Commenter Archive

Oh I think there would be plenty of ways to do it but they'd have to stop treating discussions about the social safety net as a racially charged dog whistle and supporting efforts to make voting harder for low income people. I am not a black person or voter but in my experince there are substantial segments of the black population that are very socially conservative and support 'by the bootstraps' type of narratives that the right kind of Republican could appeal to.

I think you're right that these issues matter and that's why I've tried to be careful on this thread to hedge my comments in terms of my own perspective. I think that privilege discussion is useful insofar as it gets people to try, to the extent they can, to put themselves in someone else's shoes before they cast judgment or get behind some policy or another. I think it's also useful as a tool of self-criticism and reflection on whether our own views are as logical to everyone else as they seem to us.

However, despite those insights, it can also be a very limiting tool if it isn't tempered because it causes people to focus only on the who, and the identity of the person arguing rather than the logic, rationality, or morality of the argument itself. This creates intellectual weakness, incoherent political stances, and, again, speaking from my perspective, results in energy spent on circular and overly serious arguments between (relatively) privileged people about cultural minutae. To me whether or not a black person gets an Oscar this year is so infinitely much less important than what we might do to stop black people from being disproportionately imprisoned or shot by the police that it's hard for me to comprehend the Academy awards debates as more than a weird expression of narcissism.

The goal of thinking about privilege, in my opinion, should be to humanize people who are different from ourselves, so that we can support better policies for everyone, not ridicule political opponents or show how holy we are.

I do think his post would have been stronger if he grappled with that issue, though I think Sanders success among younger black people outside of the South complicates your narrative a bit. I think the black vote would be a lot less monolithic than it often appears if the GOP hadn't essentially conceded it over the last several decades.

I read him the same way.

I agree with you in the sense that changes in economic policy are harder to implement and evaluate, and take a much longer time (and when Freddie gets into public ownership of the means of production in his post I suspect he is setting goals that aren't possible or even desirable given what it would take to make that happen). I also think you're right that the path of least effort in all endeavors is unfortunately the one most of us take.

What I would question is whether or not the changes in language and culture really mean anything substantive at this point or if we've gotten as far as we can until older generations die off. Don't get me wrong. I think it is better to banish overt racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. from polite conversation to the extent possible but I don't think it's value right now is anywhere close to, for example, reducing the number of people in prison. To use Freddie's own terms (and this is only from my anecdotal observation) there seems to be more of a focus on being good than doing good. My view is that there is a qualitative difference between the two.

I obviously can't speak for him and I think you may have something when you talk about him living in somewhat of a bubble, though I'd venture that we all to varying degrees do.

I guess I don't read Freddie as saying 'compromise is bad' so much as saying being a self righteous scold about vocabulary and cultural signals makes it harder to build a coalition capable of implementing the types of policies you listed above (or at least something better than what we have). Obviously I can't speak for everyone everywhere but from my post collegiate, urban bubble it does look like the mainstream center left is at the very least prioritizing the optics of inclusivity above economic issues in its rhetoric. I suspect, to at least some degree, that comes from living in a wealthy east coast state among a demographic of people (myself included) that has mostly never really experienced economic hardship and has the money to dodge the nastier elements of public policy. I think Freddie's point is that this can gets lost in heated online discussions about whether or not there is some sort of racism or sexism involved in who won a Grammy.

As a side note it isn't clear to me that the DNC was committed to something better than the ACA in its current form. I'm agnostic on the subject but there are plenty of people out there who think the votes could have been there for a public option (again probably not worth litigating that particular issue it's just an example). The more compelling one would be the substantial centrist Democrat support for the Iraq invasion and Obama's drone warfare.

This isn't my favorite post Freddie has written but I don't think his point here is so absurd. I think it is pretty consistent with his usual argument that improving material well being for all people is more important than the optics of racial/gender/sexuality/whatever else inclusivity in elite institutions and pop culture. Generally I agree with him on this issue.

I think where he loses a lot of people is in the assumption that everyone's social/demographic circle looks like his. I'm pretty sure, at the very least, my Facebook feed is pretty similar to what he sees on social networks in that it includes a lot of college educated upper or soon to be upper middle class people telling (often hypothetical) others to check their privilege and chastising failures to adhere to the vocabulary of intersectionality. They will also scoff at anything other than supporting mainline Democrats who, while a bit gentler than Republicans, in large part still support policies that perpetuate inequality, imperialistic warfare, mass incarceration, etc. Its an argument against putting cultural preferences over policy to a center left that trends to see itself as non-ideological/technocratic.

At least that's the context in which I see much of his political writing.

Truthfully the only big change the technology has resulted in is bad PR and a handful of prosections that probaby wouldnt have been possible otherwise. The law is still very deferential to the police and the bar for recovery is high. What the police are worried about is that over time these videos will result in erosion of support for the policies that shield them from accountability.

Strangely enough I think I understand her perspective quite well.

The appropriate response is who the hell cares? You either agree with the church's teaching on marriage or you dont. Dont like their rules? Easy. Get buried somewhere else. If we're really at a point where people think it's reasonable to require a religious organization to erect a symbol contradicting it's own teachings on its own property then we've already lost the game.

It isn't just surreal but seems to be a failure on the part of the plaintiffs to understand when they've won.

It sounds like the church is perfectly willing to allow them to be buried there and even buried together. The issue is the images within the tombstone endorsing gay marriage. A better parallel wouldn't be a divorced person being buried there it would be that person designing their tombstone to celebrate the legality of divorce.

And they were doing more than was required of them and taking risks prior to the advent of cell phone videos and youtube? I mean, maybe as portrayed in Bruce Willis movies...

If the law enforcement mantra for the last few decades had been 'to obtain union benefits and protect ourselves at all costs' that would be one thing. However you don't get to talk up the thin blue line and self sacrifice in the face of danger then claim that the very limited transparency created by new technology is too intimidating.

The argument the police are making here would be laughed at in virtually any other context.

'The system may still be overwhelmingly stacked in our favor but now that people can capture our misconduct on cell phones we can no longer do our job.'

My view is that if you can't spell it out you don't have much of an argument. Don't be mistaken, I think that privilege is real and we can attain some insight by thinking about it. Where we differ I suspect is that I see all the bad isms of the world as being fundamentally material problems, even if there are cultural attitudes that are intertwined.

You've already assumed that any woman would be affronted or reminded of some form of inequality by my scenario. That view is in itself a product of believing that the cultural attitudes, manners, and decorum favored by a certain subset of largely middle class, college educated (dare I say, privileged?) people is the only way of analyzing human interaction. This is how I see the vast majority of discussion about intersectionality; using the language of trauma and oppression to justify the thinking of certain people who are for the most part doing alright for themselves.

Your entire response is begging the question. It assumes both that obnoxious words are the result of, as you put it, 'unjust situations arising from entrenched inequalities in social power' and that such words are fundamentally comparable to material deprivation. You've got to actually do the work of making that argument before you've got any chance of convincing unbelievers.

Does a crazy bum who says 'hey girl lookin' good' to a corporate attorney on the metro really have more entrenched social power than she does? Does it cause damage the way a lash does? Only if one has abandoned all nuance and perspective.

Agreed, not that people with those attitudes are unique in their ability to completely lose perspective, but I do worry about a certain learned helplessness in young people. A society full of people willing to yell 'fuck you' at someone for stupid reasons worries me a lot less than a society full of people asking for things they don't like to be removed by the authorities in order to prevent a trauma that cant be quantified.

@oscar-gordon don't confuse people with this talk about the history of the world outside the United States. Ideas that aren't consistent with intersectionality and certain 21st century American class/cultural preferences are strictly forbidden.

The fact that cat calling can be so easily thrown in on the same spectrum as institutionalized slavery is a perfect illustration of why the SJW perspective is so hard for anyone not dyed in the wool to take serioisly.

I've commented the same way I'm about to on similar lines of questioning to Saul but I think the way it fails most basically is in the politics it produces. The level of inequality we have now already raises challenging questions about equal protection under the law and even the rule of law. I have certain libertarian leanings myself but over time I've come to realize how fragile a republican form of government that respects individual liberty really is.

I don't think it's possible to let the bottom fall out and still have a political system that people who value individual liberty want to live under. History shows us that not having some minimal level of shared prosperity invites tyranny, be it of the Bolshevik or the brown shirt variety.

It is a reference to Monty Python's The Life of Brian.

And that is precisely the reason there are not and never will be any serious investigations by the executive branch into its own past malfeasance. It's an OrwellIan twist on 'judge not lest ye be judged.'

@will-truman that's true as far as it goes but local and state governments look to the federal government and often the same crusading organizations. Even when federal policy isn't explicitly coercive to lower levels of government there are numerous ways in which it pushes policy. Tobacco has been deemed not only unhealthy but evil. I'd hate to see the same thing happen to a less unhealthy alternative especially one that so many people use to quit or lessen their tobacco use.

There is so much wrong with this I don't know where to begin. Maybe one day our government and our apparently endless supply of puritanical activist organizations will start to understand concepts like harm reduction and diminishing returns. And maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot.

I think the premise of your own point (which is correct) is what proves Drum's ultimate argument here wrong. Constitutionally Clinton and Sanders would be under the same constraints when it comes to domestic policy. Neither of them is likely to have a friendly Congress and even if they did neither of them are going to be able to implement their domestic economic policies in anything remotely resembling what they say they want.

For some reason we insist on pretending during presidential elections that we're picking a king who with the wave if a hand can make anything happen but that's not the case. On those matters where the president has most control (like foreign policy) Sanders is an infinitely superior candidate. The criticisms Drum makes of Sanders' economic policy preferences apply equally to Clinton but he, like the rest of the non-conservative media, is invested in a Clinton victory so of course he lacks that type of perspective.