemitic.)
“Dreadlocks are perceived as a connection to wisdom,” Matthews said. “This is not a fad, and this is not about getting attention. Hair is our connection to our soul, our heritage and our connection to God.”
Is this true? That hair is “about wisdom”? Or is this an example of the flattening and caricaturizing of black culture?
And the superintendent responds:
Greg Poole, who has been district superintendent since 2006, said the policy is legal and teaches students to conform as a sacrifice benefitting everyone.
“When you are asked to conform … and give up something for the betterment of the whole, there is a psychological benefit,” Poole said. “We need more teaching (of) sacrifice.”
So the superintendent is establishing rules for what the “correct” culture must be, as enforced by clothing and hairstyles.
This is an example of how rules which are ostensibly neutral are in fact very particular and biased- that dreadlocks are seen as disruptive, and that “sacrifice for the betterment of the whole” means that only the dominant, i.e. white culture is to be allowed.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/black-student-suspended-hairstyle-school-discrimination-103271143Report
Its the whole trope of female students are responsible for distracting male students trope enlarged.
And its digusting.Report
I see it more broadly.
When the superintendent says “We need more teaching of sacrifice” who is he referring to?
Is he talking about conservative Christian student who must conform to using proper pronouns of trans students for the “betterment of the whole”?
Ha ha, of course not.
When the representative says ““Dreadlocks are perceived as a connection to wisdom,” Matthews said. “This is not a fad, and this is not about getting attention. Hair is our connection to our soul, our heritage and our connection to God.”
Who is this “we”? Isn’t he really just talking about a small subset of a larger culture which doesn’t necessarily share that opinion?
this is what’s wrong with that flyer that Jaybird shared.
That it takes large complex and loosely defined groups and collapses them into flat caricatures which can be described in a few bulletpoints.Report
The entire “dreadlocks are perceived as a connection of wisdom” statement is basically the idea that some cultures of a Special Way of Being (TM) that is more authentic, natural, and truer than the boring and overly academic egg-headed bland generic White-East Asian-Jewish cultural sphere. People who think like this need a lot of punishment and punches to the head.Report
Agreed, and my target here is the tendency of people to have a viewpoint similar to the famous New Yorker cover where Manhattan is rendered in high detail, then everything else is increasingly flattened and pushed to the edges.
Meaning that for example, we see our own culture as complex and filled with different groups and riven with tension.
But those people over there? Just a big homogenous monoculture where they all think alike and are basically just indistinguishable from one another.
An example would be how we view the “Chinese”. I put it in quotes because it was only in adulthood when I discovered that there is no such language as “Chinese”.
People speak Mandarin, or Cantonese, or half a dozen other languages, but no one anywhere speaks something called “Chinese”.
And there is no such ethnic group as “Chinese”. There are people such as the Han who make up the majority but there are also the Mongols, Hui, Uighyurs and a dozen other minority ethnic groups.
The same goes for religion and any other cultural identifiers, that there are dozens of distinct groups.
But from our vantage point, we look at a map and see a giant red blotch and get the impression that there is a place with a billion identical people who marvelously are free of anything like our own racial and cultural divides.Report
China, like Russia, is more an empire than a country. So the dominate group has concorded the sub-groups and is trying to convince them that they want to be members of the empire and/or they don’t really exist.
One mono-culture for them is more propaganda than reality, but they have a big budget claiming it.Report
Everyone should support CROWN Act-type legislation.Report
During the pandemic, a lot of liberals went gah-gah how the East Asian democracies seemingly confirmed to the COVID restrictions and policies without complaints and wished that Western nations didn’t have a decent number of COVID deniers who refused to conform to the rules. They never quite realized that there is baby-bathwater issue in how strictly conforming Japan could be at least when you are in public. In private? Be as weird as you want but in public YOU WILL BE NORMAL AND CONFORM. So no wild haristyles or genderqueer people going about.Report
I see this as just the normal process of negotiating social norms and rules, that all societies have engaged in since the beginning of time.
What is appropriate dress, what is appropriate behavior, how much deviance from the norm is allowed.
These boundaries are always in flux and are constantly being renegotiated.
There isn’t some clear objective line which can be established forever and all time.Report
There definitely isn’t some clear objective line but it also seems to me that many people want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to negotiating social norms and rules. People do not really like thinking about the dreaded concept of trade offs where the ability for maximum self-expression also means getting a society disciplined enough to deal with mass level emergencies in a calm and orderly matter is impossible.Report
There’s also a difference between the ever shifting bounds of cultural norms and trying to institutionalize total post modern nihilism, which is really what’s at issue in some of these flashpoints.Report
I don’t know what it means to “institutionalize total post modern nihilism”.
Seriously what is this, and who is doing it?Report
It means institutions deciding that there is no objective right way(s), even if aspirational, and that any old thing is as good as anything else, even where this is self evidently false. As for who is doing it, the answer is everyone.Report
Postmodernism characterizes mainly as the view that there’s no objective truth, no objective moral values, and that logic and reason are socially constructed concepts.
These align quite well with nihilism.Report
“People do not really like thinking about the dreaded concept of trade offs…”
particularly since dreads are banned in schoolReport
Also, they’re generally believers in and practitioners of “monoethnicity = high trust”.Report
It is just a start but Japan is increasing the number of immigrants because frankly, they need the grunt labor. There isn’t even a lot of political resistance to this because most Japanese realize they need the labor. I’d also argue that Japan was more medium trust than high trust simply because 130 million Japanese compared to 10 or under million Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians means you get a higher percentage of malcontents simply by more numbers.Report
How do you explain all the girls strolling around dressed like Little Bo Peep 15 years ago?Report
It was in Harajuku, an open weird zone. Plus it was a lot of people dressed in the same weird manner. The Japanese call it Elegant Gothlic Lolita. Yes, really.Report
“This is an example of how rules which are ostensibly neutral are in fact very particular and biased- that dreadlocks are seen as disruptive…”
why? can’t white people have dreadlocks?Report
as a practical matter yes, but its exceedingly rare. Especially in Texas.Report
congratulations, you’ve just explained why “this applies to everybody” is trueReport
Yes some white people do wear dreadlocks.
But it is mostly a hairstyle among black people which is why the rule is an example of rules which are ostensibly neutral are in fact very particular and biased.Report
I can count the number of times I’ve seen white people with dreadlocks on one hand. That would be about three times and one of these was at summer camp when I was middle school kid in the 1990s. A lot of white people really just don’t have the necessary hair texture for dreadlocks and it tends to be seen as disrespectful.Report
There was a big incident about it back in 2016.
“Cultural appropriation”.
We were so young!Report
Captain Jack Sparrow is the only white person with dreads I recognize on a google search. After that we have nothing.Report
Don’t look now, but I an my colleagues are about to get furloughed because governing is hard, and the GOP in the House doesn’t want to govern:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/20/politics/government-shutdown-house-republicans/index.htmlReport
Chip, down here, this is actually a great example of institutional nihilism totally hollowing out the GOP to the point it can’t even serve its nominal purpose.Report
I am interested, nay fascinated, nay alarmed that you would look at a party heck bent on obtaining and retaining political power at all costs and accuse them of nihilism. They very much believe in a truth and are willing to pursue that truth by whatever means necessary.Report
That’s a fundamental disagreement you and I have then about why this is happening. I think it’s because they’re operating under the idea that there is no truth but the truth they make, which is the natural conclusion one reaches from a nihilistic worldview, once in gets out into reality. Especially one where the rank and file are too dumb to know the difference anyway.Report
gosh I’m old enough to remember when the government shutting down because Congress refused to approve the budget was the President’s fault for refusing to negotiate away his pet political projects, and the fact that government employees went unpaid and the military was funded by a continuing-resolution process was just an unfortunate result of Executive Office intransigence and the Occupant could stop it any time he wanted.Report
That’s certainly been the GOP line every other time they have done this. YMMV but this time they are threatening to do it because their OWN speaker won’t wrangle votes to approve their draconian cuts and the Senate colleagues won’t threaten to do likewise.Report
Despite the media doing its best to try and BSDI 2024, Democrats have been smashing up victories in special elections: https://abcnews.go.com/538/democrats-winning-big-special-elections/story?id=103315703Report
And if the Democratic Party had any cohones they’d be smashing the GOP ove rthe head with this daily.Report
They are: https://x.com/MediumBuying/status/1704479015992447432?s=20Report
Florida man insists Portland burned to the ground in 2020, not yet rebuilt.
I’d better get that claim on my homeowners’ insurance started, then.Report
And yet, we’ll let him vote next year.Report
Even worse, millions would vote for him.Report
The only thing I know about the guy is Burt’s headline, but I’d want to at least look at his foreign policy before saying no.Report
Its TFG story . . . you know his foreign policy already . . . .Report
Interesting TED talk on anti-racism.
https://www.ted.com/talks/ibram_x_kendi_the_difference_between_being_not_racist_and_antiracist
For me it was a mix.Report
A mix of what?Report
Things that I agree with and things I disagree with.
I remember the disagreements better but I agreed with a lot more than I disagreed. So I thought he was correct about most things but jumped the shark more than once.
He stated all differences in group outcomes can only be explained by policy. So by implication, culture has no impact whatsoever. It was clearly a big part of his world view and as a core belief that’s a problem. I also disliked the idea that everyone who denies their racism can only do so out of racism. There was definitely some Motte-and-bailey going on there. If you don’t agree with X then you’re doing heinous deed Y.
In terms of solutions, the idea that the gov can/should equalize wealth among groups is a non-starter. Ditto the idea that Fortune 500 companies could be basing all their personnel decisions to fix historical injustices, i.e. that group rights should override individual rights.
Big picture he’s articulate, intelligent, a great speaker, and does a great job at presenting the movement and it’s ideals in an easy to understand way. It’s a great talk. I found it very much worth my time.Report
He stated all differences in group outcomes can only be explained by policy
It’s insane how people on the left can get away with saying blatantly antisemitic things like this.Report
I misspoke, I said “power” and I should have said “power and policy” Let’s quote:
…to be anti-racist, again, is to recognize that there’s only two causes of racial inequity: either there’s something wrong with people, or there’s something wrong with power and policy. (Transcript quote)
So if Jews don’t benefit from policy then they must benefit from power.
I didn’t see that as antisemitic when I heard it. He never mentioned Jews at all and he’s talking about a group that was officially repressed as a matter of policy, but wow I can see how we instantly go there.Report
Who would have guessed that the N*zis were anti-racists?Report
IMHO one of the places were he massively jumps the shark is where he suggests policy ideas that can’t help but be savagely racist in their implementation.
Fortune 500 companies should hire, promote, and pay people based on the color of their skin. Massive amounts of wealth will be taken from one racial group and given to another.Report
I would push for my competitors to hire people based on historical injustice and avoid pushing for stuff like “ability”.Report
“I would push for my competitors to hire people based on historical injustice and avoid pushing for stuff like “ability”.”
If you genuinely believe that people are all fundamentally identical except for some accidents of genetic expression related to appearance, then this idea makes sense, because in your world there’s no such thing as “ability”; there’s only “been trained” and “not been trained”.Report
I listened to it and I didn’t find much of anything I could agree with. Kendi comes off as stupid in the way fundamentalists can: he has five minutes worth of beliefs and no interest in supporting his positions. Also, since I was just making fun of Trump for “exceptions”, I noticed Kendi did the same thing with “intersectionality”.Report
What he does is the classical begging the question fallacy with a lot of motte and bailey red herrings woven in. Ultimately all of his assertions assume the truth of his conclusions instead of proving them. Every time I’ve heard him speak I am also surprised by how unconvincing he is.Report
For where we agree…
He agrees that people can have a point of racism in them and be different otherwise, i.e. you can go back and forth between racism and opposing racism.
He agrees that People of Color can be racist.
He agrees that the poor and powerless are not powerless and believing they are is a problem.
He talks about how a lot of the movement is driven by emotion and how you march to make yourself feel better but don’t do or expect anything other than that.
For that matter his opposition to racism, i.e. the idea that certain racial groups are better or worse than others, is something to oppose is something I agree with.
He tends to give examples which I liked. For example what the powerless can do, how PoC can be racist, and so on.Report
He agrees that people of color can be racist against people of color. I guess that’s something.Report
This week in the GOP utopia of Texas:
If the anti-Semitism doesn’t get, the misogyny will I guess.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/20/texas-teacher-fired-anne-frank-book-banReport
You really do want eight-graders to have surprise porn, huh?Report
The Diary of Anne Frank is porn?Report
Most editions leave out the part about labia. This one didn’t. Personally I don’t think it’s a big deal but I can understand if the school board wanted to.Report
I remember when I was in middle school learning about the Holocaust, I saw one of those old black and white documentary films of a bulldozer pushing a pile of emaciated corpses into a ditch, and what really offended me was that I could see the labia.Report
Brother, what’s offensive to me is you using the corpses of murdered Jews in an attempt to make a rhetorical point in a message-board comments section.Report
Should the documentary filmmakers have blurred out the labia, so as not to cause offense?Report
Or put shirts on the naked mice in Maus?Report
That whole subject is really, really brutal for obvious reasons. Maus is a cartoon and Diary was about a 13(?) year old, but imho that doesn’t change that this is borderline adult thing.
IMHO Grade 8+ is fine but opinions can vary.Report
It really is fun experiencing 21st century Puritanism. Before we could only marvel at how backward thinking the original Puritans were, but now we get to live, or at least witness, it.
What 8th grader doesn’t know more than we think about the naughty bits?Report
I hope your school board reflects the beliefs of those in your community.Report
I gotta think the school board in my city, like school boards countrywide, reflects the beliefs of either the appointed board members or those of the tiny number of people who vote for those who serve on elected boards.Report
And Philip, why did you leave out the part about labia? It was in the Guardian article. Did you not read that part, or not think it was relevant? There was nothing in the article indicating that the Texas board was being anti-Semitic or misogynistic, but there was something about the sexual content.Report
Which parts of the book do you find objecctionable?Report
Even the Who were once gawky teenagers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBendsEKJCY&list=RDNBendsEKJCY&start_radio=1Report
I just learned that Roger Daltry is a little man. Only 5’6″ tall.Report
Gaige Grosskreutz, the guy who was shot by Rittenhouse in the arm during the whole “mostly peaceful” thing, was run over in a hit-and-run. Lacerated liver, multiple broken bones.
Dude has *BAD* luck.Report
Don’t think it’s really bad luck….Report
At least we still have Robin DiAngelo.
Report
Will the weaponization of the Biden Justice Department never end?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/nyregion/robert-menendez-indicted.htmlReport
What about Clarence Thomas?Report
It’s not illegal to lack ethics.Report
What about him?Report
Menendez has released a statement:
Report
Could have been written by Menendez or Thomas.Report
The part about being a “First generation Latino” excludes Thomas.Report
If he says he identifies as that then he does.
So yes, Thomas could have written that.
He could even write that and then change his identity to something else.Report
Vox confronts the recent cases of celebrities who stuck their foot in their mouths recently in defending the indefensible.
https://www.vox.com/23883634/jann-wenner-rolling-stone-racist-drew-barrymore-ashton-kutcher-celebrity-mistakes
The basic problem is that as long as we have this concept of celebrity than there are going to be people who misuse it. Even if we diversify the groups celebrities and tastemakers come from, we can’t get rid of the status and the social system created by celebrity. This is one of those problems without much of a solution except pushing back when it happens.Report
I read the Times’ interview with Wenner. In a lot of respects it reflects the Rolling Stone thinking. If an interviewer looks back on his career and finds seven interviews that Say Something, I’m not going to begrudge him that. He was essentially the – I can’t think of the right term, but the royal biographer and recorder of the court’s deeds in the olden days – for the rock generation. There are no surprises on the list.
To my thinking, Motown was a tightly run operation, and if you wanted to talk to a great thinker or cultural voice from that genre it’d be Berry Gordy Jr. If I were making a list of rock star thinkers to document its history, I’d probably add a few more white guys: David Bowie and Sting popped into mind. The most interesting non-white guy I can think of who’s in that league is Carlos Santana. There have been a few great female songwriters / lyricists in rock, but none I think of as essential.
But rock is dead. I’m not the first person to say that rock was dead the moment they built a Hall of Fame, which is the exact opposite of what rock was “supposed” to be about. Rolling Stone always followed the hipster party line. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we’re 50 years out from what was probably the greatest album year in history (it’s got to be 1971 or 1973). That’s a long time. There are no surprising obituaries of rock stars anymore. I don’t know where I was going with that musing though.Report
Rock is basically an art genre music these days like jazz. It used to be popular music but most teens and twenty somethings prefer pop or hip-hop. Part of what killed rock was that sort of exclusiveness that Jann Wenner and the other music critics did where certain groups count and certain groups did not. The 1990s was probably the last time that you had really big superstars that could fill stadiums emerge in rock music.Report
Classic rock (loosely defined) is also popular among that generation. I was a weird kid who used to listen to big band music, but generally kids don’t listen to music from earlier generations. This one does more than most.Report
Streaming services.Report
About 15 years ago, I was driving my son and his friends home from high school. One of them asked if he could play his new favorite album on the car stereo. I shuddered internally, but, sure, I could be the cool dad, so he plugged in his iPod and out came …
Abbey Road.Report
Ehh it all depends on what you’re into. I don’t think rock is dead, it’s just splintered. The fact that no real creativity has come out of alt rock for decades says more about alt rock than the larger genre. I’m a metalhead and there is still good, new metal coming out. And before you say the harder stuff isn’t relevant I think it’s worth noting the periodic record breaking upsets like Metallica immediately breaking Taylor Swift’s attendance record at SoFi last month, or Tool suddenly appearing as number 1 out of nowhere when they finally put their music on iTunes.
Now obviously there are counter arguments to this, I’m just saying don’t mistake the fact that alt and university radio rock still hasn’t moved passed its ripping off the Pixies stage isn’t conclusive on the subject.Report
Some of that link has the (bad) idea that victims should be beyond question.
My one minute review of the Russell Brand allegations suggested that’s not a good idea. For all the claims of multiple victims and kidnaping over years, the cops were claiming that no one ever told them anything.
What we should be doing at this point is simply waiting. That includes not claiming that it’s unacceptable for Brand’s friends to support him or believe him. One hopes we’re at the point where the cops step in and investigate everything.Report
The rest of that link was how unacceptable it was to have a list of the top 7 rock artists without having any women or blacks. I’m someone who doesn’t listen or pay attention to this sort of thing, but my one minute of research (i.e. asking google “top rock artists over the last 50 years”) suggests it’s pretty easy to do that.
Two searches found none of either in the top 10. Expanding that to 24 added Jimi Hendrix.
The Rolling Stones
Led Zeppelin
Pink Floyd
The Beatles
Aerosmith
Queen
AC/DC
Guns N’ Roses
The Who
Metallica
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Bruce Springsteen
Nirvana
Van Halen
David Bowie
Fleetwood Mac
Journey
Foo Fighters
Pearl Jam
Rush
Jimi Hendrix
The Kinks
Radiohead
Deep PurpleReport
Remembering the debates we had at the time (1986-1991)…
It was Led Zeppelin vs. The Rolling Stones when it came to the technical questions. And Led Zeppelin won. Like, all the time. The Stones were consistently the ones that would lose, though.
“The Who” was the option for the kids who were more into being ANGRY ALL THE FREAKIN’ TIME than chasing tail. Pink Floyd was the choice for the kids who were more into weed than being angry/chasing tail.
And after that, man… there was a *LOT* of space. Sure, we had bands that people *LIKED*. People liked Hendrix, they liked Van Halen, they liked Rush. But the “What is the best band” question had two bands fighting it out and Led Zepp won.
(The Beatles were a category unto themselves and, well, they were more considered to be inspirations for Rock and Roll than Rock and Roll themselves.)
Now it seems such a silly question. Who even listens to entire albums? Does it even make sense to compare IV to Let it Bleed? Is it better to have six perfect albums, one average one, and one stinker than to have seventeen albums of which maybe three were perfect, eight were average, and six maybe had one good song per?
Who listens to albums anymore?Report
What you’re not saying speaks volumes.
You’re not saying the A.I. did an insane mis-job. So that’s a reasonable list for the top 24. None are female and only one is non-white.
That puts a different light on saying his list of the top 7 needs to have women and minorities in it.Report
Fleetwood Mac is the closest, with Christine McVie. But if I were looking to interview the seven people who spoke to the rock experience, she wouldn’t be on my list. Maybe only third on my Fleetwood Mac list.Report
Not sure on the top 24 but I would think Blondie would be in a lot of the top 50s. Maybe Heart and/or Joan Jett get in there. Possibly also Pat Benatar at some point if we are going to consider her rock instead of pop.
I also think there are some serious debates to be had on at minimum AC/DC, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Journey, Radiohead, and Pearl Jam being that high on the list. The closest to a really transcendent of their time and place in rock is Radiohead but I attribute that more to their following than to their contributions to the genre.Report
I’m putting a lot of weight on whether they’re interesting, whether their interview would provide some insight of historical worth. I’d rather listen to Cat Scratch Fever for the thousandth time than hear another Beatles song, but even I have to admit that an interview with The Nuge probably doesn’t belong in “The Masters”.Report
Oh I totally get you. I think the only omission I find truly offensive is Black Sabbath.Report
My guess is that the AI generated list was drawn from people’s current playlists. Journey, Aerosmith, Foo Fighters – maybe not the biggest but among the most popular for the longest.Report
I’m from roughly that era, and I’d mostly agree with your analysis. Although Rick Derringer, The Ramones, Yes, and Elvis Costello would have come up in that conversation.
As for albums, I may be in the minority but I think they’re the pinnacle of rock. Admittedly, I’m a fan of progressive rock, so I may be overstating their importance. But they were the place where rock went from 3:00 to 20:00, and the bands that took advantage of that did phenomenal work.Report
No, that’s not what the article is saying.
Yet, somehow, Wenner did not recognize a single Black artist as a “master,” despite rock music being born from Black culture, despite the work of artists like Stevie Wonder and Prince. Nor could he acknowledge a single female artist, despite living through the eras of Tapestry and Blue, Rumours, Whitney, Jagged Little Pill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, 1989, and Lemonade. In the interview, he instead suggested that Black artists and women simply weren’t “articulate” about the craft.
“Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level,” he told Marchese. “The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock. Of Black artists … I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.”
Its true that there are almost no black “top rock artists” for the same reason there aren’t very many white soul or R&B groups.
If Wenner had just said that no one would have batted an eye.
For a self-professed authority on rock to ignore the very words that his idols like Mick Jagger and John Lennon themselves have said is jaw-droppingly stupid. Was he even listening when they talked about their musical development?
Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf aren’t “top rock acts” and never were but they are the wellspring of inspiration for virtually every rock act in the Hall of Fame. And hey, they are surprisingly articulate, if Wenner would deign to speak to them.
What Wenner was displaying is an attitude which has been discussed repeatedly since he was a teenager, that the rock culture treats its black sources as exotic and dispensable and views females as empty headed eye candy.
Because it is driven by the sales to white teenage boys, rock tends to place them at its center. And nothing wrong with that, but its staggeringly stupid to not recognize that fact when you spend a lifetime chronicling it.Report
I don’t think rock music needs some kind of silly equivalent of a land acknowledgement. Yes, the earliest versions of what we now call rock and roll were created and performed by black Americans then popularized primarily by British musicians. But you’re not going to make a ‘best of’ list with a bunch of artists very few people had heard of even in their day. I also think we’ve passed the point of overstating the actual history. A debt is certainly owed to those early black musicians but even in the 60s rock was already full of all kinds of folk, country, and classical music influences that are not exclusively black American in origin. No one owns it the way it is now often suggested.Report
Which just points up how arbitrary these “best of” lists are.
What Wenner and Rolling Stone did was establish the rock critic as a sort of salon system, where “experts” would act as gatekeepers to what was “best” or acceptable.
The standards set by the critics are sort of circular- Howlin Wolf doesn’t make the cut because he is obscure.
Oh so KISS is certainly on the list, right?
No, no, they are wildly successful but that doesn’t count because reasons.
Treating rock music as an art form requires splitting it off from its commercial sector.
The commercial sector rewards sales, whereas the art sector rewards being popular with the salon gatekeepers.
What a bunch of teenage boys think is a great song is wildly different than what Jann Wenner, or a 30 year old music major, or 45 year old suburban dad think is a good song.Report
Eppur si muove.Report
I guess I can see what you’re saying that there’s some level of arbitrariness. But I think it’s also important to remember that many of the rock musicians held in almost universal high esteem now were not well regarded by the contemporaneous gatekeepers, yet broke through anyway.
I’m also not sure how much it really matters 20 years after Napster mortally wounded all the gatekeepers. They’re all gone. No one cares about Jann Wenner anymore and the closest parallel is the poptimist folks in legacy media, trying to make the case that the last vestiges of mass pop culture are actually the real rebelious counter culture. And yet many of those older rock acts still persist in relevance based on preferences in the streaming services. Meanwhile pop can’t touch its own legends (look at how many albums Thriller sold and compare it to any current pop act for example). That tells me there is still something to this music, beyond just what some old forgotten snob thinks.Report
This is basically the Elijah Wald thesis in a nut shell. A lot of music histories are really histories of what music critics think are important rather than what people actually listened to.Report
Another thing regarding the Jann Wenner saga is that before social media, his critics would be unaware of how many people agreed with them. People would read his remarks and get angry and might even write some letters to the editor but they wouldn’t know how many people were also angry. Within a month or two the entire thing would die down. These days people are more aware of how many other people agree with them on what Jann Wenner said and go against it.
Rock transformed itself from fun dance music to basically art music during the mid to late 1960s. Rock critics saw it as their job to present art rock as the highest form of popular music and everything else like pop or the funny rock bands like Van Halen or hair metal in general as a lesser form of pop music for many people. Gangsta rap was a bit of a challenge because it definitely had serious themes so was accorded serious status even though the music critics probably wished the hip hop artists played instruments rather than turned turn tables.Report
What’s the value in knowing that other people agree with you on this, though?Report
It means you can form an alternative narrative rather than let Wenner win by default. Sustained push back becomes plausible rather than a few of letter to the editor.Report
Where the hell is The Cure?Report
Not to mention Deff Leppard or Ratt!Report
Trixter! Bullet Boys! Firehouse! NELSON!Report
Ratt is interesting because I definitely remember Def Leppard being big in the 1980s but I don’t remember Ratt at all.Report
Ratt was early 80’s rock and I have a very soft spot both for 80’s rock and Ratt because it’s, like, one of the daddies of that sound.Report
Back in high school and early college I worked with a guy at a restaurant who was some (read, many) years older than me and most of the front of the house staff (but was desperate to appear otherwise), and who could have been an extra in a John Waters movie. Among the things I recall about him is that he was the biggest, most unapologetic Ratt fan I have ever met. Totally unironic about it, not that our culture had reached the point of liking things ironically yet. Anyway they played a show at one of the local venues and he would talk about nothing else during the cigarette breaks for weeks and weeks.Report
In the late 80s I worked at an Indian boarding school in South Dakota. The older kids there were massive hair metal fans.Report
I guess after working as a lawyer for Donald Trump, you pick up some of the client’s habits:
https://www.aol.com/news/rudy-giuliani-fails-pay-more-114622677.htmlReport
Biden to join auto workers on picket line. Something something neoliberal something squees the dirtbag left though: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/us/politics/uaw-biden-shawn-fain.htmlReport
Still, I’m sure Biden’s NLRB can be trusted to enforce the law fairly.Report
It will be every bit as even handed as Reagan’s was.Report
Whoa, Chip reaches back four decades in a bid to join Team BDSI! Welcome aboard!Report
Are we all in agreement that both sides, are in fact unfairly biased?
Or do the various NLRB decisions reflect the policy preferences of the elected President?Report
Mostly agreed.
The part I disagree with is a President should be good with someone threatening to crash airplanes if they don’t get their way. Reagan handled the situation correctly.
Weirdly enough retrospectively he had been trying to be a friend of labor and he’d been the head of a labor union himself. One of the reasons the union felt free to strike is they thought he had their back.
That he didn’t should be less on him and more on them.Report
Holding public safety hostage was a terrible idea. It seems like a good idea to treat that harshly.Report
I assume that you’re alluding to Reagan’s handling of the air traffic controller’s strike, which doesn’t really make much sense here, because:
1. Reagan’s handling of the strike was by the book. Federal employees are not legally permitted to strike, which made their refusal to do their jobs grounds for firing.
2. That was a very different situation, because the air traffic controllers were employees of the executive branch, then headed by Reagan. He had no choice but to take a side, either turning a blind eye to an illegal strike, or enforcing the law.
Joe Biden is publicly taking sides on a private dispute that is really none of his business as long as nobody’s breaking the law.Report
You would regard any victory for labor against business people and corporations as fundamentally unfair.Report
Hochul messes with the narrative.
“We’re at our limit”.
People who have lived in New York, is it true that New York is full?Report
Very UNliberal of them. Not upholding their claimed values are they?Report
I do think that the ability of Texas to get New York to scream “WE’RE FULL!” after only a handful of buses full of undocumented dreamers who only want a better life for themselves and their families show up does a great job of undercutting the yard signs that everybody has in front of their house.Report
Yeah, it’s funny. I always enjoy seeing hypocrisy exposed. Petard, hoist, etc.Report
The difference between untested virtue and tested virtue is always illuminating.
But it’s like Norm’s joke about Bill Cosby. The worst part isn’t necessarily the hypocrisy.Report
Here in Chicago, which is receiving daily busses from down south, migrants have begun selling water and pop at busy intersections to make some money. Most of the time it’s kind of heartbreaking because the women doing it are toting little kids while they sell.
That said, you’d think most Americans would welcome anyone with that kind of entrepreneurial spirit.Report
I, too, think that the permitting regime to do something as simple as setting up a lemonade stand is out of control. Let people engage in commerce!
But there’s this weird idea that the government should be able to get a piece of every transaction and that prevents a lot of free movement of dinero.Report
I’m not sure what to make of this non sequitur.Report
You’re talking about entrepreneurial spirit.
I’m pointing out that if we could do stuff like “sell water and pop at busy intersections” legally, we might find a lot more people with entrepreneurial spirit.
As it is, people who are here legally cannot engage in that level of free commerce without being choked out by police officers.Report
This kind of activity went on in Chicago long before this “crisis”.
My greater point is, they want to work. I dare say we could put them to it.Report
And if they charge less than the going rate, everybody’s happy!Report
The cultural progressive take on immigration may be annoying and hypocritical but I find where you’re taking this to be kind of ridiculous. At the end of the day there’s no doubt in my mind a critical mass of Democrats in Congress would get on board with some kind of compromise. The GOP on the other hand, despite the constant gnashing of teeth, a popular mandate to address immigration, the subject being probably their best issue on the national stage, did nothing last time they had the chance, outside of a few high profile but ultimately inconsequential executive orders. They used their trifecta to pass a tax cut for the rich instead. In light of that I think it’s pretty clear who is winning the contest to be most unserious.Report
Please, please, please do not see my mockery of the yard sign folks as an endorsement of Republicans.
I beg you.Report
Mockery and vice signaling IS the Republican position, the only one they have.
Both you and they have virtually nothing coherent to say about immigration, other than to mock those who are giving aid, and chortle about the pain and suffering endured by the asylum seekers.
Beg all you want, but its completely fair and accurate to speak of your position and the Republican’s as one and the same.Report
Chip, I’ve written multiple essays talking about the multiple problems with our immigration system and how it’s run.
I’ve linked to them before… heck, I’ll link to when I linked to them last time. Golly. That was 19 days ago.
Anyway, the whole “how dare you ask us to share the burden!!!” thing doesn’t play particularly well and I find myself flabbergasted that we have people praising how ingenious these folks are at working outside of the law.
Hey. Maybe we could level the playing field a little and let everybody work outside of the law.
Or enforce the law. It’s all good.
This Hammurabi’s Code thing where we have three distinct social groups with three nebulous spheres of law that apply to them strikes me as regressive rather than progressive, though.Report
Though I will say that the whole “Anarcho-Tyranny” thing really comes into sharp focus when it comes to the immigration problem.
Do we have laws? Should we enforce them? Should we get rid of them if we’re not going to enforce them?
Is there a list of “real” laws out there or do we just have to guess?Report
I don’t. But when we’re going through this exercise I’m not sure the flip flopping on sanctuary jurisdictions is substantively any more ridiculous than bussing illegal aliens across the country instead of I don’t know, going to DC and calling on the Biden admin and Kevin McCarthy to agree to mandate e-verify across the entire private sector.Report
If we can get everybody to agree that “something ought to be done”, we’re going to be somewhat closer to getting something done than if only half of everybody is saying “something ought to be done” and the other half is explaining that the Statue of Liberty has a poem on it.Report
Is that really a reasonable expectation when the half that says they are most interested in getting something done fails to do so at any and every opportunity? I’ll happily denounce the poem quoters. I’ll also say I think the bussers are happy to rile up the hoi polloi but have no actual intention of solving anything.Report
Oh, sure. But the bussers have gotten the New York governor to say “go somewhere else”.
Chicago is busy building temporary tent cities for immigrants.
California is still optimistic but now pointing out that their resources are limited.
And even the New York Times is acknowledging that there is a rift between the people who have power and the people they ostensibly represent.
Read that story. Seriously, there are some messed up dynamics in there. Here’s a representative paragraph:
Maybe we could get some of those migrants to write television shows and do late night television.Report
Of course there’s a rift. There’s been a rift for quite some time. The question is whether these various provocative acts is the same as actually addressing the underlying problem. As opposed to laughably cynical performance art, ultimately not much different than checking your white privilege on twitter to entertain your rich friends.Report
As cynical performance art goes, getting sanctuary cities to yell “go somewhere else” is in Duchamp territory.Report
If you’re asking me to grant that the GOP surpasses the Democrats in cynical performance art I gladly will. In the contest of pissing matches that accomplish nothing they win way more often than they have any business doing. But being an accomplishing things kind of guy I’m not going to award them points for it.Report
Florida recently (like, July) passed a mandatory e-verify law.
Wanna see us talk about it? We did so here.
Before you click through, guess as to what the criticisms were and then see if you were right. That’s always a fun game.Report
Hey good for Florida. No sarcasm. But if this is such an important issue why didn’t they do it or something like it nationally when they had a trifecta? I’m also not going to mistake internet comments for the center of political gravity. I’m probably to the left of something like 65 or 70% of the country which at OT makes me a right leaning centrist.Report
For the record, the law hasn’t been enforced, and it doesn’t appear there is much in the way of enforcement mechanicsm.
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/orlando-sentinel/20210612/281749862298780
Again..Performative arm waving and foot stomping.Report
There is an informal but sizeable transient disaster workforce in the US that follows natural disasters. That workforce, largely immigrants and a significant part undocumented, augments the locals in everything from debris removal to unlicensed skilled construction trades. There has been a bunch of concern expressed that because of the new Florida law, that workforce is going to pass on the Idalia damage, slowing the recovery/rebuilding by a lot.Report
But if this is such an important issue why didn’t they do it or something like it nationally when they had a trifecta?
They went for the whole “wall” thing (which was controversial) and the whole “do what Obama did” thing which was a humanitarian disaster (I’m sure you remember the photo ops).
But the real answer to your question is that if you solve a problem, you can’t get elected on solving it next time.
Like the whole “Move embassy to Jerusalem” thing? Nobody will ever be able to make that campaign promise again!
Embarrassing, really.Report
Not solving the problem to retain it as an issue is exactly what I’m talking about. Also exposing the hypocrisy of ‘in this house we believe’ style progressivism is shooting fish in a barrel. I’m pretty cynical myself about my fellow travelers in that mold. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves that it’s actual politics and if it’s never followed up with actual moving of the ball it isn’t worth the time we give to it.
Compare Trump’s fleeting executive actions to something like the ACA or even IRA. These are not perfect pieces of legislation but they are attempts to actually address issues the D coalition cares about. Even where parts are rolled back (as has been with the ACA and doubtlessly will be with the IRA) or disappoint the further left there is enduring change. This is the fundamental difference between the parties today, one can do things, the other can’t, except tax cuts. That’s even the case in situations like immigration where the critical mass of voters broadly leans in their direction.
At a certain point one has to ask who is really being played. Or at least who is getting played worse. Is it the people with the fading BLM signs and limousine liberals with egg on their faces, who at least got a big climate change bill? Or is it the people who have been voting Republican, and begging for federal action on immigration for 20 years, who get little spectacles for laughs on Fox News?Report
Building a wall is a perm change.Report
Yea, and where is it? It never got built because it couldn’t get through a Republican Congress, and the tiny sections that did came out of discretionary defense spending that the Biden admin was able to immediately halt. Again, who is getting played here?Report
Just to be clear-
when you talk derisively about the annoying “poem readers” who posture cynically, I assume you aren’t talking about people like Mayor bass and the Welcome Committee that are actually processing people and giving them effective aid and assistance.
Or President Biden who recently granted santuary to thousands of Venezuelans, allowing them to find work.
The point is, that while I take issue with many of the things Democratic administrations have done, or not done, as a rule they stand head and shoulders above the Republicans in providng actual effective assistance to real people, instead of performative cruelty.Report
I’m not sure either are really relevant to the policy question. The case for giving sanctuary to fleeing Venezuelans is IMO independent of what immigration policy should be writ large. I don’t really know enough about what’s going on in LA to comment on it. I certainly find using desperate people for political stunts like conservatives are to be highly immoral no matter the cause. However jurisdictions handling illegal entrants or ‘asylum’ seekers more humanely in some jurisdictions than others strikes me as more of a symptom of the failure to resolve this at the federal level where it needs to be than as a win.Report
There are several facts that have to form the basis of any discussion about immigration, and Republicans refuse to accept either of them.
Fact 1: There are somewhere around 12 million undocument aliens living and working in America today.
Any proposal which envisions deporting all or even a majority of these people is a perverse fantasy.
Fact 2: Our economy relies in large part on these low wage workers.
Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does and any proposal that envisions native born Americans taking these jobs without a tsunami-like upheaval in the economy is another perverse fantasy.
But Republicans have embraced the perverse fantasy as their primary mode of being which leaves them nothing but performative cruelty.
The only possible solution to miigration will involve some sort of mass legalization of those here already, and a process for the orderly flow of immigrant labor inand out of the country.Report
Yep. All of that.
And I’d add that “a process for orderly flow of immigrant labor” needs to be something other than “a process for preventing immigrant labor”.
But I’m not sure we’re there yet. Far as I can tell even Team Blue, as a whole, doesn’t want this.Report
Guest Workers.
You can come and work. You can stay a number of years while working. Number of years you can stay: TBD. After that, you leave.
You’ll get taxed. You are NOT a citizen, you cannot vote.
You want to come here presently? Demonstrate why we NEED you.Report
Define “Demonstrate why we need you”. What needs to happen and how does it happen?
If a farmer needs to predict 18 months in advance who he’ll need and what he’ll need them for, then that’s what we already have and it doesn’t work.Report
I think they’re down a half million from their peak in 2020.Report
Meanwhile, Mayor Bass continues to show how its done:
The L.A. Welcomes Collective greeted the migrants as they got off the charter bus at Union Station and provided them food and other resources at a nearby church, Cabrera said.
“Our limited resources will support those who need us and they in turn make our communities safe, vital, & strong,” L.A. Welcomes Collective said in a statement. “L.A. is an immigrant city; CA is an immigrant state. We thrive because of the creativity, contributions, & diversity of our communities.”
Bass’ office was notified of the group’s arrival on Thursday and mobilized a plan to greet the migrants.
“The city has continued to work with city departments, the county, and a coalition of nonprofit organizations, in addition to our faith partners, to execute a plan set in place earlier this year,” Bass’ office said in a statement.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-22/migrants-bus-los-angeles-texas-greg-abbottReport
I hope their plan set in place earlier this year is successful.Report
It seems to have caused the Republicans to clam up.
When this stunt first started, they were all over the internet crowing about it, how they really showed those libruls hur hur.
Now that Mayor Bass is showing them what actual American values and Judeo-Christian mercy and kindness is, they are very, very quiet about it.Report
They’re waiting for Newsome to break, probably.
Look at this from your quote: “Our limited resources will support those who need us and they in turn make our communities safe, vital, & strong,”
See those first three words? That’s a “tell”.
But if you want to know why Why Los Angeles Has Avoided the Migrant Crisis Hitting New York, the New York Times has written a story about it.Report
Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, these hundreds of immigrants are settling into life in California, getting jobs, paying taxes, contributing to one of the largest economies in the world.
U.S. to allow hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the country to work legally
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration says it’s granting temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are already in the country — quickly making them eligible to work — as it grapples with growing numbers of people fleeing the South American country and elsewhere to arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The move — along with promises to accelerate work permits for many migrants — may appease Democratic leaders who have pressured the White House to do more to aid asylum seekers, while also providing grist for Republicans who say President Biden has been too lax on immigration.
See that part about Biden being willing to “provide grist for Republicans”?
That’s the “tell.”Report
Eh, “Republicans Pounce” is a tell, but I think it’s kind of a different tell than you seem to think it is.
For me, I see it as talking about the response to the issue rather than talking about the issue.Report
Good for them.
El Paso, Texas is currently getting 2000 immigrants a day.
Eagle Pass only gets something like 800 a day.
El Paso has 678,415 people.
Eagle Pass has 30k people.
If NPR was correct then El Paso is busing them basically anywhere they’re willing to go.Report
The War On Drugs, the surveillance state, and the Republican war on women’s freedom come together:
US mother sentenced to two years in prison for giving daughter abortion pills
Although the case occurred before the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, it has been seen as a harbinger of how law enforcement may prosecute people for ending their own pregnancies in a post-Roe era – and how giant tech companies could go along with it.
Court documents in the case revealed that Facebook’s parent company Meta supplied police with the private Facebook messages that Celeste and Jessica Burgess had sent one another. In one message, Celeste told Jessica: “Remember we burn the evidence.”
Although most states do not ban people from inducing their own pregnancies – abortion bans typically penalize abortion providers, not patients – abortion rights advocates have long warned that if a prosecutor wants to target someone for a self-managed abortion, they will find a statute that is elastic enough to do so.
Oh, it gets better:
At her sentencing, Celeste Burgess said that her family could not have afforded a funeral for fetal remains, according to Courthouse News. (In a financial affidavit obtained by Vice, Jessica Burgess said she had $400 to her name.) Celeste Burgess also reportedly deals with multiple mental health issues and became pregnant due to an abusive relationship.
Jessica Burgess was set to undergo a court-ordered psychological evaluation ahead of her sentencing. But the evaluation was canceled due to lack of funding, according to KTIV.
So…No money?
Republicans: “Not our problem.”
In an abusive relationship?
Republicans: “Not our problem.”
Self-manage an abortion?
Republicans: “We will comb Facebook and surveil your social media feeds to ferret you out and send you to prison!”
Need mental treatment after your jail term?
Republicans: “As we’ve said so many times, piss off, not our problem.”
The latest Republican platform is just a pdf of The Handmaid’s Tale.Report
We now have Menendez truthers.
I question the timing.Report
Resident immigration lawyer here. So called sanctuary cities means that basically the municipal authorities have decided not to actively work with ICE in the actual physical removal of non-citizens from the United States and does not give them information. They have no authority to process them in anway or give them work authorization. That authority lies solely with the Federal government. Likewise, ICE has conducted several raids and carried out many actual deportations in the so called sanctuary cities.Report
Whether it’s fair or not, the whole “Sanctuary City” thing is used as shorthand for “Holds the values proudly depicted on posters much like this one from Martha’s Vineyard”.
Report
I know this sort of sign makes conservatives grind their teeth in rage, but have you ever considered how normal people react to it?Report
Well I consider myself “normal” and I’ve always rolled my eyes at signs like this. Same with those bumper stickers that say: “coexist” etc. It’s just posturing. What matters is the DOING, and if you’re doing, it doesn’t matter that other people know you’re doing. That is exactly why the whole sanctuary city designation, and the border towns shipping illegals to NYC and other places has resonance.Report
“have you ever considered how normal people react to it?”
okay Richard NixonReport
Under what circumstances?
Before deporting 50 migrants or after deporting them?Report
Again…
Put your thoughts into the form of an argument, with a premise and supporting facts and a conclusion.
I’m being serious here. When conservatives speak its often in some sort of shorthand code, with buzzwords and references (Burisma! The Met Gala!) no one outside their bubble understands and they end up sound like street people babbling gibberish.
You’re walking with a normal apolitical person and see this sign on a yard.
Now explain why you are so angry. In a way that doesn’t make them remember an urgent appointment.Report
You asked a question:
Here, let me quote it: “have you ever considered how normal people react to it?”
You’re not asking me to make an argument.
But it is a yes or no question. So I will give a yes or no answer.
Yes, I have.
I have actually considered it under two main circumstances:
“Before their virtue has been tested”
“After their virtue has been tested”
And I have concluded that there are two somewhat different reactions.
(Oh, and you’re totally misguessing my internal emotional state.)Report
And, you’re convinced that a normal person reading this wouldn’t think it is gibberish?Report
Reading what? The sign?
Have you considered what a normal person would think when they saw this sign or the “IN THIS HOUSE” sign on someone else’s front yard?
What conclusions did you reach after considering it? (Assuming you have, of course.)Report
I’ll take a crack at that and related questions. I would conclude that the person who put the sign up believed the claims made on the sign. Just as I would assume that the person in my neighborhood who has a “Trump Won” sign on his lawn believes that Trump won or the person who has a “Keep Christ in Christmas” decal on his car is a Christian who thinks the Christmas holiday season has gotten too secular for his taste. If I cared — and whether one cares may be the dividing line between a “normal person” and everyone else — I could draw inferences of varying reliability about other characteristics of the person who put up the sign or stuck on the decal. Or, as someone who doesn’t put up signs or stick decals on my car, I could just sniff at the whole project on aesthetic grounds. Or I could note the fact and move on. That might be “normal.”Report
Do you think it’s a silly question to ask someone?Report
Depends. If you have nothing better to do with your time, it’s your time. Just don’t expect much.Report
I was on a liberal blog once and someone made a sneering reference to a minivan with those stick figures of a family and after being asked about it, went on to explain that the mom and dad figures with three kids and a dog meant that this was a cishet family, likely Christian, probably conservative, and almost certainly hateful bigots.
Out of such a trifling fact, this person applied all their priors and biases and prejudices to condemn people he never met and honestly, ended up sounding like a loon, like one of these street people ranting on a corner.
I’m highly politically attuned so I understand completely why you have such scorn for the people who put up these signs.
But imagine a normal person.
Lets say a youngish person in their 20s, who is largely apolitical and just forming their partisan attachments.
Imagine this person is cis and het, but has friends or family who are queer. And maybe works at a company that hires immigrant laborers who are undocumented, and this young person likes them, and wishes them to have a happy life and good outcome. This person is up for grabs, politically speaking.
Now…imagine you or any conservative trying to explain what irritates them about this sign, or that Anne Frank graphic novel, or rainbow tee shirts or why some guy is off shooting at cans of Bud Light.
You guys lack the ability to speak to these people in any language they can understand.
You can make snarky inside baseball references, you can make snide sarcastic jibes about hypocrisy, maybe even toss out some shocking anecdote about immigrant crime.
But a clear persuasive argument for an intelligible position? No.Report
I’m highly politically attuned so I understand completely why you have such scorn for the people who put up these signs.
I’ll note that you didn’t answer my question and, instead, started talking about my internal state.
Could you answer the question?
I mean, you made a big deal about how I needed to construct an argument and everything.
I still don’t know if you’ve considered what a normal person thinks when they see the sign.Report
I know that a normal person sees the sign as akin to any other sign like the stick figures or fish symbol or “Eat Pray love” sign, just a sappy sort of appeal to virtuous values.
That’s how Lorie Meacham sees it.
So how would you explain your understanding of the sign to Lorie Meacham?Report
I’d probably say something like “I interpreted it one way before you guys deported all of the immigrants and I interpreted it a different way afterwards”.Report
This is what I mean.
It sounds to your ears like a persuasive argument, but to any normal person it would leave them with their head tilted to one side asking “Huh?”
The woman on Martha’s Vineyard is deporting people whaaa?Report
Oh, I would say that if the person who knew about the poster had no idea that the immigrants were shipped out of Martha’s Vineyard, after a mere 44 hours there, that would explain her confusion.
“What do you mean only 44 hours?”Report
Yes, continue explaining.Report
“They went into a lot of detail about how compassionate they were and how much they cared but put even more emphasis on how limited their resources were. Anyway, yeah. 44 hours and the immigrants were shipped away.”Report
“Oh, you mean they were resettled in other areas and given assistance in finding family members and jobs?
Or just lied to and dumped somewhere without access to aid agencies?
Please, do explain in detail- My vote in November will turn on this!”Report
“Sent away to other school districts, yes. So if you want to make sure that you feel like you’re living up to the ideals on the poster but have someone else pay the cost for those ideals, vote Biden. You can easily get away with calling the people who want you to live next to immigrants ‘racist’ and you’ll have a lot of people backing you up. And your groceries will be less expensive than they’d be if legal immigrants were hired to produce them.”Report
“Oh, so the cost of resettling and assisting immigrants is borne by the federal government instead of the residents of Martha’s Vineyard.
That sounds about right. I think I read that somewhere in civics class.
Thanks for helping me with this- can I get you a Biden Harris 2024 tee shirt?”Report
“No, most of the costs are born locally and they extend beyond the monetary. Just look at what Chicago and New York City is saying. They can’t afford immigrants! And those are two of the largest tax bases in the country! It’s almost laughable that Martha’s Vineyard got rid of mere dozens in 44 hours. That’s less than one hour per person per capita!”Report
“Well thats a terrible state of affairs.
We should definitely have the federal government offer much more aid and assistance in resettling immigrants.”Report
“Somewhere *ELSE*!”Report
“Well, as a totally apolitical person just forming an opinion, I would guess immigrants should be allowed to resettle wherever they want, or have family and jobs I guess.”Report
Chip
so when someone in El Paso says “the Federal Government should pay whatever it takes for these immigrants to move somewhere else”, is that person being racist?Report
“But not in Martha’s Vineyard?”Report
“Uh, I dunno. Did the immigrants want to stay in Martha’s Vineyard?”Report
“I’m guessing that they didn’t have enough time there to figure out whether they would before they were deported. They were only there 44 hours, after all. Though I could easily understand not wanting to be around racists would would do that.”Report
“Well, I have to say, you’ve been very persuasive.
I agree, immigrants should be given much more assistance, more aid, and be allowed to stay where they are most comfortable, even when the local residents don’t like it.
I will certainly keep this in mind when I vote come November.”Report
“Thanks Undecided person who lives in Martha’s Vineyard!”Report
This is why I wanted to construct your snark in the form of an argument.
That the “hypocrisy” argument only ends up ratifying the liberal side of things.
Which I’m pretty sure isn’t your intention, but exemplifies why I say the immigration restrictionists can’t muster up coherent vision.
Your A game, your kill shot argument, is that we aren’t being liberal enough.Report
I’m not sure that it does ratify the liberal side of thing. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that it does not.
And my quickest example of this is Hochul.
Not because of the hypocrisy.
Because of the material reality of limited resources and unlimited desires.
“Your A game, your kill shot argument, is that we aren’t being liberal enough.”
No, not really. It’s that you’re like the 5 year old saying to the parent “You don’t have to spend money. Just use a credit card!”
When the time comes for you to foot the bill, suddenly the reality of hard tradeoffs becomes apparent.Report
If Hochul says New York city or state doesn’t have enough money to provide assistance wouldn’t the logical response by a normal person be (after they stop giggling at the absurdity of the notion) to suggest that the federal government, which has authority over our national borders, provide assistance?
I mean, isn’t the total amount of assistance and aid something like a rounding error for any medium sized federal agency?Report
I suppose that that would be one of the several logical responses, but she, instead, went with one of the other possible responses which was “go somewhere else”.
As for federal aid, I’m pretty sure that if New York asks for some, then California will ask for some and then Texas asks for some and then Florida and next thing you know you’ve got people suggesting preventing undocumented immigration instead of paying for more of it.
I mean, that seems what would logically happen.Report
Why would a hypothetical apolitical voter suggest we prevent undocumented immigrants?Report
“They should come here legally!” is the first thought that came to my mind.Report
“Ahh, OK. So I, Mr. Apolitical Persuadable, think that since there are already 12 million undocumented people living here, we must act urgently to get them all registered and properly documented.
And we must reform the entry process to be streamlined and efficient so as to make it easier for people to immigrate.”Report
“No, we should make them go to the back of the line! There are tons of people trying to get here legally and just being able to jump the border shouldn’t give you a leg up over people doing this the right way according to the law!”
Seriously, Chip. This debate is *OLD*.
I’m surprised you haven’t encountered it before.Report
Finally, we get to it.
Took only a few dozen comments, but you’re finally at the starting point of an argument.
Remember the Two Facts on immigration that any discussion has to accept in order to be plausible?
Your statement “make them go to the back of the line” is a preposterous fantasy.
How exactly can you do that?
Do you propose that 12 million people continue to reside in America while their documents are processed?
Or perform a mass deportation?
All the snark about Marth’s Vineyard, Eric Adams and Gov. Hochul are just feints, window dressing since your core argument is premised on an absurdity.Report
No, Chip. You’re operating at a lower level of abstraction.
This is not *MY* argument. This is the argument of hypothetical apolitical voter.
You need to switch back to “it’s virtuous to not have a border at all! That’s why I’m going to vote for Biden!”Report
No, no logical person could make such an assertion.
Can you construct it in such as way such that it isn’t preposterous?
Isn’t it much more logical to respond that 12 million people should be properly documented and allowed to remain?Report
So now we’ve moved from “hypothetical apolitical voter” to “logical hypothetical apolitical voter”?
Where will the goalposts be by tonight?
But I think that our coherent hypothetical apolitical voter could easily concede that it’s not realistic to deport all 12 million but, instead, say something about deporting the *CRIMINALS* and the ones who are getting public assistance but keeping the ones who are a net benefit to the society SO LONG AS WE SECURE THE BORDER.
Something like that.Report
“Logical” was assumed, since why bother with “Stupid” hypothetical voter?
But OK, lets say that this logical hypothetical person (who is totally not you, not at all) wants to deport criminals (which we are generally doing) and deport ones getting public assistance which seems odd since just cutting off public assistance seems cheaper.
But now this leads to the third Fact; “Securing the border” is like “eradicating drugs”, an idea which is so amorphous as to be again, something only a stupid person can accept.
What would be the metrics to declare that the border has been secured?
How much would that cost, both in terms of money and loss of liberty?
Look at the Leviathan that is Homeland Security, Customs, ICE and various other agencies dealing with border issues.
How much more will be needed to be spent, how much more control will they be given over the movement of people living in America?
Would this be more, or less expensive than simply accepting that our economy needs millions of immigrants?Report
So you have “logical” versus “stupid”?
You’re excluding a middle, there.
Though there is a gigglesnort available for those who wish one.
But OK, lets say that this logical hypothetical person (who is totally not you, not at all) wants to deport criminals (which we are generally doing) and deport ones getting public assistance which seems odd since just cutting off public assistance seems cheaper.
You’re not immediately running to “but none of them are on public assistance!!! Why would people come to this country just to get on welfare! Lazy people DON’T MOVE THOUSANDS OF MILES TO GO TO A NEW COUNTRY!”?
That’s the usual move. Huh.
“Securing the border” is like “eradicating drugs”, an idea which is so amorphous as to be again, something only a stupid person can accept.
And yet Marijuana is still Schedule 1.
This idea that an idea is stupid and therefore neither voters will call for it nor the government will try to do it goes against pretty much all of human history.
And let’s look at this:
“only a stupid person can accept”
We’ve gone from the idea being stupid to someone holding the idea being stupid themselves.
I’ve met *PLENTY* of smart people who believe stupid things. They don’t stop being smart because they believe stupid things.
It’s just that they’re usually screaming “ought!” into the void that is “is”.
What would be the metrics to declare that the border has been secured?
Well, without getting into issues of “secured 100%” versus “more secure than right now”, I’d say that the metrics would probably be “immigrants crossing the border without bothering to check in first”.
What is the number per day right now?
Is it possible to make that number be lower than it is?
How much would that cost, both in terms of money and loss of liberty?
Something worth measuring!
Would this be more, or less expensive than simply accepting that our economy needs millions of immigrants?
The illegal ones are sure a lot cheaper than the legal ones. Willing to do jobs that Americans won’t do, to boot. For *CHEAP*.
Cheap labor is pretty much what keeps our lifestyles possible, when you think about it.Report
This is where it always comes to.
The idea of “securing the border” dissolves into vaporous “We oughtta study it” evasion, and the perfectly logical idea of just legalizing those already here is rejected with a moral stance of “sending them to the back of the line”, akin to “abstinence” in its mind boggling absurdity.
This is why you need to make these arguments via sockpuppet, because on some level you know they have no logical structure.
So it ends up being a mixture of sarcasm, snark, and irrelevant feints about libruls on Martha’s vineyard.Report
For the record, there *HAVE* been studies.
There have been laws passed and, when the laws were enforced, the measured undocumented immigrants not bothering to check in first had their numbers go down rather than remain unchanged.
This is something that actually happened.
I’m not making these arguments via sockpuppet.
I merely am familiar enough with the debate to know what the boilerplate arguments of the different sides are and have been for decades and don’t see familiarity with positions that I do not hold as evidence of Sin.
But here’s something that we’ll probably get to deal with over the next few years:
While I appreciate how much New York City needs these immigrants, there seems to be a large number of people who are arguing that New York City does not need them.
This large number of people includes the mayor and the governor of New York.Report
You still are evading the two basic facts:
1. That some 12 million immigrants living here cannot be deported, and must be accepted as legal workers or citizens;
2. Our economy cannot function without them.
Those are facts, even Gov. Hochul can’t change them.Report
Lotta facts out there being evaded.
Let’s see which ones are best at staying that way.Report
Back of the line is not possible, but some penalty is probably doable and politically needed.
RE: Stupid vs Logical
I would frame it as “emotional vs logical”, and welcome to my world.
The logical vote is normally correct, it’s also a minority.Report
They have a coherent vision, it’s just not workable.
The vision is “enforce the existing laws” which means in practice we’re going to prohibition, wall, and brutality our way to controlling/restricting immigration.
His argument is we aren’t liberal enough and because of that “being liberal” is hard or unrealistic.
We’re a democracy, the anti-immigration part of society is so large that changing the rules is hard. Within living memory they’ve been the majority of society.
We need to do more backbone work on convincing society that immigration is a good idea.Report
And “Immigration Restrictionists” is a good way to frame the non “Open Borders” folks.
Do you think we should have a border? Then you are a restrictionist.
Easy peasy.Report
https://www.wbez.org/stories/us-foreign-policy-contributes-to-chicago-migrant-crisis/a447a736-7073-442f-ba83-9c5be5dc94d5
“First of all, you have the inability of the local governments to deal with what is essentially a federal problem: The Congress and the federal government, since 2006, have been unable to reach a new immigration policy for the United States. And because Congress is frozen, unable to make decisions, the local governments have to face how we’re going to deal with these constant problems. The other aspect is the narrative that’s created. For instance, as many Ukrainians roughly have come to the United States in the last couple of years, as have Venezuelans. There is no narrative in the media that the Ukrainians are creating a crisis. Why not? Because the government is quietly integrating them into the society, giving them work permits, giving them social benefits, and they’re in essence melting into the U.S. population. There are more Ukrainians that have come to Chicago in the last year than Venezuelans. But somehow we see the Venezuelans in the police precincts, we see them in the shelters, we see the government claiming it has no ability to deal with them.”Report
“That the “hypocrisy” argument only ends up ratifying the liberal side of things.”
Chip
you’re aware that the people in Martha’s Vineyard did not actually “ratify the liberal side of things”, right
like
you’re aware that the Mayor of New York is out there in the shadow of the Statue Of Liberty speaking directly against “ratifying the liberal side of things”Report
The people of Martha’s Vineyard took these people in gave them aid and helped them resettle to where they had family and jobs.
The hypocrisy argument by its nature, always ratifies the underlying premise.
If the criticism of Hochul is that she says virtuous words about immigrants, then acts differently, then the premise is that welcoming immigrants is in fact, virtuous.
Are the words on that yard sign virtuous?Report
P -> Q.
P is False.
Therefore P -> Q is false no matter what Q is.Report
“The people of Martha’s Vineyard took these people in gave them aid and helped them resettle to where they had family and jobs.”
Which is exactly what Greg Abbot did!Report
Median household income in Martha’s Vineyard is 73k, total population is 15k. Housing costs are 50% above normal for the state.
If the plan is to let them stay in Martha’s Vineyard if they want; Then either they instantly become homeless or they have enough resources that they wouldn’t be getting blindly onto buses.Report
Chip, they aren’t going to understand this no matter how carefully you explain it. They really believe that most people think like them in a sort of conservative version of the Secret Disney Liberal. They don’t get that most not very online people look at them and the Woke like they are bonkers people constantly agitated about something.Report
Here’s some recent polling on immigration.
Would we be able to use polling to see any trends among these so-called “normal” people?
I mean, if we wanted to guess how they viewed “IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE” kinda sentiments?Report
Seems like a strong majority either like the current amount of immigration or want more, and a strong minority will continue to be upset more people will continue to come in the country.Report
How many of the people who expressed opinions about whether we should take in more immigrants, fewer immigrants, or about as many immigrants as we now let in have any idea what the current levels are?Report
Asking people about numbers is dumb – people think we spend 20% of the budget on foreign aid. The more/current/less isn’t a question about 1.2 vs 800k vs. whatever number of immigrants, it’s basically a question of how comfortable you are with more people showing up.Report
Asking people who don’t know the numbers is dumb. What you get are dumb opinions. Unless measuring, and taking advantage of, dumbness is the point.Report
Sounds like they’re big fans of legal immigration, that’s for sure!
For the record: I am too.Report
“Sounds like they’re big fans of legal immigration, that’s for sure!”
My opinion — which is for-real, not ironic snark or pwn-the-libz viciousness, I genuinely believe this is true and would work — is that they should just give everybody a Green Card. Just do it. “Immigration Restriction” should be nonexistent.
Because when they’ve all got Green Cards, when they’re all legal residents, when they’re all here on the up-and-up and can’t be deported, they can file wage-theft and OSHA-violation lawsuits. (not to mention you won’t be able to hire them from outside the Home Depot as cash-only day-labor.)Report
When I worked in the restaurant, 90% of the back was Mexican. I don’t mean “Hispanic” or “Latino”, but dudes from Mexico who knew each other back there too.
They lived six to a two-bedroom apartment, worked 6 months and went back for 6 months.
There’s no way the restaurant could have gotten worked that skilled who worked that hard for those wages for people who intended to stay in the US.Report
“They really believe that most people think like them in a sort of conservative version of the Secret Disney Liberal. ”
you know what would have been a really good demonstration that not everybody thinks like them in a sort of conservative version of the Secret Disney Liberal?
if when these refugees were sent to liberal communities they were welcomed and allowed to stay if they wished.
you know what actually happened?
not that.Report
I’m one of those rare liberals that is more animated by pissy and negative energy rather than positive energy, so I find these signs eye-rolling and avoiding some tough questions and facts but ultimately well-meaning and harmless.
The most infuriating thing about these signs is that they are evidence on how many people just can’t come out and say that multiculturalism means food, festivals, and fabrics with a college educated liberal morality. Just come out and say what you mean.Report
I’m a fan of the term “EPCOT multiculturalism“, myself.
“College educated” is a good way to put it. We don’t care what you believe, so long as you know the jargon. And then when non-college educated opinions bubble up, we can be aghast that someone gained enough prominence to say such things in a place where we’d have to hear them too.
But we’re entering a new dynamic where, for whatever reason, college educations are being pilloried by the newly educated class and they’re making a very big deal about how their degrees are not worth what they paid for them.
Bad timing. Bad luck.Report
What is “Welcum here man?” Is that Jamaican English? I looked it up in Wiktionary and it only said it was an eye-dialect spelling of “welcome.”
Also, the sign has oppressor Chinese but not resistance Chinese.Report
It means it was written by a person with an ivy league education that wants to sound some combination of ethnic and authentic.Report