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I find all the “this is an escalation that will lead to unrest” thoughts going around dangerously naive and fantastical. There is zero possibility of political unrest in America. Americans of both spectrums are increasingly isolated, sedentary, and addicted to their phones. White Americans are becoming poorer. Everyone is addicted to a device which spies on them continually, and all social activity now begins* online. The upper rung of intel communities are hyper-elite well-connected individuals with names like Robert Swan Mueller III who likely care more about maintaining intergenerational wealth and family influence than adhering to abstract principles of justice. If through some cosmic miracle you managed to create some organization intent on unrest, it will be Ruby Ridge but with drone strikes. It’s simply impossible. Any “unrest” would have to come from inside the upper rung of the intelligence agencies, not among the common squabble.
This fact needs to be accepted so that conservatives realize the whole moral burden of correcting the perceived injustice rests in their ability to propagandize, boycott, and culture-craft. There will be no cavalry or Calvary moment to save you. If you do nothing politically or culturally productive, nothing will happen. Ever. Ad infinitum. The new world does not allow for the smallest amount of unrest. They will drone strike you (you will once again complain it is an “escalation”) before they allow any unrest that could be utilized by foreign actors to reduce American influence.
Is this true? I can see it being true in a relative sense as other groups catch up, but it seems totally fantastical given that basically everyone has become massively richer over the past 40, 30, 20, 10, 5 years.
They are incapable of doing that because the right has no human capital
It's unclear what the Democrats will do if they win, because they can't promise anything as they have almost no more positive-sum, or even zero-sum, gains to make. Almost everything they do from here on out, unless someone in the Democratic coalition actually acts as a leader and e.g. shuts down the Left-NIMBYs and greenmailers, is negative-sum, and against a particular ethnic group and sexual identity.
If Trump goes to prison, but Democratic leadership shut that negative-sum behavior down and can manage to just be normal for 20 years, then I think there are few consequences to them for jailing Trump.
But they've put so much effort into avoiding necessary reforms and avoiding having tough conversations, that it's hard to believe that they'll suddenly act like mature leaders governing the nation in the broad national interest.
If they don't shape up, the question is just how much abuse bright young cis heterosexual males (of left-discriminated-against racial or ethnic categories) are willing to take before they decide to organize for their own advantage, just as Democrats tell every other group to organize for their own advantage.
A lot of paranoia within Social Justice seems rooted in the understanding that these men really aren't organizing for their own interests right now, but would be a powerful force if they did so in the future, and thus wants to weaken this category based on an implicit theory of inevitable identitarian conflict, rather than pursuing a more peaceful solution which avoids creating incentives for conflict.
They'll make negative-sum gains by taking from their enemies and giving to their friends and clients.
It turns out the answer is "all of it". They've successfully convinced a majority of society -- including said cis-het makes -- that they deserve all the abuse that is handed out to them, and that it is unacceptable for oppressors like them to organize for their own advantage.
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So what if "bright young cis heterosexual males" do decide to start organizing for their own advantage? Just cut them off off all avenues of converting such organizing into advantage if you can. And if you can't, then just punish them for organizing in that manner. One can always adjust incentives away from an undesired outcome by shifting the cost/benefit analysis through imposition of costs. If the "abuse" left-discriminated-against-categories are taking is incentivizing them to pursue "organizing for advantage," then you need only provide an offsetting disincentive. People will take any amount of abuse if the consequences for not taking it are even worse. If the punishment for "bright young cis heterosexual males" organizing isn't discouraging them from doing so, then escalate it, harsher and harsher, until it does.
Why "shape up" when you can instead simply destroy the lives of anyone who tries to oppose you?
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The democrats have done a ton of positive sum things and there are a lot more positive sum things I expect them to be much better at executing than republicans. For example dems all lined up for the TikTok divestiture, which Trump supported until some random billionaire with a financial interest in TikTok donated and got him to oppose it.
The situation with support for nasty racial/ethnic coalition politics by the Democrats is so bad that it actually isn't clear that forcing TikTok to divest from China will be a net benefit in the medium to long term. If the general direction continues, it will be so out of control by mid-century that Xi Jinping Thought will look reasonable by comparison.
In theory, e.g. environmentalism can be positive sum, but they can't stop screwing up construction projects. Unions, administrators, or environmentalists - at least one group of the democratic coalition must take the loss.
I don't trust Republicans do e.g. properly run groups that monitor for radium in road salt. But at the same time, if those organizations divert resources from checking for radioactivity to the left-identitarian omni-cause, then we are not looking at an even a maintenance of the status quo, but a loss.
We have tried asking nicely for Democrats to stop supporting "corrective" racism, and they always refuse. I don't see how anything other than imposing consequences on them will work. The personnel and programs responsible must be defunded, and de facto legal liability must be increased.
So what? It clearly benefits the people pushing it, and there's nobody remotely powerful enough to make them stop pushing it, so why should they stop?
Again, so what? This is a bad thing, sure, but it's an inevitable badness — there's nothing that can be done to stop it.
Because they know there's no possible consequences for said refusal, since there's absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop them.
Yes, nothing else will work… which means nothing will work because there is simply no way whatsoever to impose consequences on them. They're too powerful.
Except there is no means available, at all, to do any of those. It's never going to happen.
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Unless this is wrong, it has decreased since 2018. Something else I’m interested in knowing (but haven’t found yet) is a really solid income x cost of living estimate which accounts for the higher paid jobs increasingly being in high cost areas, eg white American well-paid professionals moving into Silicon Valley or city centers — “average cost of living” tells us nothing about specific cohorts. Have white American wages since 2010 actually accounted for white Americans moving to higher cost areas? Idk. Also curious if it accounts for delayed age of retirement and delaying work because in grad school? Maybe someone smarter than me can inform on that.
I don’t disagree but I do think they can develop this, over time
I don't have it by race but 2021-22 were kind of down years across the board that have reversed more recently. Even moreso for wealth.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
But without getting into the quarterly bouncing ball the trend at the frequency of a few years is still strongly up.
Adjusted for inflation net worth since Biden took over increased less than 1% per household. This is much less than when Trump was president.
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