"I’d vote for your opponent Cory Booker (who’s attractive to Republicans anyways) just to remind other potential quislings that elephants never forget."
And this sums up the other major problem of the Republican party. Lockstep, lockstep, lockstep....
"Without making inroads in some of these now-Blue, fairly urban, states, the GOP’s margin for error in national elections is negligible."
I was basically making this argument. I'm as blue as they come. However in theory, given my professional and socio-economic status, I should make an ideal Rockefeller Republican. Liberal on social issues, a bit more moderate on economic ones, sensible in foreign policy.
The Republican Party has massacred the Rockefeller Republicans though.
I think in a sane world, the Republican Party would be able to compete for socially liberal and well-educated young professionals.
I am still convinced that looking at this issue state-wide is wrong.
Based on a not very deep study, I think that the big political division in the United States has always been urban-rural over anything else. Jefferson loathed cities. The early Federalists were essentially city politicians (as much as America had cities during the early Republic).
Today's GOP is the part of outerring suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas. The Democratic Party is the city of cities and inner-ring suburbs (the expensive ones filled with upper-middle class Clintonesque* professionals). I think the states that you mentioned as going from toss-up to safe blue are largely ones with big enough cities/inner-ring suburbs to control an election. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia keep Pennsylvania blue along with their suburbs (especially Philly suburbs). Colorado has the Denver-Boulder Metro area but also enough hippie towns like Durango and Telluride. Oregon's biggest growth in the past decade has been because Portland is now one of the coolest cities in America (with cheap living especially compared to other cities).
I admit that Maine and New Hampshire are outliers here. I am not sure how much Detroit helps Michigan stay blue considered the city is still retracting. It is the urban areas of Ohio that keep it blue for Presidential elections.
I have yet to read Paradise Lost but as I have heard you and others say: The Devil is the more compassionate, cooler, and sexier character.
I don't think this is the fault of the artist even if Milton intended otherwise. Rather it is a problem with humanity on a psychological and philosophical level. Most people want to think of themselves as being good, not cruel, etc. Maybe for the most part, most people do lead lives where they treat their fellow humans very decently. However, sometimes the "bad" people just seem like they are so much cooler and have so much fun that it is intoxicating.
We are all attracted to the outlaw somewhat. I don't think most people want to be sociopathic murderers but something more on the scale of a slightly to moderately amoral perpetual prom king or queen.
It can be very hard to write characters who are good but also interesting.
I think Birth of a Nation is a better example of immoral art than the Protocols of the Elder of Zion.
D.W. Griffith produced many innovations in that movie. The use of existing music, long-form epic films, close-ups, etc. But it is a highly racist work. Of course it is our modern sensibility that renders it immoral. The original audience probably largely agreed with the racist sentiments.
For moral art? Night by Elie Wiesel? Christ Stopped at Eboli? Native Son? Invisible Man? To Kill a Mockingbird? Angels in America? Johnny Got His Gun? Slaughter House Five? Beethoven's 9th Symphony?
There are many pieces of art that I consider moral. Interestingly they have also been frequently banned.
I don't consider The Protocols of the Elder of Zion to be art. I consider it to be propaganda issued by the government of Czar Nicholas II.
The same goes for things like The Turner Diaries.
Maybe this is a bit self-serving but whatever. Now Will Eisener's graphic novel on the Protocols and how they helped spur modern anti-Semitism and the Holocaust is art.
I question the whole idea about whether art can be immoral. Or whether we should be concerned with immorality in art.
Art is a manifestation of how an artist or collection of artists view the world or a particular theme of the world. The theme can be emotional, physical, sexual, religious/spiritual, etc.
All people are capable of both moral and immoral thoughts and actions. Hence all artists should be capable of producing art that is moral, immoral, and possibly both at the same time. Some artists because of their biographies might have a world view that most people would consider a bit to very warped and damaged. Harvey Darger comes to mind here.
To say that a piece of art is immoral is to imply that it should not have been produced or needs some kind of correction for it to be good. I am not sure that this is the case and I find it interesting that you pick out high art/older art for your examples. How about something like a Black Sabbath album or art that is purposefully meant to shock and challenge. For example, Robert Mapplethorpe photographs, the plays of Sarah Kane, Brecht, etc.
"Perhaps their insistence on writing the Left out of the American tradition will finally cease."
If someone believes this (and I am not saying that you do), I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I would like to sell them.
The tradition of wirting the Left out of the American tradition goes back way before Fox News, way before Goldwater, and Hofstadter's Paranoid Style/Anti-Intellectualism.
It seems to me that the right-wing has always dismissed the American Left as being part of the other even though we have been around since the Colonial Era. I consider Roger Williams, William Penn, and Anne Hathaway to the originators of the American Left in their own ways. Same with many of the Founders.
As I said to Brandon, I don't care that he is raising prices on pizza. A lot of restaurants in San Francisco charge a small surcharge (besides the normal sales tax) because they are required to provide health insurance for their employees. I don't mind paying this. It often comes out to about 50 cents to a dollar or so extra. This is a pittance.
I think the Papa John's guy is a jerk because he was trying to turn people against Obamacare by suggesting pizza prices would go up a pittance. He thought that people would hate the idea of paying just a small bit more for pizza that they would turn against the legislation. That is what pissed me off. He is being an absolute jerk.
Also cutting hours in order to be outside the range covered is also jerky. The dude lives in a huge mansion in Kentucky, Obamacare is not going to reduce him to a one bedroom apartment.
The issue is not the increase on the price of his pizza.
The issue is that he was very cynically trying to turn people against Obama care by saying that pizza prices would go up by a pittance. 50 cents really is a pittance. He thought that this would make people revolt against Obamacare.
The jerk part is reducing hours so to avoid giving employees healthcare.
My biggest problem with Kate Bolick's piece was not that she has no intention of getting married. It was largely being very dense around the issue of her class privilege. There was one section where she talked about borrowing a house in the Hamptons. I think the friend was another single lady who spent most of her time in London. My immediate thought upon reading this sentence or hearing about it was:
"Really? How many people have the time for all that?"
My inner socialist kicks a lot at trend pieces about the 1 percent or close to 1 percent. There is a big difference between being a single woman who can borrow a house in the Hamptons and a single woman struggling via low-wage jobs!
I would welcome the end to at least one stupid aspect of the Culture Wars though.
I am still economically on the left and believe in the welfare state, unions, single payer-healthcare, and end to our draconian prison system, and many other issues. The entire economic message of the Republican Party seems rooted in a protestantism that is alien to me.
All this being said, I never understood why 24/7 news is a viable market. It is true that only a small handful of people watch each station but they seem to do so constantly. All three repeat stories numerous times a day and this makes it kind of dull.
CNN is absolutely worthless as far as I am concerned. They are the feather-weights of Cable News.
MSNBC is left-leaning but there is a big difference in the books that Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes writes and the books written by Hannity and company. Maddow and Hayes write about actual serious issues and put forward policy changes like restoring Congress in their war-making powers. Hannity writes a book long elementary-school bully taunt that roughly translates as "Look at those dumb libruls"
I somewhat agree. There are a lot of young conservatives. They are just largely invisible from my urban core of people who are largely college and grad school educated.
However, do you think we could be entering a cycle where power switches every two years or so?
2008: Democratic Party sweeps the election
2010: Tea Party/Republicans gain control of the House by huge numbers. They also gain control of many state legislatures including a super-majority in New Hampshire.
2012: Obama wins reelection pretty easily despite some strum und drang. The Democrats increase their majority in the Senate. They gain a super-majority (or near) in California and retake the Minnesota and New Hampshire legislators. New Hampshire seems to be an especially strong showing of Tea Party overreach.
I spend a lot of time arguing with more ardent Dawkinites that Judaism is distinct from Right-wing Evangelical Christianity. Interestingly most of my Christian friends are on the left (as are most of my friends). They are largely of Jesuit-Catholic, Quaker, and Unitarian backgrounds.
Prosperity Doctrine/Gospel of Wealth goes back way before Ayn Rand was even born. I think it always existed in one form or another but largely kicked into full gear during the Gilded Age.
William Jennings Bryan was the Christian Left of his day. It is too bad we remember him for his downfall during the Monkey Trials. It would be good to remember him for his beliefs in dignity and decency for workers and farmers, his Pacifism (he resigned as Secretary in State because he thought Wilson was gunning up for War with Germany. One can't imagine something like this happening today.)
As I have said in other Internet communities, I don't get the conservative complaints or boasts about being "anti-PC". What conservatives decry as being politically correct, I just consider treating people with dignity and decency.
Yes, conservatives are people who just don't get it often. The world has changed and they don't want to deal.
People are simply really good at compartmenalizing and holding wildly contradictory beliefs without a second thought. I do this, other people on the League do this, you do this, everyone does it. The problem is that we are really good at catching these contradictions in others but not in ourselves. We need to be called out to see our own contradictions.
I know a woman who belongs to a facebook community with a name like "Peaceloving Hippie Freaks". She shares memes from this group fairly often and it is fairly typical hippie-liberal stuff. One shared meme was a picture of someone from a third-world country who was using crushed soda bottles as impromptou footwear because he could not afford shoes with a message on shutting up about your first-world problems. A few weeks ago facebook informed me that said woman also "liked" Mitt Romney. Then I would see her gush about Mitt and wonder if he saw an astrologer because Mitt was a Pieces III like her.
Needless to say this caused me to scratch my head a bit. However, it probably did not cause her the same kind of perplexity.
How about the Papa John's Pizza CEO? He is going around very cynically claiming that he will need to raise pizza prices by a pittance (50 cents or so) or lower employee hours at some stores as to comply with Obamacare or make his employees ineligible for Obamacare.
Can we call this guy a major asshole? He seems to think his customers are so craven (and/or poor) that they will rebel at a minor increase in prices or that he is so against providing some healthcare that he is willing to further drive his employees into poverty by reducing their hours.
Guys like him are why we need Single Payer and not Obama's mandates. Obamacare is better than nothing but still allows jerks to play politics.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Fifty Shades of Purple – Blue States Are American, Too”
"I’d vote for your opponent Cory Booker (who’s attractive to Republicans anyways) just to remind other potential quislings that elephants never forget."
And this sums up the other major problem of the Republican party. Lockstep, lockstep, lockstep....
"
Thanks for the link. That pretty much sums up the problems.
"
I fully agree with everything you wrote above.
Instead of competing for people like me, the GOP seems to be doing everything in their power to repulse me and my cohort.
"
"Without making inroads in some of these now-Blue, fairly urban, states, the GOP’s margin for error in national elections is negligible."
I was basically making this argument. I'm as blue as they come. However in theory, given my professional and socio-economic status, I should make an ideal Rockefeller Republican. Liberal on social issues, a bit more moderate on economic ones, sensible in foreign policy.
The Republican Party has massacred the Rockefeller Republicans though.
I think in a sane world, the Republican Party would be able to compete for socially liberal and well-educated young professionals.
"
I am still convinced that looking at this issue state-wide is wrong.
Based on a not very deep study, I think that the big political division in the United States has always been urban-rural over anything else. Jefferson loathed cities. The early Federalists were essentially city politicians (as much as America had cities during the early Republic).
Today's GOP is the part of outerring suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas. The Democratic Party is the city of cities and inner-ring suburbs (the expensive ones filled with upper-middle class Clintonesque* professionals). I think the states that you mentioned as going from toss-up to safe blue are largely ones with big enough cities/inner-ring suburbs to control an election. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia keep Pennsylvania blue along with their suburbs (especially Philly suburbs). Colorado has the Denver-Boulder Metro area but also enough hippie towns like Durango and Telluride. Oregon's biggest growth in the past decade has been because Portland is now one of the coolest cities in America (with cheap living especially compared to other cities).
I admit that Maine and New Hampshire are outliers here. I am not sure how much Detroit helps Michigan stay blue considered the city is still retracting. It is the urban areas of Ohio that keep it blue for Presidential elections.
On “Paradise Lost: “Eves, Apples, Adam Smashers!””
I have yet to read Paradise Lost but as I have heard you and others say: The Devil is the more compassionate, cooler, and sexier character.
I don't think this is the fault of the artist even if Milton intended otherwise. Rather it is a problem with humanity on a psychological and philosophical level. Most people want to think of themselves as being good, not cruel, etc. Maybe for the most part, most people do lead lives where they treat their fellow humans very decently. However, sometimes the "bad" people just seem like they are so much cooler and have so much fun that it is intoxicating.
We are all attracted to the outlaw somewhat. I don't think most people want to be sociopathic murderers but something more on the scale of a slightly to moderately amoral perpetual prom king or queen.
It can be very hard to write characters who are good but also interesting.
"
I think Birth of a Nation is a better example of immoral art than the Protocols of the Elder of Zion.
D.W. Griffith produced many innovations in that movie. The use of existing music, long-form epic films, close-ups, etc. But it is a highly racist work. Of course it is our modern sensibility that renders it immoral. The original audience probably largely agreed with the racist sentiments.
For moral art? Night by Elie Wiesel? Christ Stopped at Eboli? Native Son? Invisible Man? To Kill a Mockingbird? Angels in America? Johnny Got His Gun? Slaughter House Five? Beethoven's 9th Symphony?
There are many pieces of art that I consider moral. Interestingly they have also been frequently banned.
"
I don't consider The Protocols of the Elder of Zion to be art. I consider it to be propaganda issued by the government of Czar Nicholas II.
The same goes for things like The Turner Diaries.
Maybe this is a bit self-serving but whatever. Now Will Eisener's graphic novel on the Protocols and how they helped spur modern anti-Semitism and the Holocaust is art.
"
I question the whole idea about whether art can be immoral. Or whether we should be concerned with immorality in art.
Art is a manifestation of how an artist or collection of artists view the world or a particular theme of the world. The theme can be emotional, physical, sexual, religious/spiritual, etc.
All people are capable of both moral and immoral thoughts and actions. Hence all artists should be capable of producing art that is moral, immoral, and possibly both at the same time. Some artists because of their biographies might have a world view that most people would consider a bit to very warped and damaged. Harvey Darger comes to mind here.
To say that a piece of art is immoral is to imply that it should not have been produced or needs some kind of correction for it to be good. I am not sure that this is the case and I find it interesting that you pick out high art/older art for your examples. How about something like a Black Sabbath album or art that is purposefully meant to shock and challenge. For example, Robert Mapplethorpe photographs, the plays of Sarah Kane, Brecht, etc.
On “Faulty Polls and Self-Offsetting Tax Cuts”
"Perhaps their insistence on writing the Left out of the American tradition will finally cease."
If someone believes this (and I am not saying that you do), I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I would like to sell them.
The tradition of wirting the Left out of the American tradition goes back way before Fox News, way before Goldwater, and Hofstadter's Paranoid Style/Anti-Intellectualism.
It seems to me that the right-wing has always dismissed the American Left as being part of the other even though we have been around since the Colonial Era. I consider Roger Williams, William Penn, and Anne Hathaway to the originators of the American Left in their own ways. Same with many of the Founders.
On “A Lump of Coal”
Bike lanes are also a UN plot, don't cha know?
"
As I said to Brandon, I don't care that he is raising prices on pizza. A lot of restaurants in San Francisco charge a small surcharge (besides the normal sales tax) because they are required to provide health insurance for their employees. I don't mind paying this. It often comes out to about 50 cents to a dollar or so extra. This is a pittance.
I think the Papa John's guy is a jerk because he was trying to turn people against Obamacare by suggesting pizza prices would go up a pittance. He thought that people would hate the idea of paying just a small bit more for pizza that they would turn against the legislation. That is what pissed me off. He is being an absolute jerk.
Also cutting hours in order to be outside the range covered is also jerky. The dude lives in a huge mansion in Kentucky, Obamacare is not going to reduce him to a one bedroom apartment.
"
Because non of the chains make good Pizza.
"
The issue is not the increase on the price of his pizza.
The issue is that he was very cynically trying to turn people against Obama care by saying that pizza prices would go up by a pittance. 50 cents really is a pittance. He thought that this would make people revolt against Obamacare.
The jerk part is reducing hours so to avoid giving employees healthcare.
On “Numeracy, Hedonism and Journalism: A Place-Holder”
My biggest problem with Kate Bolick's piece was not that she has no intention of getting married. It was largely being very dense around the issue of her class privilege. There was one section where she talked about borrowing a house in the Hamptons. I think the friend was another single lady who spent most of her time in London. My immediate thought upon reading this sentence or hearing about it was:
"Really? How many people have the time for all that?"
My inner socialist kicks a lot at trend pieces about the 1 percent or close to 1 percent. There is a big difference between being a single woman who can borrow a house in the Hamptons and a single woman struggling via low-wage jobs!
On “A Question About Same Sex Marriage”
Probably not.
I would welcome the end to at least one stupid aspect of the Culture Wars though.
I am still economically on the left and believe in the welfare state, unions, single payer-healthcare, and end to our draconian prison system, and many other issues. The entire economic message of the Republican Party seems rooted in a protestantism that is alien to me.
On “Sailing Away to Irrelevance, Part II”
All this being said, I never understood why 24/7 news is a viable market. It is true that only a small handful of people watch each station but they seem to do so constantly. All three repeat stories numerous times a day and this makes it kind of dull.
Do people just like it as background noise?
"
CNN is absolutely worthless as far as I am concerned. They are the feather-weights of Cable News.
MSNBC is left-leaning but there is a big difference in the books that Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes writes and the books written by Hannity and company. Maddow and Hayes write about actual serious issues and put forward policy changes like restoring Congress in their war-making powers. Hannity writes a book long elementary-school bully taunt that roughly translates as "Look at those dumb libruls"
"
I somewhat agree. There are a lot of young conservatives. They are just largely invisible from my urban core of people who are largely college and grad school educated.
However, do you think we could be entering a cycle where power switches every two years or so?
2008: Democratic Party sweeps the election
2010: Tea Party/Republicans gain control of the House by huge numbers. They also gain control of many state legislatures including a super-majority in New Hampshire.
2012: Obama wins reelection pretty easily despite some strum und drang. The Democrats increase their majority in the Senate. They gain a super-majority (or near) in California and retake the Minnesota and New Hampshire legislators. New Hampshire seems to be an especially strong showing of Tea Party overreach.
On “A Lump of Coal”
Maybe originally. This was certainly true for Byron. He loathed Social Darwinism.
Now many of them seem to be social darwinists in their own right.
"
Don't forget Jews.
I spend a lot of time arguing with more ardent Dawkinites that Judaism is distinct from Right-wing Evangelical Christianity. Interestingly most of my Christian friends are on the left (as are most of my friends). They are largely of Jesuit-Catholic, Quaker, and Unitarian backgrounds.
"
Prosperity Doctrine/Gospel of Wealth goes back way before Ayn Rand was even born. I think it always existed in one form or another but largely kicked into full gear during the Gilded Age.
William Jennings Bryan was the Christian Left of his day. It is too bad we remember him for his downfall during the Monkey Trials. It would be good to remember him for his beliefs in dignity and decency for workers and farmers, his Pacifism (he resigned as Secretary in State because he thought Wilson was gunning up for War with Germany. One can't imagine something like this happening today.)
"
As I have said in other Internet communities, I don't get the conservative complaints or boasts about being "anti-PC". What conservatives decry as being politically correct, I just consider treating people with dignity and decency.
Yes, conservatives are people who just don't get it often. The world has changed and they don't want to deal.
"
And on the combination:
People are simply really good at compartmenalizing and holding wildly contradictory beliefs without a second thought. I do this, other people on the League do this, you do this, everyone does it. The problem is that we are really good at catching these contradictions in others but not in ourselves. We need to be called out to see our own contradictions.
I know a woman who belongs to a facebook community with a name like "Peaceloving Hippie Freaks". She shares memes from this group fairly often and it is fairly typical hippie-liberal stuff. One shared meme was a picture of someone from a third-world country who was using crushed soda bottles as impromptou footwear because he could not afford shoes with a message on shutting up about your first-world problems. A few weeks ago facebook informed me that said woman also "liked" Mitt Romney. Then I would see her gush about Mitt and wonder if he saw an astrologer because Mitt was a Pieces III like her.
Needless to say this caused me to scratch my head a bit. However, it probably did not cause her the same kind of perplexity.
"
How about the Papa John's Pizza CEO? He is going around very cynically claiming that he will need to raise pizza prices by a pittance (50 cents or so) or lower employee hours at some stores as to comply with Obamacare or make his employees ineligible for Obamacare.
Can we call this guy a major asshole? He seems to think his customers are so craven (and/or poor) that they will rebel at a minor increase in prices or that he is so against providing some healthcare that he is willing to further drive his employees into poverty by reducing their hours.
Guys like him are why we need Single Payer and not Obama's mandates. Obamacare is better than nothing but still allows jerks to play politics.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.