I'm getting kind of tired of asking you to explain what policies you want liberals to adhere to. Again, both moderates in Virginia and New Jersey had problems or lost, same as liberals did. It's not clear that popularism is actually popular. If you're going to say 'liberals need to stop trying to do things and instead do other things' yo…
I'm getting kind of tired of asking you to explain what policies you want liberals to adhere to. Again, both moderates in Virginia and New Jersey had problems or lost, same as liberals did. It's not clear that popularism is actually popular. If you're going to say 'liberals need to stop trying to do things and instead do other things' you need to be specific as to what you want, Charlie. It's not enough to say 'be more moderate' without defining what it means to be a moderate in 2021. Because again, in Virginia the former governor, a moderate who ran on kitchen table issues, lost to an insurrectionist sympathizer. So unless you're going to say that his method was successful, you're going to need to actually say what you think he and other liberals should run on. Because yelling 'be moderate' doesn't actually mean anything to most people who can only define the term based on where they think their opponents are.
As for CRT, it's clear now that the problem is that most liberals are incapable of grasping that words often do not have esoteric or branching meanings to most people. Example, 'racist' conjures up a very specific image, as does 'racism.' At least, to moderates and conservatives. To liberals, the terms is more open and flowing. For example, racism isn't just men in hoods to them, it's the policies that cause things like increased incarceration against minorities, and the people who support those policies. It's the belief that, if you support things like segregated schools based on wealth, which often means color, you are also a racist, even if you're not directly marching with the tiki torch guys. If you're afraid of willie horton, then you must be a racist.
This extrapolation is everywhere. And in many situations, they come to these conclusions armed with lots of data and ideas. But they're rather terrible at actually making it make sense to those who aren't versed in the liberal nomenclature. Let's put it like this: conservatives have the fox news cinematic universe. Liberals have something similar in regards to words like 'racist' though I don't know what to call it.
The issue of CRT is that it's very easy to be like 'they're trying to make people feel guilty about being white!' which is where liberals say it's an overtly racist dogwhistle against learning history. Part of this comes from certain sections of liberal thought that says the sins of the father are the sins of the son, so to speak. Your ancestors set up these systems, they did so with racist intentions, and so if you defend them you must be racist, because you're defending a system created by and meant for racist reasons. A lot of people would disagree with this, and that's partially why liberals struggle so much. Because people don't see themselves as inheriting a racist system. They see themselves as simply existing in a time when these things were already set up. They didn't make these systems, they don't have the power to change them, so why are you getting mad at them for going along with things, goes the thinking.
We talk a lot about how silence is acceptance, which is why liberals are quick to point fingers at those who talk a lot about how bad fascism is, but not about how bad racism is. If you're mad about systems that enforce or make it easier for fascists to gain power, why aren't you also mad about the same systems that create racist outcomes? Again, you can agree or disagree with this, but that's the thinking.
I think the issue with CRT is that liberals are refusing to say what they really want which is: yes, we are changing how we teach things, because we're doing it better than we did before. The past was complicated, and how we teach kids should reflect that. People are neither good nor evil for the most part, but that doesn't mean there weren't terrible things in the past that we should work towards being better than. If the goal of education is to produce better citizens, then logically we should be striving to not be teaching, say, lost cause narratives in text books, something that still happens in much of the south today for example.
Instead, by trying to say nothing has changed, they've let the CRT moral panic swallow up lots of airtime and define itself as 'actually, the people complaining about racists are the real racists, and also the people who are mad about segregation are the real segregationists.'
One last bit. One issue that the CRT panic is about but which we don't talk a lot about is how, for most of our history, the idea was that there was an arc of progress, that we moved forward, that there was a kind of manifest destiny at work, and that America was a special, blessed place. Reality is not that simple, and there were a lot of people who had to be enslaved and displaced and killed in that whole arc of progress thing. But it's a story that Americans have told ourselves and used to justify ourselves since our creation. Now, people question whether that was actually an arc of progress, and whether it was right or wrong to exterminate people and the like. But they don't have a better story to tell in its place yet, so what ends up happening is a backlash against changing the story.
The same thing happens all the time if you deal with civil war stories. There are lots of people in the south who have stories about how Sherman or the northerners did something to their ancestors when in reality they were nowhere nearby. But that story is more powerful than the truth.
Personally, I think the story liberals should tell is simple: America is not a perfect place. But the point of America is that we understand that we are not perfect people, and that over time we work to create a better place, rather than be stuck in the past, slaves to the ideas of dead men. America is meant to be a dynamic place, both in spirit and character, and the idea that there is one narrative in America is profoundly unamerican. America is not more racist than other countries, we're simply the only ones that actually talk about it like it's a bad thing. In Japan, koreans are second class citizens. In China there are concentration camps for muslims. In the middle east they're still killing each other over different religions. In africa various ethnic groups are still committing genocide. In Europe, islamaphobia drives resentment and hatred towards others. And yet, you'll find no greater dialogue about whether this is good or bad than in America, because we believe, at least on paper, that the color of one's skin shouldn't define a person. That's a rather American idea, even if it's taken a lot of work to get where we are. But it's a specifically American concept.
The left should embrace that, rather than try to define terms that people already have ideas about.
A good post... one of the things that tends to bother me is the underlying assumption by a lot of people (on both the left and right) that there IS some sort of arc or plan--that it is inevitable that progress will be made.
This is something that bleeds into our thinking about history from our religious culture... either directly or through (in the case of the Left) Hegelian perspectives on history.
This determination/belief that it will all work out right in the end (however you might define right) breeds a certain complacency. This regularly bites the progressives in the behind, especially in midterms and more local politics.
There is no arc to history, because "history" is really only a story we come up with to explain why we are where we are. There is only the daily, recurring struggle to make a better life for ourselves and others.
It's very human to think of ourselves in terms of the stories we tell. We like to think that we are progressing somewhere, that we're doing good and that we're moving toward something. It's human to see ourselves as being part of a greater whole. That's just human nature.
One of the issues we now have is that liberals question many of our stories, and not without fault. The founders questioned many of the stories about their own monarchal culture in their own time. The problem is that liberals haven't yet settled on a story they'd like to tell instead. Many of them resemble what can best be thought of as modern day baptists or the like. Very fire and brimstone, very 'the world is fallen and we are sinners, repent lest ye be damned' types. There's plenty of that in American history too.
Much of the problem I think, is that liberals don't seem to every consider that they need to talk with people or explain how they got to conclusions. They simply say the conclusion, assume people will understand the jumps in logic, and as a result, end up making things worse for themselves.
It is the stories we tell that MAKE us human. It is the quintessential difference between human and animal. Animals live in the moment, humans rarely live in the moment--we are most usually in the past or future.
The stories we tell to explain why we are here.
The stories we tell to explain who we are--and, more importantly, that MAKE us what/who we are.
The stories we tell so that we can see where we are going (even though we rarely actually get there).
The jumps in logic are often NOT visible to the person telling the story. The inconsistencies and contradictions--because we tell the stories and rarely think about them or critique them.
It is kind of like trying to teach someone something that you know EXTREMELY well or are EXTREMELY good at... and you can't understand why they aren't getting it (because you left out a LOT of things that you never even think about, though perhaps you once did).
I'm getting kind of tired of asking you to explain what policies you want liberals to adhere to. Again, both moderates in Virginia and New Jersey had problems or lost, same as liberals did. It's not clear that popularism is actually popular. If you're going to say 'liberals need to stop trying to do things and instead do other things' you need to be specific as to what you want, Charlie. It's not enough to say 'be more moderate' without defining what it means to be a moderate in 2021. Because again, in Virginia the former governor, a moderate who ran on kitchen table issues, lost to an insurrectionist sympathizer. So unless you're going to say that his method was successful, you're going to need to actually say what you think he and other liberals should run on. Because yelling 'be moderate' doesn't actually mean anything to most people who can only define the term based on where they think their opponents are.
As for CRT, it's clear now that the problem is that most liberals are incapable of grasping that words often do not have esoteric or branching meanings to most people. Example, 'racist' conjures up a very specific image, as does 'racism.' At least, to moderates and conservatives. To liberals, the terms is more open and flowing. For example, racism isn't just men in hoods to them, it's the policies that cause things like increased incarceration against minorities, and the people who support those policies. It's the belief that, if you support things like segregated schools based on wealth, which often means color, you are also a racist, even if you're not directly marching with the tiki torch guys. If you're afraid of willie horton, then you must be a racist.
This extrapolation is everywhere. And in many situations, they come to these conclusions armed with lots of data and ideas. But they're rather terrible at actually making it make sense to those who aren't versed in the liberal nomenclature. Let's put it like this: conservatives have the fox news cinematic universe. Liberals have something similar in regards to words like 'racist' though I don't know what to call it.
The issue of CRT is that it's very easy to be like 'they're trying to make people feel guilty about being white!' which is where liberals say it's an overtly racist dogwhistle against learning history. Part of this comes from certain sections of liberal thought that says the sins of the father are the sins of the son, so to speak. Your ancestors set up these systems, they did so with racist intentions, and so if you defend them you must be racist, because you're defending a system created by and meant for racist reasons. A lot of people would disagree with this, and that's partially why liberals struggle so much. Because people don't see themselves as inheriting a racist system. They see themselves as simply existing in a time when these things were already set up. They didn't make these systems, they don't have the power to change them, so why are you getting mad at them for going along with things, goes the thinking.
We talk a lot about how silence is acceptance, which is why liberals are quick to point fingers at those who talk a lot about how bad fascism is, but not about how bad racism is. If you're mad about systems that enforce or make it easier for fascists to gain power, why aren't you also mad about the same systems that create racist outcomes? Again, you can agree or disagree with this, but that's the thinking.
I think the issue with CRT is that liberals are refusing to say what they really want which is: yes, we are changing how we teach things, because we're doing it better than we did before. The past was complicated, and how we teach kids should reflect that. People are neither good nor evil for the most part, but that doesn't mean there weren't terrible things in the past that we should work towards being better than. If the goal of education is to produce better citizens, then logically we should be striving to not be teaching, say, lost cause narratives in text books, something that still happens in much of the south today for example.
Instead, by trying to say nothing has changed, they've let the CRT moral panic swallow up lots of airtime and define itself as 'actually, the people complaining about racists are the real racists, and also the people who are mad about segregation are the real segregationists.'
One last bit. One issue that the CRT panic is about but which we don't talk a lot about is how, for most of our history, the idea was that there was an arc of progress, that we moved forward, that there was a kind of manifest destiny at work, and that America was a special, blessed place. Reality is not that simple, and there were a lot of people who had to be enslaved and displaced and killed in that whole arc of progress thing. But it's a story that Americans have told ourselves and used to justify ourselves since our creation. Now, people question whether that was actually an arc of progress, and whether it was right or wrong to exterminate people and the like. But they don't have a better story to tell in its place yet, so what ends up happening is a backlash against changing the story.
The same thing happens all the time if you deal with civil war stories. There are lots of people in the south who have stories about how Sherman or the northerners did something to their ancestors when in reality they were nowhere nearby. But that story is more powerful than the truth.
Personally, I think the story liberals should tell is simple: America is not a perfect place. But the point of America is that we understand that we are not perfect people, and that over time we work to create a better place, rather than be stuck in the past, slaves to the ideas of dead men. America is meant to be a dynamic place, both in spirit and character, and the idea that there is one narrative in America is profoundly unamerican. America is not more racist than other countries, we're simply the only ones that actually talk about it like it's a bad thing. In Japan, koreans are second class citizens. In China there are concentration camps for muslims. In the middle east they're still killing each other over different religions. In africa various ethnic groups are still committing genocide. In Europe, islamaphobia drives resentment and hatred towards others. And yet, you'll find no greater dialogue about whether this is good or bad than in America, because we believe, at least on paper, that the color of one's skin shouldn't define a person. That's a rather American idea, even if it's taken a lot of work to get where we are. But it's a specifically American concept.
The left should embrace that, rather than try to define terms that people already have ideas about.
A good post... one of the things that tends to bother me is the underlying assumption by a lot of people (on both the left and right) that there IS some sort of arc or plan--that it is inevitable that progress will be made.
This is something that bleeds into our thinking about history from our religious culture... either directly or through (in the case of the Left) Hegelian perspectives on history.
This determination/belief that it will all work out right in the end (however you might define right) breeds a certain complacency. This regularly bites the progressives in the behind, especially in midterms and more local politics.
There is no arc to history, because "history" is really only a story we come up with to explain why we are where we are. There is only the daily, recurring struggle to make a better life for ourselves and others.
It's very human to think of ourselves in terms of the stories we tell. We like to think that we are progressing somewhere, that we're doing good and that we're moving toward something. It's human to see ourselves as being part of a greater whole. That's just human nature.
One of the issues we now have is that liberals question many of our stories, and not without fault. The founders questioned many of the stories about their own monarchal culture in their own time. The problem is that liberals haven't yet settled on a story they'd like to tell instead. Many of them resemble what can best be thought of as modern day baptists or the like. Very fire and brimstone, very 'the world is fallen and we are sinners, repent lest ye be damned' types. There's plenty of that in American history too.
Much of the problem I think, is that liberals don't seem to every consider that they need to talk with people or explain how they got to conclusions. They simply say the conclusion, assume people will understand the jumps in logic, and as a result, end up making things worse for themselves.
It is the stories we tell that MAKE us human. It is the quintessential difference between human and animal. Animals live in the moment, humans rarely live in the moment--we are most usually in the past or future.
The stories we tell to explain why we are here.
The stories we tell to explain who we are--and, more importantly, that MAKE us what/who we are.
The stories we tell so that we can see where we are going (even though we rarely actually get there).
The jumps in logic are often NOT visible to the person telling the story. The inconsistencies and contradictions--because we tell the stories and rarely think about them or critique them.
It is kind of like trying to teach someone something that you know EXTREMELY well or are EXTREMELY good at... and you can't understand why they aren't getting it (because you left out a LOT of things that you never even think about, though perhaps you once did).