He's talking about elected representatives - who are the people who are representing these interests in Congress. There really aren't many, and those that you could point to have really been converts - they weren't elected because of those principles. And the reason for that is probably mostly the result of, first, the Tea Party having about a five year head start on the left's equivalent (remember, identity politics really rose up very quickly around 2013), and second, the fact that young people don't vote.
Sorry, his question was a little hard to decipher. The answer is:
Barack Obama capitalised on the university crowd to get elected, but in no way was he a far-left representative or one that had any desire to move the needle remotely towards that area.
Barack Obama was not elected by some leftist equivalent of the Tea Party - or, to us his words, the "NRA-beholden, the anti-immigrant, or the EPA-is-the-devil-ers". He's not some Chomsky fanatic. The guy is a reasonable, intelligent, centrist politician, and is in most ways not an ideologue. In other words, politicians like Obama are what we should be striving for, not decrying or attempting to cast as equivalents to, say, Michelle Bachmann.
I mean, hell watch this.
... Oh my God, I miss that guy. Now I'm depressed.
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Serious question: is Barack Obama the far-left because he’s black or had a Muslim father? Because that’s the strawman on the far right...
Serious question: is Barack Obama the far-left because he’s black or had a Muslim father? Because that’s the strawman on the far right...
I don't think Obama was "far left". I do think he drew heavy support from them and definitely pandered to them. It's not unlike many right wing politicians. Very few mainstream politicians are "far" anything. Many do pander to voting bases with those positions to get elected though.
For the record, I was a very big supporter of Obama, and went to see him speak live, prior to his election.
I remain of the opinion that there is no true dialectic in the US between extreme right and left. The extreme right is enabled, abetted, funded, and championed by many wealthy interests: a perverted betrayal of many poor citizens’ best interests, but a thrust that continues to exacerbate inequality and social ills.
I agree that the economic far left poses no real challenge to the far right in America. But I don't think traditional notions of left-right hold up in today's political climate. Silicon Valley is the crucible of modern capitalism. However, the lords of the new economy despise Trump, and champion the cutting edge of progressive politics.
And you're thinking of the moneyed interests as the 1 per cent. But what about the 20 per cent? The educated, progressive, urban professionals who skew heavily Democrat today? Virtually all of the wealthiest 100 counties in the U.S. went to Clinton. The leafy suburbs of Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, with their lawyers, doctors, professors, and HR managers, are the Democratic heartland today.
On economic issues, the Democrats largely abandoned the working class and economic egalitarianism in favour of identity politics and social progressivism. I don't think you can say at all that the Republicans are the party of moneyed interests anymore, when Clinton ended up with three times the campaign funding as Trump did.
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Originally Posted by AltaGuy
So yeah - social issues get some play - and make it seem as if the discourse is a dialectic. It’s not: the extreme right is backed by money, while the extreme left is part of a party that is firmly centrist and will never go far left because it would hurt its own moneyed interests too much.
Social issues get more than 'some play.' Dogmas that only 10 years ago were confined to radical academia have become core social orthodoxy in progressive culture. Questioning those orthodoxies, no matter how provisionally, ends careers.
In 2005, a left-leaning American could challenge radical assertions that all differences in group outcomes are due to systemic oppression, that wearing ethnic costumes is egregious oppression, that American society is rape culture, or that toxic masculinity governs every dimension of our society. Today, you will be cast out of progressive society, and may well lose your job, if you challenge such orthodoxies. Just ask Katie Roiphe, Erika Christakis, and James Damore.
If social issues aren't that important in politics today, why are figures like Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, and Jordan Peterson vilified by the left? I'm confident all of them support universal public health care, public education, and progressive taxation. Nothing in their writing suggests they're patsies for the plutocrats who foster growing inequality. And yet they're reviled in every progressive media outlet and blog.
Then there's immigration. Progressive sensibilities have changed dramatically in only a few years.
Quote:
In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, “Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that “immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants” and that “the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.” His conclusion: “We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.” That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, “When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”
The blogger was Glenn Greenwald. The columnist was Paul Krugman. The senator was Barack Obama.
...In its immigration section, the 2008 (Democratic) platform referred three times to people entering the country “illegally.” The immigration section of the 2016 platform didn’t use the word illegal, or any variation of it, at all.
“A decade or two ago,” says Jason Furman, a former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, “Democrats were divided on immigration. Now everyone agrees and is passionate and thinks very little about any potential downsides.”
I don't think it's useful to see this only in terms of American politics in the least few years. This polarization and magnification of the voices of extremists is not confined to the U.S., and it predates Trump and Obama. You see it in the UK too, and increasingly in Canada as well. When a Liberal or Conservative politician would make a mistake or a gaffe, he'd give a half-hearted defence and then move on, and his colleagues would ignore it. Now, the opposing party is villified for even raising the issue, and the party closes ranks and defends their own to the hilt. It's us or them, black and white, attack attack attack. Moderation is seen as weakness, compromise as treason.
And it goes beyond formal politics. I was recently sanctioned on a hobby forum for taking a fairly moderate stance on an issue that some activists were up in arms about. I doubt more than a fraction of the people in this hobby care about the issue. And yet a movement is emerging that will almost certainly rip through the hobby, leaving dozens of flames wars and a divided hobby its wake. That's the power of a small and intensely motivated cohort to completely dominate discussion in today's social media environment.
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This is a very deterministic opinion, and I don't believe that it is substantiated. The concept of 7.2 Billion people being "programmed" the same way after being subject to different cultural forces is ridiculously simplistic.
The current science on nature vs nurture is that it's about a 50/50 split.
Evolution doesn't stop at the neck. There are all sorts of behaviours imprinted on us that are recognized as universal. Our minds are the minds of highly evolved, status-seeking, violent primates. Our social instincts are the consequence of our needs as a species for hundreds of thousands of years. Culture can suppress some instincts, but it's very difficult to overcome them altogether.
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Manipulation (social, economic especially) of the huddled masses has a had a profound impact on society around the world, but so glaringly obvious in the U.S.
We don't need manipulation from above for our discourse to be hobbled by all sorts of cognitive biases. I don't think anybody planned for social media to amplify conflict and polarization. In group behaviour and binary thinking are deeply imprinted in our nature. We've managed to overcome them at times to build our civilization. But the institutions that helped us sustain liberal, tolerant, pluralistic society are under a lot of pressure today. I don't think the masters of the universe really want the breakdown of society. And I don't think they really understand what's happening any better than the rest of us.
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Who are these Chomskyists in government? They’d be the counterpoint to the Deep State crowd for sure - but I don’t know of any.
The radical dogma that has been entrenched in universities 30 years has wedged its way into mainstream culture as its adherents graduate and go into influential fields such as teaching, entertainment, and journalism.
There was no broad public debate on whether the principle of equality of opportunity was sufficient to foster a just society, or whether it needed to abandoned and replaced with equality of outcome. No debate on whether treating people as individuals following universal principles is the best way to foster a liberal society, or whether our political identity is our group identity, and society is an unrelenting struggle between those identities.
People have been emerging from universities for decades now hewing to a kind of passionate orthodoxy on those issues. They are now deeply entrenched in influential fields in education and culture, and treat any challenge to that orthodoxy as immoral. Among the progressive left today, this stuff isn't up for debate. If you try to debate this dogma, treat it like any other scientific or political assertion, it's evidence that you're a misogynist and racist. They've become what Jonathan Haidt calls sacred values. Cultural Marxism really is a new religion, and should be recognized by moderates as such and challenged when it threatens liberal values. Just as moderate conservatives need to recognize the inflexibility of religious conservatives, and call them out when their dogma is a threat to tolerant, secular society.
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Last edited by CliffFletcher; 07-05-2018 at 07:57 AM.
Left and right and representations for societal progression or societal conservation respectively. Progressives embrace change and moving society forward. The most obvious targets of societal progression are social issues like the standard bearers of civil rights, voting rights and human rights. But those are more the results of having a progressive society not the goal itself.
Historically, it's the economic issues that drive societies, and ultimately culture, forward. Generally speaking, those societies with economic systems that are the least socialized also tend to be the most repressive. I don't believe that Communism can be considered here because we've never seen a real Communist system in action. All of the so-called Communist nations still had all of the wealth concentrated with a very small group of people. A real communist society would be more akin to an indigenous tribe or an Israeli Kibbutz.
The polarization of left vs. right, change vs. remain, progress vs. conserve has always been in place since at least the Ancient Greeks. They debated how quickly society should progress. Typically, those with the most resources argued for little to no change while those with fewer resources argue for quicker progress. This debate is a necessary. Progress that is too fast can have negative unintended consequences while a lack of progress can lead to the ultimate collapse of a society. So, the pendulum back and forth between dynamic and static societal progress is a vital component of any democracy. Progress is inevitable but it must remain in check otherwise it can lead to chaos.
It's inevitable that there will be extreme positions on both sides. And of course, those with the bulk of the resources will almost always want to protect the status quo and vice versa. That said, most modern democracies tend to progress slowly with the occasional hard swing one way or the other. I don't think it's worse now than it normally is but what is worse is that those extreme voices actually have a platform so they are more readily heard than at any other time in history. That may end up causing more extreme swings of the pendulum.
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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
The radical dogma that has been entrenched in universities 30 years has wedged its way into mainstream culture as its adherents graduate and go into influential fields such as teaching, entertainment, and journalism.
There was no broad public debate on whether the principle of equality of opportunity was sufficient to foster a just society, or whether it needed to abandoned and replaced with equality of outcome. No debate on whether treating people as individuals following universal principles is the best way to foster a liberal society, or whether our political identity is our group identity, and society is an unrelenting struggle between those identities.
People have been emerging from universities for decades now hewing to a kind of passionate orthodoxy on those issues. They are now deeply entrenched in influential fields in education and culture, and treat any challenge to that orthodoxy as immoral. Among the progressive left today, this stuff isn't up for debate. If you try to debate this dogma, treat it like any other scientific or political assertion, it's evidence that you're a misogynist and racist. They've become what Jonathan Haidt calls sacred values. Cultural Marxism really is a new religion, and should be recognized by moderates as such and challenged when it threatens liberal values. Just as moderate conservatives need to recognize the inflexibility of religious conservatives, and call them out when their dogma is a threat to tolerant, secular society.
I must admit that - to me - you sound like the one on the witch hunt. These radicalized post-college students infiltrating the ranks of teachers, journalists, etc: I don’t see them. Maybe I know of or see a few - I know a few postdoc radicals in their 25th year of post-secondary education - but I don’t see them as widespread. At all.
Yes, some very successful professors have spoken out against illiberal behaviour from the radical left. Amusing that the professors you named are all millionaires many times over and certainly have never had problems getting their ideas out there if we’re going to worry about the radical left.
To me this example proves two points:
1. The radical left is weak and ineffective. They can’t even do the little things they want to do like shut newly rich Jordan Peterson up.
2. The radical left is a red herring and propaganda tool: witness the popularity and immediate acclaim of academics like Peterson, Harris, Pinker who bemoan the censorship attempted by the radical left.
I am not supportive of the radical left: I feel like they live in a different reality than the majority. And many are illiberal, entitled brats.
What I take issue with is the attitude that they are anywhere near as threatening to our society as the radical right. The radical left - largely because of focus on identity - tends to eat itself. Fights break out among groups championing different narrow agendas, faculties at universities are paralyzed with inactivity, and protesters can’t even agree on what they’re marching for.
Meanwhile, the federal government in the US actually had a policy to separate children from parents and detain them. There are many, many far right politicians, lobby groups, and think tanks with enormous power. They have a news station. It just isn’t equivalent, and should not be held as such.
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CliffFletcher's whole spiel is just dogma of a different sort, repeated ad nauseam for the last how many years.
Nothing moderate or centrist about it, except in his own world where "classical liberal" somehow doesn't mean right wing conservative.
My spiel would have been recognized as mainstream liberalism anytime in the 20th century. It's only in the last 15 years that the left was captured by identarian, cultural Marxism. That's why a great many people who were unabashed liberals in the 20th century look at the progressive left today and wonder what in #### is happening.
Liberalism differs fundamentally from right-wing conservatism.
Liberal: Treat people as individuals.
Right-wing conservative: Treat whites and people of colour differently under the law; treat men and women differently under the law.
Liberal: Ensure equality of opportunity through publicly funded education and merit-based entrance exams.
Right-wing conservative: The affluent deserve to pass on to their children all the advantages their money affords them.
Liberal: The private behaviour of individuals is no concern of the state, so long as they aren't causing problems for others.
Right-wing conservative: Society has a duty to uphold traditional morality and suppress immoral behaviour, whether it's private or not.
Liberal: Foster the widest possible public discourse to encourage new ideas, innovation, and free expression.
Right-wing conservative: Police speech to ensure conformity with established norms. We already know what is right and correct. New and unproven ideas are likely to be disruptive and harmful to society.
Several of the authoritarian values of right-wing conservatives are being mimicked by the left today. Which is why there's a growing chasm between liberals and the illiberal left.
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What I take issue with is the attitude that they are anywhere near as threatening to our society as the radical right. The radical left - largely because of focus on identity - tends to eat itself. Fights break out among groups championing different narrow agendas, faculties at universities are paralyzed with inactivity, and protesters can’t even agree on what they’re marching for.
Meanwhile, the federal government in the US actually had a policy to separate children from parents and detain them. There are many, many far right politicians, lobby groups, and think tanks with enormous power. They have a news station. It just isn’t equivalent, and should not be held as such.
As an educated, liberal, urban Canadian, the radical left is more of a threat to me and my values than right-wing Americans. Canada's national broadcaster has been largely captured by the identarian left. On anything touching on social issues, the CBC's stance is indistinguishable from radical leftist academics. Many corporations are adopting the same dogma, as are traditional mainstream media. And the problem is a great many people who aren't ardent identarian Marxists go along with it because A) it's the thing you do in polite, progressive society, and B) (and this is where polarization comes in) because they somehow feel that as the right gets more extreme, the left needs to as well as a sort of counterbalance.
So that's why I challenge the far left more than the right - it's where I live. Personally, I don't see any purpose in me challenging far-right politics. I don't know any people who follow it. I don't think anything would be accomplished by joining the millions of people denouncing Donald Trump. The folly of the far right seems pretty self-evident to me, and not worth wasting breath over.
If I lived in rural Kansas I'd probably feel differently. But I don't. And I don't see much point in concerning myself with the domestic politics of a foreign country, except insofar as it demonstrates wide-spread social changes that are happening across the developed world.
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Figure this is as good a place to ask as any: I’m looking for recommendations of great (or at least, interesting) books covering social and political issues (and ideally, those that intertwine the two).
I’ve read a lot of Hitchens, McInnis, and Coates previously, but I’m honestly really really behind in my reading. I read 12 Rules recently, and have looked into some books by Harris and Hayes (to name a couple) but I’d like some recommendations on good reads to expand my mind a bit.
Anything interesting, regardless of where it falls on the “political spectrum” is very welcome.
Figure this is as good a place to ask as any: I’m looking for recommendations of great (or at least, interesting) books covering social and political issues (and ideally, those that intertwine the two).
I can recommend the Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. It's tailored to American politics, and Haidt has an overly tidy notion of liberals vs conservatives. But he's onto something when he identifies how sacred values govern so much of our social and political behaviour.
Top of my 'to read' list is The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics by David Goodhart. I've only read the free Kindle chapter, but it looks good so far. It's mainly from a UK perspective, but it's observations about the growing gap between people who feel themselves citizens of the world and those deeply rooted to a place and a close community seem to apply to North American politics as well.
And I highly recommend Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein. It's a history of how Nixon changed American politics and set the table for the divisions we see today. It's also a fascinating portrait of American in the late 60s, the last time the country was so inflamed with social unrest and anger.
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If anyone caught it, the last June Waking Up podcast has Andrew Yang on talking about universal income.
Granted, I was already ready to buy in, but he makes a really strong argument, suggesting it’s not just the low-level jobs that will be lost in great numbers to AI (retail, food service, truck driving), but also jobs that require a significant amount of money and training to be qualified for (Oncology for example).
The main takeaway is a very dire look at our future without a universal basic income on the horizon.
In the 1800s it was the Luddites smashing weaving machines. These days retail staff worry about automatic checkouts. Sooner or later taxi drivers will be fretting over self-driving cars.
The battle between man and machines goes back centuries. Are they taking our jobs? Or are they merely easing our workload?
A study by economists at the consultancy Deloitte seeks to shed new light on the relationship between jobs and the rise of technology by trawling through census data for England and Wales going back to 1871.
Their conclusion is unremittingly cheerful: rather than destroying jobs, technology has been a “great job-creating machine”. Findings by Deloitte such as a fourfold rise in bar staff since the 1950s or a surge in the number of hairdressers this century suggest to the authors that technology has increased spending power, therefore creating new demand and new jobs.
That is also covered in the podcast from two different angles.
While technology has created jobs, using data from the industrial revolution is not sufficient to deal with the way AI is replacing human labour today. It’s not simply making things easier, it’s making them easier to the point where humans will not need to be involved at all, and it’s going to disproportionately impact the 40+ crowd who don’t have the capability to retrain. You’re going to have more hair dressers, and more bartenders, but that’s the solution for young people who are more and more directed to jobs that stand a lower chance of automation (hair dressers, massage therapists). The problem with that is that the supply of labour is going to outrank the demand for it very quickly, especially when you’re losing large swaths of the workforce in record time.
In addition, this new automation is going to have a devastating impact on small towns and requires people to have a high degree of mobility. In-state relocation (moving from small towns to big cities) is at a serious low, because people simply can not afford to live in the urban areas that are going to be able to handle AI automation much easier.
Yang pointed out that otherwise intelligent people have a dependency on looking to the past to predict the future of AI automation when mother remotely comparable has occurred like it, instead of looking at the present. He was very good in addressing concerns over “why is this time different.”
It was a great episode.
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That is also covered in the podcast from two different angles.
While technology has created jobs, using data from the industrial revolution is not sufficient to deal with the way AI is replacing human labour today. It’s not simply making things easier, it’s making them easier to the point where humans will not need to be involved at all, and it’s going to disproportionately impact the 40+ crowd who don’t have the capability to retrain. You’re going to have more hair dressers, and more bartenders, but that’s the solution for young people who are more and more directed to jobs that stand a lower chance of automation (hair dressers, massage therapists). The problem with that is that the supply of labour is going to outrank the demand for it very quickly, especially when you’re losing large swaths of the workforce in record time.
In addition, this new automation is going to have a devastating impact on small towns and requires people to have a high degree of mobility. In-state relocation (moving from small towns to big cities) is at a serious low, because people simply can not afford to live in the urban areas that are going to be able to handle AI automation much easier.
Yang pointed out that otherwise intelligent people have a dependency on looking to the past to predict the future of AI automation when mother remotely comparable has occurred like it, instead of looking at the present. He was very good in addressing concerns over “why is this time different.”
It was a great episode.
Thanks for the heads up. I don’t listen to all of his podcasts, just what I think will be interesting to me, so this one is now on my listen list.
