U.S. Politics: John Boehner Discovers Teh Intrawebs

[Starkess]

Isn't PBS the equivalent of the BBC? So not state-run news agency. Which also gets my spidey senses up a bit.

[all swedes are racist]

Isn't PBS the equivalent of the BBC? So not state-run news agency. Which also gets my spidey senses up a bit.

Huh?

[Starkess]

Someone upthread compared "state-run news agency" to the BBC, but I was just pointing out that isn't the equivalency. And I agreed with the sentiment that had been expressed about the possible misuse and abuse of a state-run news agency.

So, you know, basically the last page of the thread?

[all swedes are racist]

Oh, gotcha. The spidey sense thing just kinda confused me

[Starkess]

Sorry, it wasn't the best worded post I've ever written. :)

On an unrelated note, my boyfriend's boat is coming home from deployment soon, and the Family Readiness Group had a drawing for which sailor and SO will get the "First Kiss"--they get to see their sailor first and have this big kiss in front of everyone. And it just happened that the one man that is a member of the FRG won, so it's going to be a big ol' gay kiss and I think it's fucking awesome. Only a few years ago that sailor wouldn't have even been allowed to mention his SO. :thumbsup: for DADT repeal!

[Gertrude]

That is ... pretty damn awesome. :)

[TrackerNeil]

(Hopefully, the politics thread is the right place for this, but if not, mods, let me know and I'll start a new one.)

I read Jonathan Chait regularly, and this particularly caught my attention:

That the new political correctness has bludgeoned even many of its own supporters into despondent silence is a triumph, but one of limited use. Politics in a democracy is still based on getting people to agree with you, not making them afraid to disagree.

Let me say from the start that I acknowledge Chait has some, ah, problematic views, and the fact that he backed the Iraq invasion in my view tarnishes his credibility a good deal. However, I don't think he's completely off-base here. I'll see what others think. (It's a long read, sorry about that.)

[Gears of the Beast]

I read Jonathan Chait regularly, and this particularly caught my attention:

Let me say from the start that I acknowledge Chait has some, ah, problematic views, and the fact that he backed the Iraq invasion in my view tarnishes his credibility a good deal. However, I don't think he's completely off-base here. I'll see what others think. (It's a long read, sorry about that.)

That article was a bit meandering but pretty good. I think he justifies the position that political correctness is antithetical to liberalism well throughout the piece and I'm in strong agreement on most of it, except the stuff about Marxism - I'm not convinced on that and it seemed unnecessary to drag it in.

[Inigima]

It will surprise no one that I think that Chait piece is dogshit wankery, but I'll let the more eloquent Alex Pareene take it from here.

http://gawker.com/punch-drunk-jonathan-chait-takes-on-the-entire-internet-1682078451

[lokisnow]

(Hopefully, the politics thread is the right place for this, but if not, mods, let me know and I'll start a new one.)

I read Jonathan Chait regularly, and this particularly caught my attention:

Let me say from the start that I acknowledge Chait has some, ah, problematic views, and the fact that he backed the Iraq invasion in my view tarnishes his credibility a good deal. However, I don't think he's completely off-base here. I'll see what others think. (It's a long read, sorry about that.)

Agreed, I really liked it overall, especially the intriguing Marxist antecedents.

I also think John hodgman's response is pretty close to perfect and how I feel.

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/27/7924325/jonathan-chait-john-hodgman

[TerraPrime]

Re: Chait's piece

Meh. It's so much butthurt over the simple fact that he, and some of his friends, seems incapable of approaching certain topics without creating a backlash against that opinion.

Yes, the same critique offered by two different people can, and sometimes should, be evaluated differently. Oh, how shall we carry on under this horror?

What Chait was describing is not the evil of political correctness, but the power of a prevailing ideology in the context of diminishing competing thoughts. On conservative college campuses, it is the pro-imigrant, pro-LBGTQ, pro-women opinions that are threatened. This is not something inherent to liberalism that the left (or the neo-left) dreams up all on our own. The difference is that we deploy it back at the, here, wait for it and take a shot if you're playing a drinking game, privileged classes.

And, really, it's just a more erudite write-up of a generic Angry Gamergate rant: woe is me that I cannot speak freely and you mark my words, this is a terrible thing!

Pffffffffbbbbbbbbppppppttt.

Or, what Ini's linked article said.

[lokisnow]

I like the gawker article too, but I think it is important to have chait style warnings, lest we plunge down a slippery slope to the French Revolution. Hodgman has the best response though, as it contains none of the righteous indignation "how dare you question me" tone infused in the gawker article.

I think it's great to have an understanding of the seemingly insurmountable scope of the blindness of being a member of the privileged ( which means private law it's good to remember, literally different laws for us and them). But it's also worthwhile to call out the self destructive inward looking religious purges and purity tests inherent in all such movements, historically. That's true of the American right wing as well as the journalist left chait is calling out.

In other words there is danger as there always is in zealotry, we just have to balance that danger against the dangers of the inertia of status quo blindness.

[TrackerNeil]

What Chait was describing is not the evil of political correctness, but the power of a prevailing ideology in the context of diminishing competing thoughts. On conservative college campuses, it is the pro-imigrant, pro-LBGTQ, pro-women opinions that are threatened. This is not something inherent to liberalism that the left (or the neo-left) dreams up all on our own. The difference is that we deploy it back at the, here, wait for it and take a shot if you're playing a drinking game, privileged classes.

I do detest the term "political correctness", which is to my mind a way of describing any care that must now be taken in discussion that inconveniences the privileged. And so I dismiss concern about it. However, I think Chait circles around something that I know I've seen, and that I think is important.

Oftentimes in discussions between liberal-minded folks, if someone claims to be offended, the rest of us must agree, without question or reservation, that an offense was committed. Those who refuse are told they are being bigoted, closeminded, hateful, and creating an environment that is unsafe. I don't buy this. Sometimes people's perceptions don't line up with reality, and those people find offense where none was meant or committed. That being the case, I don't think we should allow the bounds of reasoned, genuine debate to be set by the most sensitive or disjointed person in the room. In my view, just because someone finds offense doesn't mean offense exists.

In addition, I am distressed by the way allies who are perceived to misstep are sometimes treated. Check out the vitriol Kate Pierson received when she released her single "Mister Sister." I don't want to rehash the controversy, but what I perceived was that, no matter how egregious her offense (assuming one thinks she offended), we should never forget that Pierson is and has been a long-time LGBTQ ally. From what I witnessed, you'd think she was Jesse Helms come again. It was absurd. Call Pierson out if you think she's gone wrong, but let's not confuse her releasing one song that might have been somewhat tone-deaf with some kind of deliberate and significant harm to trans people.

I dabbled in a few discussions, but I quickly found that there was this Orwellian manner of speaking in which no objection to orthodoxy was acceptable. If Pierson did not agree with her critics, she was "dismissing trans experience." If she turned to other trans people to check herself, she was "dividing the community and using others as her shield." And if anyone dared to object to this treatment, they were "tone policing." It was a Newspeak that effectively classified anything other than complete prostration as hate speech.

Let me be clear: I'm not advocating that we allow anyone to speak without consequence. I think that we have a right (and, sometimes, a duty) to call people on what they say. We're liberals, and that to my mind means supporting a free forum for discussion even at risk of offending each other. Sometimes we'll hurt feelings, and when we do we'll have more discussion. However, if we're creating a model in which missteps are capital offenses, in my view we're not being very liberal.

[kuenjato]

I like the gawker article too, but I think it is important to have chait style warnings, lest we plunge down a slippery slope to the French Revolution. Hodgman has the best response though, as it contains none of the righteous indignation "how dare you question me" tone infused in the gawker article.

I think it's great to have an understanding of the seemingly insurmountable scope of the blindness of being a member of the privileged ( which means private law it's good to remember, literally different laws for us and them). But it's also worthwhile to call out the self destructive inward looking religious purges and purity tests inherent in all such movements, historically. That's true of the American right wing as well as the journalist left chait is calling out.

In other words there is danger as there always is in zealotry, we just have to balance that danger against the dangers of the inertia of status quo blindness.

Sullivan has a piece on it as well, and correctly identifies it as a process of gaining and allocating power. The blatant and blanket dismissals by some, including such hyperbole as comparing it to GamerGate (evoking in turn this board's problem with RequiresHate i.e. she says what I likes so I'll ignore the problems beneath and smear any opposition), is unsurprising.

edit: Tracker said it much better.

[Inigima]

After some discussion elsewhere, while I still don't think much of the Chait piece, I have to concur that grappling with privilege as a concept is difficult, and I shouldn't judge others so harshly since I made that leap not so long ago. And I would add that I'm quite sure I have plenty far to go yet myself.

Tangentially, someone else posited -- and I agree -- that we are collectively still grappling with the idea of prejudice (and so on) as non-binary states in which someone is, for example, either a racist piece of shit or pretty much a saint. That has implications for both someone being called out and for someone doing the calling out.

That is, most or all of us probably have inappropriate prejudices, as a matter of degree. As someone calling out prejudiced behavior or commentary, it's worth keeping that in mind, and not assuming that someone is head-to-toe awful because they aren't perfect in this regard. And as someone being called out for the same, we have to learn to hear criticism like that as a criticism of that behavior, as hopefully it's intended, rather than as a criticism of the person, if we're going to improve.

[Shryke]

http://gawker.com/the-koch-brothers-will-spend-an-ungodly-sum-buying-the-1681897772

The Koch Brothers have told their allies that the groups they supportplan to spend $900 million to influence the 2016 elections. That's a lot!

Specifically, that means that the Kochs and their rich, conservative allies who donate to the various conservative groups that operate under the Koch umbrella will spend more than twice the $400 million they spent on the last presidential election, and much more than the $657 million that "the Republican National Committee and the party's two congressional campaign committees spent" in the 2012 presidential election cycle. It is an amount almost equal to the $1 billion that the Republicans are expected to spend on their nominee this time around. It means that the Koch brothers in effect represent a political money force equal to that of the Republican party itself. "And unlike the parties," the New York Times notes, "the Koch network is constructed chiefly out of nonprofit groups that are not required to disclose their donors. Among other advantages, it makes it almost impossible to tell how much of the money is provided by the Kochs — who are among the wealthiest men in the country — and how much by other donors."

http://gawker.com/the-koch-brothers-will-spend-an-ungodly-sum-buying-the-1681897772

At this point, one expects it might be cheaper to just buy another country.

And yes, this means they will be spending almost as much as the GOP itself.

[Commodore]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/397324/liberals-seek-pc-exemption-kevin-d-williamson

Jonathan Chait’s recent critique of political correctness insists that the phenomenon has undergone a resurgence. It hasn’t; contrary to Chait’s characterization, it never went away. The difference is that it is now being used as a cudgel against white liberals such as Jonathan Chait, who had previously enjoyed a measure of immunity. Chait is in roughly the same position as Lena Dunham, who is so obviously confused by feminists who insist that she, a spoiled white Manhattan princess of progressivism, has little to contribute to the discussion of the situation of women who do not come from such rarefied circumstances.

Because Chait is intellectually dishonest, I will not go into his essay in great detail. And that isn’t really even necessary. Chait is stumbling, in his way, toward the realization that in political arguments intelligent adults pay attention mainly to what is being said, while fatuous children pay attention mainly to who is saying it. Chait is hardly in a position to complain about that, given his own heavy reliance on that mode of discourse. Chait isn’t arguing for taking an argument on its own merits; he’s arguing for a liberals’ exemption to the Left’s general hostility toward any unwelcome idea that comes from a speaker who checks any unapproved demographic boxes, the number of which — “cisgendered,” etc. — is growing in an appropriately cancerous fashion. “White males” is a category that includes Jonathan Chait and Rush Limbaugh, and Chait, naturally, doesn’t like that much.

[Ramsay Gimp]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/397324/liberals-seek-pc-exemption-kevin-d-williamson

An especially good part from that article, and relevant to this thread (my interjections bolded)

^from the Chait article

Williamson's Reply: One can make the case that Koch-style libertarianism — which runs the range from low regulation to gay marriage to drug reform — is bad policy. Or one can do what Chait does here: Dismiss the argument because of where it comes from: Rich guys who inherit money, in this view, must believe what they believe out of self-interested and dishonest reasons. If there is another possible explanation, Chait is not much interested in it.

[Summah]

I think Chait does sound like a "whiny man-baby". He is in absolutely no danger of being silenced. And neither are white people, men etc in general either.

[TrackerNeil]

Bryan Lowder does in my view a solid job of analysis of the Chait piece. Here's what I consider the most interesting part:

Here, Chait (and Sulllivan and Dan Savage, who all echoed him on this point) picks up on what is truly the most self-defeating part of contemporary PC culture—the refusal to distinguish between ignorance and genuine disagreement. We are not talking, to be clear, about disagreeing over, say, the value of trans lives or the fairness of gay marriage; those are no longer things seriously up for debate. But plenty of legitimate contentions remain.

This is where I find myself in greatest agreement. Just because I don't see eye to eye with the point of view of someone who isn't a cisgendered gay white male doesn't mean I'm refusing to consider any view other than my own, or that I need education, or to just listen. It might just mean I disagree, period. We liberals are the ones who helped make it OK to swim against the stream, and that shouldn't change just because our own waters have so many different currents.