Interesting those who rely most on Fox News have the lowest % with no false beliefs. Evidence that Fox News is exceptionally efficient at spreading the BS.
“COVID-19 Misinformation is Ubiquitous: 78% of the Public Believes or is Unsure About At Least One False Statement, and Nearly a Third Believe At Least Four of Eight False Statements.”
One of the false statements is "Deaths due to the COVID-19 vaccine are being intentionally hidden by the government." I have read on these very pages that COVID deaths are likely underreported. Is it intentional? At least sometimes:
About the DEI, um, why would you want to hire staff that didn't think diversity, equity or inclusivity was a good ideal?
And the Andrew Gillen piece cited by AEI was crap. It basically boiled to "it looks like the more leftists dominate a particular subject the less it pays but there's no evidence of causation but I'm going to keep going like there's causation anyway!"
It was full of "could bes", "maybes" and "likelys" with no actual evidence proffered. It was a typical right-wing attack in higher education with no substance.
Oh, and there was no corroboration that nearly 700 of the 900 applicants for 1 life-sciences position were rejected solely due to their response to the DEI. It was just "some guy said this thing" and he went with it like it is actually true.
I really do expect better, but you do have a bit of hobbyhorse about this wokeism stuff.
The "progressive populist" quote sounds like every union organizer and official I've ever heard (I'm 68 so I've heard many over the years). This means it will automatically appeal to what used to be called the core of the Democratic Party, the working middle and lower middle class. No wonder it was the most popular.
Short observations. The far left has been suspicious of free speech since Marx. The simple idea is that corporate ownership and profit motive suppresses all ideas not conducive to profit. Nuff said.
California has been sharpening the DEI since the introduction of Prop 209 in 1996. DEI developed as a way to push for diversity absent the legal mechanism of affirmative action. Unfortunately, the voters killed Prop 96 just last year which would have rolled back 209, so it looks as if we are stuck with DEI for the duration.
I am not aware of any college in the US founded by faculty which succeeded. Colleges need much broader and more powerful sanctioning bodies -- faculty are just hired hands. That said, colleges do not exist exclusively for the students either. They come for the feast, but should neither cause food fights nor dictate the menu. Yet, so too legislators, who should simply keep their hands off and let the market place of evolving ideas dictate needs. There is a great tradition, now both undermined and trampled over, but the positive news is that in America it has been a ferment since 1636.
Whoever made the video of Gosar attacking Biden either didn't read the comics until the end or is subtly trolling everyone.
*Spoilers for Attack on Titan follow*
The character they photoshopped Gosar's face onto ends up betraying his allies, orchestrating a fascist coup, killing his own parents and brother, engaging in terrorism in a crowded public place, committing genocide against everyone outside his own race, and becoming the very thing he swore to destroy in the first season.
The character replaced by Biden was bad, but Gosar's character is FAR worse.
Freedom of speech is extremely slippery when it evades serious data to support the ideas expressed and does not include the idea that just about all of the freedoms we adhere to are associated with consequences. Misuse of badly collected and disseminated "facts" or twisting data to serve ones purpose are clear misuses of data, engaged in by those of both the left and the write. The mistaken equivalency of "I feel" with "I think" are particularly dangerous. Without accepting the consequences of making behavioral choices out of mistaken understanding of data, order is simply impossible. Finally, clear thinking is subtle and nuanced, not absolutist and doctrinaire. Finding truth is always accomplished through careful study and thoughtful decision making.
As an Arizona resident, I am so proud of Paul Gosar! His wonderfulness is right up there with our former (impeached) governor, Evan Mecham, who referred to African-American children as "pickaninnies", although that was not the reason for his impeachment, and our former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who cost the county millions in settlements to people he illegally targeted, and was sanctioned for directing his folks to stop drivers who "might be illegal aliens" (maybe because they looked Hispanic, like a large percentage of Arizona citizens?). Not to mention the recently concluded "audit" of the 2020 election.
Inviting Sohrab Ahmari to join the board of a college he would probably abolish given half a chance was... interesting. Kind of like inviting Communists into a coalition government in post WW2 Eastern Europe. (Indeed, Ahmari himself is not only a former hard leftist, but has tweeted that he would be fine with CCP world domination.)
But really, if the college intended to make the "fearless pursuit of truth" its lode star, on what basis could it disqualify someone who represents a train of thought that's been in the Western mainstream for centuries? At least he hasn't endorsed horse goo. (I think.)
Is Sen Mark Kelly a lefty radical? Because last I checked, he had 80% approval rating in his state amongst Democrats while Sinema had a 23% approval rating. Y’all seem to ignore this fact while dog-piling on Biden’s 43% approval rating, and it bothers me. Also, we are still THREE YEARS from possibly changing Presidents, so let’s all calm the f*@k down. Trump looked like he was gonna win in 2020 and then Covid hit. Let’s all stop pretending we’re psychics.
The truth is you need both moderates and the progressive base to win. Moderate Republicans were never going to vote McAuliffe when a seemingly respectable, not-too-Trumpy, Youngkin was on the ballot and young people also stayed home (as they usually do in these non-presidential elections).
Also, AOC represents the Bronx, so yeah maybe she’s not going to have the same views as other Dems. It’s called Democracy, and they are representing their constituents. Also, there are more people living in California/New York/ etc, and they want different things than many moderates in other states. It sucks that in the system of checks and balances, we must all try to balance together.
As a former tour guide, I’ll never forget the reasonable Republican I gave a tour to of the heathen city of San Francisco. Before visiting, he thought our straw ban was really dumb, but then he said this during the tour:
“You know, in New Mexico, we think y’all are a bunch of idiots because of your plastic straw ban, but then you get here, look around and and are like, ‘Dang, there’s a lot of people here. That’s a lot of plastic straws.’”
We have a geographic divide, a cultural divide, and an economic divide. Honestly, the only person on the “right” that gets it is David Jolly. He does a great job of explaining the problems in our system without shitting on “wokeism” or using useless buzzwords. He’s why I’m a member of the SAM Party. Great interview yesterday btw, Charlie!
"The truth is you need both moderates and the progressive base to win. Moderate Republicans were never going to vote McAuliffe when a seemingly respectable, not-too-Trumpy, Youngkin was on the ballot and young people also stayed home (as they usually do in these non-presidential elections)."
Virginia was trending blue before Trump ever appeared, so it is valuable to understand what happened. It appears the change from 2020 to 2021 is the total collapse of Democratic support in rural areas of the state, and middle-of-the-road suburbanites flipping red. You write about AOC's district being different than other parts of the country. Yes, her district's representative is essentially elected in the Democratic primary. As you've written before, the embrace of the label "socialist" by some on the left is a messaging disaster. It seems to me what we have the right to demand from AOC and all those in safe Democratic districts is some message discipline. I live in a rural area and all one hears is "socialism" and culture war stuff.
What should the message be? First a statistic that Democrats should make sure every American knows: The three Democratic administrations going back to Jimmy Carter plus Biden's 10 months created in excess of 50 million jobs. The last three Republican administrations created a total of 1 million. In other words, go straight at the Republican strength, which is the belief that they are better at managing the economy. The message around the two big bills in the news should not be the big topline number, it should be about how the provisions in the bill will make our market economy work better for everyone. Emphasizing the topline number just plays into the tax-and-spend narrative. That narrative plays fine in AOC's district, but is poison elsewhere. AOC can continue to fight for her perspective in the halls of Congress, but she needs to be a team player on messaging to the wider country.
Lewis! My dude! We completely agree. The problem is a lack of trust. Progressives do not trust the DNC. Period. Look at this Mayor of Buffalo stuff happening. I am the first in line to decry the “socialist” hypocrites who actually love capitalism (they sure do a lot of tweetin’ on smart phones and other stuff capitalism gave them), but AOC has those ppl tweeting at her everyday. I’m not a big AOC fan, but I know her base well and they will never bend to the moderate wing. We need to start finding those transformational candidates that can rise above the Clinton/Sanders fued.
Samantha!!! Did you read The Triad today where JVL describes his podcast as filled with "crushing morosity and misanthropy?" He knows what draws his audience in! I've sworn off insulting Las Vegas for today, but I see your still stalking Senator Sinema. Any sightings of those transformational candidates?
"Why did a tiny minority of professional conservatives—and a relatively large number of suburban Republican-leaning voters—find themselves in opposition to Trump? It wasn’t just the tweets. It wasn’t only a question of style. It was the recognition that having a major political party submit to a conspiracy-minded, amoral opportunist would ultimately corrupt the party by forcing people to excuse and defend the indefensible. And that this corruption of a major party would ultimately create dangers for the country.
Not that anyone is keeping score, but . . . this view has been vindicated—fully, entirely, completely—by history."
This, from Sarah Longwell, is perfection! Tens of thousands of pages of reporting and observation boiled down to a gem of capital T Truth!
Frankly, free speech lost its luster for me some time back. It is highly overrated and is grounded in a principle that basically seems false: that conversation and debate over ideas will result in the best and most correct idea winning.
On its face, over the course of history, these seems false--outside of very narrow confines. I have been watching the political and policy debate in this (and other countries) for decades. I see "losing" ideas--ideas that don't work and that are bad for society hanging around in seeming immortality--or apparently dying, but NOT really--like Dracula in the old Hammer movies, someone pulls the stake out and there it is again. And again. And again.
The marketplace of ideas in public discourse is a sham. The idea that policies contend and are tried out and that there are winners and losers is a sham. How many times has "trickle down" economics failed to deliver? Or the Laffer Curve? (it should be laugher). And yet they get trotted out again, whenever the majority party changes. The same is true of many leftist policies.
Our study of cognition and human psychology has pointed out time and again that there isn't a lot of classical rationality or critical thought happening. But we keep pretending it is there... are we hoping beyond hope and long experience that it is magically going to appear? The Rationality Fairy is going to poof in and zap us with a magic wand and fix it?
Instead we are busy demonizing/dehumanizing each other on the basis of (largely) failed and stupid ideas that owe more to tribal membership and innate psychology than anything rational. Plus there is money to be made and power to be built, which distorts things even further.
I read through the Claremont Institute thing yesterday and just shook my head. Really?
Inside a forum where there are actual rules, where you are forced to actually confront contending ideas and make judgments based upon evidence, where there ARE winners and the losers die and disappear, where the people involved actually know what they are talking about (OMG, actual expertise!) that is a marketplace of ideas. What happens in public and on the internet isn't--unless the sole criteria is popularity?
It has been my experience that the things that are correct (as far as we can know them) don't tend to be popular.
There are too many contending narratives. The population is atomized and lives in a number of distinct realities (and it is unlikely that ANY of them are particularly correct, in an objective sense). A society cannot continue to function in this manner and hope to survive. There is no narrative that works to unite rather than dissolve. Lies are more attractive and powerful and popular than truth (which some people don't even believe exists).
A lie can run around the world before the truth gets its boot on.
That's often true, but the obvious question is, who gets to decide which speech is too dangerous to permit? I'd say that's something for the private sector to work out as best as it sees fit, but not the province of government. BTW I'm not saying that UCal is therefore obliged to hire David Duke in the name of free speech, just that if he were otherwise qualified for a job there it could not fire him solely for his views. Ie, I think that on balance the First Amendment is worth the cost.
An historical fact also worth mentioning is that the Nazi Party was actually declining in popularity when Franz von Papen convinced Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Adolf Hitler Chancellor. Go figure.
Whoever has the power gets to decide--that is the way things usually work. We can pretend to argue about it, but if and when it happens, it will be the people with wealth and power that decide.
Right now, it is in the interest of these people to feed you all the garbage you are currently being fed. It makes them money and gives them power. When that is no longer the case, or the people who have the force to "convince" them to do otherwise, ten things will change.
The government is no more and no less qualified to determine who can speak and who cannot than some plutocrat. Each entity or person will choose what they believe serves their interests best.
Actually judging what speech is too dangerous is pretty easy. It merely depends upon what your goal is. When in doubt, do not spare the ban hammer.
I trust the private sector no more than I trust the government. Actually, I trust the private sector less--because I KNOW who their master is (mammon) and what their goals are and they aren't really interested in MY well-being or in the well-being of society. Just look at Zuckerberg. The government is at least better at pretending and is a locus of contending powers and interests, even in an authoritarian state.
I do not think most people actually have an idea of what the First Amendment actually costs. particularly since we tend to look at it through through individual rather than societal eyes. But that is the way we have been trained to look at things. in our society. It is not really possible, I think, to make an accurate judgment of the cost/benefit ratio--and that will change depending upon what you value, anyway.
We exist in a narrative that says that everybody has something useful and important to say and where individual opinions have meaning and import.. and that these things should, in most cases, be respected.
We exist in a narrative that says that individuals have worth, in and of themselves (which leads to the belief that their thoughts and opinions also have worth, above).
This is narrative, it isn't actual fact. It IS a better narrative than many that we have had. There are certainly narratives I do not want to live within--but maybe that is also an artifact of the narrative I was born and raised in and I believe that because I do not know better.
If you are lucky, you live in a time and place where you can at least pretend that you get to choose your story. For most of human history this has not been true.
Zuckerberg can't throw me in jail for saying the wrong thing. He can't take away my right to say it at all or frighten me into keeping my mouth shut. To claim that plutocrats are as dangerous as government apparatchiks is very naive. Maybe if we lived in a Central American gangocracy it would be true. But so far we don't.
Your understanding of the power of plutocrats/corporations is naive. Who do you think ultimately runs the US government? It isn't the people. Why do you think we have the laws and the tax structure we do? Yes, Zuckerberg (or Musk or Bezos or Megacorp) isn't going to DIRECTLY put you in jail. But not all jails have walls and iron bars and they can influence and create laws through the government that CAN put you in jail--but their hands are clean, sort of.
Zuckerberg CAN ban you from saying things on his property (FB or other iterations) and you can be effectively silenced by the raging hoard that takes offense at what you say (or even injured or killed in extreme cases). How is being silenced/killed by some private citizen for what you say better than being silenced/killed by the government? Dead is dead. silent is silent. But you have been told/taught that one is acceptable and the other isn't... because of arbitrary rules.
I distrust power, period. Not that it does me much good, because power IS power regardless of whether I trust it or not.
Eh, I don't know if you've ever had ten cops show up at your door merely because you told a social worker you were having suicidal thoughts, and the law arguably obliged her to inform on me. Trust me, it's worse than being kicked off a comment section.
As for actually being murdered by private citizens, there are still laws against that sort of thing. Once the cops start doing it with impunity, laws are out the window and there's no turning back.
It's nice that there are laws against it... and you are still dead... and looking at some of the trials recently, they may well be able to do it with impunity.
Cops already kill people with impunity for no real reason other than either carelessness or fear or animus against the other.
I am not necessarily disagreeing with you here. What I am trying to do is point out the arbitrary nature of some of the distinctions that are being made and the reasoning (or lack thereof) behind them.
If the SA (or a contemporary equivalent) kills you or trashes your place of business or merely puts enough fear into you that you censor yourself (and they have the tacit support of people powerful enough so that they can avoid punishment) is it REALLY that different from the government doing it?
On an abstract level, certainly--but that is an artifact of our particular society/culture/abstract rules. The results are certainly the same.
This also begs the question: While A might be better than B for YOU, is A better than B for society? We are largely trained to not even ask that question or, if we do ask it, devalue the answer if it doesn't come out in favor of the individual.
I can't comment on the Social worker thing. I also work in a profession where I am a required reporter. It sometimes comes down to a judgment call. Sometimes the call is wrong. The general thought is that it is better to possibly save a life than it is to do nothing.
Doesn't sound like it was necessarily a problem with the reporting so much as the nature of the response. part of that is the general social perception of an animus towards certain behaviors or psychologies. Part of it is a lack of proper resources and training.
We hold (because we have been taught that way) that private censorship is okay but government censorship is not. The arguments put forward generally rely upon the extreme applications (imprisonment/death scenarios) which serve to hide the central incongruity/ambiguity about censorship.
I would argue (in this case), ultimately, that censorship is censorship, regardless of the source--and so you are either okay with it or not okay with it. If you are okay with it, who does it is really kind of beside the point. I would then argue, from a societal standpoint, that it is better for the government to do it than vigilantes.
University of Austin. Yes, the list of advisors is impressive. But I personally don't find Ahmari, loathsome as he his, to be the worst. How about Joe Lonsdale (who I assume gave them their start-up money), a Thiel disciple who most recently said of Pete Buttigieg that Pete was a "loser" for taking parental leave to help take care of his twins. Because real men don't do that, or something. Why oh why would a group of distinguished public thinkers who preach civility (I'm looking at you, Arthur Brooks and Jonathan Rauch and Jonathan Haidt) want to be swept up with that guy. I'm not saying to cancel him, but it would be nice to see someone on that esteemed list say, "Now, just hold on there a minute, Joe..."
No shortage of good stuff in here, but what may have disturbed me the most (aside from the idea of Trump winning in 2024) is Ahmari's declaration that free inquiry and free speech are incompatible with Catholic teaching. Bold statement from THE OPINION EDITOR of the NY Post.
Interesting those who rely most on Fox News have the lowest % with no false beliefs. Evidence that Fox News is exceptionally efficient at spreading the BS.
“COVID-19 Misinformation is Ubiquitous: 78% of the Public Believes or is Unsure About At Least One False Statement, and Nearly a Third Believe At Least Four of Eight False Statements.”
One of the false statements is "Deaths due to the COVID-19 vaccine are being intentionally hidden by the government." I have read on these very pages that COVID deaths are likely underreported. Is it intentional? At least sometimes:
https://www.kansascity.com/news/coronavirus/article253147128.html
This sort of thing explains why polls are so often wrong nowadays. I'm tempted to ignore them altogether.
About the DEI, um, why would you want to hire staff that didn't think diversity, equity or inclusivity was a good ideal?
And the Andrew Gillen piece cited by AEI was crap. It basically boiled to "it looks like the more leftists dominate a particular subject the less it pays but there's no evidence of causation but I'm going to keep going like there's causation anyway!"
It was full of "could bes", "maybes" and "likelys" with no actual evidence proffered. It was a typical right-wing attack in higher education with no substance.
Oh, and there was no corroboration that nearly 700 of the 900 applicants for 1 life-sciences position were rejected solely due to their response to the DEI. It was just "some guy said this thing" and he went with it like it is actually true.
I really do expect better, but you do have a bit of hobbyhorse about this wokeism stuff.
The "progressive populist" quote sounds like every union organizer and official I've ever heard (I'm 68 so I've heard many over the years). This means it will automatically appeal to what used to be called the core of the Democratic Party, the working middle and lower middle class. No wonder it was the most popular.
Short observations. The far left has been suspicious of free speech since Marx. The simple idea is that corporate ownership and profit motive suppresses all ideas not conducive to profit. Nuff said.
California has been sharpening the DEI since the introduction of Prop 209 in 1996. DEI developed as a way to push for diversity absent the legal mechanism of affirmative action. Unfortunately, the voters killed Prop 96 just last year which would have rolled back 209, so it looks as if we are stuck with DEI for the duration.
I am not aware of any college in the US founded by faculty which succeeded. Colleges need much broader and more powerful sanctioning bodies -- faculty are just hired hands. That said, colleges do not exist exclusively for the students either. They come for the feast, but should neither cause food fights nor dictate the menu. Yet, so too legislators, who should simply keep their hands off and let the market place of evolving ideas dictate needs. There is a great tradition, now both undermined and trampled over, but the positive news is that in America it has been a ferment since 1636.
We have a University devoted to free speech. It is called The University of Chicago.
Whoever made the video of Gosar attacking Biden either didn't read the comics until the end or is subtly trolling everyone.
*Spoilers for Attack on Titan follow*
The character they photoshopped Gosar's face onto ends up betraying his allies, orchestrating a fascist coup, killing his own parents and brother, engaging in terrorism in a crowded public place, committing genocide against everyone outside his own race, and becoming the very thing he swore to destroy in the first season.
The character replaced by Biden was bad, but Gosar's character is FAR worse.
I would vote for didn't read. The trolling usually is not that subtle.
Or perhaps the creator of meme is telling on himself. Even after all he's done, there are some "fans" who still defend the character.
Freedom of speech is extremely slippery when it evades serious data to support the ideas expressed and does not include the idea that just about all of the freedoms we adhere to are associated with consequences. Misuse of badly collected and disseminated "facts" or twisting data to serve ones purpose are clear misuses of data, engaged in by those of both the left and the write. The mistaken equivalency of "I feel" with "I think" are particularly dangerous. Without accepting the consequences of making behavioral choices out of mistaken understanding of data, order is simply impossible. Finally, clear thinking is subtle and nuanced, not absolutist and doctrinaire. Finding truth is always accomplished through careful study and thoughtful decision making.
As an Arizona resident, I am so proud of Paul Gosar! His wonderfulness is right up there with our former (impeached) governor, Evan Mecham, who referred to African-American children as "pickaninnies", although that was not the reason for his impeachment, and our former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who cost the county millions in settlements to people he illegally targeted, and was sanctioned for directing his folks to stop drivers who "might be illegal aliens" (maybe because they looked Hispanic, like a large percentage of Arizona citizens?). Not to mention the recently concluded "audit" of the 2020 election.
So proud of my state!
Your state went for Biden. So when I rank the states, you're not so far down the list.
Inviting Sohrab Ahmari to join the board of a college he would probably abolish given half a chance was... interesting. Kind of like inviting Communists into a coalition government in post WW2 Eastern Europe. (Indeed, Ahmari himself is not only a former hard leftist, but has tweeted that he would be fine with CCP world domination.)
But really, if the college intended to make the "fearless pursuit of truth" its lode star, on what basis could it disqualify someone who represents a train of thought that's been in the Western mainstream for centuries? At least he hasn't endorsed horse goo. (I think.)
Is Sen Mark Kelly a lefty radical? Because last I checked, he had 80% approval rating in his state amongst Democrats while Sinema had a 23% approval rating. Y’all seem to ignore this fact while dog-piling on Biden’s 43% approval rating, and it bothers me. Also, we are still THREE YEARS from possibly changing Presidents, so let’s all calm the f*@k down. Trump looked like he was gonna win in 2020 and then Covid hit. Let’s all stop pretending we’re psychics.
The truth is you need both moderates and the progressive base to win. Moderate Republicans were never going to vote McAuliffe when a seemingly respectable, not-too-Trumpy, Youngkin was on the ballot and young people also stayed home (as they usually do in these non-presidential elections).
Also, AOC represents the Bronx, so yeah maybe she’s not going to have the same views as other Dems. It’s called Democracy, and they are representing their constituents. Also, there are more people living in California/New York/ etc, and they want different things than many moderates in other states. It sucks that in the system of checks and balances, we must all try to balance together.
As a former tour guide, I’ll never forget the reasonable Republican I gave a tour to of the heathen city of San Francisco. Before visiting, he thought our straw ban was really dumb, but then he said this during the tour:
“You know, in New Mexico, we think y’all are a bunch of idiots because of your plastic straw ban, but then you get here, look around and and are like, ‘Dang, there’s a lot of people here. That’s a lot of plastic straws.’”
We have a geographic divide, a cultural divide, and an economic divide. Honestly, the only person on the “right” that gets it is David Jolly. He does a great job of explaining the problems in our system without shitting on “wokeism” or using useless buzzwords. He’s why I’m a member of the SAM Party. Great interview yesterday btw, Charlie!
"The truth is you need both moderates and the progressive base to win. Moderate Republicans were never going to vote McAuliffe when a seemingly respectable, not-too-Trumpy, Youngkin was on the ballot and young people also stayed home (as they usually do in these non-presidential elections)."
Virginia was trending blue before Trump ever appeared, so it is valuable to understand what happened. It appears the change from 2020 to 2021 is the total collapse of Democratic support in rural areas of the state, and middle-of-the-road suburbanites flipping red. You write about AOC's district being different than other parts of the country. Yes, her district's representative is essentially elected in the Democratic primary. As you've written before, the embrace of the label "socialist" by some on the left is a messaging disaster. It seems to me what we have the right to demand from AOC and all those in safe Democratic districts is some message discipline. I live in a rural area and all one hears is "socialism" and culture war stuff.
What should the message be? First a statistic that Democrats should make sure every American knows: The three Democratic administrations going back to Jimmy Carter plus Biden's 10 months created in excess of 50 million jobs. The last three Republican administrations created a total of 1 million. In other words, go straight at the Republican strength, which is the belief that they are better at managing the economy. The message around the two big bills in the news should not be the big topline number, it should be about how the provisions in the bill will make our market economy work better for everyone. Emphasizing the topline number just plays into the tax-and-spend narrative. That narrative plays fine in AOC's district, but is poison elsewhere. AOC can continue to fight for her perspective in the halls of Congress, but she needs to be a team player on messaging to the wider country.
Lewis! My dude! We completely agree. The problem is a lack of trust. Progressives do not trust the DNC. Period. Look at this Mayor of Buffalo stuff happening. I am the first in line to decry the “socialist” hypocrites who actually love capitalism (they sure do a lot of tweetin’ on smart phones and other stuff capitalism gave them), but AOC has those ppl tweeting at her everyday. I’m not a big AOC fan, but I know her base well and they will never bend to the moderate wing. We need to start finding those transformational candidates that can rise above the Clinton/Sanders fued.
Samantha!!! Did you read The Triad today where JVL describes his podcast as filled with "crushing morosity and misanthropy?" He knows what draws his audience in! I've sworn off insulting Las Vegas for today, but I see your still stalking Senator Sinema. Any sightings of those transformational candidates?
No! We’re all screwed, Lewis!!!
"Why did a tiny minority of professional conservatives—and a relatively large number of suburban Republican-leaning voters—find themselves in opposition to Trump? It wasn’t just the tweets. It wasn’t only a question of style. It was the recognition that having a major political party submit to a conspiracy-minded, amoral opportunist would ultimately corrupt the party by forcing people to excuse and defend the indefensible. And that this corruption of a major party would ultimately create dangers for the country.
Not that anyone is keeping score, but . . . this view has been vindicated—fully, entirely, completely—by history."
This, from Sarah Longwell, is perfection! Tens of thousands of pages of reporting and observation boiled down to a gem of capital T Truth!
Frankly, free speech lost its luster for me some time back. It is highly overrated and is grounded in a principle that basically seems false: that conversation and debate over ideas will result in the best and most correct idea winning.
On its face, over the course of history, these seems false--outside of very narrow confines. I have been watching the political and policy debate in this (and other countries) for decades. I see "losing" ideas--ideas that don't work and that are bad for society hanging around in seeming immortality--or apparently dying, but NOT really--like Dracula in the old Hammer movies, someone pulls the stake out and there it is again. And again. And again.
The marketplace of ideas in public discourse is a sham. The idea that policies contend and are tried out and that there are winners and losers is a sham. How many times has "trickle down" economics failed to deliver? Or the Laffer Curve? (it should be laugher). And yet they get trotted out again, whenever the majority party changes. The same is true of many leftist policies.
Our study of cognition and human psychology has pointed out time and again that there isn't a lot of classical rationality or critical thought happening. But we keep pretending it is there... are we hoping beyond hope and long experience that it is magically going to appear? The Rationality Fairy is going to poof in and zap us with a magic wand and fix it?
Instead we are busy demonizing/dehumanizing each other on the basis of (largely) failed and stupid ideas that owe more to tribal membership and innate psychology than anything rational. Plus there is money to be made and power to be built, which distorts things even further.
I read through the Claremont Institute thing yesterday and just shook my head. Really?
Inside a forum where there are actual rules, where you are forced to actually confront contending ideas and make judgments based upon evidence, where there ARE winners and the losers die and disappear, where the people involved actually know what they are talking about (OMG, actual expertise!) that is a marketplace of ideas. What happens in public and on the internet isn't--unless the sole criteria is popularity?
It has been my experience that the things that are correct (as far as we can know them) don't tend to be popular.
There are too many contending narratives. The population is atomized and lives in a number of distinct realities (and it is unlikely that ANY of them are particularly correct, in an objective sense). A society cannot continue to function in this manner and hope to survive. There is no narrative that works to unite rather than dissolve. Lies are more attractive and powerful and popular than truth (which some people don't even believe exists).
A lie can run around the world before the truth gets its boot on.
That's often true, but the obvious question is, who gets to decide which speech is too dangerous to permit? I'd say that's something for the private sector to work out as best as it sees fit, but not the province of government. BTW I'm not saying that UCal is therefore obliged to hire David Duke in the name of free speech, just that if he were otherwise qualified for a job there it could not fire him solely for his views. Ie, I think that on balance the First Amendment is worth the cost.
An historical fact also worth mentioning is that the Nazi Party was actually declining in popularity when Franz von Papen convinced Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Adolf Hitler Chancellor. Go figure.
Whoever has the power gets to decide--that is the way things usually work. We can pretend to argue about it, but if and when it happens, it will be the people with wealth and power that decide.
Right now, it is in the interest of these people to feed you all the garbage you are currently being fed. It makes them money and gives them power. When that is no longer the case, or the people who have the force to "convince" them to do otherwise, ten things will change.
The government is no more and no less qualified to determine who can speak and who cannot than some plutocrat. Each entity or person will choose what they believe serves their interests best.
Actually judging what speech is too dangerous is pretty easy. It merely depends upon what your goal is. When in doubt, do not spare the ban hammer.
I trust the private sector no more than I trust the government. Actually, I trust the private sector less--because I KNOW who their master is (mammon) and what their goals are and they aren't really interested in MY well-being or in the well-being of society. Just look at Zuckerberg. The government is at least better at pretending and is a locus of contending powers and interests, even in an authoritarian state.
I do not think most people actually have an idea of what the First Amendment actually costs. particularly since we tend to look at it through through individual rather than societal eyes. But that is the way we have been trained to look at things. in our society. It is not really possible, I think, to make an accurate judgment of the cost/benefit ratio--and that will change depending upon what you value, anyway.
We exist in a narrative that says that everybody has something useful and important to say and where individual opinions have meaning and import.. and that these things should, in most cases, be respected.
We exist in a narrative that says that individuals have worth, in and of themselves (which leads to the belief that their thoughts and opinions also have worth, above).
This is narrative, it isn't actual fact. It IS a better narrative than many that we have had. There are certainly narratives I do not want to live within--but maybe that is also an artifact of the narrative I was born and raised in and I believe that because I do not know better.
If you are lucky, you live in a time and place where you can at least pretend that you get to choose your story. For most of human history this has not been true.
Zuckerberg can't throw me in jail for saying the wrong thing. He can't take away my right to say it at all or frighten me into keeping my mouth shut. To claim that plutocrats are as dangerous as government apparatchiks is very naive. Maybe if we lived in a Central American gangocracy it would be true. But so far we don't.
Your understanding of the power of plutocrats/corporations is naive. Who do you think ultimately runs the US government? It isn't the people. Why do you think we have the laws and the tax structure we do? Yes, Zuckerberg (or Musk or Bezos or Megacorp) isn't going to DIRECTLY put you in jail. But not all jails have walls and iron bars and they can influence and create laws through the government that CAN put you in jail--but their hands are clean, sort of.
Zuckerberg CAN ban you from saying things on his property (FB or other iterations) and you can be effectively silenced by the raging hoard that takes offense at what you say (or even injured or killed in extreme cases). How is being silenced/killed by some private citizen for what you say better than being silenced/killed by the government? Dead is dead. silent is silent. But you have been told/taught that one is acceptable and the other isn't... because of arbitrary rules.
I distrust power, period. Not that it does me much good, because power IS power regardless of whether I trust it or not.
Eh, I don't know if you've ever had ten cops show up at your door merely because you told a social worker you were having suicidal thoughts, and the law arguably obliged her to inform on me. Trust me, it's worse than being kicked off a comment section.
As for actually being murdered by private citizens, there are still laws against that sort of thing. Once the cops start doing it with impunity, laws are out the window and there's no turning back.
It's nice that there are laws against it... and you are still dead... and looking at some of the trials recently, they may well be able to do it with impunity.
Cops already kill people with impunity for no real reason other than either carelessness or fear or animus against the other.
I am not necessarily disagreeing with you here. What I am trying to do is point out the arbitrary nature of some of the distinctions that are being made and the reasoning (or lack thereof) behind them.
If the SA (or a contemporary equivalent) kills you or trashes your place of business or merely puts enough fear into you that you censor yourself (and they have the tacit support of people powerful enough so that they can avoid punishment) is it REALLY that different from the government doing it?
On an abstract level, certainly--but that is an artifact of our particular society/culture/abstract rules. The results are certainly the same.
This also begs the question: While A might be better than B for YOU, is A better than B for society? We are largely trained to not even ask that question or, if we do ask it, devalue the answer if it doesn't come out in favor of the individual.
I can't comment on the Social worker thing. I also work in a profession where I am a required reporter. It sometimes comes down to a judgment call. Sometimes the call is wrong. The general thought is that it is better to possibly save a life than it is to do nothing.
Doesn't sound like it was necessarily a problem with the reporting so much as the nature of the response. part of that is the general social perception of an animus towards certain behaviors or psychologies. Part of it is a lack of proper resources and training.
We hold (because we have been taught that way) that private censorship is okay but government censorship is not. The arguments put forward generally rely upon the extreme applications (imprisonment/death scenarios) which serve to hide the central incongruity/ambiguity about censorship.
I would argue (in this case), ultimately, that censorship is censorship, regardless of the source--and so you are either okay with it or not okay with it. If you are okay with it, who does it is really kind of beside the point. I would then argue, from a societal standpoint, that it is better for the government to do it than vigilantes.
That is one argument. There are contrary ones.
horde not hoard... in paragraph 2
Well said.
University of Austin. Yes, the list of advisors is impressive. But I personally don't find Ahmari, loathsome as he his, to be the worst. How about Joe Lonsdale (who I assume gave them their start-up money), a Thiel disciple who most recently said of Pete Buttigieg that Pete was a "loser" for taking parental leave to help take care of his twins. Because real men don't do that, or something. Why oh why would a group of distinguished public thinkers who preach civility (I'm looking at you, Arthur Brooks and Jonathan Rauch and Jonathan Haidt) want to be swept up with that guy. I'm not saying to cancel him, but it would be nice to see someone on that esteemed list say, "Now, just hold on there a minute, Joe..."
No shortage of good stuff in here, but what may have disturbed me the most (aside from the idea of Trump winning in 2024) is Ahmari's declaration that free inquiry and free speech are incompatible with Catholic teaching. Bold statement from THE OPINION EDITOR of the NY Post.