Commenter Archive

I think @joe-sal is on target in his last paragraph. You aren't going to hear the music discussed in this piece at trendy upscale bars (except maybe ironically) but it's plenty popular in places where commuting into a large or medium sized city is normal. The appeal isn't geographic (or even necessarily genre specific) so much as cultural, as noted above by @mike-dwyer. Historical context is also important.

Bernhard Goetz would probably agree with a lot of the sentiments in the law and order section despite not being from a rural background in the sense most people would envision.

I never said it was struggling (the NFL isn't either, even if we are at the peak of its popularity), I just think there are attributes/challenges of the NBA that will keep it from being as big as the NFL. There will never be an 'any given Sunday' aspect that gives casual fans and the minimally interested in markets with bad teams a reason to watch.

Also who said anything about the fundamentals of the sport? I think college basketball presentation is generally far superior and the competition on the court is much more interesting (actual rivalries for example). My main point though with regard to popularity/viewership is that it also directly competes with NBA time slots in most of the regular season in a way college football doesn't quite with the NFL.

Agreed.

I don't think the politics have much to do with any change in popularity in the NFL (my impression is that people who make the biggest stink about this or that incident aren't actually fans but ymmv). The NBA struggles I think due to being completely dominated by 3-5 franchises/personalities. If your local team isnt one of them/doesnt have a superstar there isnt much excitement. That plus college basketball is just an infinitely superior product in direct competition.

@pinky

I think there's some truth to that analysis, and while I don't want to speak for @roland-dodds it would seem that a more defensible approach would be to get someone from FIRE or a similar organization. Unless of course the goal is, aa others have speculated, simply to bait leftists into painting themselves as the greater of two evils.

First this was a great post thanks for writing it.

The facet of the policy I struggle most with isn't the constitutionality but the incoherence of the policy, particularly with regard to Syria. After all the United States and our Gulf allies are in many respects supporting the side of greater sectarian repression (i.e. Islamist Sunni militias) against the secular but politically repressive Assad government that most religious minorities (Christian, Allawite, other Shia) would prefer. To the extent we are talking about prioritization based on religion it seems we'd be taking in asylum seekers frightened by the side in the conflict we ourselves are supporting and who support the government we oppose.

I think this is a really good point, though I think it leaves out one important part. In twenty or thirty years those shows that seem very progressive now will themselves have aspects that a future audience sees as backwards or retrograde, perhaps glaringly so.

This is why I think looking to pop culture to lead us on social or political issues is silly, particularly in an ultra materialistic and consumerist society. I won't go so far as to say there's no value in the kind of programming created by Whedon, because I think there is, and I'm never one to deny people's desire to enjoy whatever art they want, regardless of the politics of the piece. Nevertheless it bears repeating that these shows are all ultimately money making endeavors catering to our culture as it currently exists, not engines of change.

They seem to win either way, most of the time.

I'd attributed the oddities in the writing style to the author being British. I agree with you on the differences in perception. Part of it I think arises from the very different ways that each side fails to actually interrogate it's own ideas and stances. That in itself is nothing new but I do think there might be new implications of an age old problem with a mass media broadly controlled by one side and a globalized economy.

Conservatives (provincials may really be a more accurate term), at least in the US, I think fail to meaningfully interrogate their positions and narratives for a combination of cultural and geographic reasons whereas I think urban/suburban progressives (maybe 'elite' is the better term) delude themselves into thinking they've done that hard work by virtue of their education when they actually haven't. The provincial tendency left unchecked seems vulnerable to vicious cycles and slow, if unspectacular self-destruction. The elite tendency seems more vulnerable to Trump or Brexit type shocks to the system that no one saw coming because they thought they already had everything figured out. That latter view is the one that dominates in the government, media, and most places of cultural influence which in turn skews everyone's perspective on partisan politics in weird ways.

I'll look forward to your piece if it comes together.

@aaron-david your comments on this thread reminded me of this: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/dominic-cummings-brexit-referendum-won/.

It's a long-ish but fascinating read from the campaign director of the Leave campaign in Britain. Very insightful on some of the bigger issues McArdle dipped her toes into with regard to the veracity of political narratives.

Thanks for sharing this was great.

@saul-degraw @morat20 @don-zeko I generally agree that debating whether Sanders would have beaten Trump is pointless and impossible to know anyway. What I don't like is the outright dismissal HRC supporters seem to have, especially when a lot of Sanders' criticisms of Clinton proved prescient and he beat her in the Michigan primary. The supposedly safe candidate lost despite big advantages and I don't think her supporters are in a place to turn their noses up right now.

Edit to add not assuming you are/were Hilary supporters during the primary.

I get that this was the conventional wisdom at the time but isn't it maybe worth some re-examination in light of the results?

Regarding intersectionality I don't think it's totally without insight. We'd all benefit by trying to put ourselves in other people's shoes, and considering how our own advantages in life might color our views about politics and policy. It's the religious aspect with all the incoherent dogmas and purification rituals that I find intellectually weak and potentially disastrous from an electoral perspective.

No disagreement. The only reason I keep bringing it up is I see no value in the birtherization of the Democratic party or balkanization more generally.

@veronica-d fair enough if that's the argument, but the way it's being made in light of Trump's victory looks to a lot of people like a hysterical combination of sour grapes and crying wolf, especially given the particulars of this election. I mean, a woman with a lot of heavy political baggage (some warranted, some not) won the popular vote and the crucial swing in the Midwest was among a bunch of white people who twice voted for a black president. Yet the way the intersectionalist left talks you'd think that the country and the culture have barely budged since Reconstruction.

There's a reason that the non-tribal among us hear a lot of this as a very convenient excuse for a movement that is reluctant to engage in self-examination.

This is like asking why an upper middle class suburban black person might start to wonder about the underlying attitudes/ideology of his white neighbor who makes broad, negative generalizations about inner city black people. No liberal would think to dismiss that. I know I wouldnt. 'Don't worry it's only those other black people who dont live in cul-de-sacs and drive nice cars that he doesn't like!' Yet this is the weird place identity politics uber alles takes us. Assuming it's all in good faith and not just tribal signaling that is.

There was an article at the post over the weekend that I thought made a better point about that issue.

We have a hybrid system
and probably always will. Even if we could import Sweden's model in whole we would still not be Sweden or get the same results. What I find frustrating about the current climate is that 'tear it down' is the operating philosophy of the Republican party. What we should be working towards isnt public or private, its coherence.

The ACA for all its flaws was at least a baby step in that direction. I'm sad that instead of finding ways to correct it's problems and internal contradictions we're probably going to take a step back.

I agree and that's why I think the Jacobin article isn't without some merit. Granted I also feel like this election resulted in the mainstream left defending a whole lot of entities and organizations it typically wouldn't.

I think there's truth to your point here but I also find it incomplete. There are things we can do and can demand that our politicians do to limit the real dangers these agencies pose. I get your point that we should be realistic but doesn't that require acknowledging that our intelligence agencies have been allowed to run rampant with zero oversight or accountability?

The CIA is at least in theory supposed to work for the citizens of this country and yet we often find out that even Congress is just as in the dark about what they do as we are.

Yea, the first priority in a robbery like this should be to give them what they want and get them out without anyone being harmed. I wouldn't want her on my staff anymore either.

Regarding your friend's predicament, I think it's the natural result of a bunch of well intended but ultimately unworkable and schizophrenic rules that govern urban professional progressive culture. Don't move into a minority majority enclave and the sin is failure to integrate. Move into one and the sin is gentrification. Make sure to appreciate other cultures but don't dare get caught listening to their music or cooking their food or doing their stretching routines lest you commit the sin of appropriation. Confess to your own privilege often and loudly... and also to the utter powerlessness of yourself and all people to do anything about their own condition (sarcastically if you can manage it).

It's a bad look and I really hope we (as a demographic) grow out of it.

I would and as I said above I'm fine with investigating what happened and attempting to close those holes. I'm less sanguine about what was done in the particular context.

I don't want to speculate on what else Russia might do with whatever information it has. With regard to their foreign policy though this is where I'd like us to become a bit more circumspect about how our own actions are perceived abroad, and the precedents we're setting. From Russia's perspective we marched NATO right up to their doorsteps, have orchestrated regime changes, and put our own fingers on the scale in the internal politics of other countries (including supporting some corrupt and unsavory groups of our own in places where they have interests like Ukraine and Syria).

This doesn't mean I think well of Putin's government or that the West shouldn't defend it's actual interests when pressed. It does mean that we need to be more honest about the role our own actions abroad play in causing blowback, and assessing when it's worth the risk. Right now we seem to treat everything as some sort of hollywood script with the valiant, free and democratic West standing up for what's right and the evil Russians/terrorists/whoever undermining us.