Way back in Obama's first term, Julian Sanchez wrote how the American Right was ending up in a system of epistemic closure because they are only exposed to people that agree with them. Being very online did that with large swathes of the liberal to left side of politics in the United States.
They are only talking to people they agree with and use the same jargon that they do. This turned a lot of social justice causes into something of a quasi-religion in how people approach them. When you point out that things like land acknowledgements or gender is a social construct is not how normies speak or see things, you can get a lot of push back from them. They don't know how to speak to people who aren't already in agreement and know the correct verbiage.
What a lot of very political 21st century people don't remember is that politics and news used to be a big source of entertainment for people. During the French Revolution, people went to the National Assembly not only because they were interested in what is going on but because it was the best theater show in Paris at the time. Likewise, the Golden Age of the Metropolitan Daily (TM) was because newspapers were a big source of entertainment. What we now call lifestyle sections always existed and they were always a lot more popular than the hard hitting news. Since people have many more entertainment options now, they don't need politics or the news to be a source of entertainment. This is why you get so many people without the faintest ideas of what is going on.
On LGM, another poster also pointed a related problem that society in most developed democracies is so high up on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs that politics becomes more about self-expression than forming policy. This is true for the entirety of the political spectrum even if it manifests differently on the left and right.
A lot of younger voters also like Bernie because he doesn't do the God thing like other Democratic candidates including Hillary Clinton did when necessary. I remember a poster on LGM describing Hillary Clinton as speaking fluent Methodist. Bernie Sanders doesn't do that and couldn't do it if his life depended on it. This really hurt him with the African-American faction of the Democratic Party but it got him a lot of popularity elsewhere.
Otherwise, this analysis is spot on. Bernie and even AOC's popularity has to do more with their personas than their policy preferences. There are a lot of people who do not understand this and believe that their popularity is more because of their policy preferences and they are tapping into a deep wellspring of unspoken for socialists. They aren't.
I'm joining the others on this. In local elections during November 2024 in some of the most left leaning places in the United States like Alameda County, the most left leaning Democrats lost to more moderate/centrist Democrats. California voters overwhelmingly voted for tough on crime ballot initiatives and rejected some liberals ones. Going full left is not the way to defeat Trump no matter how many people want it.
Clashes in Syria between Druze and Pro-Government forces. The trouble has seemed to have started because of an anti-Mohammed internet post that was attributed to a Druze cleric.
First, Netanyahu has ulterior motives in being in Gaza for this long. Mainly to save his own skin. Second, there have been plenty of other protests against Netanyahu. Third, getting out for some international politics isn't a bad thing. Put other pressure on Hamas to release the hostages.
It's the exact opposite of they wanted but just enough people voted for the politician that gave them what they don't want because they were angry at egg prices. Now thanks to avian flu, there aren't any eggs in the stores.
I was watching a PBS documentary on the American Public Library last night on YouTube. It was made by a white woman who was the daughter of two public school teachers. Being PBS and about libraries it contained a lot of the standard orthodoxies of American liberalism. It contain something interesting though. When noting why so many women ended up as librarians, there was a brief comment about pioneer librarian Melvil Dewey, of the Dewey Decimal system, loving women and women loving him.
Wikipedia's entry on Melvil Dewey presents Dewey's love of women as something more like sexual harassment and not only that but it was so obvious that his male contemporaries believed he was very inappropriate in his behavior towards women:
Americans want first world service on third world levels of taxation. They get angry about why it is so hard to build anything new or various problems or why existing infrastructure is degrading. They don't want to pay for maintenance or do the hard work in getting superior services.
The propaganda on what a good neighborhood even proceeds radio let alone television. When Manhattan got too populated for row houses and you started to need apartments, this was basically a decade after the Civil War, there were lots of people aghast because proper Anglo-Saxon Protestants live in a home and not an apartment buildings. Lots of cities in pre-car North America promoted themselves as cities of homes.
I haven't really been following this scandal but the DNC has been rather angry with David Hogg for fighting for young politicians in positions of power in the party rather than the seniority system currently in play. A female Native American DNC member is going to challenge David Hogg's victory as DNC Vice Chair by citing "fairness and diversity rules." This is basically the liberal equivalent of Christians who use Muslim front people to file suits against pro-LGBT kid's lit in schools. Nobody who isn't already on their side is going to fall for it.
There has been a lot of propaganda in North America that "good" neighborhoods consists of single family homes with well manicured lawns and gardens and not in walking distance of non-residential real estate. Mixed use land use, apartment buildings, and even transit make something a bad neighborhood. That's the problem with voter preferences. The problem with fashionable leftist notions is that the real solution is not very romantic and it means that the dreaded developer, a worse capitalist than an arms merchant, will get wealthy.
My parents did day care through the Young Men and Women's Hebrew Association. I think that day care was a lot less fancy and cheaper during the 1980s. This might mainly be because we were in an in between era from modern options for women and when women had limited working options. So you had larger number of women pre-school teachers you could pay cheap for.
I agree that working class and lower middle class people are not as easy to buy off with benefits as possible.
From my job, I know that many working couples or single parents lower in the socio-economic scale, also engage in grey market day care. Lots of working class or lower middle class Asian parents would leave their kids with an older woman baby sitter. It wouldn't surprise me if other communities did something similar.
College educated bougie parents are going to want something a lot more formal for their young kids. They aren't going to want to just leave the kid with an older person in their apartment.
How is subsidized or universal daycare, an upper middle class welfare thing? Lots of not very upper middle class families have two working parents and no grand parent to take care of the kids or you have working single parents.
There are lots of places where if you are white you vote Republican because Republicans are the white people party. It's tribal voting. The Democratic problem is finding candidates that can win in those states, which aren't super liberal or lefty, but can also work with the rest of the Democratic Party without going Steve Manchin or blue dog.
Considering how leaving Gaza didn't really free Israel of Gaza, I don't think leaving the WB will have the effect you think it will. People will find a way to say the Occupation continues even after the Occupation ended.
TL/DR of my comment: I want to hear the plot and the plan for attacking global anti-Semitism whether it comes from the White Right, the Left, Intersectionalists, Muslims, or anybody else..
I do not want people to appeal to Jews to Jews as victims of rash international conspiracy theories and hatred then shrug and do nothing if it turns out that all of Sumatra or Venezuela is in the grip of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. They should not say "well it doesn't matter, there aren't any Jews in Sumatra or Venezuela." They should do something about it.
A world war against global anti-Semitism should be the price for an independent Palestine. This is true even if it means going very hard against hundreds of millions or billions of people that will never meet a Jew.
I happen to live in an area of the United States where these people exist in large numbers and are very loud. There is a nearby and rather important Bay Area park where "F-word Israel" scrawled on the pavement. I literally know people in real life that I have to interact with fair frequency because of work who believe that "Israelis are the new you know what" without irony.
I am utterly sick that it is always the Jews in general and Israelis in particular who have to do outreach work. It just feels like a one way street. Even though there are only 16 million Jews in the world and 2 billion Muslims, I guarantee you that more Jewish organizations are holding events like the below link than Muslim ones:
The enemies of the Jews are on the march and nobody seems that interested in putting them down. Pointing out the anti-Semitism of the DEI/Intersectionalists, the Left, and among the Muslim world is simply something that can't be done. We are supposed to hold our nose at these freaks and believe they are pure as snow.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “A Backlash Is Coming”
Way back in Obama's first term, Julian Sanchez wrote how the American Right was ending up in a system of epistemic closure because they are only exposed to people that agree with them. Being very online did that with large swathes of the liberal to left side of politics in the United States.
They are only talking to people they agree with and use the same jargon that they do. This turned a lot of social justice causes into something of a quasi-religion in how people approach them. When you point out that things like land acknowledgements or gender is a social construct is not how normies speak or see things, you can get a lot of push back from them. They don't know how to speak to people who aren't already in agreement and know the correct verbiage.
"
What a lot of very political 21st century people don't remember is that politics and news used to be a big source of entertainment for people. During the French Revolution, people went to the National Assembly not only because they were interested in what is going on but because it was the best theater show in Paris at the time. Likewise, the Golden Age of the Metropolitan Daily (TM) was because newspapers were a big source of entertainment. What we now call lifestyle sections always existed and they were always a lot more popular than the hard hitting news. Since people have many more entertainment options now, they don't need politics or the news to be a source of entertainment. This is why you get so many people without the faintest ideas of what is going on.
On LGM, another poster also pointed a related problem that society in most developed democracies is so high up on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs that politics becomes more about self-expression than forming policy. This is true for the entirety of the political spectrum even if it manifests differently on the left and right.
"
A lot of younger voters also like Bernie because he doesn't do the God thing like other Democratic candidates including Hillary Clinton did when necessary. I remember a poster on LGM describing Hillary Clinton as speaking fluent Methodist. Bernie Sanders doesn't do that and couldn't do it if his life depended on it. This really hurt him with the African-American faction of the Democratic Party but it got him a lot of popularity elsewhere.
Otherwise, this analysis is spot on. Bernie and even AOC's popularity has to do more with their personas than their policy preferences. There are a lot of people who do not understand this and believe that their popularity is more because of their policy preferences and they are tapping into a deep wellspring of unspoken for socialists. They aren't.
"
I'm joining the others on this. In local elections during November 2024 in some of the most left leaning places in the United States like Alameda County, the most left leaning Democrats lost to more moderate/centrist Democrats. California voters overwhelmingly voted for tough on crime ballot initiatives and rejected some liberals ones. Going full left is not the way to defeat Trump no matter how many people want it.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/28/2025”
Clashes in Syria between Druze and Pro-Government forces. The trouble has seemed to have started because of an anti-Mohammed internet post that was attributed to a Druze cleric.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/what-is-behind-latest-clashes-in-syria-between-druze-and-pro-government-gunmen/
"
First, Netanyahu has ulterior motives in being in Gaza for this long. Mainly to save his own skin. Second, there have been plenty of other protests against Netanyahu. Third, getting out for some international politics isn't a bad thing. Put other pressure on Hamas to release the hostages.
"
IDF reservists protest against Netanyahu in Israel, demand the end of the Israel-Hamas War. The only way forward if if Hamas and Netanyahu go away.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crldw5gklrro
"
It's the exact opposite of they wanted but just enough people voted for the politician that gave them what they don't want because they were angry at egg prices. Now thanks to avian flu, there aren't any eggs in the stores.
"
Happy Birthday Israel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=171nZBA3eTc
"
Happy Birthday Israel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=171nZBA3eTc
"
American company shocked to learn it has to pay 255K worth of tariffs for 167K worth of imported goods:
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/wyze-gets-first-tariff-bill-component-imports-pays-usd255k-in-levies-on-usd167k-worth-of-floodlights
"
Possibly. I think running away from Clinton hurt Gore more than it helped in the 2000 election.
"
I was watching a PBS documentary on the American Public Library last night on YouTube. It was made by a white woman who was the daughter of two public school teachers. Being PBS and about libraries it contained a lot of the standard orthodoxies of American liberalism. It contain something interesting though. When noting why so many women ended up as librarians, there was a brief comment about pioneer librarian Melvil Dewey, of the Dewey Decimal system, loving women and women loving him.
Wikipedia's entry on Melvil Dewey presents Dewey's love of women as something more like sexual harassment and not only that but it was so obvious that his male contemporaries believed he was very inappropriate in his behavior towards women:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvil_Dewey#Controversies
Everybody seems to be capable of ideological blindness when necessary.
"
Americans want first world service on third world levels of taxation. They get angry about why it is so hard to build anything new or various problems or why existing infrastructure is degrading. They don't want to pay for maintenance or do the hard work in getting superior services.
"
The propaganda on what a good neighborhood even proceeds radio let alone television. When Manhattan got too populated for row houses and you started to need apartments, this was basically a decade after the Civil War, there were lots of people aghast because proper Anglo-Saxon Protestants live in a home and not an apartment buildings. Lots of cities in pre-car North America promoted themselves as cities of homes.
"
I haven't really been following this scandal but the DNC has been rather angry with David Hogg for fighting for young politicians in positions of power in the party rather than the seniority system currently in play. A female Native American DNC member is going to challenge David Hogg's victory as DNC Vice Chair by citing "fairness and diversity rules." This is basically the liberal equivalent of Christians who use Muslim front people to file suits against pro-LGBT kid's lit in schools. Nobody who isn't already on their side is going to fall for it.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c029d5f6a28705d3d8f43655f5492ecf65b3a4aed0dc8fa00017d60157cf19c7.jpg
"
There has been a lot of propaganda in North America that "good" neighborhoods consists of single family homes with well manicured lawns and gardens and not in walking distance of non-residential real estate. Mixed use land use, apartment buildings, and even transit make something a bad neighborhood. That's the problem with voter preferences. The problem with fashionable leftist notions is that the real solution is not very romantic and it means that the dreaded developer, a worse capitalist than an arms merchant, will get wealthy.
"
My parents did day care through the Young Men and Women's Hebrew Association. I think that day care was a lot less fancy and cheaper during the 1980s. This might mainly be because we were in an in between era from modern options for women and when women had limited working options. So you had larger number of women pre-school teachers you could pay cheap for.
I agree that working class and lower middle class people are not as easy to buy off with benefits as possible.
"
This is like saying public school won't work.
"
From my job, I know that many working couples or single parents lower in the socio-economic scale, also engage in grey market day care. Lots of working class or lower middle class Asian parents would leave their kids with an older woman baby sitter. It wouldn't surprise me if other communities did something similar.
College educated bougie parents are going to want something a lot more formal for their young kids. They aren't going to want to just leave the kid with an older person in their apartment.
"
How is subsidized or universal daycare, an upper middle class welfare thing? Lots of not very upper middle class families have two working parents and no grand parent to take care of the kids or you have working single parents.
"
There are lots of places where if you are white you vote Republican because Republicans are the white people party. It's tribal voting. The Democratic problem is finding candidates that can win in those states, which aren't super liberal or lefty, but can also work with the rest of the Democratic Party without going Steve Manchin or blue dog.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
Considering how leaving Gaza didn't really free Israel of Gaza, I don't think leaving the WB will have the effect you think it will. People will find a way to say the Occupation continues even after the Occupation ended.
"
TL/DR of my comment: I want to hear the plot and the plan for attacking global anti-Semitism whether it comes from the White Right, the Left, Intersectionalists, Muslims, or anybody else..
I do not want people to appeal to Jews to Jews as victims of rash international conspiracy theories and hatred then shrug and do nothing if it turns out that all of Sumatra or Venezuela is in the grip of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. They should not say "well it doesn't matter, there aren't any Jews in Sumatra or Venezuela." They should do something about it.
A world war against global anti-Semitism should be the price for an independent Palestine. This is true even if it means going very hard against hundreds of millions or billions of people that will never meet a Jew.
"
I happen to live in an area of the United States where these people exist in large numbers and are very loud. There is a nearby and rather important Bay Area park where "F-word Israel" scrawled on the pavement. I literally know people in real life that I have to interact with fair frequency because of work who believe that "Israelis are the new you know what" without irony.
I am utterly sick that it is always the Jews in general and Israelis in particular who have to do outreach work. It just feels like a one way street. Even though there are only 16 million Jews in the world and 2 billion Muslims, I guarantee you that more Jewish organizations are holding events like the below link than Muslim ones:
https://www.jccsf.org/event/shared-grief-shared-hope-voices-from-israel-and-palestine/
The enemies of the Jews are on the march and nobody seems that interested in putting them down. Pointing out the anti-Semitism of the DEI/Intersectionalists, the Left, and among the Muslim world is simply something that can't be done. We are supposed to hold our nose at these freaks and believe they are pure as snow.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.