The NYT's Taylor Lorenz falsely accuses a tech investor of using a slur after spending months trying to infiltrate and monitor a new app that allows free conversation.
I loved this article. I see at my university with terms like Latinx. As a Mexican American I see that young kids from privileged backgrounds are exploiting all this bs. Everyone wants to be a victim and everyone is so easily offended and scared of self reflection and criticism.
I recall very vividly watching a CNN town hall panel of average citizens talking about the Trayvon Martin case. One young woman wanted to say something very important to her: "And why did you say I'm African-American?" she asked the panel moderator. "I think that's ridiculous. Charlize Theron is African-American. I'm *Black*." She was a liberal, proud, black woman speaking her mind and it was beautiful. There is a pretty big distance between the average minority voter and the progressive leftist that wants to use terms like African-American and Latinx.
BTW, the most ridiculous part of this is that "retard" is no longer acceptable. Kids in middle school are already calling people they want to insult "mentally disabled"... "What, do you have a mental disability or something?". Remember "Idiot" was a clinical term that turned into an insult and so they changed the clinical term to "mentally retarded" which turned into an insult and so they changed the clinical term.... it's a neverending cycle. The American Kennel Club has been wise enough to continue using bitch, because as soon as they change it, it will be co-opted for use as an insult.
Exactly--it is truly the victim mentality-- it is all about finding a special tribe-- being special by being able to say things from a protected place. So tiresome if it wasn't so sad and pathetic. What kind of values do these people have.
The ones given to them, most likely. We're a consumerist culture that's commodified everything, including ourselves. It's no wonder we desperately want to be in boxes.
Takes a while to deprogram, you know?
I ain't old, but I ain't young anymore, and it's only recently that I've come around to the idea of rejecting labels entirely. There's a few I'll accept for myself, but only as shorthand descriptions. I'll use them to describe others too, but again for the same purpose.
People are deep. You can't ever slap a word on 'em and call the job done.
"People are deep. You can't ever slap a word on 'em and call the job done."
Mostly, perhaps, but I can definitely cite a few examples. Or, if there's anything more deep in them, their ugly natures tend to overwhelm any interest in finding it; we have to judge people by what they express to us. And while beauty may only be skin deep, ugly is often to the bone, and I don't mean that literally.
I'm Irish. Born in NYC to immigrant parents. Who would get truly pissed off if someone mistook them for Welsh, Scot, or god forbid English (my grandfather fought in the Easter Rebellion). Here's my question:
Isn't 'Latinex' kind of racist in itself? I mean...lumping in a Cuban with a Peruvian or Mexican? My personal experience of both VZ & Cuba demonstrates two cultures as distinct as the Irish and the Scots. I dunno...
I don't think latinx is racist for that reason... in my experience, latin people are happy to call themselves latino or latina in their native Spanish. Latino/latina is a common word in Spanish (it's the same word, just gender-inflected) and people use it frequently.
The problem to me is that 'latinx' seems to be a Spanish word that was coopted by non-Spanish speakers to nonsensically remove the gender inflection.
Every noun in Spanish is gender-inflected. If you tell a Spanish speaker to speak without gender inflection, you might as well tell them to not talk. There is no means in the language to remove the gender inflection of a word. To even attempt to do so is approaching the problem from a state of complete ignorance, as I understand things. How embarrassing.
Only if the people who came up with this idiotic NewSpeak were capable of being embarrassed or had any self awareness at all, but that doesn't concern them. It's all a naked power grab, because to them, power is everything. And they mean to have it.
"Hey, we made a new word for your nationality/ethnicity/heritage that's inoffensive. Oh, and also, there's literally no way you can say this word in your own language and have it be grammatically correct. You're welcome."
And by the way, we invented a new, awkward-to-pronounce suffix that you can now conveniently graft onto the end of all your gender-problematic words. It sounds muy bonitinx!
We'll roll that out with the next software version after we get the bugs worked out...
Latinx wherever it came from didn’t come from a Hispanic person. That term was forced upon people by some intellectual at a University to pretend that normal people give a shit about that term.
Things weren’t easy growing up where I did but I overcame that and didn’t blame everyone and their Mother for things being rough. I’ve struggled less in school than others because I have had to deal with real problems. I’ve had classes complain about reading too much in a Masters program. These kids are coddled now and you see that in all aspects of life but media is a prime example and the elite media are the same people running the universities and educational systems
. . . putting aside the fact that somewhere around 2-3% of those who are presumably described by it actually identify with "Latinx" versus "Latino" or better yet "Hispanic".
You're correct that "lumping in" dozens of different ethnic groups under the general term "Latinx" (never seen it written with an "e") is itself kind of racist, or at least reductive of the complexity of those groups. However, there's another insult involved which is calling people something that they themselves do not wish to be called. Pew did a study and found that it's rarely the preferred term: https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/
Because it makes no sense. As I posted above, it's linguistically nonsensical to remove the gender inflection of any noun in Spanish. It's embarrassing that anybody is even trying.
The ones who should really be embarrassed are the vanishingly few hispanics who do speak Spanish and know what you say is true, yet still actually buy this crap. I don't know, maybe 1%? Possibly as high as 2% if you count "Beto" O' Rourke and Hilaria Baldwin.
Of course, like the rest of their Woke brethren, sistren, and LGBTQWTF-stren, they are incapable of being embarrassed.
Yeah...well...I don't use the term enuf maybe? :) I thought that was where you were going, but I didn't want to make an assumption. The comments here are eye-opening.
I guess many want unique identity but all the British Islanders were people of the Celtic nation originally. True nations are related people, not the false substitution word for a bordered country.
My culture was prominently Scots-Irish until the 1950s when various hordes flooded out of Philadelphia all over them. Ironically Scots-Irish refugee hordes from the battle with the Church of England's domination over their Presbytery had flooded the original Quakers and Mennonites in Pennsylvania. Much Larger hordes of starving overpopulated, (no) thanks to a South American potato, Irish came soon after and hordes from also overpopulated Europe followed them.
No cultures want to be dominated by others even if there is enough land confiscated from other species to share. We see that still today, often stupidly hidden behind phony race/ethnicity covers when the real battle is between incompatible cultures.
The Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh were all Celtic groups until the Germanic hordes, Vikings (Norwegians in Ireland, Danes in Scotland and England) and Germans (Angles and Saxons in southern Britain), began invading/migrating into those isles. The Germanic and Celtic nations, including the mostly Celtic French, are very different cultures from each other but both are similar within their own nations.
Under the stress of ever more overpopulation true nations battle for land and resources with each other, or groups within nations will if the need is more immediate. Scott and Irish clans battled incessantly centuries ago, as did Japanese clans, some battles historically notorious. Ironically Picts held northern Britain until Irish "Scotty" invaded. If they hadn't it would now be "Pictland."
That’s because identity politics replaces a hierarchy of meritocracy with a hierarchy of victimhood. Just like the communists elevated the poorest peasant and street criminals above all others - even within the gulags. Everyone ends up fighting with each other and jockeying for favor while the elite goes about systematically killing off and persecuting the smarter ones who could pose a threat to the elites’ power. Ultimately Marxism/Commumism is about nihilism a killing humans but first in order to do this, they must destroy humanity and the institutions that hold society together / civilization. It takes a murderous psychopath to think and do what communists / marxists / identity politics do. Their goal is a ihli sting the human race. Of course that hint about this with things like the climate change agenda and population control and dissuading women from having children - especially the smart ones who would have smarty children.
I wish I could remember where I read it so i could provide a link, but I recall a survey that found that only about 3% of those of Hispanic heritage approved of the latinx label.
And one of the saddest consequences of this trend is that a great many actual victims become invisible because "poser victims" are hogging the limelight.
Actual Marxists are class-based economic populists. They don’t give a shit about stuff like this. Maybe you mean “Stalinist”, which is more applicable. These people are basically authoritarians, that’s about it, and authoritarianism can come from the right just as it can come from the center or the left.
What is the point of people always making this relativist point that evil can come from all sides of the political spectrum? Who cares? It is coming from the Left now. That is what matters. If we don’t stop it NOW we won’t be around to watch out for it next time.
I'm pretty hardcore conservative anti-government but you'd struggle to convince me only the left is evil. People like Newt Gingrich and Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney all represent that same lockstep-party elitism (within the own elite of their party at that) and are just as happy to bomb someone they dislike. They would do whatever is asked of them like good little bootlickers if it meant furthering their and "the parties" ideals.
FoxNews was calling Biden's executive actions "Mussolini-like" so I don't know. Its so much bullshit right now its gotten harder to differentiate if its fake bullshit to gaslight or real bullshit to mislead or neither.
I made that point because I think it matters in terms of credibility and consistency: that we should oppose authoritarianism as a matter of principle, whether it’s coming from the left, center or right. So that cynics can’t come at you with “Oh you’re only against it now because it’s coming from the left/right, but you were/would be just fine with it when/if it was coming from YOUR side”. That’s all I meant by it.
That’s fair. Thanks for the explanation. My fear is there won’t be a next time, at least not here in our lifetime. At least that is what history teaches us.
Perhaps it is because you have yet to name a single candidate you think is actually left. Should I assume by your lack of response, you do support McCarthyism? Unfortunate.
Good and evil are for stories you tell to children at bedtime. This is plain old power politics, same as it's always been. Just mixed up in a different way thanks to technology like the internet, social decay, and a dramatically different world order since the end of the Cold War.
You can't stop it. No point in it. However, you can make like Hawkeye Pierce and get as many of the victims out as you can before you're done.
I don't like saying this because it bolsters bad memes but you should google the frankfurt school. basically this tripe has direct lineal ties to marxism.
Oh ok, thanks. I’m sure there have been many different strains of Marxism since the time his major works were published, so you may be right. I guess I tend to think of Marxism primarily in terms of Marx’s original analyses of capitalism as expressed in his own work.
There are certainly ties to French deconstructionist oddities as well. But this language is mostly used by decrepit Reaganites to attack economic leftism.
There is no need to put a foreign boogeyman on this. This behavior of entitlement and trying to destroy others is very American. These journalists aren’t just liberals) conservatives also have the same pathos. All of them are typically American (or British). This is the fundamental holier than thou mentality of Americans.
Is Marxism really populism? What about when we automate all the rote tasks on earth? What will be left for the workers of the world to unite behind if there is no work?
Marxism is sold to the gullible masses as economic populism through the politics of envy -- power to the people -- but that's only the brochure. In reality Marxism and its offshoots are only ever implemented through the iron fist of absolute authoritarianism. The "equality" promised to the proles is one of shared misery while the oligarchs enjoy the spoils of their labors. Thank you, COVID-19.
Capitalism is far from perfect but at least it offers opportunity to advance if you work for it. To wit: Dolly Parton's redux of 9 to 5 as 5 to 9 and the bitter NBC (National Bullshit Corp.) reaction to it. Nothing comes for free, no matter what they promise.
Once you have an -ism, you have people in charge. The type of people who jockey to be in charge are rarely the sort who should. The greatest miracle since Christ's resurrection was George Washington voluntarily stepping down. But now that power is centralized in the bureaucracy, there's a new way to be in charge. Capitalism and Communism share the same fatal flaw: Whatever they purport to stand for, their end result is the creation of power centers where organizational maneuvering and favor trading to maintain the status quo replaces the original mission because human beings are fallible and concentration of power leads to concentrated corruption.
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
They are "democratic," at least they think they are until they face opposition. Then they become pseudo-Marxists. They demand their "best of all" ideals (non-functional in this non-ideal world) be rammed into it.
Maoist. A couple of BLM founders from Berkeley also were associated with old tie Mao organizer from way back. That's why it all resembles cultural revolution inanity
My fear is people just not seeing it. I work in tech (UX Designer) and have lived on the coasts until I escaped with my family into the "dreaded" interior. All of my ex-agency friends and upper middle class Seattle and Austin friends think all of this is just fine. These policies don't affect them and they're convinced Trump was literally Hitler and anything, even election rigging, is legitimate in stopping this. They really seem to believe that we need multinational corporations, Wall Street and the CIA to protect us from half the country who are literally the KKK. They all were tweeting in unison "Vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!" They literally believe Covid stopped the minute Biden was elected and now were are finally free from tyranny. They're.. crazy? I've never seen such moral hysteria. Ultimately, this cannot hold. Rule by elites can be tolerated when the elites are competant and most citizens are reasonably happy, but these elites are in a crazy bubble and some of the most incompetent leaders around. I keep telling myself this HAS to cave in at some point, but when? Its like there's two realities at play here. It's not a right / left thing anymore. It's...I can't explain this. I really can't.
If that's true it's interesting how education doesn't seem to make one immune. Most of my liberal coastal friends are highly educated. Many have PhD's and all have masters. Makes me feel all of that propoganda about higher ed being a propoganda machine wsan't exagerrated. I was a audio engineer / musician prior to getting into UX and am self employed. I dropped out of college. Still managed to make six figures and work with some highly educated people, but maybe since I'm more entreprenueral, as well as coming from a working class immigrant background, I was better sheilded from the propoganda? These aren't bad people but they are increasingly becoming miserable and un-hinged. Everything is political now for them. EVERYTHING!
Jennifer, you have exactly the same fear I do. I am not left/right, liberal/conservative. I am just a human being trying to live my life. I do not care what another person thinks or does as long as there is not a victim at the end of their actions. I thought I was what some might call a social liberal/fiscal conservative... but these days I am the enemy because I think anyone should be able to think or say what they want. When you do say what you want.. understand there are consequences. However just using a wrong word or believing a different philosophy is not a reason to throw away half of our country. We really are a stone's throw away from totalitarianism.
I see it in terms of a new set of secular religions. People, in general, crave religious structure. The model is the same as the inquisition or any other religious horror: true believers, heretics, blasphemers, proselytizing and holy retribution. Only belief structures can truly blind people en-masse. We have environmentalists immune to discourse or discovery, critical race theorists unable to see beyond skin color and genetic sin, trans-activists, and on and on. Above it all are those who crave acceptance from any and all - modern day journalists forced by their acquiescence to all secular religion, placating the fevered evangelists to gain power from the disparate centers of true belief.
It's a struggle between authoritarians and libertarians. Authoritarians can originate on the right, on the left, or on any other axis. What differentiates an authoritarian from all others is complete lack of tolerance. Either one agrees completely with the authoritarian or one is an "enemy." Of whom is irrelevant; it can be 'of the state,' or 'of the party,' or, my favorite, 'of the people.'
Most of my life I've encountered speech police whose most common characteristics are an ossified worldview and a poor vocabulary. I wound up banned from an internet forum for referring to transgenderism as a "phenomenon." I can recall in a second- or third-grade Sunday School class being harshly corrected by the teacher for using the phrase "Native New York residents." I was told there were no natives in New York, just in places like Africa.
In 1958 I confronted by fifth-grade teacher for failing to read aloud part of a name from Huckleberry Finn. I'd read the book a few years earlier and discussed the use of the name "Nigger Jim" with my mother and a few other adults, including the matriarch of a black family with whom we socialized. I learned that in the aftermath of the Civil War casual racism and public use of demeaning terms for black people were common, which started me on a path to understand our history. That path led ultimately to marching for civil rights in the mid-sixties, participating in sit-ins, being whipped and beaten, screamed at, spit upon and realizing that these people were desperate for someone to whom to feel superior.
Today, people with that same need are leftist authoritarians performing speech police duties. They have little self-worth, and view society as a zero-sum game. They can only gain self-respect by disrespecting others. I don't hate these people; I pity them.
I've had the same experience living on both coasts and the Midwest. My state has been tightly closed down by our Dem governor, which I agreed with, as the Navajo/Dine Nation is still the worst hit, and I have many Dine and Pueblo students. Then, as soon as Biden was inaugurated, she announced that all schools could reopen, although our cases are still in the red, and it goes against all her previous plans. Even the Reps here who were calling for no masks etc were dumbfounded! Luckily I trust no one and had heard the Biden wins, Covid gone trope, so am not going nuts.
I work with highly intelligent programmers whose jobs are based heavily around the ability to reason logically, spot edge cases, develop robust algorithms and so on. Yet I'm constantly stunned by how many of them just mindlessly parrot whatever the headlines of the mainstream press tell them. It's clear that they don't really put any effort into developing their own thoughts on topics, but will nevertheless voice strong opinions on them.
LMAO I too work in IT and amazed how some of the smartest people I work with will sprew propaganda from either the left or right with zero facts. Or facts that are complete BS. Makes ya wonder what this world has turned into.
I said it earlier and I will say it again, there are zero consequences when someone cancels another and keeps the mob spewing out hate. Yet everyone else walks on eggshells in fear.
Just because you are highly intelligent or have fancy degrees doesn’t mean you have common sense. Their worlds and life experiences are often so small - by design.
Such bullshit! I cannot believe everyone I disagree with is by coincidence stupid and evil! Good thing for me I am smart and righteous, anyone who disagrees with me should be purged.
Jennifer--I couldn't agree more! It truly is inexplicable what is happening now. And the fact that the left doesn't see that their previous bogey men--Wall Street, mega multinational corps, FBI etc are now their saviors against the orange man--is--well--insane! The bubbles on the coasts defy logic. You mean Covid didn't disappear the minute Biden was elected?? Haha. Reality will hit with time and hopefully this fascist censorship madness will collapse of its own weight. I'm waiting....
Leftists have been wondering what to make of the PMC. They work for a living and don’t own much of the means of production. A lot of their income goes to insurance, childcare, housing etc, meaning they derive only modest gains from being part of the PMC—just enough to stay in it, in many cases. So you’d think they might see themselves as workers.
But not if they see workers as either racist, misogynistic, privileged, violent whites supremacist extremists or infants realized magical brown people.
I think our current time approximates America during WW1. I don't think it's a mistake Espionage Act of 1917 is coming back into style.
The key difference is that you needed an actual war to get the people to turn on The Bill of Rights in 1917. We're now so afraid of our own shadow that a handful of yahoos taking selfies for Facebook at the capital is enough for most people to eagerly beg those in power to take away their rights.
It’s the Chinese model which combines them all but McCarthy had noting on the reign of terror of the Communists - neither did the Spanish Inquisition. It Definitely is not ‘right’. Fascism is leftist. All communists regimes are tyrannical.
In a way it seems like the germination of an historically illiterate theocracy, and these journalists are positioning themselves to be the Jesuits of a new ruling class.
Very nicely stated. But above all, these highly competent neolibs are jockeying for position not by improving themselves and their work (hard), but by slaying the competition (ridiculously easy). That's what is really behind all of these machinations.
When everyone does it, mistakes like this one will be forgiven. After all, not to forgive might bring a demand for higher standards on all their heads. YEESH. Anything but that.
Its vertically integrated business, politics, and media, on a global level. Its arguably the worst thing that could ever happen to "the people". The reason the global economy doesn't work correctly is because people and countries are different and markedly different economies. What happens when you rage low-end wages in the US? Ask the Steel industry. Ask the auto-manufacturing industry. The work goes to other countries for less cost and better ROI for the very investors the big companies work for.
You have been buying other left propaganda about their fascist cousins. They lie about fascist "corporatization" and pretend it's "corporatism." It's not.
Fascism is dictatorial (usually nation) socialism. All major entities are put under public (not private as lying other left propagandists pretend) corporate structure. The fascist state confiscates the majority of (owned in common) stock so it controls all major industries just as other socialist governments do.
The fascist state demands everyone work for the good of the society in general as all other socialist governments expect.
"But it's also fascist, in that government is openly colluding with corporate powers to control narratives and silence dissent." -- That is why people call these wokes the 'neo-fascists' or crypto-fascists.
Nenad, It sounds crazy putting all those together--but that stew sounds damned accurate! I don't know about authoritarianism coming from the center- it's usually born out of the extreme fringes- right or left. But when we take the center of the line and move right and left--the extremes bend the curve and actually meet--both equally scary!
Fascist collusions with corporations are lies from other socialists. The socialist frauds perpetrating those lies perpetually try to divorce their fascist socialist cousins. Fascism prescribes "corporatizing" (not "corporatism" as the their ordinary democratic socialist cousins pretend) where everything, all industries and agencies, is put under "public" corporate structure (socialist "owned in common [stock]") with the "state" holding a majority of stock in all the public (only, no private "capitalist") major corporations. That gave the fascist "state" control over all major industries and agencies.
NSDAP, in 1930s-1940s Germany, allowed petite bourgeoisie ("sole proprietor" shop keepers and tradesmen) to own their businesses and run them as they wished, but all major industries were ordered to "work for the good of the [German] nation" and all military industries were to be nationalized.
I wrote what fascism is by formal definition. That is it's philosophy and policies.
People using those philosophies don't always follow them exactly nor do people using any others, including Democracy. Look how horrendous smiley faced tyrants now, fraudulently claiming they support democracy, are trying to ram their p.c. indoctrination down everyone's throat whether they want it or not.
Sorry (not) I puke it back all over them. They are some of the most delusional, unreasonable fairy tale idealists I've ever encountered and they are getting much worse since January 20 (no, I don't like Trump and didn't vote for him either time).
You should try to shake your indoctrination and it's prejudices. If you want to see the real world you must look from all perspectives. The horrendous twisting of what actually is by outrageous bigots, particularly the ones in the stratospheric ivory towers of academia spewing fairy tale ideals completely unworkable far down in the non-ideal world, have your brain so twisted it's pitiful Art.
I know the fairy tales are so pretty and the real world can be quite ugly sometimes but that's all we actually have. Chasing those fairy tales has caused far worse disasters than the ones the fairy tales are intended to remedy. Just look at what they did in the last century.
Hardly. What I wrote was the correct definition, certainly the one the WWII fighting generation would agree with: Fascism is the merger of state and business power, however achieved. It does not require ultra-nationalism or racism, but these often accompany fascism because these are quick ways to rouse the emotions of would-be followers and get them to join the cause.
Further, fascism has _nothing_ to do with socialism.
What you're spouting is the propagandized definition the USA has been flooded with since the end of WWII in hopes that the citizens of the USA wouldn't recognize the fascism unfolding in their own state. ...If anyone is indoctrinated here, it's not me.
Meh, it's broader than just Marxism or leftist - I mean, the fascists employed domestic spies to ferret out opposition, too. Totalitarianism seems the word that most accurately describes their behavior: We have the right to control what you can say, and by exercising it over time, to control what you allow yourself to think.
China isn't fascist, China's some form of dictatorship. As for NAZIs, and lets not forget Italy's Mussolini, yes, they were fascists: they had the merger of state and business power. The uber-nationalism, racism and so forth are just garnishment.
And, the USA fits exactly the same pattern today, which is exactly why the ultra-rich have been propagandizing us since WWII that the USA is something else.
Wow...that's about as ignorant a statement as I've read on here. Most posters here are pretty smart. State and Business power are intertwined in China.
This is exactly backwards, BUT DOES comport to the propaganda you've been fed since WWII.
For a more erudite understanding, search these comments for the line "The position of the original "Right" against original Liberalism" and therein you'll find a link to a page that can catch you up to date and it includes also some remarks about the shortcomings of that particular write up, as well as a tip on where the recommended point to start reading begins - namely the sentence I just quoted from it.
Narcissists use negative emotions to dominate and control people. When they say "speech is violence" they mean that the negative emotions they experience and the harm they do to their own health are caused by people not letting them control them. The statement "intention is irrelevant" is basically a narcissistic power grab.
"There is only one descriptor which applies: Marxist."
I can hear quite a few conservative radio show hosts' influence here for whom "Marxist" is an expletive. Unless you can explain how that crap is specifically "Marxist". That is, where exactly Marx advocated for it.
"Marxist" has nothing whatever to do with any of this. It's a word that's been nuanced by neo-conservatives from the actual meaning: communist. It's used as frequently as "Nazi" is used by the neo-liberal. "Newspeak" We've all been subjected to constant propagandised narratives. It separates us, that's what NSA/CIA/FBI/2-parties want.
WOW, how clueless! The class warfare in the USA is almost over, bub, and here's some bad news for you, they're "cleaning our clocks."
Apparently the author of that knee-slapper hasnt' been paying any attention for the past 40 years. Or, more likely, they're DEEPLY steeped in the propaganda of the ultra-rich.
"Liberal" is definitely wrong and should go away. "Progressive" is better but it risks lumping in those leftists who are intellectually honest.
"Marxist" won't catch on, and doesn't really fit anyway. These creepy authoritarians are actually all for Capitalism, but only in the form crony-capitalism and woke-capitalism.
We definitely need a new, more accurate label for the philosophy espoused by the NYT. Which is basically a toxic brew of elitism, crony corporatism, anti-white racism, and censorship.
I think a fundamental problem is that both parties are vehicles for crony capitalists to print money and pillage the economy. The only argument is about which rich people should get the plunder and whose minions should get the power.
Huh? What does Marx have to do with it? It's authoritarian, which some Marxists (and a lot of fascists) are; as well as, variously, petty, self-aggrandizing, and so on. It's very sad to see such attitudes associated with "liberal," but here we are.
"Marxist?" Sounds more like this Taylor Lorenz person was born too late and missed her true calling as a COINTELPRO operative. No marginally rational or ethical person would sign up for what she's pushing. Who is teaching people to call it "Marxist?" How did they persuade you?
I really wish some of you posters would stop trying to be the gatekeepers of who is "left" or "right" and who is "liberal" and who is "conservative". I have yet to see a poster make a comment I agree with regarding who is left or right. We all have a different view of that because we all represent a different political position. People that peacock left-wing ideals and constantly attack right wing conservative positions are either independents or liberals. Since none of the people mentioned are independents, walk me through why you don't think they are "liberal". Are you suggesting they are conservatives?
I 100% represent a different political position than you. I'd bet you $100 any poster on this forum disagrees with you on some piece of policy. The two party system wants everyone to fit into this nice little mold, but the facts are no one does.
Actually Marxists (advocating forced infusion of international communism) are rare here. Most left was progressive (advocating protections for workers and consumers) but today they are moving farther left to socialism (industries owned in common and/or controlled by government) with some ordinary (not necessarily Marxist) communist policies (wealth distribution according to need).
They aren't actually Marxists. They are "democratic," at least they think they are until they face opposition. Then they become pseudo-Marxists. They demand their "best of all" ideals (non-functional in this non-ideal world) be rammed into it. Of course it always becomes a disaster because most people are not ideal people for them, except a rare few like the communal for millennia Norse and ultra-disciplined Japanese.
How do we fight this nonsense? It doesn’t matter that they’re wrong or blatantly lying. They put the narrative out then it’s blasted out everywhere and public opinion is formed. Then they just walk away. Zero consequences for them. It’s entirely absurd.
The only I could offer so far might be to refer to Vaclac Havel's essay "The Power of the Powerless". One thing I get out of that essay is that when a critical mass of people know that the system is a joke, and everyone in that critical mass knows that a critical mass of people know it's a joke, then the system becomes likely to collapse under its own weight. So, what to do?: Keep talking. Keep reading. Keep honing one's language for discussing these things. Keep cataloguing examples of indefensible things that one can roll out. There's nothing like colorful examples to make a point.
Its typical for our entire country across the board. The rule of "law" is a joke that really means the rule of the "elite". This is why Epstein's deal was "at the highest levels of Justice" and Cheryl Mills got an immunity deal even though Hillary and them "did nothing wrong". The only thing that defeats lawyers is guns. This is why the DNC is so fucking shook by the Capitol uprising.
Zero consequences for them? They get paid very well for however knowingly or unknowingly serving the propaganda agenda of the masters of the world.
Very probably unknowingly. Look inside, we are all hypocritical in one way or another. We can rationalize or justify a great deal when we receive some kind of reward for thinking or behaving this way or that.
Vent outrage to people who will truly listen and strive to understand, if that’s what we need to do.
Talk with people we know with a genuine desire to sympathetically understand what they think and why. This is perhaps the greatest challenge, and takes a lot to cultivate.
When people feel cared about, heard, taken seriously, they are much more likely to consider alternative perspectives.
There are only a small minority who consciously and malevolently pursue thoroughly anti-social agendas. We need to be with as many of the rest as we can be, and we need them with us.
It really (significant change) does happen one person, one act, at a time, forming associations.
Talk with someone who’s hard to talk to, if we want to push harder! It’s agonizingly slow. On the other hand, big positive changes can happen fast.
Have hope and do something achievable and strategic. As Chomsky says, What’s the other choice?
Find places both online and off where you can say exactly what you want and discuss whatever you feel like without consequences. However that needs to happen.
Think it through. Make sure these pukes can't do shit. When they try?
Laugh at them if you can't engage compassionately. Also, find your people, discover your purpose. If you fight fire with fire you just get burned...let them perish...
Ignore these punks and Speak with your money! Don't click on nor subscribe to NYT, Washington Post, etc. What goes around comes around and these morons will pay dearly. These folks are not journalists and we should not treat them as such.
Thanks for another well written article. That Chase Strangio would call out JK Rowling as being "aligned with white supremacists" doesn't surprise me. The goal posts of "white supremacy" has changed from literal nazis, KKK members, and devout racists, to every white person that doesn't virtue signal in the appropriate way. The corporate media and their enablers are just gaslighting everyone into submission.
You don't have to be white to be accused of "white supremacy culture". The "culture" bit is supposed to soften the term. Look up Kenneth Salim (who is very pro-minority and not white) in the Boston Globe from Jan. 25.
Ironic, no? I sometimes feel like my life is an episode of the twilight zone. When I was young, I was trying to avoid Republicans and Christians (the evangelical types). Now, I am trying to steer clear of self-righteous Dems and the regressive left. Never dreamed it would turn out this way. Reminds me of a song:
"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you." —Stealers Wheel
These "reporters" are really starting to look desperate. With the Bad Orange Man gone, what will they write about? You can't write fawningly every single day about Kamala's shoes. If it were me, I'd start asking about why that Federal Minimum Wage of $15 vanished from the Stimulus Bill. But that would take guts, and I don't think they have any.
The $15 minimum wage was taken out of the bill because enough members of Congress realized the terrible impact it would have on minorities. Roughly 2 million jobs would be lost, and the share of blacks and Hispanics losing jobs would be much higher than their portion of the population. Every economist from Thomas Sowell on down has said that minimum wages have a bad impact, especially on minorities and young people looking for a first job. Plus, a minimum wage of $15 may have less impact in expensive areas, but it would have a disastrous impact on jobs in areas with normal prices.
Is the Seattle area foundering due to a high minimum wage? No it isn't. And. My mother was in the multicultural movement fighting for Living Wage in the 80s and 90s in L.A. so I know about the economics. If you get higher pay, then you can afford to pay more for your burger.
Want to stay in a hotel in Tucson or Phoenix? Over $100 a night for a decent room.
Yet hospitality workers in AZ are getting paid peanuts. Get real. We're already living in an oligarchy. We need higher wages for the working class!
Yup. And why I mentioned Tucson. How'd you miss that? I've lived in 8 states, and now live in the poorest state in the US. While growing up, my single parent had to use food stamps. I've worked as a cleaner.
And your bona fides? Looking at your handle, I doubt you have any actual knowledge of the working class.
His mother fought for "Living Wage" (whatever that means) in L.A back in the day while living on food stamps, so he knows "about the economics".
Unlike Dr. Sowell, don't you know. He only grew up in poverty in Harlem, without food stamps, and ended up in Stanford because of is hard work and brilliance.
The combination of narcissism, arrogance, ignorance and sheer obtuseness of these leftist toddlers is simply breathtaking.
"The city’s escalating minimum wage has meant a slight increase in pay among workers earning up to $19 per hour, but the hours worked in such jobs have shrunk, a study commissioned by the city found. It estimates there would be 5,000 more such jobs without the Seattle law."
And due to reductions in overall hours: "For an average low-wage worker in Seattle, that translates into a loss of about $125 per month per job."
"Every economist from Thomas Sowell on down has said that minimum wages have a bad impact," is a jack-booted propagandist for the ultra-rich. They're completely full of shit.
As for "normal prices", that's its own joke. Unfortunately, I don't really have the energy for that dialogue right now - maybe we can talk about it intelligently some other time, but the short-short-short of it is that keeping the min-wage down suppresses natural price increases that actually help EVERYONE on Main Street because it puts more money in circulation on Main Street.
Looks like developed nations without minimum wages rely on trade unions to set wages, such as Sweden. It would be interesting to look into the intricacies of this system.
It’s the unions that cussed all of the jobs in the US to be shipped to China, etc.. they were so unreasonable in their demands. Gone are the good manufacturing jobs that provided steady work, decent wages and benefits including pensions.
It seems like "free trade" also contributes. When globalized companies can outsource everything, with no tariffs, they will do so, until our wages are at the same level as the poorest country in the world's wages. I remember "the great sucking sound" back in 1992. NAFTA. And that's what actually happened. All those auto jobs went off to Mexico because of NAFTA. That was Clinton, right? A Big Corporate win.
This sentence is abjectly false and the reasoning that produced it either ignorant or inept:
"It’s the unions that cussed all of the jobs in the US to be shipped to China,"
Sorry no. What _caused_ "all of the jobs in the US to be shipped" elsewhere was the rapacious desires of the already ultra-rich capitalists. They took good, well run blue-collar-run companies like Rubbermaid and sent all the jobs to China NOT because Rubbermaid was losing money with over-paid workers but because the OWNERS could make even more paying slave wages with no environmental protections.
You know, you could educate yourself.
The problem is / are capitalists and the fact that the workers don't own the means of production. ... Think they'd have voted to send their own jobs to China? Hell No! Trouble is, capital can move in the blink of an eye and workers can't. ... You might apply some of your brain cells - they don't appear to be doing very much presently, just parroting right-wing propaganda that the ultra-rich have been feeding them (us) since "forever." Thinking for yourself and not buying the propaganda is a good start to help actually understand the world.
Thomas Sowell - a Milton Friedman senior shill at the right-wing neoliberal Hoover Institute? What does Rfhirsch mean by "Sowell on down" mean in this case? Does it mean other paid shills of the establishment who never stopped to reflect that the absurd assumptions of their macro-economic models reflect an imaginary world with no connection to reality?
Interesting. So if they all knew about this effect, why did the Administration put it in there in the first place? To give false hope to all those $7.50/hour workers? Was it just a con all along? Kind of a big deal to those workers; I read there were 40 million people making < $15/hour.
Well there are many politicians who see the minimum wage as a way to get support from voters, even if it affects those voters negatively after it is raised. And not that many politicians understand economics or even want to. The number of such workers is not that large.
Good info from CBO. Makes sense; wages are up since 2016. Curious with the Democrats able to pass it now, they don't - although they allegedly tried to back in 2019. Bezos probably doesn't want them to, and he sorta runs the place. Kinda like Republicans not funding "the Wall" back in 2017 when they had control.
Well, you're clearly looking in the wrong places! You shouldn't be looking to _media_outlets_ like Slate and NPR for this kind of thing since, of course media people are experts in nothing but, perhaps, propaganda.
Though I loathe Google, they do have a good tool to find competent analysis of the data - it's called Google Scholar.
Furthermore, the data is available from the USG, and this kind of calculation isn't all that hard to make, so you CAN do it yourself fairly easily - I mean, you already have an internet connection / computer!
It’s was vote buying. They rallied the loser left in to riots to do their bidding to scare the judiciary, politicians and public so they could make their power grab. They got it and now it’s back to business as usual. White liberals and black rednecks screwing over everyone else. Fleecing the taxpayers and abusing power.
So you are saying that politicians opposed an increase in the minimum wage based on........checks notes........concern for it's impact on minorities.
Whether increasing the minimum is a good idea (which I think it is) is a separate debate, but the idea a politician did anything because in their heart of hearts they worried some policy would negatively impact minorities is to fundamentally misunderstand what a morally vacuous sociopath a politicians is.
When you provide me with the most cynical, self serving reason for anything they do, I will believe you.
Politicians are there to serve the powerful. Anything else is simply
Your casual slander of Dr. Sowell says much more about you than it does about him. Hateful and ugly though it is, your diatribe reveals your true character, thereby serving as an excellent example of why offensive speech should not be suppressed.
I would wager that not a single one of these leftist morons disparaging Dr. Sowell has read even one of his many books, or much of anything else of merit for that matter.
This rocket scientist Orban is the progressive-moron poster boy. He doesn't realize that Malcom X was talking about HIM is his 1963 speech about white liberals.
He doesn't know that the origin of the minimum wage in the U.S. was to protect white northern union labor from being undercut by southern blacks.
He doesn't know that minimum wages were used in apartheid South Africa to protect white wages against black competition.
In short, like most leftists, he doesn't know much of anything about anything. But despite his profound ignorance, he nevertheless feels entitled to call Dr. Sowell, who fought his way out of abject poverty to become among the leading economist on the planet, and "Uncle Tom".
Dr. Sowell knew more about economics and reality at 10 years old than this Orban fuckwit will ever know.
Character attacks ensure that only the echo chamber will listen to you. This results in zero value. “Uncle Tom” is a personal attack, but so is “fuckwit”
You're right. Libel is the correct term, not slander. "Uncle Tom" is a highly derogatory term, commonly understood (as in the usage in question) to be an epithet to belittle and disparage the character of black men whose opinions deviate from progressive orthodoxy. It's a little more than simply being dismissive.
Sowell is not an Uncle Tom; he's one of the foremost philosophers of our time, and he cares deeply about the fate of black people in America. An "Uncle Tom" is a black person who sells out their own people in order to enjoy the privileges of acceptance in white society. Sowell's black critics are far more accepted by white society at universities, in the media and in government than he is, it's not remotely close. His prescriptions for what ails black people have proven far more effective than whatever it is that his critics are selling, just look at the status of black people in any "blue" area of the country. He doesn't blame "shiftless black folk" for the ills of the country, he blames clueless white liberals!
Policies will always have unintended side effects, it’s certainly possible that this is one of them. Where do you get the idea it was done on purpose though?
We needs to ask what the benefits as well as negatives are. Then weigh their value against facts rather than ideologies.
Thanks for the head start! This is exactly the sort of discussion we should be having.
I think the root cause of the whole issue is the massive power imbalance between today's worker, and today's megacorp. When companies are local and small and immigration is restricted, workers have power. When companies are outsourced globalized monopolies and borders are open, as they are today, workers have no power at all. That's my sense anyway.
I 'get that idea' because I know history. If you look into the history, you'll see the same thing. But don't trust my word for it, go onto the internet and find out for yourself.
After learning this, do you still support min wage?
Debates about the efficacy of the minimum wage and the notion of bailing out Wall Street certainly have their merits; however, the offhanded dismissal of Thomas Sowell's illustrious career with a derisive epithet has no merit whatsoever.
Your comment is typical of the narcissistic rage of regressive left activists when they come across opinions they do not like. This is the same set of emotions behind the cancel culture that this article is about.
If there is systemic racism in the US holding back blacks, why does the latest census data show Nigerian households in the US making more than white households? Also, there are now six nonwhite ethnic groups that earn more than white households. My partner got a Lyft ride home from an immigrant from Africa. He explained that he works full time as an engineer, but works weekends as a Lyft driver to save up the down payment for a house. For many immigrants, the US is the least racists, most free and prosperous country that has ever existed.
Sowell's point about the minimum wage is that few people stay at that low level of pay for very long. The lower wage makes it easier for businesses to create entry-level jobs for unskilled workers. The workers gain job skills as they work, and move on to higher paying jobs.
Mmm...Uncle Tom. Dude. I don't agree with the, "let capitalism sort them out play", but Uncle Tom? That over the top language immediately "cancels" your argument. People stop listening. Anyone that might have "gotten" your point, even agreed with it, are lost.
Wow, Uncle Tom Is even more caustic and vile than retarded, is in contempt of the essay and in reality the comment itself is seriously mentally deficient.
Sowell isn't an Uncle T, he's a Reaganite neolib like millions of Americans of every race. Maybe we should applaud his ability to step on the downtrodden poor like all these other arseholes. The trait most Americans share is kicking away the ladder as soon as they make it to the top.
Stepping on the downtrodden poors, kicking away the ladder as soon as one made it to the top -- these actions and human character features are truly terrible... only they belong not to Thomas Sowell but to the shameless liars who take to convince those downtrodden poors that there is anything for them in minimum wage laws other than perpetuation and worsening of their conditions.
Never really understood the all or nothing mentality of conservatives and liberals in regards to this issue. It seems to me both racism and culture are contributing factors.
Desperation because their MSM gig is not getting the prominence, stroking or funding it was. That all belongs to social media. So they hire pip-squeaks who talk first, research/study last-- cause it gets them "trending" on s. media or they are being talked about. Because the NYT is not being talked about as path breaking investigative journalism.
They can't become People magazine -- that market is full, so what market do they find their relevance in? How do you compete vs. Glenn, Max Blumenthal, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Mate etc.? They can't even with all their resources. The problem for them is their news gathering structure , it is ancient and obsolete-- so they struggle and hire Lorenz.
Heard an explanation that it wont work during a pandemic, as small businesses are already struggling. But let's face it, that's weak tea. No one in the antigovernment has cared about small businesses since March 2020.
Don't worry, their big business friends are going to buy up all the market share for peanuts on the dollar because only big $ business could really weather 1+ year of restricted business. We saw this in CA a decade ago after CA Medicaid reduced payments by 10%. https://lao.ca.gov/Recommendations/Details/294
BTC is skyrocketing because the big finance hubs can make huge margins manipulating it's value just like they did with GameStop. Its one of the few areas of wild west investing still left.
And 15 is spit-in-your-eye too low; as Elizabeth Warren pointed out in the 2016 cycle - I think her comment was actually in 2015 - that there are two very different but very valid ways to look at what the Minimum Wage _should_be,_ one based on it having been tied to "the rate of inflation" at inception, or to "the Consumer Price Index" instead, and in both cases, the rate would have been over $24/hour at the time she spoke.
$15 is a joke.
And as for raising it during the pandemic, OK, fine, I can understand that, so you simply tweak the legislation so it reads that it applies to all "large" businesses immediately and to "small" businesses "as soon as the pandemic ends." ...BTW, last time I checked, "small business" was defined as those that employ less than 500 people. Oh, and another BTW, that lets ULTRA-RICH holding companies claim all sorts of tax advantages because they're "small businesses" even though they have gross receipts in the billions of dollars.
Do you really think that the pandemic will ever be declared over? Don’t be naive. Once they’ve got the “low lives” by short hairs they’ll never let go. Do as your told !!!!! It’s a pandemic. Never let a good crises go to waste.
Yes, I do, the public will demand it. You can be sure. What it takes is for the majority of hospitals to have insufficient quantities of Covid-19 patients to be considered even half full and a decreasing rate of infection. When that happens, we'll have broken the back of the pandemic and it will be "mop-up-crew" time to finish the job off.
A vital key is vaccination. The Sooner The Better.
Now you are a medical pandemic expert? Or did you just listen to the good DNC and media's coverage of this planted, man-made virus that shockingly ended the best economy the US had ever had just in time for an election!
Sounds to me those "Americans" you're talking about should be demanding more, too. Perhaps they're just to servile?
"Americans" used to stand up for themselves, join unions, have solidarity between their unions and work for a better life for all of us. While you can still find such people, their numbers are pitifully low at present. How about we reawaken the Union spirit? Too communistic for you?
I've worked professionally in computer science (in one form or another) since the late 1970s and yet I've never had to unplug since I never bothered to plug in. ... As all this was developing through the late 90s, I knew instantly that if you aren't paying for it, YOU are the product, and I simply never signed up. And, I've told others to as well, but, well, that's been like trying to keep the ocean back with a broom.
However, that's changing.
I have run my own email and web servers for about 25 years now and have been offering my services to all my friends, nearly always free, and always with a plug they should unplug from social media - they can do all they want to do with the tools I handed them, including managing web pages via emails! You just email the server with your changes, it validates you, validates your instructions make sense and then automates the web page update... This way, I don't have to spend my time at it and they get what they want published to the web!
""Americans" used to stand up for themselves, join unions, have solidarity between their unions " - would you say that's largely because the nature of the work has changed?
Most manufacturing went to faraway countries where (or near where) troops are deployed to watch over them. The low pay work that's left requires no to little skill that doesn't lend itself to necessarily bonding together because of certain professional qualities.
High pay tech companies employ lots of H1B workforce that cannot participate in any sort of organizing by definition. Locals working those jobs also have little to complain about due to relatively high compensation and readily approve any and all wasteful fiscal policies that cover for real problems.
And so bringing manufacturing back home would have lots of positive impact on many fronts, but most certainly is against the interests of the ruling oligarchy.
The most sensible thing to have done, WAY back in the late '70s or even the '80s would have been to set up import duties proportional to the approximate equivalency of their labor and environmental regulation AND including enforcement thereof - makes no sense to give a break to a country because they have a law they don't enforce on the books. The idea would be that the tax would raise the cost of the imported goods to equal the U.S. goods. ...This would have protected U.S. jobs while at the same time not stifled rising economies around the world.
But as you point out such things are most certainly against the interests of the ruling oligarchy.
This would be a long discussion and out of scope for this format, but I wanted to point out a few things:
- you address fiscal part but that would require benevolence from the ruling class which we can safely rule out
- the way to really enforce it is to have strong professionally united groups of workers here at home which were eliminated in large part to prevent that
- "not stifled rising economies around the world" - I guess you don't imply that sending jobs overseas was to help those other economies. I'd say it was to exploit them under the cover of "help"
- just like "spreading democracy" etc is a cover for ensuring those countries with newly minted "democracies" stay permanently embattled and disorganized while being robbed by the "democratizers"
That inflation-adjustment is an interesting concept. The $7.25 rate was set in 2009, as per: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart Inflation since then per CPIAUCSL is 21%. (about 2% per year). So that's just $8.84; where did Warren get $24? Still, I didn't realize it hadn't been raised since 2009. That's a long time with no raise. Seems like Biden could have done *something* for workers. Lots of people got goodies in that Big Stimulus Bill.
You're apparently forgetting the compunding effect. And, you're apparently unaware of the HUGE inflation of the mid 1970s that, of course, gave the excuses to get rid of heavy taxation on the ultra-rich.
As for where Warren got it, do a web search, but she did explain it at the time. I'm sure you'll find it and, BTW, it's not particularly hard to do the analysis yourself.
Perhaps you can tell me where I went wrong: I brought up the timeseries CPIAUCSL from fred. Here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL The value of this series in July 2009 was 214.726. The value today is 261.775. That's a 21.9% increase. Does this calculation seem right to you? If so, 21.9% times $7.25 is $1.59. What am I missing?
In fact the Fed includes the compounding effect: "The CPIs are based on prices for food, clothing, shelter, and fuels; transportation fares; service fees (e.g., water and sewer service); and sales taxes." So the Dec 2020 value quoted represents the actual prices in that month, and the 21.9% increase is the ACTUAL increase in prices from 2009. It is NOT the sum of annual % increases, but the compounded increase from 2009 to 2020.
And these large companies pay so little that many of their employees are eligible for food stamps and Medicaid. So the oligarchs are screwing their employees and the taxpayers!
Here you are actually on something. Yes, large companies get to squeeze their workers on pay. How? By using their naturally superior negotiating power. The only cure? More smaller companies. How? By making it easier and less burdensome to run a small company. That is, cut regulations, unify taxation, do not create artificial contractual obligations for employers; large companies thrive on regulations, small busines owners are strained enough already, to the point of extinction, they cannot afford notorious "your lawyer" (as if they needed only one these days). That is, Trump should have been your natural choice; but you refused to act on it. Now relax and enjoy the rule of large companies and lawyers -- your fought hard for it after all. And you won!
If I had the ability to make law, I'd have a law that says that any corporation who has any full time employee who is eligible for public assistance just to pay their ordinary bills should be assessed 15% of their gross income for that year, to be taken FIRST from the leadership of the company's compensation, reducing it down to the same as whoever works for that company who was so eligible for public assistance.
That ought to solve it. ... Well, and also that they can't just make people not full-time to screw them that way...
No, it's the minimum you're legally allowed to pay for employment. Period. It was never intended for anyone to be able to live as an adult on that income. It's at best a training wage.
What evidence would you give of someone providing more than a $15 hour minimum wage and it being successful? Do you not think the capitalist corporations running the world just turn around and pass that cost off down the line? You think they just take the hit to their ROI and be like oh yeah fuck it lets just give our workers a bigger share of the pie? LOL!!!!
What about the workers who grabbed too much when they had all the power with their private sector unions? How has that worked out in the global economy the DNC and RNC elite support? How come Carter didn't meet with the Steel industry when they collapsed? Let me guess... "he wasn't left". How come Bill Clinton passed NAFTA over his own party's objections? Let me guess...."he wasn't left"?
Another post responding to me, saying a DNC president "wasn't left" and yet another post without you pointing at someone you think is. Say something substantive. Put your name behind your belief. Give us a candidate that you, Lord Gatekeeper of the labeling of Left Politicians think is truly left.
I'm going to agree with Art that the left-right "party" dynamic doesn't hold significance - at least not anymore. Both parties are "oligarch parties" with only cosmetic differences. Both parties are heartily glad to see Trump gone, for instance. Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi are functionally equivalent.
I'd say Bernie is left. Proof: "cheap drugs from Canada" bill. Establishment people from both parties voted that one down. Trump is also - sorta - left. Or at least, pro-labor. Tariffs on China & bringing jobs back to America = pro labor. And reduced immigration is a long-standing goal of labor. At least it was for a very, very long time. Before they all got "woke".
Woke has replaced wage advocacy on "the new left." "Woke" won't affect the bottom lines of corporations, so they're fine with that. Contribute to BLM: yes! Minimum wage increase? NO!!!
DNC = RNC = the money interest. Its why healthcare costs go up regardless of who we elect.
Thank you for saying an example of someone you think is left. I mostly agree with your other points except for the healthcare one but that's another argument :)
Give it up; the dichotomy of right vs left simply cannot explain some things, and you're obviously too dense to consider that there's a large body of people whose politics are neither right nor left.
Maybe you'll see the light someday, but I'm certainly not holding my breath.
I thought the same. Now I realize....you can just keep going. After the election, we have the impeachment. Blaming previous administration for CV19 rollout, white nationalism, fascism that must be squelched with stringent authoritarianism. All these narrative need Orange Man Bad; like soup needs salt to taste better. I'm sure there will be more. Guaranteed. Orange Man Bad has a long runway. (for reference, see, Russia, Hillary's emails, FBI Comey saga, etc. etc.)
It is understandable that reporters at the NYT are sensitive about certain words. Mr. Andreessen may not have used the R word, but he could have used it at any moment. Ms. Lorenz should not have to live in continual fear and it is arguably worse dealing with the suspense of when Mr. Andreessen will drop the R word than if he had actually uttered it. Free speech does not give you the right to terrorize others with all the things you might potentially say.
Unfortunately, those who have the privilege not to work for the NYT probably will never understand this degree of suffering.
“They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers: the military-industrial complex, the CIA and FBI, the clandestine security state, Wall Street, Silicon Valley monopolies, the corrupted and lying corporate media outlets they serve.”
Don’t forget their core insufficiency: character. What they have in sufficient supply to overcome all those insufficiencies is ignorance and a breathtaking level of naivety.
K Well Glenn I am a great grandma living on SS and a small nurse's pension having become radicalized about the time the VN war was over and realized all the lies, and never looked back...not once, but have been more and less active over the years d/t work, kids, late higher education, divorce, etc etc. so always have had limited ability to give $ but not energy or desire for the truth. But d/t this column, have subscribed now with a v. small monthly stipend I could afford, in this so critical time. I so wish it were more, hopefully one day it will be more. If not for you, Chris Hedges, Noam, Lee Camp, and your moral and intellectual cohorts I wouldn't know jack shit. You are in my thoughts and prayers. Stay safe, keep the faith and stay strong. We are here for you.
I'm 62. And when I was a kid, up until I was 15 and they stopped the draft, I KNEW I was going to Viet Nam. All the 'big kids' in my working neighborhood went. They stopped the draft when I was 15 and whoa the relief I felt. B/c I was also convinced I would die over there.
I was raised Catholic, and as a child I was an altar boy. 67-71 there was some kind of build up, and we served at funeral masses during school hours. It was sweet to get out of class...
Until the boys started coming home in boxes. Half a century later, I can still see the destroyed familes at those funerals. What a horrid time.
I've always thought that we should draft the upper classes to war first. So Biden wants to bomb Syria? OK, well, we'll enlist Harvard and Yale to do so. Hunter goes as well. Also Pelosi's grandkids. Girls too. On the front line! Wouldn't want to be sexist. I am convinced this would end American imperialism overnight.
Let me share with you something of a similar nature. I am 76 years old and a graduate of Tulane. For the past year I have become alarmed at the woke course Tulane has taken. From a disproportionate number of liberal versus conservative professors, to supporting BLM ( who by the 3 founders own admission "we are trained Marxists"), to a english professor ( yes ENGLISH) starting a course called "Feminism after Trumplandia", to a professor telling a story of a student who thought he was a student and suggested "You should try out for the baseball team" saying that such comment was a"microaggression", to mandating Critical Race Theory as a required course for freshmen. All of this nonsense was too much for me. So I wrote many a dozen emails over time. At least 3 to the President of Tulane, one to the english professor,and emails to the Dean of the English Dept and well a Deans of other schools at Tulane, the Provost, and even the President of the Tulane Alumni Association. How many responded to my concerns ? None. A big fat 0. I believe that Tulane believes if they just ignore I will go away. But I have news for them. The war is long. I'm not giving up until I have a public say on this far left course my beloved alma mater is taking. I have no problem with people who are liberal. But its not right for all thought, if not liberal, to be shut out. Tulane needs to at least hear and be tolerant of a different view.
Not at all. I'm happy I went, and my kids did too. Yeah, yeah; grievance studies are a rip off for sure, but any other dept will teach you critical thinking skills.
You're aware of Peterson, Lindsay, and Weinstien's experiences I assume? If not, just google those names w/ CRT on them.
People are waking up, man. This shit from the Frankfurt school of thought has been going on for generations. It's taken over the NYT (I'll be cancelling my sub for the final time today) and pretty much the majority of Establishment higher ed (Ivy League and the 2nd tiers). It ain't good. I believe we're witnessing a Cultural Revolution in real time.
I use to donate but not anymore.......I went to Tulane on a football scholarship and still communicate with many of my old teammates. They are helping me brainstorm. Thanks so much for reading what I wrote
Glenn is describing a form of mass psychosis amongst privileged leftist elites, many of whom are employed by the old, decayed & very faded 'Grey Lady', The New York Times. We just stopped our FOUR decades long run of a subscription. Don't support this intellectual malfeasance.
Decades ago, we started out with a noble idea, equality for all regardless of skin color, ethnicity, or sex. Now we've descended into an absurd state where people are destroyed for uttering a word from the (growing) collection determined by the mob to be offensive. Meanwhile, mob members make ludicrous claims about their "pain and suffering" from having to hear these particular words. We've become a parody and the antithesis of serious people solving serious problems.
Great stuff. But I wouldn't call the Stasi hall-monitors "journalists." You are a journalist. These two-bit lowlife bullies are not journalists. They are media whores, and should be so described.
I loved this article. I see at my university with terms like Latinx. As a Mexican American I see that young kids from privileged backgrounds are exploiting all this bs. Everyone wants to be a victim and everyone is so easily offended and scared of self reflection and criticism.
". . . young kids from privileged backgrounds are exploiting all this bs."
Read Ted Kaczynski. He predicted exactly this and much more.
That doesn't make him murdering innocent people the correct conclusion for dealing with that analysis.
Yeah, that's why he was clearly insane, if perceptive - shocking how often they go together.
I recall very vividly watching a CNN town hall panel of average citizens talking about the Trayvon Martin case. One young woman wanted to say something very important to her: "And why did you say I'm African-American?" she asked the panel moderator. "I think that's ridiculous. Charlize Theron is African-American. I'm *Black*." She was a liberal, proud, black woman speaking her mind and it was beautiful. There is a pretty big distance between the average minority voter and the progressive leftist that wants to use terms like African-American and Latinx.
BTW, the most ridiculous part of this is that "retard" is no longer acceptable. Kids in middle school are already calling people they want to insult "mentally disabled"... "What, do you have a mental disability or something?". Remember "Idiot" was a clinical term that turned into an insult and so they changed the clinical term to "mentally retarded" which turned into an insult and so they changed the clinical term.... it's a neverending cycle. The American Kennel Club has been wise enough to continue using bitch, because as soon as they change it, it will be co-opted for use as an insult.
The phenomenon is often referred to as the "euphemism treadmill".
Don't they want enlightenment? Damned ungrateful proles!
Exactly--it is truly the victim mentality-- it is all about finding a special tribe-- being special by being able to say things from a protected place. So tiresome if it wasn't so sad and pathetic. What kind of values do these people have.
The ones given to them, most likely. We're a consumerist culture that's commodified everything, including ourselves. It's no wonder we desperately want to be in boxes.
Takes a while to deprogram, you know?
I ain't old, but I ain't young anymore, and it's only recently that I've come around to the idea of rejecting labels entirely. There's a few I'll accept for myself, but only as shorthand descriptions. I'll use them to describe others too, but again for the same purpose.
People are deep. You can't ever slap a word on 'em and call the job done.
“Behavior is truth.” —Andrew Vachss
"People are deep. You can't ever slap a word on 'em and call the job done."
Mostly, perhaps, but I can definitely cite a few examples. Or, if there's anything more deep in them, their ugly natures tend to overwhelm any interest in finding it; we have to judge people by what they express to us. And while beauty may only be skin deep, ugly is often to the bone, and I don't mean that literally.
oops, I meant counter-examples! Obviously! (Where's that edit button when you need it?!)
I'm Irish. Born in NYC to immigrant parents. Who would get truly pissed off if someone mistook them for Welsh, Scot, or god forbid English (my grandfather fought in the Easter Rebellion). Here's my question:
Isn't 'Latinex' kind of racist in itself? I mean...lumping in a Cuban with a Peruvian or Mexican? My personal experience of both VZ & Cuba demonstrates two cultures as distinct as the Irish and the Scots. I dunno...
I don't think latinx is racist for that reason... in my experience, latin people are happy to call themselves latino or latina in their native Spanish. Latino/latina is a common word in Spanish (it's the same word, just gender-inflected) and people use it frequently.
The problem to me is that 'latinx' seems to be a Spanish word that was coopted by non-Spanish speakers to nonsensically remove the gender inflection.
Every noun in Spanish is gender-inflected. If you tell a Spanish speaker to speak without gender inflection, you might as well tell them to not talk. There is no means in the language to remove the gender inflection of a word. To even attempt to do so is approaching the problem from a state of complete ignorance, as I understand things. How embarrassing.
"How embarrassing."
Only if the people who came up with this idiotic NewSpeak were capable of being embarrassed or had any self awareness at all, but that doesn't concern them. It's all a naked power grab, because to them, power is everything. And they mean to have it.
"Hey, we made a new word for your nationality/ethnicity/heritage that's inoffensive. Oh, and also, there's literally no way you can say this word in your own language and have it be grammatically correct. You're welcome."
And by the way, we invented a new, awkward-to-pronounce suffix that you can now conveniently graft onto the end of all your gender-problematic words. It sounds muy bonitinx!
We'll roll that out with the next software version after we get the bugs worked out...
STOP! You're killin' me! LOLZ
I just lol'd for real at this
Latinx wherever it came from didn’t come from a Hispanic person. That term was forced upon people by some intellectual at a University to pretend that normal people give a shit about that term.
Things weren’t easy growing up where I did but I overcame that and didn’t blame everyone and their Mother for things being rough. I’ve struggled less in school than others because I have had to deal with real problems. I’ve had classes complain about reading too much in a Masters program. These kids are coddled now and you see that in all aspects of life but media is a prime example and the elite media are the same people running the universities and educational systems
preach
If Latinx can be used as a noun what do you call a good Latinx? A Latinx buenx?
Since ‘Latin’ worked just fine there was no reason to create ‘Latino’ other than wanting to queer the word.
‘Latinx’ not ‘Latino’
Thank you for explaining that. And by gods is it stupid. Haha!
Try being Scots-Irish.
In terms of whiskey, you have been blessed with the best of both worlds.
No thanks.
Oh boy... ya got me! LOL
Polls show that most Latinos don’t like latinx
What about the oppressed of that cultur, the Latinas?
. . . putting aside the fact that somewhere around 2-3% of those who are presumably described by it actually identify with "Latinx" versus "Latino" or better yet "Hispanic".
I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're trying to say. Could you expand on this?
You're correct that "lumping in" dozens of different ethnic groups under the general term "Latinx" (never seen it written with an "e") is itself kind of racist, or at least reductive of the complexity of those groups. However, there's another insult involved which is calling people something that they themselves do not wish to be called. Pew did a study and found that it's rarely the preferred term: https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/
Because it makes no sense. As I posted above, it's linguistically nonsensical to remove the gender inflection of any noun in Spanish. It's embarrassing that anybody is even trying.
The ones who should really be embarrassed are the vanishingly few hispanics who do speak Spanish and know what you say is true, yet still actually buy this crap. I don't know, maybe 1%? Possibly as high as 2% if you count "Beto" O' Rourke and Hilaria Baldwin.
Of course, like the rest of their Woke brethren, sistren, and LGBTQWTF-stren, they are incapable of being embarrassed.
And yet, I'm completely certain that someone somewhere has been disciplined for discriminatory behavior in failing to do so . . .
Yeah...well...I don't use the term enuf maybe? :) I thought that was where you were going, but I didn't want to make an assumption. The comments here are eye-opening.
I guess many want unique identity but all the British Islanders were people of the Celtic nation originally. True nations are related people, not the false substitution word for a bordered country.
My culture was prominently Scots-Irish until the 1950s when various hordes flooded out of Philadelphia all over them. Ironically Scots-Irish refugee hordes from the battle with the Church of England's domination over their Presbytery had flooded the original Quakers and Mennonites in Pennsylvania. Much Larger hordes of starving overpopulated, (no) thanks to a South American potato, Irish came soon after and hordes from also overpopulated Europe followed them.
No cultures want to be dominated by others even if there is enough land confiscated from other species to share. We see that still today, often stupidly hidden behind phony race/ethnicity covers when the real battle is between incompatible cultures.
The Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh were all Celtic groups until the Germanic hordes, Vikings (Norwegians in Ireland, Danes in Scotland and England) and Germans (Angles and Saxons in southern Britain), began invading/migrating into those isles. The Germanic and Celtic nations, including the mostly Celtic French, are very different cultures from each other but both are similar within their own nations.
Under the stress of ever more overpopulation true nations battle for land and resources with each other, or groups within nations will if the need is more immediate. Scott and Irish clans battled incessantly centuries ago, as did Japanese clans, some battles historically notorious. Ironically Picts held northern Britain until Irish "Scotty" invaded. If they hadn't it would now be "Pictland."
Exactly, people are so afraid to admit they are white they are pretending to be spanish like Hillary Baldwin.
Well, I think Hillaria is faking Spanish heritage for attention, money, and because she’s not right in the head.
Well, she IS married to Alec Baldwin. Seems to be a pretty good match, too.
Like meets like :)
Why not Comedia? That was my only question. Comedia is more international.
That’s because identity politics replaces a hierarchy of meritocracy with a hierarchy of victimhood. Just like the communists elevated the poorest peasant and street criminals above all others - even within the gulags. Everyone ends up fighting with each other and jockeying for favor while the elite goes about systematically killing off and persecuting the smarter ones who could pose a threat to the elites’ power. Ultimately Marxism/Commumism is about nihilism a killing humans but first in order to do this, they must destroy humanity and the institutions that hold society together / civilization. It takes a murderous psychopath to think and do what communists / marxists / identity politics do. Their goal is a ihli sting the human race. Of course that hint about this with things like the climate change agenda and population control and dissuading women from having children - especially the smart ones who would have smarty children.
You describe capitalists perfectly.
I wish I could remember where I read it so i could provide a link, but I recall a survey that found that only about 3% of those of Hispanic heritage approved of the latinx label.
3% seems like a lot. I’m surprised.
https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/
And one of the saddest consequences of this trend is that a great many actual victims become invisible because "poser victims" are hogging the limelight.
Say it in Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" voice. ;-)
I only with Glenn would stop using the term liberal to describe these cretins. There is only one descriptor which applies: Marxist.
Actual Marxists are class-based economic populists. They don’t give a shit about stuff like this. Maybe you mean “Stalinist”, which is more applicable. These people are basically authoritarians, that’s about it, and authoritarianism can come from the right just as it can come from the center or the left.
It strikes me as more Mao-ist, in that it attacks a person's essential character.
Chinese cultural evolution struggle sessions. Turn in your family and friends for "wrong think."
All communists have done that. That’s how witch hunts work.
All puritans have done that. It is the only way to keep thoughts pure.
Sorry is should be Chinese cultural revolution.
🎶If mommy is a commie, boys, you gotta turn her in...”🎶
-excerpt from “John Birch Society” song by The Chad Mitchell Trio.
Agreed, that term works pretty well here too.
What is the point of people always making this relativist point that evil can come from all sides of the political spectrum? Who cares? It is coming from the Left now. That is what matters. If we don’t stop it NOW we won’t be around to watch out for it next time.
I'm pretty hardcore conservative anti-government but you'd struggle to convince me only the left is evil. People like Newt Gingrich and Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney all represent that same lockstep-party elitism (within the own elite of their party at that) and are just as happy to bomb someone they dislike. They would do whatever is asked of them like good little bootlickers if it meant furthering their and "the parties" ideals.
I agree 100%. They are all evil. But it isn’t RINO’s acting like the Misleadia Gestapo is it?
FoxNews was calling Biden's executive actions "Mussolini-like" so I don't know. Its so much bullshit right now its gotten harder to differentiate if its fake bullshit to gaslight or real bullshit to mislead or neither.
"Fake bullshit"
I love it!
Romney and Chaney are the uni-party establishment. They are neo-cons and are not conservatives.
Agree, they are Bush disciples and you can take all of them and flush em as far as I am concerned.
I made that point because I think it matters in terms of credibility and consistency: that we should oppose authoritarianism as a matter of principle, whether it’s coming from the left, center or right. So that cynics can’t come at you with “Oh you’re only against it now because it’s coming from the left/right, but you were/would be just fine with it when/if it was coming from YOUR side”. That’s all I meant by it.
That’s fair. Thanks for the explanation. My fear is there won’t be a next time, at least not here in our lifetime. At least that is what history teaches us.
"It is coming from the Left now."
False. You right-wingers don't seem to know a damned thing about what's actually left.
There is definitely evil coming from the left now, its unfortunate you fail to see it. Are you someone who approves of McCarthyism and intolerance?
Go troll someone else who's more stupid.
We've had this same conversation three dozen times and more already; you simply refuse to understand what left actually is.
Perhaps it is because you have yet to name a single candidate you think is actually left. Should I assume by your lack of response, you do support McCarthyism? Unfortunate.
Good and evil are for stories you tell to children at bedtime. This is plain old power politics, same as it's always been. Just mixed up in a different way thanks to technology like the internet, social decay, and a dramatically different world order since the end of the Cold War.
You can't stop it. No point in it. However, you can make like Hawkeye Pierce and get as many of the victims out as you can before you're done.
It does seem to me that we Americans do need our archetypes of both good and evil. Its so odd too that there has to be a person symbolizing it.
My gut reaction to that is it's a holdover from our Puritan roots. God vs. Satan. Jesus and Judas.
Plays well with many cultures, I'm sure.
I don't like saying this because it bolsters bad memes but you should google the frankfurt school. basically this tripe has direct lineal ties to marxism.
strange that we have to google the frankfurt school and were never taught about it.
Oh ok, thanks. I’m sure there have been many different strains of Marxism since the time his major works were published, so you may be right. I guess I tend to think of Marxism primarily in terms of Marx’s original analyses of capitalism as expressed in his own work.
There are certainly ties to French deconstructionist oddities as well. But this language is mostly used by decrepit Reaganites to attack economic leftism.
There is no need to put a foreign boogeyman on this. This behavior of entitlement and trying to destroy others is very American. These journalists aren’t just liberals) conservatives also have the same pathos. All of them are typically American (or British). This is the fundamental holier than thou mentality of Americans.
"These journalists" are neo-liberals.
Is Marxism really populism? What about when we automate all the rote tasks on earth? What will be left for the workers of the world to unite behind if there is no work?
Marxism is sold to the gullible masses as economic populism through the politics of envy -- power to the people -- but that's only the brochure. In reality Marxism and its offshoots are only ever implemented through the iron fist of absolute authoritarianism. The "equality" promised to the proles is one of shared misery while the oligarchs enjoy the spoils of their labors. Thank you, COVID-19.
Capitalism is far from perfect but at least it offers opportunity to advance if you work for it. To wit: Dolly Parton's redux of 9 to 5 as 5 to 9 and the bitter NBC (National Bullshit Corp.) reaction to it. Nothing comes for free, no matter what they promise.
Once you have an -ism, you have people in charge. The type of people who jockey to be in charge are rarely the sort who should. The greatest miracle since Christ's resurrection was George Washington voluntarily stepping down. But now that power is centralized in the bureaucracy, there's a new way to be in charge. Capitalism and Communism share the same fatal flaw: Whatever they purport to stand for, their end result is the creation of power centers where organizational maneuvering and favor trading to maintain the status quo replaces the original mission because human beings are fallible and concentration of power leads to concentrated corruption.
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Remembering, of course, that actually the president is just there to distract attention from the people - er, mice - who actually rule us.
They are "democratic," at least they think they are until they face opposition. Then they become pseudo-Marxists. They demand their "best of all" ideals (non-functional in this non-ideal world) be rammed into it.
Maoist. A couple of BLM founders from Berkeley also were associated with old tie Mao organizer from way back. That's why it all resembles cultural revolution inanity
Agreed! I fear it is going to get worse before it gets better.
My fear is people just not seeing it. I work in tech (UX Designer) and have lived on the coasts until I escaped with my family into the "dreaded" interior. All of my ex-agency friends and upper middle class Seattle and Austin friends think all of this is just fine. These policies don't affect them and they're convinced Trump was literally Hitler and anything, even election rigging, is legitimate in stopping this. They really seem to believe that we need multinational corporations, Wall Street and the CIA to protect us from half the country who are literally the KKK. They all were tweeting in unison "Vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!" They literally believe Covid stopped the minute Biden was elected and now were are finally free from tyranny. They're.. crazy? I've never seen such moral hysteria. Ultimately, this cannot hold. Rule by elites can be tolerated when the elites are competant and most citizens are reasonably happy, but these elites are in a crazy bubble and some of the most incompetent leaders around. I keep telling myself this HAS to cave in at some point, but when? Its like there's two realities at play here. It's not a right / left thing anymore. It's...I can't explain this. I really can't.
It’s a psyop
If that's true it's interesting how education doesn't seem to make one immune. Most of my liberal coastal friends are highly educated. Many have PhD's and all have masters. Makes me feel all of that propoganda about higher ed being a propoganda machine wsan't exagerrated. I was a audio engineer / musician prior to getting into UX and am self employed. I dropped out of college. Still managed to make six figures and work with some highly educated people, but maybe since I'm more entreprenueral, as well as coming from a working class immigrant background, I was better sheilded from the propoganda? These aren't bad people but they are increasingly becoming miserable and un-hinged. Everything is political now for them. EVERYTHING!
Yes and it is the result of years and years and years of propaganda
Jennifer, you have exactly the same fear I do. I am not left/right, liberal/conservative. I am just a human being trying to live my life. I do not care what another person thinks or does as long as there is not a victim at the end of their actions. I thought I was what some might call a social liberal/fiscal conservative... but these days I am the enemy because I think anyone should be able to think or say what they want. When you do say what you want.. understand there are consequences. However just using a wrong word or believing a different philosophy is not a reason to throw away half of our country. We really are a stone's throw away from totalitarianism.
I see it in terms of a new set of secular religions. People, in general, crave religious structure. The model is the same as the inquisition or any other religious horror: true believers, heretics, blasphemers, proselytizing and holy retribution. Only belief structures can truly blind people en-masse. We have environmentalists immune to discourse or discovery, critical race theorists unable to see beyond skin color and genetic sin, trans-activists, and on and on. Above it all are those who crave acceptance from any and all - modern day journalists forced by their acquiescence to all secular religion, placating the fevered evangelists to gain power from the disparate centers of true belief.
See the latest from John McWhorter on neoracism:
https://www.persuasion.community/p/john-mcwhorter-the-neoracists
It’s not craving acceptance, it’s craving power and domination.
It's a struggle between authoritarians and libertarians. Authoritarians can originate on the right, on the left, or on any other axis. What differentiates an authoritarian from all others is complete lack of tolerance. Either one agrees completely with the authoritarian or one is an "enemy." Of whom is irrelevant; it can be 'of the state,' or 'of the party,' or, my favorite, 'of the people.'
Most of my life I've encountered speech police whose most common characteristics are an ossified worldview and a poor vocabulary. I wound up banned from an internet forum for referring to transgenderism as a "phenomenon." I can recall in a second- or third-grade Sunday School class being harshly corrected by the teacher for using the phrase "Native New York residents." I was told there were no natives in New York, just in places like Africa.
In 1958 I confronted by fifth-grade teacher for failing to read aloud part of a name from Huckleberry Finn. I'd read the book a few years earlier and discussed the use of the name "Nigger Jim" with my mother and a few other adults, including the matriarch of a black family with whom we socialized. I learned that in the aftermath of the Civil War casual racism and public use of demeaning terms for black people were common, which started me on a path to understand our history. That path led ultimately to marching for civil rights in the mid-sixties, participating in sit-ins, being whipped and beaten, screamed at, spit upon and realizing that these people were desperate for someone to whom to feel superior.
Today, people with that same need are leftist authoritarians performing speech police duties. They have little self-worth, and view society as a zero-sum game. They can only gain self-respect by disrespecting others. I don't hate these people; I pity them.
authoritarian vs libertarian (in outlook, not party) makes a great deal of sense and helps me frame this in a way that isn't so terrifying. Thank you!
I've had the same experience living on both coasts and the Midwest. My state has been tightly closed down by our Dem governor, which I agreed with, as the Navajo/Dine Nation is still the worst hit, and I have many Dine and Pueblo students. Then, as soon as Biden was inaugurated, she announced that all schools could reopen, although our cases are still in the red, and it goes against all her previous plans. Even the Reps here who were calling for no masks etc were dumbfounded! Luckily I trust no one and had heard the Biden wins, Covid gone trope, so am not going nuts.
I work with highly intelligent programmers whose jobs are based heavily around the ability to reason logically, spot edge cases, develop robust algorithms and so on. Yet I'm constantly stunned by how many of them just mindlessly parrot whatever the headlines of the mainstream press tell them. It's clear that they don't really put any effort into developing their own thoughts on topics, but will nevertheless voice strong opinions on them.
LMAO I too work in IT and amazed how some of the smartest people I work with will sprew propaganda from either the left or right with zero facts. Or facts that are complete BS. Makes ya wonder what this world has turned into.
I said it earlier and I will say it again, there are zero consequences when someone cancels another and keeps the mob spewing out hate. Yet everyone else walks on eggshells in fear.
Just because you are highly intelligent or have fancy degrees doesn’t mean you have common sense. Their worlds and life experiences are often so small - by design.
The current SJW motto:
Such bullshit! I cannot believe everyone I disagree with is by coincidence stupid and evil! Good thing for me I am smart and righteous, anyone who disagrees with me should be purged.
It’s the elite bubble, rule by incompetents and the corrupt, feminism, identity politics, a huge entrenched selfish bureaucracy.
If I could like your comment a thousand times I would, thank you!!!
Jennifer--I couldn't agree more! It truly is inexplicable what is happening now. And the fact that the left doesn't see that their previous bogey men--Wall Street, mega multinational corps, FBI etc are now their saviors against the orange man--is--well--insane! The bubbles on the coasts defy logic. You mean Covid didn't disappear the minute Biden was elected?? Haha. Reality will hit with time and hopefully this fascist censorship madness will collapse of its own weight. I'm waiting....
This is brilliant.
Leftists have been wondering what to make of the PMC. They work for a living and don’t own much of the means of production. A lot of their income goes to insurance, childcare, housing etc, meaning they derive only modest gains from being part of the PMC—just enough to stay in it, in many cases. So you’d think they might see themselves as workers.
But not if they see workers as either racist, misogynistic, privileged, violent whites supremacist extremists or infants realized magical brown people.
It's how former democracies decay and die.
I think our current time approximates America during WW1. I don't think it's a mistake Espionage Act of 1917 is coming back into style.
The key difference is that you needed an actual war to get the people to turn on The Bill of Rights in 1917. We're now so afraid of our own shadow that a handful of yahoos taking selfies for Facebook at the capital is enough for most people to eagerly beg those in power to take away their rights.
It’s the Chinese model which combines them all but McCarthy had noting on the reign of terror of the Communists - neither did the Spanish Inquisition. It Definitely is not ‘right’. Fascism is leftist. All communists regimes are tyrannical.
The KKK agrees with you that blacks are the real racists.
Gosh you do put in a lot of time trolling my comments.
In a way it seems like the germination of an historically illiterate theocracy, and these journalists are positioning themselves to be the Jesuits of a new ruling class.
Very nicely stated. But above all, these highly competent neolibs are jockeying for position not by improving themselves and their work (hard), but by slaying the competition (ridiculously easy). That's what is really behind all of these machinations.
When everyone does it, mistakes like this one will be forgiven. After all, not to forgive might bring a demand for higher standards on all their heads. YEESH. Anything but that.
Its vertically integrated business, politics, and media, on a global level. Its arguably the worst thing that could ever happen to "the people". The reason the global economy doesn't work correctly is because people and countries are different and markedly different economies. What happens when you rage low-end wages in the US? Ask the Steel industry. Ask the auto-manufacturing industry. The work goes to other countries for less cost and better ROI for the very investors the big companies work for.
Very true.
You have been buying other left propaganda about their fascist cousins. They lie about fascist "corporatization" and pretend it's "corporatism." It's not.
Fascism is dictatorial (usually nation) socialism. All major entities are put under public (not private as lying other left propagandists pretend) corporate structure. The fascist state confiscates the majority of (owned in common) stock so it controls all major industries just as other socialist governments do.
The fascist state demands everyone work for the good of the society in general as all other socialist governments expect.
"But it's also fascist, in that government is openly colluding with corporate powers to control narratives and silence dissent." -- That is why people call these wokes the 'neo-fascists' or crypto-fascists.
Nenad, It sounds crazy putting all those together--but that stew sounds damned accurate! I don't know about authoritarianism coming from the center- it's usually born out of the extreme fringes- right or left. But when we take the center of the line and move right and left--the extremes bend the curve and actually meet--both equally scary!
Fascist collusions with corporations are lies from other socialists. The socialist frauds perpetrating those lies perpetually try to divorce their fascist socialist cousins. Fascism prescribes "corporatizing" (not "corporatism" as the their ordinary democratic socialist cousins pretend) where everything, all industries and agencies, is put under "public" corporate structure (socialist "owned in common [stock]") with the "state" holding a majority of stock in all the public (only, no private "capitalist") major corporations. That gave the fascist "state" control over all major industries and agencies.
NSDAP, in 1930s-1940s Germany, allowed petite bourgeoisie ("sole proprietor" shop keepers and tradesmen) to own their businesses and run them as they wished, but all major industries were ordered to "work for the good of the [German] nation" and all military industries were to be nationalized.
https://www.vaholocaust.org/25-points-of-nsdap/
-chuckle-
That's one of the most ridiculous comments I've yet read regarding fascism. For one thing, this is truly laughable:
"Fascist collusions with corporations are lies from other socialists."
That sentence illustrates a failure to understand what fascism even is.
Fascism is the merger of state and business power, however achieved. How you can reconcile the quoted sentence with reality is a real mystery.
I wrote what fascism is by formal definition. That is it's philosophy and policies.
People using those philosophies don't always follow them exactly nor do people using any others, including Democracy. Look how horrendous smiley faced tyrants now, fraudulently claiming they support democracy, are trying to ram their p.c. indoctrination down everyone's throat whether they want it or not.
Sorry (not) I puke it back all over them. They are some of the most delusional, unreasonable fairy tale idealists I've ever encountered and they are getting much worse since January 20 (no, I don't like Trump and didn't vote for him either time).
You should try to shake your indoctrination and it's prejudices. If you want to see the real world you must look from all perspectives. The horrendous twisting of what actually is by outrageous bigots, particularly the ones in the stratospheric ivory towers of academia spewing fairy tale ideals completely unworkable far down in the non-ideal world, have your brain so twisted it's pitiful Art.
I know the fairy tales are so pretty and the real world can be quite ugly sometimes but that's all we actually have. Chasing those fairy tales has caused far worse disasters than the ones the fairy tales are intended to remedy. Just look at what they did in the last century.
"I wrote what fascism is by formal definition."
Hardly. What I wrote was the correct definition, certainly the one the WWII fighting generation would agree with: Fascism is the merger of state and business power, however achieved. It does not require ultra-nationalism or racism, but these often accompany fascism because these are quick ways to rouse the emotions of would-be followers and get them to join the cause.
Further, fascism has _nothing_ to do with socialism.
What you're spouting is the propagandized definition the USA has been flooded with since the end of WWII in hopes that the citizens of the USA wouldn't recognize the fascism unfolding in their own state. ...If anyone is indoctrinated here, it's not me.
Meh, it's broader than just Marxism or leftist - I mean, the fascists employed domestic spies to ferret out opposition, too. Totalitarianism seems the word that most accurately describes their behavior: We have the right to control what you can say, and by exercising it over time, to control what you allow yourself to think.
Totalitarianism IS the closest descriptor. Throughout the 20th century both the “left” and the “right” employed this form of social control.
So different and yet so alike in their possession of power.
Power is power. Ideology is just the flavoring.
Like Kool-Aid, amusingly.
Welcome to East Berlin.
Fascism is leftist. Just look at communist China.
ANOTHER knee-slapper!
"Fascism is leftist."
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhahahaha! WOW! That's just so damned clueless.
Fascism is the merger of state and business power and you don't get any more "right wing" than that.
Tell China that. And the NAZIs did the same thing.
China isn't fascist, China's some form of dictatorship. As for NAZIs, and lets not forget Italy's Mussolini, yes, they were fascists: they had the merger of state and business power. The uber-nationalism, racism and so forth are just garnishment.
And, the USA fits exactly the same pattern today, which is exactly why the ultra-rich have been propagandizing us since WWII that the USA is something else.
Wow...that's about as ignorant a statement as I've read on here. Most posters here are pretty smart. State and Business power are intertwined in China.
China owns 50% of every business, has political commissars inside each business and nothing gets done without party approval.
Fascism and tyranny ALWAYS come from the left. Always.
This is exactly backwards, BUT DOES comport to the propaganda you've been fed since WWII.
For a more erudite understanding, search these comments for the line "The position of the original "Right" against original Liberalism" and therein you'll find a link to a page that can catch you up to date and it includes also some remarks about the shortcomings of that particular write up, as well as a tip on where the recommended point to start reading begins - namely the sentence I just quoted from it.
Right on!
Stealing that one.
That's funny.
Woke Ayatollahs, yes! That works.
Narcissists use negative emotions to dominate and control people. When they say "speech is violence" they mean that the negative emotions they experience and the harm they do to their own health are caused by people not letting them control them. The statement "intention is irrelevant" is basically a narcissistic power grab.
"There is only one descriptor which applies: Marxist."
I can hear quite a few conservative radio show hosts' influence here for whom "Marxist" is an expletive. Unless you can explain how that crap is specifically "Marxist". That is, where exactly Marx advocated for it.
"Marxist" has nothing whatever to do with any of this. It's a word that's been nuanced by neo-conservatives from the actual meaning: communist. It's used as frequently as "Nazi" is used by the neo-liberal. "Newspeak" We've all been subjected to constant propagandised narratives. It separates us, that's what NSA/CIA/FBI/2-parties want.
Jimmy Dore put it nicely recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz5c_ISpmio
Okay, how about "Stalinist"?
Class warfare didn’t work in the US so they came up with a new hierarchy of victimhood called identity politics.
This is knee-slappingly hillarrious:
"Class warfare didn’t work in the US"
WOW, how clueless! The class warfare in the USA is almost over, bub, and here's some bad news for you, they're "cleaning our clocks."
Apparently the author of that knee-slapper hasnt' been paying any attention for the past 40 years. Or, more likely, they're DEEPLY steeped in the propaganda of the ultra-rich.
Well Senator Joseph McCarthy and his ilk used essentially the same tactics and I would hardly have called them Marxists.
Do you feel anything was different from what McCarthy did and what the DNC and McCain did to Trump in 2016?
McCarthy was a piker.
Sociopaths.
Psychopaths. Narcissistic nihilistic psychopaths.
I have a suggestion.
They're cunts.
The hilarity of neoliberals realizing they have turned their reputations to shit now wanting to blame Marxists.
Liberals are champions of free speech and always have been. These control freak snitches don't deserve that noble title.
"Liberal" is definitely wrong and should go away. "Progressive" is better but it risks lumping in those leftists who are intellectually honest.
"Marxist" won't catch on, and doesn't really fit anyway. These creepy authoritarians are actually all for Capitalism, but only in the form crony-capitalism and woke-capitalism.
We definitely need a new, more accurate label for the philosophy espoused by the NYT. Which is basically a toxic brew of elitism, crony corporatism, anti-white racism, and censorship.
I think a fundamental problem is that both parties are vehicles for crony capitalists to print money and pillage the economy. The only argument is about which rich people should get the plunder and whose minions should get the power.
Huh? What does Marx have to do with it? It's authoritarian, which some Marxists (and a lot of fascists) are; as well as, variously, petty, self-aggrandizing, and so on. It's very sad to see such attitudes associated with "liberal," but here we are.
Marxists aren’t liberal.
No, but modern american liberals are certainly trying to be Marxists.
"Marxist?" Sounds more like this Taylor Lorenz person was born too late and missed her true calling as a COINTELPRO operative. No marginally rational or ethical person would sign up for what she's pushing. Who is teaching people to call it "Marxist?" How did they persuade you?
Indeed. ... It appears poor Brad here doesn't even know what Marxism is...
I really wish some of you posters would stop trying to be the gatekeepers of who is "left" or "right" and who is "liberal" and who is "conservative". I have yet to see a poster make a comment I agree with regarding who is left or right. We all have a different view of that because we all represent a different political position. People that peacock left-wing ideals and constantly attack right wing conservative positions are either independents or liberals. Since none of the people mentioned are independents, walk me through why you don't think they are "liberal". Are you suggesting they are conservatives?
"We all have a different view of that because we all represent a different political position."
No, a lot of us have "a different view of that" because of propaganda, and different groups are propagandized a bit differently than other groups.
I 100% represent a different political position than you. I'd bet you $100 any poster on this forum disagrees with you on some piece of policy. The two party system wants everyone to fit into this nice little mold, but the facts are no one does.
Actually Marxists (advocating forced infusion of international communism) are rare here. Most left was progressive (advocating protections for workers and consumers) but today they are moving farther left to socialism (industries owned in common and/or controlled by government) with some ordinary (not necessarily Marxist) communist policies (wealth distribution according to need).
They aren't actually Marxists. They are "democratic," at least they think they are until they face opposition. Then they become pseudo-Marxists. They demand their "best of all" ideals (non-functional in this non-ideal world) be rammed into it. Of course it always becomes a disaster because most people are not ideal people for them, except a rare few like the communal for millennia Norse and ultra-disciplined Japanese.
WTF back that up with rigorous and detailed analysis. Marxist? GFY until you can actually make a case without using the word like a slur.
I'm sure you meant fascists.
How do we fight this nonsense? It doesn’t matter that they’re wrong or blatantly lying. They put the narrative out then it’s blasted out everywhere and public opinion is formed. Then they just walk away. Zero consequences for them. It’s entirely absurd.
Good question; something we all wonder about.
The only I could offer so far might be to refer to Vaclac Havel's essay "The Power of the Powerless". One thing I get out of that essay is that when a critical mass of people know that the system is a joke, and everyone in that critical mass knows that a critical mass of people know it's a joke, then the system becomes likely to collapse under its own weight. So, what to do?: Keep talking. Keep reading. Keep honing one's language for discussing these things. Keep cataloguing examples of indefensible things that one can roll out. There's nothing like colorful examples to make a point.
Its typical for our entire country across the board. The rule of "law" is a joke that really means the rule of the "elite". This is why Epstein's deal was "at the highest levels of Justice" and Cheryl Mills got an immunity deal even though Hillary and them "did nothing wrong". The only thing that defeats lawyers is guns. This is why the DNC is so fucking shook by the Capitol uprising.
They may not have set fire to the Reichstag, but they're damned sure fanning and blowing frantically on the embers.
"Lawyers guns and money"-- the best Warren Zevon song-- an ode to Hunter Thompson
The shit has hit the fan :) :)
Zero consequences for them? They get paid very well for however knowingly or unknowingly serving the propaganda agenda of the masters of the world.
Very probably unknowingly. Look inside, we are all hypocritical in one way or another. We can rationalize or justify a great deal when we receive some kind of reward for thinking or behaving this way or that.
Vent outrage to people who will truly listen and strive to understand, if that’s what we need to do.
Talk with people we know with a genuine desire to sympathetically understand what they think and why. This is perhaps the greatest challenge, and takes a lot to cultivate.
When people feel cared about, heard, taken seriously, they are much more likely to consider alternative perspectives.
There are only a small minority who consciously and malevolently pursue thoroughly anti-social agendas. We need to be with as many of the rest as we can be, and we need them with us.
It really (significant change) does happen one person, one act, at a time, forming associations.
Talk with someone who’s hard to talk to, if we want to push harder! It’s agonizingly slow. On the other hand, big positive changes can happen fast.
Have hope and do something achievable and strategic. As Chomsky says, What’s the other choice?
Don't feed the trolls--point them out but don't feed them. Feeding them gives them power and influence.
Find places both online and off where you can say exactly what you want and discuss whatever you feel like without consequences. However that needs to happen.
Think it through. Make sure these pukes can't do shit. When they try?
Laugh and laugh and laaaaaaugh.
Like here 😊
Laugh at them if you can't engage compassionately. Also, find your people, discover your purpose. If you fight fire with fire you just get burned...let them perish...
Ignore these punks and Speak with your money! Don't click on nor subscribe to NYT, Washington Post, etc. What goes around comes around and these morons will pay dearly. These folks are not journalists and we should not treat them as such.
Morons used to be a clinical term. Can you be cancelled for that?
So was 'mentally retarded'. Just sayin'
Exactly
AAAAAARGHHH!!!
You said the "R" word!
And if I hurt your feelings, in the words of (I think) Christopher Hitchens, 'what's your point?' LOL (I love that guy; RIP)
You know, if Lorenz felt hurt by the word “retarded,” does that mean ....
I don't know if she's actually retarded, but she's damned sure a bed-wetter!
A euphemism, in fact.
"Way ahead of you" (quoting Brad Pitt in "Once upon a time in Hollywood"- one of Tarantinos best)
Been hacking WaPo for years now and am cancelling the NYT for the last time today.
This guy has absolutely no clue how to take a week off, and I love it. Keep up the great work Glenn.
And that concerns me...
Thanks for another well written article. That Chase Strangio would call out JK Rowling as being "aligned with white supremacists" doesn't surprise me. The goal posts of "white supremacy" has changed from literal nazis, KKK members, and devout racists, to every white person that doesn't virtue signal in the appropriate way. The corporate media and their enablers are just gaslighting everyone into submission.
"The corporate media and their enablers are just gaslighting everyone into submission."
Not everyone. ;)
I don't know man. I could definitely see Harry Potter as a goose-stepping Hitler Youth Reichjugenfuhrer.
What with those little round Himmler glasses and all.
"You're a Nazi, Harry!"
lol
Wish I could like this x 1000.
And don’t forget Abigail Shrier, who’s Jewish. I’m sure she enjoyed being called a white supremacist.
You don't have to be white to be accused of "white supremacy culture". The "culture" bit is supposed to soften the term. Look up Kenneth Salim (who is very pro-minority and not white) in the Boston Globe from Jan. 25.
We see now that many on the left are just as happy to silence dissenting opinion as the very people on the right that they "fought against".
Ironic, no? I sometimes feel like my life is an episode of the twilight zone. When I was young, I was trying to avoid Republicans and Christians (the evangelical types). Now, I am trying to steer clear of self-righteous Dems and the regressive left. Never dreamed it would turn out this way. Reminds me of a song:
"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you." —Stealers Wheel
These "reporters" are really starting to look desperate. With the Bad Orange Man gone, what will they write about? You can't write fawningly every single day about Kamala's shoes. If it were me, I'd start asking about why that Federal Minimum Wage of $15 vanished from the Stimulus Bill. But that would take guts, and I don't think they have any.
The $15 minimum wage was taken out of the bill because enough members of Congress realized the terrible impact it would have on minorities. Roughly 2 million jobs would be lost, and the share of blacks and Hispanics losing jobs would be much higher than their portion of the population. Every economist from Thomas Sowell on down has said that minimum wages have a bad impact, especially on minorities and young people looking for a first job. Plus, a minimum wage of $15 may have less impact in expensive areas, but it would have a disastrous impact on jobs in areas with normal prices.
Is the Seattle area foundering due to a high minimum wage? No it isn't. And. My mother was in the multicultural movement fighting for Living Wage in the 80s and 90s in L.A. so I know about the economics. If you get higher pay, then you can afford to pay more for your burger.
Want to stay in a hotel in Tucson or Phoenix? Over $100 a night for a decent room.
Yet hospitality workers in AZ are getting paid peanuts. Get real. We're already living in an oligarchy. We need higher wages for the working class!
It may come as a surprise to you that the entire country is not the same as Seattle.
Yup. And why I mentioned Tucson. How'd you miss that? I've lived in 8 states, and now live in the poorest state in the US. While growing up, my single parent had to use food stamps. I've worked as a cleaner.
And your bona fides? Looking at your handle, I doubt you have any actual knowledge of the working class.
I can tell your arguments are true and just since you resort to class warfare to make ad hominem attacks against a poster you don't even know.
Growing up poor isn't something you get extra credit for. Its the same shit every person's family went through at some point in their ancestry.
His mother fought for "Living Wage" (whatever that means) in L.A back in the day while living on food stamps, so he knows "about the economics".
Unlike Dr. Sowell, don't you know. He only grew up in poverty in Harlem, without food stamps, and ended up in Stanford because of is hard work and brilliance.
The combination of narcissism, arrogance, ignorance and sheer obtuseness of these leftist toddlers is simply breathtaking.
It is like a lost generation.
My cleaners demand $25 an hour. I worked as a cleaner in college because it paid twice as much as minimum wage.
Yup - and it’s under the table- no taxes
Wasted breath, surely, but nevertheless:
"The city’s escalating minimum wage has meant a slight increase in pay among workers earning up to $19 per hour, but the hours worked in such jobs have shrunk, a study commissioned by the city found. It estimates there would be 5,000 more such jobs without the Seattle law."
And due to reductions in overall hours: "For an average low-wage worker in Seattle, that translates into a loss of about $125 per month per job."
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/uw-study-finds-seattles-minimum-wage-is-costing-jobs/
"Every economist from Thomas Sowell on down has said that minimum wages have a bad impact," is a jack-booted propagandist for the ultra-rich. They're completely full of shit.
As for "normal prices", that's its own joke. Unfortunately, I don't really have the energy for that dialogue right now - maybe we can talk about it intelligently some other time, but the short-short-short of it is that keeping the min-wage down suppresses natural price increases that actually help EVERYONE on Main Street because it puts more money in circulation on Main Street.
Looks like developed nations without minimum wages rely on trade unions to set wages, such as Sweden. It would be interesting to look into the intricacies of this system.
That certainly helps! They also have solidarity among their unions.
It’s the unions that cussed all of the jobs in the US to be shipped to China, etc.. they were so unreasonable in their demands. Gone are the good manufacturing jobs that provided steady work, decent wages and benefits including pensions.
It seems like "free trade" also contributes. When globalized companies can outsource everything, with no tariffs, they will do so, until our wages are at the same level as the poorest country in the world's wages. I remember "the great sucking sound" back in 1992. NAFTA. And that's what actually happened. All those auto jobs went off to Mexico because of NAFTA. That was Clinton, right? A Big Corporate win.
Unions are simply tools used by people, sometimes used for good, sometimes evil
This sentence is abjectly false and the reasoning that produced it either ignorant or inept:
"It’s the unions that cussed all of the jobs in the US to be shipped to China,"
Sorry no. What _caused_ "all of the jobs in the US to be shipped" elsewhere was the rapacious desires of the already ultra-rich capitalists. They took good, well run blue-collar-run companies like Rubbermaid and sent all the jobs to China NOT because Rubbermaid was losing money with over-paid workers but because the OWNERS could make even more paying slave wages with no environmental protections.
You know, you could educate yourself.
The problem is / are capitalists and the fact that the workers don't own the means of production. ... Think they'd have voted to send their own jobs to China? Hell No! Trouble is, capital can move in the blink of an eye and workers can't. ... You might apply some of your brain cells - they don't appear to be doing very much presently, just parroting right-wing propaganda that the ultra-rich have been feeding them (us) since "forever." Thinking for yourself and not buying the propaganda is a good start to help actually understand the world.
Thomas Sowell - a Milton Friedman senior shill at the right-wing neoliberal Hoover Institute? What does Rfhirsch mean by "Sowell on down" mean in this case? Does it mean other paid shills of the establishment who never stopped to reflect that the absurd assumptions of their macro-economic models reflect an imaginary world with no connection to reality?
Interesting. So if they all knew about this effect, why did the Administration put it in there in the first place? To give false hope to all those $7.50/hour workers? Was it just a con all along? Kind of a big deal to those workers; I read there were 40 million people making < $15/hour.
Well there are many politicians who see the minimum wage as a way to get support from voters, even if it affects those voters negatively after it is raised. And not that many politicians understand economics or even want to. The number of such workers is not that large.
I think this is where I read it: 42.4 million people made < $15/hour back in 2016. The information is a bit old. Do you have newer information? https://slate.com/business/2016/03/how-many-workers-earn-less-than-15-per-hour.html
It's hard to find actual information on this. Here is a quote from an article in July 2019: "At the same time, the study says the $15 minimum wage would boost pay for 17 million people would otherwise be earning less than $15 an hour, and possibly for another 10 million Americans who would otherwise be earning slightly more than $15 per hour." https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/739607964/-15-minimum-wage-would-boost-17-million-workers-cut-1-3-million-jobs-cbo-says
Good info from CBO. Makes sense; wages are up since 2016. Curious with the Democrats able to pass it now, they don't - although they allegedly tried to back in 2019. Bezos probably doesn't want them to, and he sorta runs the place. Kinda like Republicans not funding "the Wall" back in 2017 when they had control.
Well, you're clearly looking in the wrong places! You shouldn't be looking to _media_outlets_ like Slate and NPR for this kind of thing since, of course media people are experts in nothing but, perhaps, propaganda.
Though I loathe Google, they do have a good tool to find competent analysis of the data - it's called Google Scholar.
Furthermore, the data is available from the USG, and this kind of calculation isn't all that hard to make, so you CAN do it yourself fairly easily - I mean, you already have an internet connection / computer!
It’s was vote buying. They rallied the loser left in to riots to do their bidding to scare the judiciary, politicians and public so they could make their power grab. They got it and now it’s back to business as usual. White liberals and black rednecks screwing over everyone else. Fleecing the taxpayers and abusing power.
So you are saying that politicians opposed an increase in the minimum wage based on........checks notes........concern for it's impact on minorities.
Whether increasing the minimum is a good idea (which I think it is) is a separate debate, but the idea a politician did anything because in their heart of hearts they worried some policy would negatively impact minorities is to fundamentally misunderstand what a morally vacuous sociopath a politicians is.
When you provide me with the most cynical, self serving reason for anything they do, I will believe you.
Politicians are there to serve the powerful. Anything else is simply
Your casual slander of Dr. Sowell says much more about you than it does about him. Hateful and ugly though it is, your diatribe reveals your true character, thereby serving as an excellent example of why offensive speech should not be suppressed.
I would wager that not a single one of these leftist morons disparaging Dr. Sowell has read even one of his many books, or much of anything else of merit for that matter.
This rocket scientist Orban is the progressive-moron poster boy. He doesn't realize that Malcom X was talking about HIM is his 1963 speech about white liberals.
He doesn't know that the origin of the minimum wage in the U.S. was to protect white northern union labor from being undercut by southern blacks.
He doesn't know that minimum wages were used in apartheid South Africa to protect white wages against black competition.
In short, like most leftists, he doesn't know much of anything about anything. But despite his profound ignorance, he nevertheless feels entitled to call Dr. Sowell, who fought his way out of abject poverty to become among the leading economist on the planet, and "Uncle Tom".
Dr. Sowell knew more about economics and reality at 10 years old than this Orban fuckwit will ever know.
Character attacks ensure that only the echo chamber will listen to you. This results in zero value. “Uncle Tom” is a personal attack, but so is “fuckwit”
Yes, but the difference is that I establish that he is a fuckwit before saying it.
Substantiating one's assertions makes all the difference.
Ah, just stenography for Walter E. Williams.
https://dailycaller.com/2011/05/12/walter-e-williams-explains-how-unions-scheme-to-keep-blacks-out-of-high-paying-jobs/
Thanks for once again proving my point about leftists complete inability to make an argument.
Do you actually dispute that the legislative record behind the Davis-Bacon Act confirms what I wrote?
Do you actually dispute that the South African government used minimum wages to suppress black wages?
No, of course you don't, because you are too ignorant to know those things are true.
So instead, you simply call me a stenographer...
And you wonder why leftists are the laughingstock of thinking people everywhere.
Why don't you try actually reading some Sowell and actually learn something about what you purport to discuss.
Lordy.
You can guarantee there is some edge case where this is true. Doubtful that it is 99% of the time though.
‘Free speech’ does bring out the a—holes : ) Thomas Sowell is a national treasure
I agree, it’s always better to know how people really feel
What was slanderous?
Probably being dismissive someone’s opinion due to their skin colour.
Not sure if slanderous is the right term.
You're right. Libel is the correct term, not slander. "Uncle Tom" is a highly derogatory term, commonly understood (as in the usage in question) to be an epithet to belittle and disparage the character of black men whose opinions deviate from progressive orthodoxy. It's a little more than simply being dismissive.
Sooo...did you miss this part of his comment?
“ People should be reading LESS Sowell and MORE Malcolm X! ”
Sowell is not an Uncle Tom; he's one of the foremost philosophers of our time, and he cares deeply about the fate of black people in America. An "Uncle Tom" is a black person who sells out their own people in order to enjoy the privileges of acceptance in white society. Sowell's black critics are far more accepted by white society at universities, in the media and in government than he is, it's not remotely close. His prescriptions for what ails black people have proven far more effective than whatever it is that his critics are selling, just look at the status of black people in any "blue" area of the country. He doesn't blame "shiftless black folk" for the ills of the country, he blames clueless white liberals!
White liberals and Black Rednecks
Ahh...you have all of Sowell’s pamphlets!
Good points!
I love how you ignore the original purpose of the min wage: Keeping minorities out of the job market.
It's still working.
Policies will always have unintended side effects, it’s certainly possible that this is one of them. Where do you get the idea it was done on purpose though?
We needs to ask what the benefits as well as negatives are. Then weigh their value against facts rather than ideologies.
Excluding blacks from northern jobs was not an unintended consequence. It was an objective explicitly stated in the legislative notes.
In case you want a headstart:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-the-historically-racist-motivations-behind-minimum-wage/?sh=622fe4d311bb
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0405-leonard-minimum-wage-20160405-story.html
https://fee.org/articles/the-eugenics-plot-of-the-minimum-wage/
Thanks for the head start! This is exactly the sort of discussion we should be having.
I think the root cause of the whole issue is the massive power imbalance between today's worker, and today's megacorp. When companies are local and small and immigration is restricted, workers have power. When companies are outsourced globalized monopolies and borders are open, as they are today, workers have no power at all. That's my sense anyway.
Really interesting, almost like a government sponsored mobster response
I 'get that idea' because I know history. If you look into the history, you'll see the same thing. But don't trust my word for it, go onto the internet and find out for yourself.
After learning this, do you still support min wage?
are there any benefits to the whole society for a minimum wage? What is the supposed holy grail that makes this incumbent protection worthwhile?
Debates about the efficacy of the minimum wage and the notion of bailing out Wall Street certainly have their merits; however, the offhanded dismissal of Thomas Sowell's illustrious career with a derisive epithet has no merit whatsoever.
Your comment is typical of the narcissistic rage of regressive left activists when they come across opinions they do not like. This is the same set of emotions behind the cancel culture that this article is about.
If there is systemic racism in the US holding back blacks, why does the latest census data show Nigerian households in the US making more than white households? Also, there are now six nonwhite ethnic groups that earn more than white households. My partner got a Lyft ride home from an immigrant from Africa. He explained that he works full time as an engineer, but works weekends as a Lyft driver to save up the down payment for a house. For many immigrants, the US is the least racists, most free and prosperous country that has ever existed.
Sowell's point about the minimum wage is that few people stay at that low level of pay for very long. The lower wage makes it easier for businesses to create entry-level jobs for unskilled workers. The workers gain job skills as they work, and move on to higher paying jobs.
Mmm...Uncle Tom. Dude. I don't agree with the, "let capitalism sort them out play", but Uncle Tom? That over the top language immediately "cancels" your argument. People stop listening. Anyone that might have "gotten" your point, even agreed with it, are lost.
Wow, Uncle Tom Is even more caustic and vile than retarded, is in contempt of the essay and in reality the comment itself is seriously mentally deficient.
Sowell isn't an Uncle T, he's a Reaganite neolib like millions of Americans of every race. Maybe we should applaud his ability to step on the downtrodden poor like all these other arseholes. The trait most Americans share is kicking away the ladder as soon as they make it to the top.
Stepping on the downtrodden poors, kicking away the ladder as soon as one made it to the top -- these actions and human character features are truly terrible... only they belong not to Thomas Sowell but to the shameless liars who take to convince those downtrodden poors that there is anything for them in minimum wage laws other than perpetuation and worsening of their conditions.
Please tell me your profile photo is parody, because I need to stop laughing.
Why don't you detail a few of those "many ways?"
I'm looking forward to this.
Well, you slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4xoHjNjxus
This beats the hell out of anything that guy has to say.
Never really understood the all or nothing mentality of conservatives and liberals in regards to this issue. It seems to me both racism and culture are contributing factors.
John, just curious. What is your current occupation and your educational background?
Desperation because their MSM gig is not getting the prominence, stroking or funding it was. That all belongs to social media. So they hire pip-squeaks who talk first, research/study last-- cause it gets them "trending" on s. media or they are being talked about. Because the NYT is not being talked about as path breaking investigative journalism.
They can't become People magazine -- that market is full, so what market do they find their relevance in? How do you compete vs. Glenn, Max Blumenthal, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Mate etc.? They can't even with all their resources. The problem for them is their news gathering structure , it is ancient and obsolete-- so they struggle and hire Lorenz.
Heard an explanation that it wont work during a pandemic, as small businesses are already struggling. But let's face it, that's weak tea. No one in the antigovernment has cared about small businesses since March 2020.
Don't worry, their big business friends are going to buy up all the market share for peanuts on the dollar because only big $ business could really weather 1+ year of restricted business. We saw this in CA a decade ago after CA Medicaid reduced payments by 10%. https://lao.ca.gov/Recommendations/Details/294
And they will buy up the rubble with all that newly printed cash.
There's a reason that BTC is skyrocketing.
BTC is skyrocketing because the big finance hubs can make huge margins manipulating it's value just like they did with GameStop. Its one of the few areas of wild west investing still left.
Uni government meant to say.
And 15 is spit-in-your-eye too low; as Elizabeth Warren pointed out in the 2016 cycle - I think her comment was actually in 2015 - that there are two very different but very valid ways to look at what the Minimum Wage _should_be,_ one based on it having been tied to "the rate of inflation" at inception, or to "the Consumer Price Index" instead, and in both cases, the rate would have been over $24/hour at the time she spoke.
$15 is a joke.
And as for raising it during the pandemic, OK, fine, I can understand that, so you simply tweak the legislation so it reads that it applies to all "large" businesses immediately and to "small" businesses "as soon as the pandemic ends." ...BTW, last time I checked, "small business" was defined as those that employ less than 500 people. Oh, and another BTW, that lets ULTRA-RICH holding companies claim all sorts of tax advantages because they're "small businesses" even though they have gross receipts in the billions of dollars.
Do you really think that the pandemic will ever be declared over? Don’t be naive. Once they’ve got the “low lives” by short hairs they’ll never let go. Do as your told !!!!! It’s a pandemic. Never let a good crises go to waste.
Yes, I do, the public will demand it. You can be sure. What it takes is for the majority of hospitals to have insufficient quantities of Covid-19 patients to be considered even half full and a decreasing rate of infection. When that happens, we'll have broken the back of the pandemic and it will be "mop-up-crew" time to finish the job off.
A vital key is vaccination. The Sooner The Better.
Now you are a medical pandemic expert? Or did you just listen to the good DNC and media's coverage of this planted, man-made virus that shockingly ended the best economy the US had ever had just in time for an election!
The illegal aliens where I live demand $25 an hour for yard work and housecleaning. More than most Americans are making.
Yup - in NW CT as well - and they don’t want more coming over the border because they don’t want the competition
$30/hour where I live.
Sounds to me those "Americans" you're talking about should be demanding more, too. Perhaps they're just to servile?
"Americans" used to stand up for themselves, join unions, have solidarity between their unions and work for a better life for all of us. While you can still find such people, their numbers are pitifully low at present. How about we reawaken the Union spirit? Too communistic for you?
The best idea I've had so far for any kind of reawakening is unplug.
Not from tech or the internet, per se, but the mainstream circus. I'll admit, it's a mountain of a job. But thankfully, our minds are a pickaxe.
I've worked professionally in computer science (in one form or another) since the late 1970s and yet I've never had to unplug since I never bothered to plug in. ... As all this was developing through the late 90s, I knew instantly that if you aren't paying for it, YOU are the product, and I simply never signed up. And, I've told others to as well, but, well, that's been like trying to keep the ocean back with a broom.
However, that's changing.
I have run my own email and web servers for about 25 years now and have been offering my services to all my friends, nearly always free, and always with a plug they should unplug from social media - they can do all they want to do with the tools I handed them, including managing web pages via emails! You just email the server with your changes, it validates you, validates your instructions make sense and then automates the web page update... This way, I don't have to spend my time at it and they get what they want published to the web!
Oh, that's some fantastic stuff! The internet is still a fantastic place and it's people like you that help keep that way.
""Americans" used to stand up for themselves, join unions, have solidarity between their unions " - would you say that's largely because the nature of the work has changed?
Most manufacturing went to faraway countries where (or near where) troops are deployed to watch over them. The low pay work that's left requires no to little skill that doesn't lend itself to necessarily bonding together because of certain professional qualities.
High pay tech companies employ lots of H1B workforce that cannot participate in any sort of organizing by definition. Locals working those jobs also have little to complain about due to relatively high compensation and readily approve any and all wasteful fiscal policies that cover for real problems.
And so bringing manufacturing back home would have lots of positive impact on many fronts, but most certainly is against the interests of the ruling oligarchy.
The most sensible thing to have done, WAY back in the late '70s or even the '80s would have been to set up import duties proportional to the approximate equivalency of their labor and environmental regulation AND including enforcement thereof - makes no sense to give a break to a country because they have a law they don't enforce on the books. The idea would be that the tax would raise the cost of the imported goods to equal the U.S. goods. ...This would have protected U.S. jobs while at the same time not stifled rising economies around the world.
But as you point out such things are most certainly against the interests of the ruling oligarchy.
This would be a long discussion and out of scope for this format, but I wanted to point out a few things:
- you address fiscal part but that would require benevolence from the ruling class which we can safely rule out
- the way to really enforce it is to have strong professionally united groups of workers here at home which were eliminated in large part to prevent that
- "not stifled rising economies around the world" - I guess you don't imply that sending jobs overseas was to help those other economies. I'd say it was to exploit them under the cover of "help"
- just like "spreading democracy" etc is a cover for ensuring those countries with newly minted "democracies" stay permanently embattled and disorganized while being robbed by the "democratizers"
That inflation-adjustment is an interesting concept. The $7.25 rate was set in 2009, as per: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart Inflation since then per CPIAUCSL is 21%. (about 2% per year). So that's just $8.84; where did Warren get $24? Still, I didn't realize it hadn't been raised since 2009. That's a long time with no raise. Seems like Biden could have done *something* for workers. Lots of people got goodies in that Big Stimulus Bill.
You're apparently forgetting the compunding effect. And, you're apparently unaware of the HUGE inflation of the mid 1970s that, of course, gave the excuses to get rid of heavy taxation on the ultra-rich.
As for where Warren got it, do a web search, but she did explain it at the time. I'm sure you'll find it and, BTW, it's not particularly hard to do the analysis yourself.
Perhaps you can tell me where I went wrong: I brought up the timeseries CPIAUCSL from fred. Here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL The value of this series in July 2009 was 214.726. The value today is 261.775. That's a 21.9% increase. Does this calculation seem right to you? If so, 21.9% times $7.25 is $1.59. What am I missing?
I suspect you "went wrong" in ignoring two two-word concepts: "since inception" and "compounding effect."
Here's an idea, perhaps look up "doubling rates of inflation" and see what you get.
A seemingly tiny % increase can yield remarkably short doubling times when the rate is compounded.
In fact the Fed includes the compounding effect: "The CPIs are based on prices for food, clothing, shelter, and fuels; transportation fares; service fees (e.g., water and sewer service); and sales taxes." So the Dec 2020 value quoted represents the actual prices in that month, and the 21.9% increase is the ACTUAL increase in prices from 2009. It is NOT the sum of annual % increases, but the compounded increase from 2009 to 2020.
And these large companies pay so little that many of their employees are eligible for food stamps and Medicaid. So the oligarchs are screwing their employees and the taxpayers!
Here you are actually on something. Yes, large companies get to squeeze their workers on pay. How? By using their naturally superior negotiating power. The only cure? More smaller companies. How? By making it easier and less burdensome to run a small company. That is, cut regulations, unify taxation, do not create artificial contractual obligations for employers; large companies thrive on regulations, small busines owners are strained enough already, to the point of extinction, they cannot afford notorious "your lawyer" (as if they needed only one these days). That is, Trump should have been your natural choice; but you refused to act on it. Now relax and enjoy the rule of large companies and lawyers -- your fought hard for it after all. And you won!
If I had the ability to make law, I'd have a law that says that any corporation who has any full time employee who is eligible for public assistance just to pay their ordinary bills should be assessed 15% of their gross income for that year, to be taken FIRST from the leadership of the company's compensation, reducing it down to the same as whoever works for that company who was so eligible for public assistance.
That ought to solve it. ... Well, and also that they can't just make people not full-time to screw them that way...
Minimum wage isn't called "minimum" for no reason. Its the minimum you can live on.
No, it's the minimum you're legally allowed to pay for employment. Period. It was never intended for anyone to be able to live as an adult on that income. It's at best a training wage.
Except that you can't, actually, not without living in squalor.
What evidence would you give of someone providing more than a $15 hour minimum wage and it being successful? Do you not think the capitalist corporations running the world just turn around and pass that cost off down the line? You think they just take the hit to their ROI and be like oh yeah fuck it lets just give our workers a bigger share of the pie? LOL!!!!
What about the workers who grabbed too much when they had all the power with their private sector unions? How has that worked out in the global economy the DNC and RNC elite support? How come Carter didn't meet with the Steel industry when they collapsed? Let me guess... "he wasn't left". How come Bill Clinton passed NAFTA over his own party's objections? Let me guess...."he wasn't left"?
That's right, Bill Clinton wasn't and isn't left. NOW you're starting to catch on; Clinton is neo-liberal.
Another post responding to me, saying a DNC president "wasn't left" and yet another post without you pointing at someone you think is. Say something substantive. Put your name behind your belief. Give us a candidate that you, Lord Gatekeeper of the labeling of Left Politicians think is truly left.
I'm going to agree with Art that the left-right "party" dynamic doesn't hold significance - at least not anymore. Both parties are "oligarch parties" with only cosmetic differences. Both parties are heartily glad to see Trump gone, for instance. Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi are functionally equivalent.
I'd say Bernie is left. Proof: "cheap drugs from Canada" bill. Establishment people from both parties voted that one down. Trump is also - sorta - left. Or at least, pro-labor. Tariffs on China & bringing jobs back to America = pro labor. And reduced immigration is a long-standing goal of labor. At least it was for a very, very long time. Before they all got "woke".
Woke has replaced wage advocacy on "the new left." "Woke" won't affect the bottom lines of corporations, so they're fine with that. Contribute to BLM: yes! Minimum wage increase? NO!!!
DNC = RNC = the money interest. Its why healthcare costs go up regardless of who we elect.
Thank you for saying an example of someone you think is left. I mostly agree with your other points except for the healthcare one but that's another argument :)
Give it up; the dichotomy of right vs left simply cannot explain some things, and you're obviously too dense to consider that there's a large body of people whose politics are neither right nor left.
Maybe you'll see the light someday, but I'm certainly not holding my breath.
I hope you find a better employer than Mr. Brock.
With Ratings Down, the Networks Hunt for a Trump Replacement: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/without-trump-is-a-depression-in
Trump saved the cable news business once. Without him, things are looking bleak again. Who will they find to feed the outrage machine?
I thought the same. Now I realize....you can just keep going. After the election, we have the impeachment. Blaming previous administration for CV19 rollout, white nationalism, fascism that must be squelched with stringent authoritarianism. All these narrative need Orange Man Bad; like soup needs salt to taste better. I'm sure there will be more. Guaranteed. Orange Man Bad has a long runway. (for reference, see, Russia, Hillary's emails, FBI Comey saga, etc. etc.)
God damn, you came back dropping bombs!
He damn sure did!
It is understandable that reporters at the NYT are sensitive about certain words. Mr. Andreessen may not have used the R word, but he could have used it at any moment. Ms. Lorenz should not have to live in continual fear and it is arguably worse dealing with the suspense of when Mr. Andreessen will drop the R word than if he had actually uttered it. Free speech does not give you the right to terrorize others with all the things you might potentially say.
Unfortunately, those who have the privilege not to work for the NYT probably will never understand this degree of suffering.
Ms Lorenz should be sentenced to one year of using Netscape Navigator v1.0 exclusively.
Ms Lorenz also will need clarification of what is meant by "R-word". She might think it's across the aisle from "D-word".
All words are offensive to someone. Using first letters only is best.
Not to mention savings on typing, paper, etc. Ultimately the environment is saved.
True - words are a waste. De-platform everybody!
ROFLMAO! Wow. You win this board and the internet!! Good stuff...
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but the R word will never hurt me.
New York Times reporters (apologies for using the R word) are more sensitive than you.
That's impossible. .. I can sense the slightest human suffering.
*aside ~ it's a little late, but this impeachment is much better than the last impeachment.
Third impeachment will be the charm.
Great article! Thanks Glenn.
Loved the below...
“They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers: the military-industrial complex, the CIA and FBI, the clandestine security state, Wall Street, Silicon Valley monopolies, the corrupted and lying corporate media outlets they serve.”
Don’t forget their core insufficiency: character. What they have in sufficient supply to overcome all those insufficiencies is ignorance and a breathtaking level of naivety.
"Once you can fake sincerity, you've got it made."
Some Wit whose name eludes me at the moment
I guessed Oscar Wilde but it's George Burns. Nice.
K Well Glenn I am a great grandma living on SS and a small nurse's pension having become radicalized about the time the VN war was over and realized all the lies, and never looked back...not once, but have been more and less active over the years d/t work, kids, late higher education, divorce, etc etc. so always have had limited ability to give $ but not energy or desire for the truth. But d/t this column, have subscribed now with a v. small monthly stipend I could afford, in this so critical time. I so wish it were more, hopefully one day it will be more. If not for you, Chris Hedges, Noam, Lee Camp, and your moral and intellectual cohorts I wouldn't know jack shit. You are in my thoughts and prayers. Stay safe, keep the faith and stay strong. We are here for you.
I'm 62. And when I was a kid, up until I was 15 and they stopped the draft, I KNEW I was going to Viet Nam. All the 'big kids' in my working neighborhood went. They stopped the draft when I was 15 and whoa the relief I felt. B/c I was also convinced I would die over there.
I was raised Catholic, and as a child I was an altar boy. 67-71 there was some kind of build up, and we served at funeral masses during school hours. It was sweet to get out of class...
Until the boys started coming home in boxes. Half a century later, I can still see the destroyed familes at those funerals. What a horrid time.
I've always thought that we should draft the upper classes to war first. So Biden wants to bomb Syria? OK, well, we'll enlist Harvard and Yale to do so. Hunter goes as well. Also Pelosi's grandkids. Girls too. On the front line! Wouldn't want to be sexist. I am convinced this would end American imperialism overnight.
Yes, and it's a better solution than simply ending the draft.
I'm in favor of bringing it back. Upper classes first.
Let me share with you something of a similar nature. I am 76 years old and a graduate of Tulane. For the past year I have become alarmed at the woke course Tulane has taken. From a disproportionate number of liberal versus conservative professors, to supporting BLM ( who by the 3 founders own admission "we are trained Marxists"), to a english professor ( yes ENGLISH) starting a course called "Feminism after Trumplandia", to a professor telling a story of a student who thought he was a student and suggested "You should try out for the baseball team" saying that such comment was a"microaggression", to mandating Critical Race Theory as a required course for freshmen. All of this nonsense was too much for me. So I wrote many a dozen emails over time. At least 3 to the President of Tulane, one to the english professor,and emails to the Dean of the English Dept and well a Deans of other schools at Tulane, the Provost, and even the President of the Tulane Alumni Association. How many responded to my concerns ? None. A big fat 0. I believe that Tulane believes if they just ignore I will go away. But I have news for them. The war is long. I'm not giving up until I have a public say on this far left course my beloved alma mater is taking. I have no problem with people who are liberal. But its not right for all thought, if not liberal, to be shut out. Tulane needs to at least hear and be tolerant of a different view.
College, a dead useless concept.
thank you for taking the time to read what I wrote
Not at all. I'm happy I went, and my kids did too. Yeah, yeah; grievance studies are a rip off for sure, but any other dept will teach you critical thinking skills.
You're aware of Peterson, Lindsay, and Weinstien's experiences I assume? If not, just google those names w/ CRT on them.
People are waking up, man. This shit from the Frankfurt school of thought has been going on for generations. It's taken over the NYT (I'll be cancelling my sub for the final time today) and pretty much the majority of Establishment higher ed (Ivy League and the 2nd tiers). It ain't good. I believe we're witnessing a Cultural Revolution in real time.
if you read abt the history of NYT, they have always been morally bankrupt, covering for Hitler and Stalin at different points in time. Lovely.
We canceled our NYTimes sub this week as well. No need to support crazy talk.
It used to be you were informed; even if you didn't agree. Now...I just feel that I'm being propagandized to the point of brainwashed.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read what I wrote. I will take your advice and google those names. Take care, be safe !
It's a rabbit hole, Mack. For me, it started w/ this video: https://www.tvo.org/video/genders-rights-and-freedom-of-speech
Interesting, do you donate as an alumni? Call your graduation year class alumni rep and give him/her the business.
We stopped donating to Smith, Wellesley, Harvard, Yale - they have all been corrupted with ‘wokeness’.
I use to donate but not anymore.......I went to Tulane on a football scholarship and still communicate with many of my old teammates. They are helping me brainstorm. Thanks so much for reading what I wrote
Glenn on Feb 3 "...take this week off ... will be back on Monday, February 8". Well Glenn, at least you tried 😉 Hope you enjoyed your 4 day vacay. 🍹
Glenn is describing a form of mass psychosis amongst privileged leftist elites, many of whom are employed by the old, decayed & very faded 'Grey Lady', The New York Times. We just stopped our FOUR decades long run of a subscription. Don't support this intellectual malfeasance.
I just cancelled my four decade long subscription also.
It's what happens as people who claim to care about others join the protected class.
Decades ago, we started out with a noble idea, equality for all regardless of skin color, ethnicity, or sex. Now we've descended into an absurd state where people are destroyed for uttering a word from the (growing) collection determined by the mob to be offensive. Meanwhile, mob members make ludicrous claims about their "pain and suffering" from having to hear these particular words. We've become a parody and the antithesis of serious people solving serious problems.
Great stuff. But I wouldn't call the Stasi hall-monitors "journalists." You are a journalist. These two-bit lowlife bullies are not journalists. They are media whores, and should be so described.
Apparatchiks-- enablers of the state