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You're modeling the entire right here as a completely cynical enterprise with no goals beyond hurting their outgroup. I think perhaps you could make some sort of case for an individual, such as Elon himself, but to model the entire right that way is missing the point. And worse, it is inaccurate.
I think you're underestimating the sincerity of the believe that the right has, that ruin and destruction will come from the left gaining unchecked power. Be it the economic conservatives who think a command economy will result in famines and shortages, or the religious factions that tend to believe in literal divine retribution, the beliefs held are sincere.
Now, are there cynical and petty people on the right? Absolutely. There are. But, taking the most cynical interpretation of the right, and comparing it to the left's most noble intentions is not a fair starting point.
That's not it at all, although I can see how I communicated my point poorly. I don't think either side has any reasonable claim to moral superiority.
However, regardless of whether it's a better model of reality, the story the left tells itself for why it does what it does is much more compelling than what the right does. Particularly in these cases of 'tit for tat' where we're measuring winning or losing in who gets banned from a platform. Leftists wanted to deplatform people to avoid COVID misinformation to save lives. Elon wanted to stand for free speech until his ideals made contact with reality, and now he wants to deplatform people who fucked with his family. Maybe things will balance out, and it will turn into 'your rules but applied fairly' and all doxxers will get banned regardless of affiliation. But 'your rules applied fairly' is still not a particularly proactive or compelling vision for the future.
You could argue, with some merit I'm sure, that the greatest harm comes from the best intentions, and self-righteousness or believing too strongly in your cause is a great way for the left to coast down some slippery slopes towards making the world a worse place. But I'm not even convinced that the right cares about solving the same problems anymore. Is there a competing vision for dealing with homelessness, besides putting them on buses to San Francisco and New York? For drug use, besides being angry at PMCs/neoliberals/deep state traitors who sold out the country to China (maybe the law and order messaging? It's conspicuously absent in discussions about the opioid epidemic though). For social alienation, for assimilating immigrants, for spreading democracy in the world, for poverty? Please, if I'm ignorant fill me in, but to varying degrees I get the impression that these issues just aren't very salient to the right anymore. Nor can I discern any kind of cohesive messaging or worldview the way I can with Reagan or Obama.
This just shows the tribal differences in viewpoint. The way I see it, retribution against people who threatened your family is a much worthier goal than any anti-misinformation or generally stochastic, society-wide aim. I'd wager at least a third of the nation feels the same way.
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That's distinct from ideology, but I would hope so. Also a question that's impossible to answer without further defining 'solving' or 'trying to solve.'
There are a large number of programs, which, as you've pointed out, don't seem particularly effective. And as you expected: at least they're trying.
The stories, though: Ruthless Shkreli wannabes jacking up meds prices, leading to mental breakdown and eviction! White supremacist patriarchy refuses to employ trans women of color, of course they have to work the streets! These people just need a helping hand to be productive members of society #latestagecapitalism
I don't profess to be an expert on homelessness, but I assume it won't be that easy.
Legalization of less addictive substances. Probably methadone clinics, heavy investment in therapy/support groups for addicts, nationalized healthcare, etc for the heavy drugs. The ideology feels a bit lighter on this issue, but I'm not sure what people would say if you asked them.
Probably true. I'm curious what people would answer if I asked them.
Fix, by their definitions.
Depends. A righteous crusade to rescue trans, gay, women and people of color from the privileged classes probably wouldn't register as colonialism.
I'm not even trying to make a value judgment. I'm trying to make an argument that they need to think bigger, stop being reactionary and provide ideological explanations/solutions to problems in society.
Thanks for the recommendations!
Well, of course they should do better at trying to actually trying to track down the effects of their policies. In their defense, a lot of these problems are fairly complex and intractable even for people who study it full-time.
Perhaps 'the future' is the wrong concept to use. It's fairly rooted in and focused on the problems of the present, more so than the utopians dreaming of metropolises on Mars.
Occam's razor would suggest that I'm a loser eating cheetos in my mom's basement, arguing on the internet in between World of Warcraft raids.
Oh, uh, I definitely wouldn't call it my approach or particularly effective. The block hosting the methadone clinic at my alma mater had the worst reputation on campus and was always a mess. Then again, who knows what the counterfactual would be like?
I've only driven through San Francisco once so you would know better than me.
You likely won't find much of substance after scratching the surface, I'm afraid. I identify with the left because they speak to the problems I care about; if someone had a realistic alternative that was more effective without committing atrocities (i.e. gassing the homeless to clean up the streets) I'd be on board. If rationalism could actually proselytize to the masses to focus more on data and results, we might get somewhere. Like, you say you care about black homeownership? How do you not know that it's largely unchanged in 50 years despite all the policies we've tried? Maybe we shouldn't hold such strong opinions about things we haven't seriously researched in any meaningful capacity...
Good, bad, it seems like reality, no? Many people are rabidly woke. People want to do the right thing, people want to feel good about themselves and many need ideology as a part of that identity. I'd like us to all have a nice dispassionate discussion about how to run society led by the relevant technocrats who haven't been captured by one interest or another, but that isn't the world we live in - and many problems are big and complex enough that even the people who study them 24/7 don't know the answer.
That being said, I don't think the liberal project has been a failure on every count. Poverty is down. Global poverty and death/disability from many preventable diseases is way down. 20 million fewer uninsured Americans from 15 years ago. Broad social acceptance of interracial and same-sex marriage. Sometimes you tell a compelling story and the world is a better place. Sometimes, you tell a compelling story that diverges from reality and you bonk your head against the wall for a decade or two before society finally lumbers back to the drawing board.
Really elaborating on my views would take a longer post than this.
Quite the opposite, I'm afraid. Although Kendi doesn't get my goat the way it does many people here - I'm not sure I agree with his worldview, but it's certainly an interesting one that makes me question how far I'd be willing to go for equality. I strongly support affirmative action and even quotas for some positions (largely political), but I'm not interested in Harrison Bergeroning society into homogeneity. Many of the quotes that do circulate (I mostly remember the 'white people are literally aliens' one) are cherry-picked to generate ridicule and outrage.
Don't think I've read the other authors.
Agreed.
The failures are what gets highlighted, because we're American and our failure mode is to bitch about every single thing the government and opposition do endlessly (as opposed to China whose failure mode is the global times assuring me everything is fantastic until the day there's no food on the shelves and the condo I paid for is never going to be built). As I've said, I don't think it's all been negative. As for the actual, undeniable failures like the mess of a crime rate or vaccines ending the pandemic, I think they'll collapse under their own weight - as they should! Just always more slowly than I'd predict, the way I thought everyone would give up on mask mandates and lockdowns after widespread vaccination in summer of 2021.
And of course, some failures whose causes aren't so tightly connected to their consequences will slip through the cracks to plague us for decades to come. Such is life.
Then by what metrics would you like to judge the success or failure of the progressive project? Female GDP per capita is outstripping that of men, as is their education level. The number of female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies has gone up 15 fold in the last quarter century. Fraction of Asian and Hispanic CEOs have both roughly doubled in the same time. Difficult to measure things like inclusion, awareness, so on and so forth, but I imagine many kinds of speech not deemed 'progressive' are absent from the workplace relative to 2000. Congress is much more representative than it was. We have minor improvements like wellness/pumping rooms, changing stations, improved accessibility for disabled people, so on and so forth.
I'm not convinced this is the case. I could be completely missing the mark here, but my impression is that China is much more matter-of-fact about differences in ability between individuals. They nevertheless straight up give bonus points on the gaokao to minorities among other things. I'm not well versed enough in Chinese culture to confidently say this is true rather that government propaganda, but I think it's an interesting model nonetheless. I don't think affirmative action is necessarily rooted in or dependent on blank slatism, nor do I think it's success should necessarily be measured by equality of outcomes (as I assume you mean when you say AA is failing).
I'd support and prefer class-based affirmative action.
Some people here want me to defend the liberal project starting with FDR, others with Carter, still others with Obama. FCfromSSC likes to bring up an ex-domestic terrorist who was blowing up mailboxes in the 70s only to be hired as a professor in the 90s, and my man, I'm sorry but those bombs were going off long before I was born.
Why don't you found it? I find people more receptive when they're convinced you care about the same outcomes as them, and just think you have a better way to achieve them.
I don't think it's serious enough to be concerned about insofar as I doubt I need to worry about mobs invading my neighborhood to lynch white people. I think the real problem is that it doesn't seem to be particularly useful for improving the outcomes of minorities, while simultaneously making significant fractions of the populace hostile to any kind of diversity/equity talk.
Thanks, I'll try to take a look. Stuff can get lost in the shuffle, particularly if it's not a substack sending me regular emails (I gave up on my RSS feed about a decade ago, but maybe the blog is undergoing a renaissance and I should reevaluate).
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Hi! Can you please stop radicalizing me in the direction of violent extremism? Thanks!
I don't think you ever needed my help on that front, friend.
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You're correct to call them "stories," and right now the left seems to care a lot more about allegiance to its stories about the world than whether or not acting on the basis of those stories actually brings about the results they profess to care about.
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The war on drugs has been an unmitigated disaster, the amount of money spent chasing weed farmers and purveyors of psychedelics as if they were the same as heroin producers is insane. Legalizing and regulating the production and sale of illegal drugs would solve a whole lot of problems. Junkies do suck though, and some drugs are legitimately dangerous, so i can't get on board with universal drug legalization, but we have a long way to go before being too permissive becomes remotely concerning.
this isn't the government's job, and as far as i can tell the right's prescription to the problem is to go to church. this doesn't work well for a country with a very large and growing atheist population.
don't confuse the progressive avant garde for the platform dem position. 20 bucks says if you ask joe biden if assimilation is racism he will say no.
same here, but i'm actually a bit more sympathetic to this one. Democracy is great, but if some other country wants to be a monarchy or whatever, how would you describe strong arming them to do otherwise?
"the left" is not a political party, but a diaspora of actual politicians and activists and twitter users etc. By and large the more zealous progressives have very little actual political cache, and garner far more twitter likes than votes.
As for wether the left wants things solved, i'm sure that having every dem-proposed initiative that makes it to congress get tanked on arrival might have something to do with the image of dems not getting shit done.
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With two word changes, I think he'd be correct, though: "no unified goals beyond stopping their outgroup."
I'll give you that one, the right does not seem to be a single cohesive group at the moment.
Except on the point of stopping the left, where it is extremely unified.
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