The Dixie Chicks analogy significantly weakens your otherwise outstanding argument; people choosing not to buy something is wholly different from trying to stop others from having the opportunity to buy it. A boycott is fundamentally and qualitatively different from a ban: If people were urging record stores to not carry their albums (and that may have happened; I don't recall it, but that doesn't mean it didn't), that would be different from a boycott. Because if choosing not to buy someone's records is censorship, then I've been "censoring" Yoko Ono for more than 40 years now.
On a serious note, Wilkinson's tweet was actually funny for anyone who has a sense of humor, whereas the tweet from his former boss was simply angry and hateful.
The answer to cancel culture is for people in positions of power to stop caring what is on Twitter. Just. Stop.
And those of us appalled by all of this should stop spending our money on organizations that indulge this crap.
Which mean, Glenn, we boycott businesses like Amazon, Google and Twitter - not to "cancel" them, but to spend our money on businesses whose practices don't contribute to cancel culture.
Again, it's important to differentiate between boycotts and bans.
People absolutely have the right to refrain from buying products. If it were just that, I'd agree with you. But they burned their CDs publicly. They demanded radio stations not play their music (and those stations succumbed to the demands). It was far more than just a decision not to buy their CDs. It was uglier than a lot of people remember. You have to be willing to look at excesses of your own side, too.
Well, they learned their lesson did they not? They dropped Dixie from their name to virtue signal to BLM this summer, because now being associated with the South in general is racist? Give these hysterical self righteous cultists an inch and you'll see it wasn't about the issue, it's about the control.
Every move that's made is just about fear and control. It's the modern Inquisition.
While I was very disappointed with the behavior of the Dixie Chicks, I was disturbed by the reaction to it. Plus, I loved their music and miss it. C'mon man, after all they are just entertainers...very few people look to entertainers as beacons of wisdom.
The campaign led them to branch out and appeal to other markets, I assume pop music and maybe folk. They expressed gratitude that they'd been evicted from the ghetto. IOW, they're still around; just look for their music.
Oh, I've heard their stuff since their eviction - it's just not music. The "ghetto" made them who they are and if they truly believe that I'd suggest such arrogance is the reason they are irrelevant today. I'll take that "ghetto" music over 95% of the soulless, heartless pablum that is out there today.
I think the issue was most amplified by one Bib Geldof. After LIve Aid the fashion was make political statements and be an activist. There was a push to say pop stars ave been given a platform so the must use it for other reasons than the reason they have been given the platform, which is to entertain.
Right-wing equivalent was Joe McCarthy. Joe enlisted government institutions to his cause, and leveraged those to bully private actors. Dixie Chicks were boycotted by individuals. There was no radio station equivalent of Big Tech. Other labels and promoters were free to do business with them. The symbolism of CD burning was horror, but they were the burners' property. Unlike expressive works of art (monuments, statues), public property, with law enforcement "giving them space" and news media proclaiming support. Glenn, are you too young to remember Tailgunner Joe?
Although not exactly equivalent to Big Tech, even today no country music artist has any chance of making it big without country radio. So much so that one of the awards given at the CMAs is top country radio DJ/personality, and they make a big deal out of. Country may be the genre most dependent on radio. As a result, the Dixie Chicks had no choice but to retool their career or perish.
Correct. There are radio station cartels, but the barriers to entry for competitors are quite low, and I'm unaware of any monolithic country radio mogul who can deny anybody the ability to perform.
I don't disagree with your points regarding the Dixie Chicks, Glenn. Especially the essential blacklisting them from country radio. For whatever it's worth, there is a cultural dimension that was also at play. Even in large mostly urban/suburban counties country music fans tend to be more conservative. Doubly so in rural areas. As you point out in your essay most of our institutions, including music and other entertainment, are most culturally liberal. One of the very few exceptions is country music. While one could argue country fans over reacted, many if not most took the Dixie Chicks comments as a cultural betrayal. Inundated by liberal institutions in almost every aspect of our culture, country music is a place where conservatives can feel completely comfortable belonging. Many took the Chicks as attacking this social place. I'm not saying this makes their cancelation right, but I think there more involved than simple gotcha fake outrage
True. But nevertheless, it did show that whatever the reasons, this type of weapon can and has been wielded by the Right and Left alike in the past. In fact, before the scourge of political correctness came down on society during the past three decades, during decades prior to the '70s the patriotic correctness of the Right was often ruled the roost in popular fiction, academia, etc.
I don't disagree. But given the left's cultural dominance, it is telling that Glenn had to reach so far back in time for a good example of cancelation by the right (and I agree it was a good example - and, sad to say, one I was guilty in supporting). And you are right about the 60s and earlier. Of course many people reading this weren't alive then! Damn, I'm old!
There is a huge difference between ad-hoc, spontaneous cancellation, as occurred with the Dixie Chicks, and the broad scale, organized, coordinated, media driven, and liberal government supported oppression. Once Obama set the framework for the new cancel culture, the left has been a cult.
"White fragility". Bullshit. Race has nothing to do wiih it. You reveal so much of yourself by use if this term in this context. Believe it or not everything in life is NOT about race. Since it's clear your values are in line with the dominate left culture, what would you know of conservatives need for a cultural place with like minded people? You've got those places in spades. All that said, as I've acknowledged in other posts it was cancelation, and especially the radio blacklisting, wrong. I've brought up the conservation cultural aspect as added nuance that is at play. Try to see beyond your rote woke stereotypes.
Sorry, but your characterization of conservatives desire for a sliver of our culture to not be dominated by the left as "white fragility" absolutely makes it about race. Not one iota of my posts had anything to do with race. Do you think all conservatives and country music fans are white? If so you need to rethink your assumptions. As for the rest of your rant, it has absolutely nothing to do with the points I made.
Let's try to see that past instance of the Dixie Chick's in the context. It was just after 9-11. We were going to eat in Iraq. The Chick's went public with an anti-war stance. The State made an example out of the Dixie Chick's. An anti war opinion in retaliation for a still to this day taboo topic of 9-11. Does it make any more sense now to see it in this context? Or is the all benevolent state harmless in the completely organic rhetoric regarding War in Iraq? Is the State completely benign now? In silencing this who question Election Integrity? In blacklisting Conservatives at a time when the Fed just printed more dollars then ever before in its history.
Context does matter. The State is never Benevolent to its citizens. The Dixie Chick's then and Conservatives now better fall in line or face the mob. Propaganda is almost always effective, especially for those who have 'a side'. It's always the other side that's brainwashed, never their own.
Andreas, perhaps you’ve never been at a football game where the 3 Manchester United F.C fans sitting in the stadium belts out a huge round of applause for the Liverpool F.C. goal. You talk about betrayal? It happens everywhere. We are all tribal and yes, it’s in our genetic code from 10,000 years ago when if you weren’t tribal, you were left to fend for yourself with the wolves and grizzly bears. When that happens and you abandon your tribe and you’re standing there naked against the wild, then you can talk about your white fragility. Unless you want to talk about Western Civilization and Judeao-Christian law, which civilized most of us so that when our tribe is dissed, they get booed and ignored instead of shoved into the wild with just their own two feet.
Very good analogy, TrueNorthMN. I do believe conservatives are becoming more tribal, in many ways including myself. I used to love discussing politics with those on the left. Still so with many in this forum. Otherwise, not so much. I live in the only GOP congressional district left in San Diego county, where I've lived my entire life. When I retire in a year or two I'm out of here, moving to someplace with more conservative people. Someplace where my world view isn't vilified as racist, etc.
Hi! Spent most of my life in San Diego, moved to a Red State in the South 3 years ago, there's lots of us here! I love it, I laugh whenever I fill up my gas tank. You won't regret it, don't wait until CA starts working to prevent its mass exodus, critical thinking is telling me that's the next move there.
I think you nailed this piece Glenn. The examples of both the right and left trying to vanquish opposition are critical for people to integrate. The fact is, the right's opposition to the Dixie Chicks used the tools that were available to them at that time. Does anyone seriously doubt the right would have leveraged their own Twitter or Facebook had those tools been available to them to cancel the Chicks? To your larger point, as long as the left and right keep fighting each other, they continue to lose coherence and credibility. One opportunity you could get into deeper is the Maginot lines that were crossed with the destruction of Parler and the occupation of the capitol. The inability of either side to dominate the other is resulting in a ramping of greater (and more consequential) results. What's next?
If you’re going to write and sing music for the Duck Dynasty, Clampett’s, Jeff Foxworthy and Bubba J (Jeff Dunham) demographic, you need to understand your audience. That’s the problem with many musicians who are good on the music side and horrible at anything outside that very narrow swim lane, including understanding their real audience. While I’m not in this demographic, I can belt out the best of Garth Brooks with the best of ‘em.
That's fair - but you get my newsletter, Glenn, and if you read it a few weeks ago you know I hammered Rudy Guiliani and Marjorie Taylor Greene for their recent attempts to destroy (cancel) any Republicans who didn't go along with Trump's false claims that the election was stolen via fraud. I'd add David Marcus' ridiculous demand in this morning's Federalist that McConnell step down for holding Trump responsible for his contribution to stoking the partisan flames that led to the riot. I'm not demanding the Federalist fire Marcus, mind you, I just think Marcus' column was idiotic.
I'd forgotten about the burning of CDs - always opposed to that. Still not entirely convinced that that episode truly amounted to an attempted cancellation so much as it was acting on frustration and anger - sort of like how you have differentiated the Jan. 6 riot as a riot and not an actual insurrection it's being portrayed as. The Dixie Chicks were, after all, able to transition to a fairly successful career catering to alternative rock fans who shared their political views and we were willing to give them a chance despite not really liking country music up to that point.
But I also acknowledge I may be completely wrong on all that.
I'd like to see you try boycotting Amazon. Hell, this website (substack) uses Amazon Web Services as a host. Its hard *not* to use AWS -- even if you purchase hosting from another company, there's a very good chance its still through AWS. Honestly, its about time we "Ma Bell" the Bezos.
Got it right though: social media loses all of its power the moment we start realizing it isn't real. Ignoring the digital mob is the only solution.
I'm boycotting Amazon right now. I use it for shopping, comparison, and reviews, then look up the manufacturer and buy from them, cutting out amazon. This is possible 8 times out of 10. The 9th time is where the original manufacturer is stupid enough to charge more than amazon, and the 10th time is when it's some little niche item that I can't get locally in central Florida. Usually items worth only a few bucks.
I hope this doesn't have anything to do with the My Pillow Qanon nutjob who was still shilling hard after the riot, because not being that much of a douche is a pretty low standard to hold for a retailer choosing to not carry a company's products.
I know Mike Lindell and his management team and I can assure you, they’re not nutjobs or a douche. They’re Populists plain and simple and they are free speech advocates. If you can’t see the nexus between Populism on the Right and the Left, you are not yet “woke” to the future of our collective fight to right size the Establishment. I sat in Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street encampments in 2010 and 2011 and there was much more in common with their mission than the Establishment media will allow you to believe. Remember, the enemy of my enemy is my friend for the purposes of promoting systemic change. After we get the change we seek, then we can go back to Populist Right vs. Populist Left fights..but I can assure you...few on the Populist Right want to shut down your 1st amendment rights. If you take the 30% of Populists on the Left and combine with the 30% of Populists on the right....that constitutes a majority vs. the 40% in the Establishment. The only question is whether people can agree on what unites us and for now.....disregard the areas we disagree on.
Working to overturn the will of the majority, potentially using military force is not a populist goal, it's elitist and literally fascist, and I'm not a lefty who overuses that term. Mike Lindell is pushing absolutely ridiculous - full-on douchebag nutjob - conspiracy theories about "hammer" and "scorecard" programs which are only alleged to exist by a previously universally reviled fraudster with a long history of self-enriching opportunistic scams. Lindell's "evidence" looks like any generic bittorrent port list, and shows no evidence that the access was even granted. I can generate an identical list using Peerblock and not a single attempt at access would amount to anything. Or I could obv generate the same thing using a word processor... It's cringeworthy to anyone with even elementary knowledge of networking. He has yet to show the full text of the paper he was photographed with showing "martial law" on it. He continued to rile up his followers even after they stormed the capital. The guy is an absolute buffoon who deserves whatever backlash he gets. I voted for Trump twice, btw, and would again just on policy grounds even though I don't think he's all that bright or competent either.
As far as populism, most on the populist left want to increase payroll taxes by ~13% to pay for universal health insurance, which would roughly double to triple my current costs depending on the year's income. They want semi-auto gun bans, sex hormones for children and teenagers, universal parental leave, universal childcare, free college - paid for by my (non-college educated) taxes, more speech restrictions. The populist right largely just wants to be left alone. There is less common ground here than you think, IMO. It'd be nice if we could all agree to raise taxes on just the uber-rich and maybe tax capital gains more like regular income, but unfortunately the only politicians advocating that also want the other items as a package deal, and that just doesn't fly in my book.
Thanks for the tip. I'm also boycotting Amazon and am having a hard time finding individual vendors to buy from. Because I won't even log into Amazon, (cancelled my account) I didn't think of that option of comparing then seeing the individual manufacturers name. I'll have to look at that in the search engine. I appreciate the tip. I'm trying to compile tips for people who are doing what they can not to purchase from these monopolies.
Proton mail based in Switzerland has been popular. I was going to get it but came across tutanota.com and found it to be much cheaper if you want more than the free acct. And tutanota encrypts the subject line whereas proton mail does not. I've only had it about a month but so far so good. Simpler UI and great responsiveness. Duck Duck Go is an alternative to Google as a search engine, and they have a standalone search app for mobile that seems to be completely private with no snooping or record keeping. As for banking, I'm in the process of moving everything to local banks -- no more citibank or other financial giants. But I do think it's useful to maintain an account or two if there's an occasional advantage for you. So 95% disinvestment and disuse is my goal.
Thank you for that inspiration. I have to admit I am only doing that for book purchases right now. First the library (we have a system here in Toronto) then to local bookstores. I am going to start doing it for other items 😊
Thanks for sharing these comments. I'm learning to walk again without the crutches of big tech too. My muscles have atrophied, but I'm regaining strength by the day.
Very often, if you look at Amazon's marketplace sellers, you can go buy directly from their site. I buy a lot of foreign language stuff and have started shopping directly with some stores that specialize in that. Don't get the 2 day shipping, but even if I'm not giving up Amazon altogether they no longer have a monopoly on my purchases.
I run the mail servers and web servers for around 60 internet domains, all for free, for friends' businesses... ...Find your local friendly computer nerd and treat them well, and you, too, might find your way to avoiding the big guys.
Seems like more than half the time the manufacturer charges more than Amazon after shipping is factored in. Ebay can be good but always price check for Amazon drop shippers there
Bezos should seek a breakup of his company for his own sake. John D. Rockefeller fought the breakout of Standard Oil out of hubris and pride, but 5 years after the breakup of his company, he had 2x the wealth.
AWS should be splintered off the E-commerce business and the media business should also be force to be spun off.
We don’t want a man worth $1 trillion who buys ink in 55 gallon drums through the WaPo controlling the national narrative. That's not free speech. That’s a Big Tech Oligarch using tyrannical means to destroy whoever he wants to destroy. You might not be in his sights today, but I can sure you that he’ll have you in his sights tomorrow.
As a AMZN shareholder, this would be hugely profitable to me. The value of those businesses independent of each other (with a sale of the WaPo) would be 3x what they’re worth today within 5 years.
Read about Salazar in Portugal. A benevolent autocrat can do the same thing. This may in fact be our best hope at this point, but we're more likely to get corporate fascists. Oh wait! They won the election just last week, "fair and square," right? And now they're moving at warp speed, publicly, to establish their own personal Stasi.
Well, I cancelled my Amazon account after 21 years. My websites are hosted by a small, family owned outfit that co-los their own server boxes. I've cancelled my Amazon referral account, obviously, although my CD reviews and book reviews still link to Amazon for now - there's more than 1,000, so changing those by hand will be time consuming. The books will link to the Independent booksellers association online portal - got approved for an account there. Not yet sure about the music links.
I'm also moving all my domain registrations from GoDaddy, and am slowly but surely migrating all my logins from Gmail to my own domain.
Someone else pointed out on a previous Glenn post, I think (or maybe Taibbi) that we've all been busy trading our principles for convenience.
"we've all been busy trading our principles for convenience."
...that's false: SOME OF US have never traded our principals for convenience, such as myself; I've run my own mail and web servers since about 1996, have never had an Amazon account, etc.
Whenever I'm using one of the big (read evil) corps in tech, it's because someone else has forced it, such as the myriad people who mindlessly have gmail accounts, so I can't email them without handing google some of MY content, which regularly pisses me off.
And, by the way, I literally have interrupted my work in now moving up to providing virtual hosting of email for my many friends I want to communicate securely with, so I can now offer all those people with gmail accounts one hosted on MY boxes, so they can shed that association and we're all better off.
That said, why are you ditching GoDaddy? I've been with them since roughly the end of their first month in operation, LONG before they had a fancy web site. While they've made some mis-steps in the last few years, I basically threatened to take my business elsewhere if they didn't ditch this "value pricing" idea on domains I already own. I was actually told the renewal on one domain was high "because it's a good domain name," and I told the kid on the phone that yeah, that's why I got it, and if GoDaddy wants to be in the domain speculation business, they need to end being a registrar - those are two different functions. ... They backed down shortly thereafter, but IDK if it was just for a guy like me, with around 60 registered domain and a total history of around 100 registered with them over the decades... If they're doing that to others, I want to know!
GoDaddy cancelled hosting for a shooting sports club with no notice, shortly after Parler got axed by Amazon. Said that "glorifying" guns violated their terms.
I admire your consistency! Clearly, though, given the market dominance of Amazon, Google, FaceBook, etc., the vast majority of us have not shown your tenacity to our ideals - myself included.
I used to write the Online San Diego column in ComputorEdge Magazine for (that's how they spelled it), reviewing local BBS systems in the '80s and '90s. Was on the 'Net before there was a Web - doing Archie and Gopher searches. But the convenience became awfully convenient.
Thanks, Jim, we're of about the same era... I started making money with computers in the FIRST half of my teens, then got a job writing an operating system in machine language using the 6809 chip when I was 15 in the late 1970s. . . . So, I'd guess we're about the same age. Like you, I was on the net LONG before non-geeks even knew there was a net.
I have definitely, knowingly, and with intention kept my integrity while knowing full well I'd do better financially if I didn't. But SOMEBODY has to tell the fuckers where they can stuff it and try and find a better way. Today, in the computing world, this is best exemplified by the open-source community's coming together to replace the expensive, siloed operating systems, "desktop software" like Microsoft Office with alternatives like OpenOffice and LibraOffice, etc.
BTW, back to GoDaddy for a moment: Canceling hosting with no notice is horrific, BUT, unlike domain name registration, hosting is subject to subjective interpretations of terms of service. This is a KEY reason (among several others) why I tell people they should host their own stuff. The network bandwidth for a modest site isn't that expensive any more, and look what happens when you catch the short straw?! Disaster!
Anyway, looking forward to more exchanges; keep the peace.
My dad built a 6502-based MOS KIM-1 clone in '76 or so - I was in high school then, the and the neighborhood kids would come around to see it - although it wasn't much. He did hook up a surplus Teletype keyboard to it for data entry, and a Hex LED display.
A few years later, he bought an Atari 400, and we joined the local Atari User Group to swap shareware on cassettes.
I was never a developer or programmer - always a computer journalist, writing about the technology and how it was changing things.
I met Dan Gookin online on a local BBS in the late '80s, then my roommate, Andy Rathbone, wrote "Windows for Dummies" when Gookin turned it down.
I was an advisory board member and volunteer curator for the Computer Museum of American in the 1990s and early 2000s; still host their old archived web site at http://computer-museum.org.
Great, exciting fun times when the tech was still new and online was wide-open.
Bezos uses the insane profits from AWS to unwrite the huge losses on the e-commerce side putting hundreds of thousands done small business out of business.
Last time we asked, Amazon isn’t willing to support our Little League program or sponsor the 4th of July fireworks in our town like small businesses historically have done.
Ignore and don't feed the trolls-- that applies to almost every obnoxious thing in life. The "trolls" need attention to be able to use their righteousness and self appointed authority. Who died and made them god?
Absolutely! That actually got me thinking of one more; Beastie Boys were almost as prophetic as The Simpsons: "So, so, so, so listen up, 'cause you can't say nothin'. You'll shut me down with a push of your button."
(Note: I must've screwed up posting this about a half-dozen times already.)
I’d add, cancel the subscription to the Times, which is no longer an objective source of news. It was like breaking an addiction after decades, but I feel better now.
Had no trouble dropping the NYT (and its clone the Boston Globe) years ago - actually after the obscene Iraq war where they played a large role in starting it. Now it's Glenn, JimmyDore, Matt Taibbi, NakedCapitalism, Aaron Mate, Ron Placone, Chris Hedges, Lee Camp, David Swanson, Caitlin Johnstone, Max Blumenthal, Ray McGovern, Consortium News, and many other independents. I hope they survive the upcoming repression of the Biden evil doers. Look what the US is doing to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden for reporting truth about war crimes and the gov't in general.
(And its other clone, the Washington Post.) I follow some of the folks you mention, e.g. Taibbi and Hedges, and I’ve discovered that I get a lot of good perspective and news from the balanced coverage of Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti. Will look into the others. I also find myself dipping into the content of black conservatives like the brilliant Glenn Loury and his more moderate colleagues, John McWhorter and Coleman Hughes. I second your comment about Snowden and Assange. The treatment of these two is unconscionable and shameful.
I also follow Krystal and Saagar (forgot to mention them, shame on me my bad) and I also recommend their balance. They are both excellent and I follow them. I'll check out your other recommendations, thank you. Always looking for independent points of view. Long before and then when WaPo was purchased by Bezos I figured it was a goner and so just dumped it, sad considering Dan Ellsberg and the courage he displayed about the Vietnam war. Too many have sold out for $$$. Goodness I loathe capitalism these days. There are many other independent journalist like StatusCoup's Jordan Chariton and his relentless coverage of the Flint lead water crisis (and Obama's collusion) and his coverage about the North Dakota pipeline I am forgetting, my bad again. Let's hope others chip in and add more of these journalists? Also Let's hope these independents can continue safely - takes much courage these days to stand up for presenting real news. And contributions - which I do. You should too!! David Sirota as well!!
Agreed about Assange and Snowden, and Krystal, though Saagar is -YAWN!- ... but I don't know the others you cite. Hmmm... Will try and look, though time is short.
Good list AND, we should be pressureing the holy fuck out of Biden and his administration to STOP pursuing Assange and Snowden. Neither have been convicted, but a "pardon" would end the witch hunts permanently.
Biden’s approach for both will be to ignore Snowden and Assange.
He’s on board with the IC and will simply shove them down the memory hole knowing that he who controls the MSM controls the narrative.
Which is why I’m here.
I know many of you will object, but paying Glenn $50 for a 1 yr. subscription is an old media model that Rush Limbaugh was forced to adopt because corporate media doesn’t like real journalists speaking real truth to power no matter where they reside ideologically. I hope Glenn is as successful in building a direct to subscriber audience as Limbaugh has done the last 30 years.
It’s nice to know there are more Mike Royko types out there in the world of journalism than you would have expected to find at the NYT and WaPo.
My nominee for the Mike Royko Speaking Truth to Power Award for 2020 goes to Glenn Greenwald.
I vehemently disagree with him ideologically, yet he understands like Chomsky that you either believe in free speech or you don’t.
It truly is a binary choice. I choose free speech.
Add Kevin Williamson to your list. He’s the one who writes for National Review and worked for the Atlantic of all of 1 week before being fired because the snowflakes in the newsroom don’t understand sarcasm, wit or irony.
It's essay writing 101 to establish credibility by pointing out how your point applies to "both sides." However, the fact that one has to go back 18 years (to a time of war, no less) to come up with a halfway decent example of "right wing" cancel culture should tell you something.
Glenn could have used the examples of Rudy Guiliani and Marjorie Taylor Greene from a few weeks ago, when they threatened to "destroy" any Republican elected officials who refused to vote to block Electoral votes from certain states. Greene called them "traitors" and said they were being added to an enemies list; Guiliani called them "Quislings" - which either displayed gross historical ignorance or, more likely, gross partisan hyperbole. Either way, it was a very timely, current example of cancel culture from the Right.
Except that Gulliani and Greene have no power to "cancel" anyone. They are more likely to get cancelled themselves.
Let's face it, everyone would cancel their opponents if they could. Only the side that controls the media and tech monopolies poses a practical threat of exercising such power.
"...everyone would cancel their opponents.." That is false. I know it's true for almost all of the left, but almost everyone I know on the right understands the value of differing opinions.
That is true in the sense that only the voters can "cancel" an elected official.
But what if media and tech can bombard your constituents with propaganda while blocking you from defending yourself?
(Also, If the Democrats have their way, they will legally bar the American people from ever voting for Trump again. That's a political "cancellation" if ever there was one.)
Whether it's AOC or MTG, the concept of a congressional member maintaining an "enemies list" of citizens simply for how they vote or whom they express support for is very concerning. Trying to run someone out of politics for how they vote, and using highly denigrating, dehumanizing words to describe them?
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
AOC is doing what any politician does, and that’s build political capital which she can exchange for power. Real power.
Aren’t you just a little bit curious what Pelosi promised her to get her and the Squad to abandon #ForceTheVote and suckle up to her hind teet?
AOC needs 100 D members to support her ideology, but she’s too immature to understand she needs to either partner with 50-75 Trump Populists in the House and/or get an equivalent number of Democrat moderates to force some rule changes or Nancy Pelosi is going to keep treating her like the chid she is.
I'm not really sure that the example qualifies as "cancel culture." The pursuit of political power is a zero-sum game, and working to condemn political opponents to political irrelevance or impotence is the way that politics work in free societies; the alternative as practiced in tyrannical regimes, imprisonment or physical exile, would be more the equivalent of "cancel culture," where a group of people attempt to destroy the lives of people outside of the domain of concern. I strongly agree with one of the following comments: like "virtue signaling," "cancel culture" is an overly used phrase. ("Virtue signaling" was never meant to refer to direct expressions of value judgments on topics commonly understood to be bound up with values; it was meant to refer to indirect expressions of value judgments when the expressions occur in relation to topics not generally considered opportunities to express a value judgment. For example, if I say to a coworker, "I think that I'm going to go to McDonald's to get a quick bite to eat for lunch," and the coworker responds by saying, "I refuse to eat fast food," the response is very often some kind of virtue signaling. The value judgment about fast food was neither requested nor desired, and the person seizes the opportunity to offer the opinion on fast food as a way to show some kind of virtue. From the value judgment on a relatively narrow topic, you might even be able to guess nearly all of the person's other opinions. By contrast, when discussing a topic like the potential social impact of fast food, if someone claims that fast food business exploit workers and the environment, the person is directly stating an opinion and not signaling.) Opposing someone in a zero-sum game like politics isn't an example of cancel culture unless you advocate destroying the person's livelihood in all other areas and excluding the person from the nations economic life or worse, advocate imprisonment or exile as Democrats seem to regularly do these days when they pursue nakedly political prosecutions against officials as happened with Rick Perry in Texas and Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Let's not dilute the concept of cancel culture by equivocation, by suggesting that cancel culture is any vigorous opposition in any domain at all. The dilution of the concept by dishonestly or incorrectly equating its tactics with normal, everyday behaviors is the means by which the practice becomes normalized.
Rudy wasn’t going to cancel anyone. He was trying to use pressure to change people’s outlook on things and without a complicit media eloping carry that message, he was no different than my Golden Retriever barking at the snow. It’s cute, but really harmless in the end. Rudy was a GREAT Mayor of NYC (they need one like him back, I’m hoping the CEO of Roivant does his IPO and runs), but when you spend too much time in the orbit of someone like Trump (Or PElosi), you don’t get to make the rules and you surely don’t walk away without heading to the showers to clean the filth off.
"However, the fact that one has to go back 18 years (to a time of war, no less) to come up with a halfway decent example of "right wing" cancel culture should tell you something."
Yeah, well the right has been "canceling" everyone it hated since Roman times.
One aspect of cancel culture ... hell, sometimes I think our culture at large ... is that we seem to have lost our sense of humor. I didn't find the bit your refer to funny, but I sure know it was intended as comedy. I wish we'd all loosen up and laugh
Probably Lorne Michaels because there was criticism across the board. Thankfully in this country, veteran's, especially those who have lost limbs or organs in defense of this country are held in esteem, even in most cases if they are a Republican. I would say that Davison did the minimum he needed to do and in fact over the following weeks seemed to walk it back. Crenshaw was the adult by brushing it off and accepting it. It didn't hurt Davison one bit and in fact elevated his standing among the resistance. The guy is a walking disaster though.
I see we are using the Obamacare definition of child. When I was 17 I was already in the military and did not consider myself a kid. Pete Davison was in no way a victim nor did he suffer any cancellation culture. You write as if you are either his mother or his agent.
Censorship can be imposed by any person or institution that has power over individuals. You know like Liberty University ... and Harvard and three popes over Martin Luther and Trump over Fauci ... ... ...
Liberty University had Bernie Sanders speak during his 2016 campaign. The students were respectful. Would Donald Trump or Ted Cruz have even had a chance to speak at an Ivy League University???
use realclearpolitics as a filter and then apply your own filter to weed out some junk on there, and you get a set of decent stuff. this greenwald article is featured. Is there a liberal version of RCP that anyone knows about - i feel like RCP includes left voices but either they're the equivalent of Alan Colmes (weak and lame on purpose) or the left is pretty vacant. I guess the left's stronger voices are Greenwald, Taibbi, etc. but they have cast them out to some sort of "center".
How telling that AntiFA can, for OVER A YEAR, hold anti-Trump rallies, burn down countless buildings, drive numerous small businesses into bankruptcy, beat a journalist into a coma, and try to barricade federal officers into a building to burn them alive, and not a peep from Twitter (or Biden for that matter). But hold ONE anti-Biden rally, and Twitter leaps in, sanctimoniously. At this point, they're just insulting our intelligence.
Christopher Wray testified that Antifa is "more of an idea" than an actual organization, and this is used constantly by Democrat lawmakers, and other establishment figures. Now that Antifa is (still) protesting in Seattle and Portland, (We don't want Biden, we want revenge...) and vandalized a Democrat Party office building after the inaugaration, I wonder if they will still be considered as such.
Yes, but I don't think the point is to insult our intelligence. I've come to believe that the blatantness of the double standard is exactly the point: it's a show of force.
My thought as well. A de-sensitization, if you will, so that more and more censorship and authoritarianism will be accepted without significant push-back.
To me it's just sort of Machiavellian: “Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? One should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved.”
What buildings did they burn down? That Minneapolis burning wead by right wing domestic terrorists abd the cops took their sweet time identifying snd arresting ... remind you of any recent events ... ? Hmmm.
I'll send you links if you'd like, of federal buildings they set on fire. As far as small businesses, there are numerous youtube videos of business owners who've defaulted on the blocks they've taken over.
The pandemic is the most pressing cause of small business losses, not some people angry that the police shoot and kill FAR too many innocent people, not that you care of course. -shrug-
"That Minneapolis burning wead by right wing domestic terrorists"
Right.
And in a few months a gigantic bunny is going to be hopping around your yard shitting chocolate eggs that you and the other children can find and squeal in delight as you do.
"What is worth knowing, he doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know; what he knows is not true. The cardinal articles of his credo are the inventions of mountebanks; his heroes are mainly scoundrels."
At the post-graduate/doctoral level, even at a place such as Yale, the greatest fear, certainly in the humanities, is to be wrong about something, or merely to be thought wrong. So, what happens is doctoral students end up doing a version of self-censorship. Thus research, the willingness to try, to err, and then to move on in an effort to expand our knowledge and understanding is diminished.
I know several PhDs that have changed careers because of cancel culture and the general decline of values, etc. It doesn't end even when people finish grad school.
This is unbelievably sad. I graduated college in 79, and law school in 82. My ed experience was fantastic. Exposure to news ideas without indoctrination. Education should not be about manufacturing minions.
We are of about the same vintage. I had the same kind of experience as an undergrad and still later, mostly, as a professional student at Yale (Divinity). At the time even the most liberal of the students approached "political correctness," which was right about then coming online, with a twinkle in their eye and a certain gentle dose of irony/mockery. Exchanges of ideas and disageements were robust and passionate, but rarely were they destructive, self- or otherwise.
I struggle with this. You could well be right. I just can't decide if it is nobler in the mind to take up arms against the sea of ignorance on Twitter, and by opposing end them... or to disempower Twitter by leaving all together. Perhaps it's true that "sometimes the only way to win is not to play the game." I'm just not sure.
Having just given up social media myself, I have a lot more peace in my life. I’m reading more, and putting my phone down more. I struggled with the decision as well, and what convinced me was that I don’t want to be a part of anything that makes a profit while censoring entire viewpoints.
Thank you very much for the insights, everyone. It's a big help. I'm leaning toward toward dropping my remaining accounts. Curious, would any opinions change if it meant using ostensibly less censored platforms like Gab or MeWe?
The only need to be on Twitter is a felt need or desire. There is no necessity involved. There is no real benefit. It deals in insignificant comments more than anything else.
I beg to differ. There are a lot of very smart scientists, professors, and just plain people on Twitter I'd never hear about if it weren't for their Twitter. It's also where independent journalists have a voice. It isn't just politics. Same for youtube. I've tried to use the newer alternative platforms, but these sorts of people aren't there just yet. If you live in the relative sticks like I do now, it's still the most efficient way to get useful and accurate information on many subjects.
I'm not on Twitter, though I know it exists. And, yes, you are right as to possible beneficial uses. For instance, I have heard that there are what I guess are private Twitter chat-rooms for people in a particular discipline in which they exchange ideas and so forth. I would still argue, though, that this does not represent a necessity, but rather still a felt need. What is the acronym about being left out, or the last one to know, or some such thing? Life can go on very easily without such technology. I will admit to being a regular viewer of the PBS Space Time channel, but I also know that my life, while somewhat enriched -- and certainly intrigued -- by learning what I do there, would not be that diminished without it.
Isn't that a little silly? Other than protection from the elements, food, water and maybe sex, nothing is an absolute necessity. Am i supposed to just sit in my living room, make sure the plumbing works, and say Hi to the neighbors once in a while? Why pick only on Twitter? Let's just close down the internet altogether, then, since life can go on (we won't die) very easily without such technology.
To be sure, Twitter is an easy target. I guess what many would argue, or at least suggest, is that absent technology such as this, we would all be saying hello to our neighbors much more often than we do now. When I grew up, the worst form of parental punishment was to be told to come inside. I understand now that for children to be cast out into the out of doors away from their screens seems to them most cruel. (I am painting with a wide brush.) In the past I have strolled about neighborhoods where I know there are children, and they are ghostly. No one is outside simply playing. I am grateful that where I live now, one does see children outdoors, walking with each other, riding bikes, I even saw some with fishing poles walking to a nearby brook. All this in my eyes appears much more enriching and of lasting value, and it contributes much more to cognitive and social development. I am not alone in this. In this Guardian article we read about how there is a trend in Silicon Valley for Those Who Know to send their children to tech-free schools. This is not to banish such technology, but rather to be far more discerning in our use of it.
Get off twitter. I spend a lot of time reading Glenn and and the wonderful comments here. I'm not on F'book or twitter either. I have better things to do than stick emojis on stuff. Read a book like E
EPThompson's The Making of the English Working Class. Or Soul on Ice.
It’s 2021. We live, work, play, shop, socialize, and date online.
Saying “just don’t have a public voice, or participate in the mainstream of social life” is not a clever comment anymore. For a Boomer retiree, it might still make sense, but few people under the age of 55 will find it easy to disconnect from online communities.
The digital commons are the commons. You’re lucky if your job does not require you to use Zoom or social media, and you can get by in life without an online presence. You’re in a shrinking minority, if so.
Ice cream socials and bowling nights aren’t coming back... and a writer for the New York Times isn’t going to develop much of a following by staying offline. We need to fix the online commons, not withdraw from them and sneer at the world.
Rather telling that your victimhood is so partisan. In fact, the democrats - notably Cuomo, Clinton, obie, and kamala, are all staunch anti-BDSers, cuomo going so far as to issue orders to fire any govt employee in support in any way - even speech - of the BDS movement. If you're going to play victim, you ought choose your truths and your allies a little better
Another great article! I am extremely happy with my choice to subscribe, if only to support one of the most clear, courageous, and consistent defenders of free speech and journalistic integrity operating in our time. Keep it up! We will, as a society, regain our senses and return to our ideals of freedom and liberty before long.
But that isn't the way it's going, sadly. I hope you are correct, but it won't be any time soon. It took 25 or 30 years to get to where we are, and the Federal Gov't is being stacked with these people as we speak.
You cannot have a decent, self-governed society filled with stupid people. The craving for social acceptance is no different than any other instinctual craving - food, sex, ect. Intelligent, self-aware people recognize their instinctual craving and aren't governed by them - which is why we have a country filled with fat slobs who spend their days browsing porn (both the carnal and MSNBC/Newsmax variety). Its an undeniable, if harsh, diagnosis that very few people are willing to accept both because most Americans lack the capacity for self-awareness and because there is no easy fix for this problem.
How do you imbue hundreds of millions of people with the ability to think critically? How do you imbue hundreds of millions of people with an understanding of history? Its would be an herculean task even if the people were ready and eager to start learning and gaining cognitive function - but they aren't. Such a campaign would represent a major shift in our nation's priorities while the oligarchs at the top have a vested interest in keeping people stupid and easily brainwashed. Fixing our broken society isn't a matter of simply filling the empty heads of our citizens with the "right" ideas, because those empty heads can be just as easily filled with the "wrong" ideas by the next demagogue to stroll along. Only the ability to think and discern the "right" ideas independently inculcates an individual against propaganda and group-think.
While anything is possible, I don't see a path towards improvement. Our society is in a death spiral of ignorance, stupidity and narcissism following the pied piper of the oligarchs and the national security state into a dystopian nightmare. But at least the people can keep up with the Kardashians along the way.
This "why can't everyone be like me" argument has never obtained in the general population, yet the US was highly functional at various points in history. The qualities you extoll can only and need only exist in the ruling/upper classes. The current lot of boomers schemed to disenfranchise the country starting in earnest with Bill Clinton. Today they are close to triumphant. History shows that oligarchs have a track record of sudden collapse.
That's what I've been telling my kids. They feel so devastated and betrayed, especially with the cover up of Hunter Biden's laptop. Then they had to see him standing at the inauguration as though her were a proud upstanding citizen of America and it just FRIED them.
One point unstated here by Glenn is that the whole new impeachment is based on "incitement" from a rally which was less pointed and more milquetoast than this tweet. For this tweet to be explained away as sarcasm and/or not a "call for violence," would require people giving at least a moment's pause to think that the former President might not have truly "incited violence" earlier this month.
In other words, "Too Soon."
I wonder if even Gilbert Gottfried would be brave enough to make a 1/6 joke today...
Anytime a journalist loses their job, I find it difficult to work up much sympathy. Far from acting like the fourth branch of government, the mainstream media has lied, covered up important stories for political reasons, promoted censorship, used a different standard for rioting by the left and right, has been ridiculously biased and acted in concert with the massive monopolies in the tech industry to censor (of all things) the media and conservative voices The mainstream media acting jointly with the far left media has been disgraceful. The media has earned all of the poor ratings and skepticism of the public.
Now the left wing media is in a quandary after denouncing the police for six months as racists while supporting the defund the police movement. This all suddenly changed when right wing rioters forced entry into the United States Capitol. Suddenly the police were heroes. The National Guard were welcomed (after an editor at the New York Times was fired for publishing Tom Cotton's op ed on bringing in the military to restore order in cities with rioting and looting). Whereas, the mainstream media referred to the BLM rioters as a very tiny percentage of the protests, it was clear that the 75 million people that voted for Trump were all going to overthrow the government. The double standards and hypocrisy is breathtaking.
Finally, what does the media do about the far left antifa protesters in Portland who yesterday rioted and vandalized a police station and carried a large sign with an assault rifle drawn on the sign calling for revenge against the police and the government? You do just what most media outlets did - ignore it - and/or you go back to the same lies as before - police brutality, systemic racism and defund the police!
Actually, I don't think Greenwald has any sympathy for Will Wilkinson either.
*If craig really wanted unity, he would acknowledge police brutality (i've got a few hair-raising anecdotes myself!) and persistent systemic racism in the administration of justice .. . and lynch his secret MAGA hat.
".......Sadly, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 999 civilians having been shot, 226 of whom were Black, in 2020. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to 1,004. Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 34 fatal shootings per million of the population as of December 2020........"
Four hundred and thirty-two white people were fatally shot in 2020. About 22% of the fatal shooting were black people which is higher than their population (13-14%), but the violent crime rates for African Americans far outweighs any other racial group. For example, According to Heather MacDonald in the Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-11591119883 via @WSJ):
".........In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population........"
Finally, an additional study finds that violent crime "strongly predicts the race of the person fatally shot" (Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings https://www.pnas.org/content/116/32/15877):
"........ We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers. Instead, race-specific crime strongly predicts civilian race...........One of our clearest results is that violent crime rates strongly predict the race of a person fatally shot........."
I am not denying racism exists in police forces (or anywhere else), or that there are individual cases of police brutality, but police forces are more diverse and better trained than ever before - and it is a difficult job with your life on the line - so to stereotype police is absurd. The media is partially responsible for promoting this false stereotype.
Well said, Craig Summers. I like the way you back up each statement with facts. If we had more people thinking rationally based on facts, rather than emotionally based on preconceived notions, the world would be a better place. If you ever start your own substack, I will be a subscriber.
>"Labeling all police brutal and racist is as fair (and false) as labeling all Muslims terrorist. "
Of course, I'm not doing any of that.. . but thanks for thinking about me.
I'm most concerned #1 presently (as if there is not enough to deal with.) with an incrasingly militarized domestic police force to battle an increasingly more domestic 'terrorism' .. . and all that implies!
Turning deputy Barney Fife into fucking Rambo with a thousand-yard-stare is not going to end well, imho (see, eg, Lousiville) ... That's why Sheriff Taylor only gave him one bullet.
>"I am not denying racism exists in police forces (or anywhere else), or that there are individual cases of police brutality, but police forces are more diverse and better trained than ever before - and it is a difficult job with your life on the line - so to stereotype police is absurd. The media is partially responsible for promoting this false stereotype. "
Please. I live in a sea of MAGA hats.. . my life is always on 'the line'. \../
The point is: If you're filthy rich and/or politically 'connected', you have nothing to fear craig. .. from the police.
Otoh, they killed 'Luke' (a poor young 'white' Appalachian-hillbilly) not so long ago. He was too drunk to stand or walk, was allegedly belligerent and had a shotgun and a box of shells beside him. After a brief stand-off [sic], the police called in a 'sniper' and took him out.
*in any case, all 'terrorism', whether foreign or domestic, supersedes law. .. that's the point, craig.
I agree totally. If someone who has been fanning the flames of hatred and division gets burned by them, I consider it poetic justice.
The enemy isn't you or me. The enemy isn't liberal or conservative, black or white, gay or straight. The enemy isn't democrat or republican. The enemy are those who would divide us.
The partisan that goes along with the efforts to divide us is obviously also dividing us.
“The right-wing is acting jointly with the disgraceful mainstream media and tech companies to (of all things) censor liberal voice - their double standards and hypocrisy are breathtaking. Conservatives cast Sanders supporters as planning to install a Marxist dictatorship, the majority of Americans who want universal health care as communists. They spent 6 months demanding a violent response to protestors and got what they asked for with the shooting of an unarmed woman in the Capital riots” are not expressions of unity. The contrary combination of exaggerations, falsehoods and half-truths pitting one side against the other is no less divisive, as is cheering or at least not caring when the victim can be portrayed from the other side. Those who express such sentiments are at a minimum falling for the enemy’s tactics. Those who call-out such views are the ones trying to unite us.
"If you identify as a conservative and continue to believe that your prime enemies are ordinary leftists, or you identify as a leftist and believe your prime enemies are Republican citizens, you will fall perfectly into the trap set for you. Namely, you will ignore your real enemies, the ones who actually wield power at your expense: ruling class elites, who really do not care about “right v. left” and most definitely do not care about “Republican v. Democrat” — as evidenced by the fact that they fund both parties — but instead care only about one thing: stability, or preservation of the prevailing neoliberal order." - Greenwald
"...........They spent 6 months demanding a violent response to protestors and got what they asked for with the shooting of an unarmed woman in the Capital riots” are not expressions of unity........."
I think in all fairness Doc, they spent 6 months demanding a "violent response" to rioters, looters and the violence (in which over twenty people were killed), the torching of federal, state and private property and the toppling of historic statues.
True, but you could have gone farther; the enemy are the ultra-rich.
All ultra-rich are a threat to democratic rule; I say we cap it, but unlike the minimum wage, we need to define it in relative terms. I say if you have wealth that puts you in the richest 0.01%, you need to be taxed at 10% of your total wealth annually...
However it's done, if we don't do this, we'll likely join the Holocene event our selves and humanity will go extinct - and I don't think it'll be all that far in the future, either.
We definitely need to eliminate the tax loopholes like the carried interest loophole that allows hedge fund managers to pay a lower tax rate than wage earners. We need to eliminate the loophole that allowed Donald Trump and real estate tycoons, to lose other people’s money, then claim the losses it as their personal deduction, which is how he avoided paying taxes.
I don’t think all rich people are the enemy but there is definitely a strong correlation with lack of empathy and wealth. I remember a paper done years ago which looked at the likelihood a driver would stop for a pedestrian in a marked crosswalk. They used graduate student volunteers as pedestrians. It varied by make of car. They used make of car as a proxy for wealth. All of the Chevy drivers yielded to the pedestrian, but only 50% of the BMW drivers yielded. It doesn’t mean all BMW drivers are A-holes, but half of them are.
All ultra-rich are a threat. And, they don't need to be ultra-rich. And, they didn't do it by themselves. NOBODY deserves the kinds of wealth being amassed today, NOBODY. And, we were warned by our founders; several of them made statements about the dangers of concentrated wealth - I'm sure you can find some of them without trying very hard.
In a discussion I had with some graduate students at Yale 2 years ago, I heard that in doctoral studies, at least in the humanities, research is now being driven by fear of being wrong, or being thought wrong, factually and, I suppose, morally and ideologically. As a result, the pursuit of knowledge is now crimped and diminished by such fear. Therefore, more and more students are writing what they believe to be acceptable, what will benefit their careers, what will keep them respectable, and so on. We all lose.
There are a number of instances in the sciences where this has happened. For example, the low fat diet was created through a small number of limited studies starting in the 1950s. It then became dogma early in the 1960s, and by the end of that decade scientists were being denied funding if they wanted to test that dogma through genuine studies. The result was a deadly increase in obesity and diabetes.
The reason is simple: eating too little fat requires eating more carbohydrates to have enough total calories to live a normal life. But carbohydrates make you want to eat more, while fats satisfy you so you don't wan t more than you need. If you need 2000 calories a day, you can get ~300 from protein (but not much more because of kidney damage), and the rest must be from fats and carbohydrates. The old recommendation of no more than 50 grams of fats, meant that you needed 300 grams of carbohydrates.
Only in the last decade has the low fat diet been recognized as scientifically wrong, and the recommended diets are slowly being revised. An excellent book on this topic is "The Big Fat Surprise" by Nina Teicholz.
Another example is that of stomach ulcers. It long was scientific dogma that these were caused by diets that were not bland enough and a stressful lifestyle. Two medical scientists in Australia discovered the bacterium Helicobacter pylori in the stomachs of many patients with ulcers. But the scientific community did not accept this explanation, because they said the stomach was too acidic for any bacteria to live in it. So one of the scientists drank a cocktail of the H. pylori and showed what it did on himself. https://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/cjgh/2008/459810.pdf They won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2005/ceremony-speech/
A third example is Alfred Wegener, who proposed in ~1915 that drifting apart of the continents was the means by which the present ones formed. This idea was vigorously opposed by most geologists for close to 50 years: "By 1930 his theory had been rejected by most geologists, and it sank into obscurity for the next few decades, only to be resurrected as part of the theory of plate tectonics during the 1960s." https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Wegener
Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard covers this.
"For this essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and at least, inevitable, and certainly better than the other conceivable alternatives. Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the "intellectuals"
Clearly the comment was said in jest in an attempt at black humor. It should not require an apology let alone cancellation.
Yet there is an inescapable schadenfreude at a member of a powerful, virtue-signaling preening aristocratic class being hoisted by their own petard if only for a while. He of course will eventually return thanks to him being part of the aristocracy of our betters.
Ironically, as noted, the head of this org, Jerry Taylor himself posted both a defamatory and hatefully violent tweet towards a couple - which SHOULD have had consequences but didn’t simply because that expression of violence was directed at the “right” people.
Ultimately, cancel culture and the hypocritical contradictions it inevitably generates will eat itself.
Black humor is rarely funny and a lot of folks don't like its cynicism. The only exception I've seen recently is the hysterically funny "The Death of Stalin" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4686844/ But still most people don't like such things. It's an acquired taste.
The supposed zero tolerance policy for inciting violence is just an empty platitude. All laws are ultimately backed by the threat and actuality of state violence. So in a way all non-libertarian political advocacy is a form of incitement of violence. The NYT is okay with political violence so long as it's done by the men with the right funny hats pursuant to laws that the NYT agrees with.
So a more honest way to put the NYT's position would be to say that they support the state monopoly on political violence, except when the state is oppressing their in-group and then a little summer rioting is OK.
"All laws are ultimately backed by the threat and actuality of state violence. So in a way all non-libertarian political advocacy is a form of incitement of violence."
Exactly.
“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”
My parents were Communists and were invested in that murderous ideology their entire lives. Many others in the 50s and 60s when I was growing up were not Communists themselves but were tarred with guilt by association. Many were blacklisted, lost livelihoods and were harassed by The FBI and the House Unamerican Activities Committee. There was no social media of course, but local organizations such as The American Legion got involved and kept lists. How short are the memories on the left. Substitute support for Trump or whatever ideology you wish but keep in mind that the worm always turns and even though the left is on top today, it won’t be forever.
"leftists of all sorts are complicit in the new culture of cancelling voices they do not like"
No, leftists don't do that. Your "neo-liberals" are not left and never have been. What HAS happened is that the neo-liberals have grown in size in the last 10 or so years.
Conflating neo-liberals as "left" is a significant error that leads to errant conclusions.
But neo-liberalism is far left in the "cultural" wars, no? The alliance between leftists in this regard and arch corporate conservatives is what keeps them in power. An example is the lefts demand for open borders based on Humanitarian grounds, and the DNC/RNC Corporatists pretending to care because it depresses wages and provides a compliant, defenseless workforce in many sectors. I don't believe this is really up for debate. A much larger percentage of the left-leaning voted for Biden than the right-leaning. Even a far left apologist commentator like Matt Taibbi admits many leftists are OK with Big Tech censorship. Jimmy Dore says so too. Not sure buy I believe Chomsky has also noted this.
Arguments focused on labels are dependent upon how the labels are defined; obviously, different definitions will lead to different results, and that’s part of the reason labels just aren’t all that informative.
For example, applying the “open borders/depressed wages” criteria to the person who said this:
"If you close the border to forbid immigration on grounds that it lowers your standard of living--which certainly is not true, but even assuming it were true--you have no right to bar others. But above all, aren't you dropping a more personal context? How could I ever advocate that immigration should be restricted when I wouldn't be alive today if it were?" - Ayn Rand https://www.ontheissues.org/Ayn_Rand.htm
. . .makes the case for labeling her a ‘leftist.’ Most people would disagree, some might take issue with the definition of leftist, others might squabble if support for open borders in the absence of other ‘leftist-tendencies’ makes one a leftist, and what exactly does ‘open borders’ mean anyway, and who is arguing for whatever you mean by it, and is that really the leftist position or do some leftists favor something else. It would all be dreary and boring.
That’s the problem with labels: the information they impart confounds insight into what is really being said. I’m not arguing Ayn Rand is a leftist, and I really don’t care if she’s called that or a ‘rightist,’ ‘upist,’ ‘downist,’ or something else. No matter how one labels Ayn Rand - or Noam Chomsky, Jimmy Dore, Matt Taibbi, or anyone else who has something to say - it’s just a lot more interesting to move past the labels and concentrate on the issues and what is being said about them.
I agree, Doc, but FAR too many people don't bother with policy... To me, that's the whole thing, and avoiding it is being used against us. For example, a lot of (idiots) are clammoring about Kamala Harris, pointing to her ethnic background and skin color instead of her POLICIES. ...They've just gone off the deep end stupid.
And as you point out, label definitions have been / are being manipulated to confuse us and keep us divided. And this works at closing down discussion because, "ew! You're of that other label I don't like!"
The question is, how do we get people to START TALKING ABOUT POLICIES as a regular matter of course.
What I often try to do is weave policy positions into my remarks... I tell people I self-identify as Progressive, then share what my policy prescriptions are. I hope it helps.
Those idiots you refer to most definitely ID as leftists/progressives. Thank you for supporting my original point. Many of them are not stupid at all, and know perfectly well what they are doing. Pro tip: if you say "I self-identiry as Progressive" it signals? you are on the left wing of the democratic party because there's no such thing as a a republican progressive, and progressives don't have their own party. Worse, we all know what "I identify as" implies. Better to deny membership of any group, like I do.
Mass immigration of low-skilled workers for slave labor w/ no benefits of any kind certainly does lower wages and opportunities for the poorest Americans. Looks like you are a shill for the deep state yourself. I am not a member of the right or the left, but act on a prioritization of issues, as you mention at the end of your comment, but your everyday Bernie-supporting progressive / leftist is largely in bed with the corporate overlord state. This is undeniable and most likely includes Taibbi. Jimmy Dore is far leftist I can respect and agree with on many issues, and he calls out progressives supporting the current regime daily, supercilious lectures from leftist purists notwithstanding.
“Mass immigration of low-skilled workers for slave labor w/ no benefits of any kind certainly does lower wages and opportunities for the poorest Americans. Looks like you are a shill for the deep state yourself.”
I was quoting Ayn Rand. I don’t agree with what she said either; I just wouldn’t label her views on immigration “leftist” as your definition does. That’s why I don’t agree with your use of labels in lieu of good faith discussion and debate. It makes no difference for whom you campaigned; labels aren’t good arguments.
"But neo-liberalism is far left in the "cultural" wars, no?"
No.
Neoliberals are engaged in "culture wars", but they're not left and certainly not "far left" no matter what the talking heads in media tell you.
The reason you likely think they are is that the ultra-rich have been trying to pit the right against the left and the left against the right since at least as far back as WWII since keeping us busy with one another in argument prevents us from coming together against them. ... But the neo-liberals aren't against the ultra-rich! They, after all, include people like the Clintons, and note that Bill stacked his administration with people from Goldman Sachs and other wall street firms.
It's also the case that some actual Left people have abandoned their left principals to join neo-liberals in an unhealthy infection of anti-Trump fever. However, they are NOT left - they've left the left.
Unlike neo-liberals, the actual left recognizes many of the complaints of "the right" as legitimate, such as the fact that our elections are now and always have been insecure and we can be sure cheating has been going on as long as there's been a USA. During my half-century of observation, the Democrats mostly cheat in primaries to keep the left out, and the Republicans mostly cheat in general elections as it's often the only way they can win. But whatever the case on that, we on the left want to fix that; instead of railing at you about the idiocy of "election stolen from Trump," like the neo-liberals do, we want to encourage you to focus your anger on working with us to secure our electoral system instead of storming the Capitol building - all that does (did) is give an excuse for removing yet more of our freedoms.
We have far more in common than not. It's long past time to stop blaming your fellow victim and join together in common cause against the tyranny of the ultra-rich - I say we tax them out of existence instead of resorting to violence, but that requires political power and we can't do it if we don't join together, exactly what the ultra-rich are propagandizing us to not do. ...If someone is not rich or supporters of the rich, they're probably not your enemy.
But I am perfectly willing to work with anyone who can help defeat the current regime and fix the sorry state of the election system. As usual though, the devil is likely to be in the details.
I don't have that perception; I look at the original meanings. It's a VERY reasonable summary that if someone supports the status-quo today, they're NOT "left."
I subscribe to the old ACLU rules: Only things that can morally be banned are child pornography, and actual state secrets (i.e., names of our spies in hostile nations). And even there, state secrets should have a finite time limit after which they are opened up.
Didn't Comrade Jack just say kiddie porn doesn't violate Twitter rules? And in other news, the French senate just voted to lower the age of consent to 13. There's more than one way to skin a cat!
They are often the literal but also the figurative children of the old left. They are the establishment now. The old ACLU would have argued powerfully against censorship.
I hear this term quite frequently. Neo-Liberalism. What is the lay person's definition of this term, if you don't mind my asking? I find myself using it occasionally and then when I read it in text, I believe I'm misusing this word.
the wikipedia entry* is pretty good, but maybe too long and not focused enough on what is most important.
it is a hyper "free market" ideology driven by techno-economic disruption: network effects, interactivity, globalization (dissolution of the nation-state system's boundaries) and no moral regulation of the boundary between public and private spheres of life. public assets are "colonized" and exploited for an increase in private wealth and power.
the result is that culture is increasingly incapable of legitimating itself by generating authentic meaning and purpose. (see Habermas' theory of communicative action, which is summarized by the phrase "systems colonize lifeworld")
First, some background on liberalism, upon which the neo-version is theoretically based, can be found here, AFTER the rather long-winded proposal and defense of a two dimensional grid system to evaluate politics - while some of that is well worth reading on this topic, for the meat, scroll past all that:
I recommend picking it up about three paragraphs above the bolded line that reads "The position of the original "Right" against original Liberalism:"
I have some criticisms of that document, such as not covering neo-liberalism, but then it was written before it was painfully clear there had been a schism that created the distinction. And, there are some other bones to pick with it, but the historical view is pretty solid.
It is my personal observation over many decades of living with lots of "liberal" family, that "liberals" certainly mean well, and talk about equality and in general "say the right things," they are normally not willing to do anything about the injustices they see in the world, and that's what has separated the traditional liberal from Progressives - Progressives want _progress_ and that requires _action._
With that background, my "lay-person's definition" of neo-liberalism is the support of the status-quo and ultra-rich, while giving lip-service to what sound like worthy causes and claims of equality but which in reality are hollow platitudes; for the most part they don't actually take actions that genuinely serve these interests while, ironically, the actions they do take often go contrary to their stated goals.
For example, the push to de-platform and "cancel" people is profoundly anti-liberal, not to mention stupid because the same tactics will be used against them, should they ever threaten the real power in the USA - the ultra-rich.
The last element that has to be added to this in practice is that the regulations that remain cement the position of established players in both politics and the markets. That is, when lip service is paid to social responsibility it is used to constrain upstarts from doing what the currently established players did (and often are still doing) to attain their position.
The Dixie Chicks analogy significantly weakens your otherwise outstanding argument; people choosing not to buy something is wholly different from trying to stop others from having the opportunity to buy it. A boycott is fundamentally and qualitatively different from a ban: If people were urging record stores to not carry their albums (and that may have happened; I don't recall it, but that doesn't mean it didn't), that would be different from a boycott. Because if choosing not to buy someone's records is censorship, then I've been "censoring" Yoko Ono for more than 40 years now.
On a serious note, Wilkinson's tweet was actually funny for anyone who has a sense of humor, whereas the tweet from his former boss was simply angry and hateful.
The answer to cancel culture is for people in positions of power to stop caring what is on Twitter. Just. Stop.
And those of us appalled by all of this should stop spending our money on organizations that indulge this crap.
Which mean, Glenn, we boycott businesses like Amazon, Google and Twitter - not to "cancel" them, but to spend our money on businesses whose practices don't contribute to cancel culture.
Again, it's important to differentiate between boycotts and bans.
People absolutely have the right to refrain from buying products. If it were just that, I'd agree with you. But they burned their CDs publicly. They demanded radio stations not play their music (and those stations succumbed to the demands). It was far more than just a decision not to buy their CDs. It was uglier than a lot of people remember. You have to be willing to look at excesses of your own side, too.
Well, they learned their lesson did they not? They dropped Dixie from their name to virtue signal to BLM this summer, because now being associated with the South in general is racist? Give these hysterical self righteous cultists an inch and you'll see it wasn't about the issue, it's about the control.
Every move that's made is just about fear and control. It's the modern Inquisition.
Its the revenge of the weenies in high school with no self esteem and super insecure. Self righteousness and moralizing is the disease of our age.
Of every age.
I remember it. Stupid it was but nothing like being ghosted by Big Tech and banished to russian servers in a matter of days.
While I was very disappointed with the behavior of the Dixie Chicks, I was disturbed by the reaction to it. Plus, I loved their music and miss it. C'mon man, after all they are just entertainers...very few people look to entertainers as beacons of wisdom.
The campaign led them to branch out and appeal to other markets, I assume pop music and maybe folk. They expressed gratitude that they'd been evicted from the ghetto. IOW, they're still around; just look for their music.
Oh, I've heard their stuff since their eviction - it's just not music. The "ghetto" made them who they are and if they truly believe that I'd suggest such arrogance is the reason they are irrelevant today. I'll take that "ghetto" music over 95% of the soulless, heartless pablum that is out there today.
I think the issue was most amplified by one Bib Geldof. After LIve Aid the fashion was make political statements and be an activist. There was a push to say pop stars ave been given a platform so the must use it for other reasons than the reason they have been given the platform, which is to entertain.
Right-wing equivalent was Joe McCarthy. Joe enlisted government institutions to his cause, and leveraged those to bully private actors. Dixie Chicks were boycotted by individuals. There was no radio station equivalent of Big Tech. Other labels and promoters were free to do business with them. The symbolism of CD burning was horror, but they were the burners' property. Unlike expressive works of art (monuments, statues), public property, with law enforcement "giving them space" and news media proclaiming support. Glenn, are you too young to remember Tailgunner Joe?
Although not exactly equivalent to Big Tech, even today no country music artist has any chance of making it big without country radio. So much so that one of the awards given at the CMAs is top country radio DJ/personality, and they make a big deal out of. Country may be the genre most dependent on radio. As a result, the Dixie Chicks had no choice but to retool their career or perish.
Correct. There are radio station cartels, but the barriers to entry for competitors are quite low, and I'm unaware of any monolithic country radio mogul who can deny anybody the ability to perform.
I remember John Brenner and his voting for Gus Hall.
I don't disagree with your points regarding the Dixie Chicks, Glenn. Especially the essential blacklisting them from country radio. For whatever it's worth, there is a cultural dimension that was also at play. Even in large mostly urban/suburban counties country music fans tend to be more conservative. Doubly so in rural areas. As you point out in your essay most of our institutions, including music and other entertainment, are most culturally liberal. One of the very few exceptions is country music. While one could argue country fans over reacted, many if not most took the Dixie Chicks comments as a cultural betrayal. Inundated by liberal institutions in almost every aspect of our culture, country music is a place where conservatives can feel completely comfortable belonging. Many took the Chicks as attacking this social place. I'm not saying this makes their cancelation right, but I think there more involved than simple gotcha fake outrage
True. But nevertheless, it did show that whatever the reasons, this type of weapon can and has been wielded by the Right and Left alike in the past. In fact, before the scourge of political correctness came down on society during the past three decades, during decades prior to the '70s the patriotic correctness of the Right was often ruled the roost in popular fiction, academia, etc.
I don't disagree. But given the left's cultural dominance, it is telling that Glenn had to reach so far back in time for a good example of cancelation by the right (and I agree it was a good example - and, sad to say, one I was guilty in supporting). And you are right about the 60s and earlier. Of course many people reading this weren't alive then! Damn, I'm old!
There is a huge difference between ad-hoc, spontaneous cancellation, as occurred with the Dixie Chicks, and the broad scale, organized, coordinated, media driven, and liberal government supported oppression. Once Obama set the framework for the new cancel culture, the left has been a cult.
"White fragility". Bullshit. Race has nothing to do wiih it. You reveal so much of yourself by use if this term in this context. Believe it or not everything in life is NOT about race. Since it's clear your values are in line with the dominate left culture, what would you know of conservatives need for a cultural place with like minded people? You've got those places in spades. All that said, as I've acknowledged in other posts it was cancelation, and especially the radio blacklisting, wrong. I've brought up the conservation cultural aspect as added nuance that is at play. Try to see beyond your rote woke stereotypes.
Sorry, but your characterization of conservatives desire for a sliver of our culture to not be dominated by the left as "white fragility" absolutely makes it about race. Not one iota of my posts had anything to do with race. Do you think all conservatives and country music fans are white? If so you need to rethink your assumptions. As for the rest of your rant, it has absolutely nothing to do with the points I made.
“White fragility.” Such an ugly phrase, revealing a rot in its utterer.
Signed,
A Brown Woman
Let's try to see that past instance of the Dixie Chick's in the context. It was just after 9-11. We were going to eat in Iraq. The Chick's went public with an anti-war stance. The State made an example out of the Dixie Chick's. An anti war opinion in retaliation for a still to this day taboo topic of 9-11. Does it make any more sense now to see it in this context? Or is the all benevolent state harmless in the completely organic rhetoric regarding War in Iraq? Is the State completely benign now? In silencing this who question Election Integrity? In blacklisting Conservatives at a time when the Fed just printed more dollars then ever before in its history.
Context does matter. The State is never Benevolent to its citizens. The Dixie Chick's then and Conservatives now better fall in line or face the mob. Propaganda is almost always effective, especially for those who have 'a side'. It's always the other side that's brainwashed, never their own.
Andreas, perhaps you’ve never been at a football game where the 3 Manchester United F.C fans sitting in the stadium belts out a huge round of applause for the Liverpool F.C. goal. You talk about betrayal? It happens everywhere. We are all tribal and yes, it’s in our genetic code from 10,000 years ago when if you weren’t tribal, you were left to fend for yourself with the wolves and grizzly bears. When that happens and you abandon your tribe and you’re standing there naked against the wild, then you can talk about your white fragility. Unless you want to talk about Western Civilization and Judeao-Christian law, which civilized most of us so that when our tribe is dissed, they get booed and ignored instead of shoved into the wild with just their own two feet.
Very good analogy, TrueNorthMN. I do believe conservatives are becoming more tribal, in many ways including myself. I used to love discussing politics with those on the left. Still so with many in this forum. Otherwise, not so much. I live in the only GOP congressional district left in San Diego county, where I've lived my entire life. When I retire in a year or two I'm out of here, moving to someplace with more conservative people. Someplace where my world view isn't vilified as racist, etc.
Hi! Spent most of my life in San Diego, moved to a Red State in the South 3 years ago, there's lots of us here! I love it, I laugh whenever I fill up my gas tank. You won't regret it, don't wait until CA starts working to prevent its mass exodus, critical thinking is telling me that's the next move there.
Come to western NC. Conservative, beautiful and we need to keep outnumbering the loons in Asheville.
I think you nailed this piece Glenn. The examples of both the right and left trying to vanquish opposition are critical for people to integrate. The fact is, the right's opposition to the Dixie Chicks used the tools that were available to them at that time. Does anyone seriously doubt the right would have leveraged their own Twitter or Facebook had those tools been available to them to cancel the Chicks? To your larger point, as long as the left and right keep fighting each other, they continue to lose coherence and credibility. One opportunity you could get into deeper is the Maginot lines that were crossed with the destruction of Parler and the occupation of the capitol. The inability of either side to dominate the other is resulting in a ramping of greater (and more consequential) results. What's next?
Well, I don't know about you, but I'm going to work in the garden a bit then take a dip in the pool.
You mean to the wall, like Martin Luther?
If you’re going to write and sing music for the Duck Dynasty, Clampett’s, Jeff Foxworthy and Bubba J (Jeff Dunham) demographic, you need to understand your audience. That’s the problem with many musicians who are good on the music side and horrible at anything outside that very narrow swim lane, including understanding their real audience. While I’m not in this demographic, I can belt out the best of Garth Brooks with the best of ‘em.
That's fair - but you get my newsletter, Glenn, and if you read it a few weeks ago you know I hammered Rudy Guiliani and Marjorie Taylor Greene for their recent attempts to destroy (cancel) any Republicans who didn't go along with Trump's false claims that the election was stolen via fraud. I'd add David Marcus' ridiculous demand in this morning's Federalist that McConnell step down for holding Trump responsible for his contribution to stoking the partisan flames that led to the riot. I'm not demanding the Federalist fire Marcus, mind you, I just think Marcus' column was idiotic.
I'd forgotten about the burning of CDs - always opposed to that. Still not entirely convinced that that episode truly amounted to an attempted cancellation so much as it was acting on frustration and anger - sort of like how you have differentiated the Jan. 6 riot as a riot and not an actual insurrection it's being portrayed as. The Dixie Chicks were, after all, able to transition to a fairly successful career catering to alternative rock fans who shared their political views and we were willing to give them a chance despite not really liking country music up to that point.
But I also acknowledge I may be completely wrong on all that.
Rather king and needy posts. Get your own substack.
psychotic asshole
subtract ad hominem
subtracting ad hominem is pure fascism
Long damn spellcheck
Long damn spellchecks are pure fascism
The election was clearly stolen from Trump - convenient votes in the middle of the night, losing the bellweather counties, etc
I'd like to see you try boycotting Amazon. Hell, this website (substack) uses Amazon Web Services as a host. Its hard *not* to use AWS -- even if you purchase hosting from another company, there's a very good chance its still through AWS. Honestly, its about time we "Ma Bell" the Bezos.
Got it right though: social media loses all of its power the moment we start realizing it isn't real. Ignoring the digital mob is the only solution.
I'm boycotting Amazon right now. I use it for shopping, comparison, and reviews, then look up the manufacturer and buy from them, cutting out amazon. This is possible 8 times out of 10. The 9th time is where the original manufacturer is stupid enough to charge more than amazon, and the 10th time is when it's some little niche item that I can't get locally in central Florida. Usually items worth only a few bucks.
Me too. And now add Bed Bath and Beyond. I live in a small town and try to patronize my Main St businesses. I will pay more to help them stay afloat.
I hope this doesn't have anything to do with the My Pillow Qanon nutjob who was still shilling hard after the riot, because not being that much of a douche is a pretty low standard to hold for a retailer choosing to not carry a company's products.
I know Mike Lindell and his management team and I can assure you, they’re not nutjobs or a douche. They’re Populists plain and simple and they are free speech advocates. If you can’t see the nexus between Populism on the Right and the Left, you are not yet “woke” to the future of our collective fight to right size the Establishment. I sat in Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street encampments in 2010 and 2011 and there was much more in common with their mission than the Establishment media will allow you to believe. Remember, the enemy of my enemy is my friend for the purposes of promoting systemic change. After we get the change we seek, then we can go back to Populist Right vs. Populist Left fights..but I can assure you...few on the Populist Right want to shut down your 1st amendment rights. If you take the 30% of Populists on the Left and combine with the 30% of Populists on the right....that constitutes a majority vs. the 40% in the Establishment. The only question is whether people can agree on what unites us and for now.....disregard the areas we disagree on.
Working to overturn the will of the majority, potentially using military force is not a populist goal, it's elitist and literally fascist, and I'm not a lefty who overuses that term. Mike Lindell is pushing absolutely ridiculous - full-on douchebag nutjob - conspiracy theories about "hammer" and "scorecard" programs which are only alleged to exist by a previously universally reviled fraudster with a long history of self-enriching opportunistic scams. Lindell's "evidence" looks like any generic bittorrent port list, and shows no evidence that the access was even granted. I can generate an identical list using Peerblock and not a single attempt at access would amount to anything. Or I could obv generate the same thing using a word processor... It's cringeworthy to anyone with even elementary knowledge of networking. He has yet to show the full text of the paper he was photographed with showing "martial law" on it. He continued to rile up his followers even after they stormed the capital. The guy is an absolute buffoon who deserves whatever backlash he gets. I voted for Trump twice, btw, and would again just on policy grounds even though I don't think he's all that bright or competent either.
As far as populism, most on the populist left want to increase payroll taxes by ~13% to pay for universal health insurance, which would roughly double to triple my current costs depending on the year's income. They want semi-auto gun bans, sex hormones for children and teenagers, universal parental leave, universal childcare, free college - paid for by my (non-college educated) taxes, more speech restrictions. The populist right largely just wants to be left alone. There is less common ground here than you think, IMO. It'd be nice if we could all agree to raise taxes on just the uber-rich and maybe tax capital gains more like regular income, but unfortunately the only politicians advocating that also want the other items as a package deal, and that just doesn't fly in my book.
Thanks for the tip. I'm also boycotting Amazon and am having a hard time finding individual vendors to buy from. Because I won't even log into Amazon, (cancelled my account) I didn't think of that option of comparing then seeing the individual manufacturers name. I'll have to look at that in the search engine. I appreciate the tip. I'm trying to compile tips for people who are doing what they can not to purchase from these monopolies.
Proton mail based in Switzerland has been popular. I was going to get it but came across tutanota.com and found it to be much cheaper if you want more than the free acct. And tutanota encrypts the subject line whereas proton mail does not. I've only had it about a month but so far so good. Simpler UI and great responsiveness. Duck Duck Go is an alternative to Google as a search engine, and they have a standalone search app for mobile that seems to be completely private with no snooping or record keeping. As for banking, I'm in the process of moving everything to local banks -- no more citibank or other financial giants. But I do think it's useful to maintain an account or two if there's an occasional advantage for you. So 95% disinvestment and disuse is my goal.
Thank you for that inspiration. I have to admit I am only doing that for book purchases right now. First the library (we have a system here in Toronto) then to local bookstores. I am going to start doing it for other items 😊
Thanks for sharing these comments. I'm learning to walk again without the crutches of big tech too. My muscles have atrophied, but I'm regaining strength by the day.
Oh my goodness, it sure does feel good to see so many people attempting to do what they can to financially support independent business.
I share your atrophy!
Very often, if you look at Amazon's marketplace sellers, you can go buy directly from their site. I buy a lot of foreign language stuff and have started shopping directly with some stores that specialize in that. Don't get the 2 day shipping, but even if I'm not giving up Amazon altogether they no longer have a monopoly on my purchases.
I'll add that my email is based on secure German servers and my hosting service is based in Bulgaria. Ditch them all.
Done that-- love Proton and Signal. 🥰
I run the mail servers and web servers for around 60 internet domains, all for free, for friends' businesses... ...Find your local friendly computer nerd and treat them well, and you, too, might find your way to avoiding the big guys.
Seems like more than half the time the manufacturer charges more than Amazon after shipping is factored in. Ebay can be good but always price check for Amazon drop shippers there
Bezos should seek a breakup of his company for his own sake. John D. Rockefeller fought the breakout of Standard Oil out of hubris and pride, but 5 years after the breakup of his company, he had 2x the wealth.
AWS should be splintered off the E-commerce business and the media business should also be force to be spun off.
We don’t want a man worth $1 trillion who buys ink in 55 gallon drums through the WaPo controlling the national narrative. That's not free speech. That’s a Big Tech Oligarch using tyrannical means to destroy whoever he wants to destroy. You might not be in his sights today, but I can sure you that he’ll have you in his sights tomorrow.
As a AMZN shareholder, this would be hugely profitable to me. The value of those businesses independent of each other (with a sale of the WaPo) would be 3x what they’re worth today within 5 years.
Who are the major stockholders of Amazon stock?
LOL. Yes, it takes more than one to make a boycott. But I'll also be happy to support your campaign to break them up. Is your campaign website up yet?
Read about Salazar in Portugal. A benevolent autocrat can do the same thing. This may in fact be our best hope at this point, but we're more likely to get corporate fascists. Oh wait! They won the election just last week, "fair and square," right? And now they're moving at warp speed, publicly, to establish their own personal Stasi.
Well, I cancelled my Amazon account after 21 years. My websites are hosted by a small, family owned outfit that co-los their own server boxes. I've cancelled my Amazon referral account, obviously, although my CD reviews and book reviews still link to Amazon for now - there's more than 1,000, so changing those by hand will be time consuming. The books will link to the Independent booksellers association online portal - got approved for an account there. Not yet sure about the music links.
I'm also moving all my domain registrations from GoDaddy, and am slowly but surely migrating all my logins from Gmail to my own domain.
Someone else pointed out on a previous Glenn post, I think (or maybe Taibbi) that we've all been busy trading our principles for convenience.
LOL. Like guaranteed next-day delivery is a requirement for a good life. Seems though a lot of people have been conditioned to expect this.
Same day/next day/two day delivery is purely an addiction I planning to overcome.
As for this:
"we've all been busy trading our principles for convenience."
...that's false: SOME OF US have never traded our principals for convenience, such as myself; I've run my own mail and web servers since about 1996, have never had an Amazon account, etc.
Whenever I'm using one of the big (read evil) corps in tech, it's because someone else has forced it, such as the myriad people who mindlessly have gmail accounts, so I can't email them without handing google some of MY content, which regularly pisses me off.
And, by the way, I literally have interrupted my work in now moving up to providing virtual hosting of email for my many friends I want to communicate securely with, so I can now offer all those people with gmail accounts one hosted on MY boxes, so they can shed that association and we're all better off.
That said, why are you ditching GoDaddy? I've been with them since roughly the end of their first month in operation, LONG before they had a fancy web site. While they've made some mis-steps in the last few years, I basically threatened to take my business elsewhere if they didn't ditch this "value pricing" idea on domains I already own. I was actually told the renewal on one domain was high "because it's a good domain name," and I told the kid on the phone that yeah, that's why I got it, and if GoDaddy wants to be in the domain speculation business, they need to end being a registrar - those are two different functions. ... They backed down shortly thereafter, but IDK if it was just for a guy like me, with around 60 registered domain and a total history of around 100 registered with them over the decades... If they're doing that to others, I want to know!
So, again please, why are you leaving GoDaddy?
GoDaddy cancelled hosting for a shooting sports club with no notice, shortly after Parler got axed by Amazon. Said that "glorifying" guns violated their terms.
I admire your consistency! Clearly, though, given the market dominance of Amazon, Google, FaceBook, etc., the vast majority of us have not shown your tenacity to our ideals - myself included.
I used to write the Online San Diego column in ComputorEdge Magazine for (that's how they spelled it), reviewing local BBS systems in the '80s and '90s. Was on the 'Net before there was a Web - doing Archie and Gopher searches. But the convenience became awfully convenient.
Props to you.
Thanks, Jim, we're of about the same era... I started making money with computers in the FIRST half of my teens, then got a job writing an operating system in machine language using the 6809 chip when I was 15 in the late 1970s. . . . So, I'd guess we're about the same age. Like you, I was on the net LONG before non-geeks even knew there was a net.
I have definitely, knowingly, and with intention kept my integrity while knowing full well I'd do better financially if I didn't. But SOMEBODY has to tell the fuckers where they can stuff it and try and find a better way. Today, in the computing world, this is best exemplified by the open-source community's coming together to replace the expensive, siloed operating systems, "desktop software" like Microsoft Office with alternatives like OpenOffice and LibraOffice, etc.
BTW, back to GoDaddy for a moment: Canceling hosting with no notice is horrific, BUT, unlike domain name registration, hosting is subject to subjective interpretations of terms of service. This is a KEY reason (among several others) why I tell people they should host their own stuff. The network bandwidth for a modest site isn't that expensive any more, and look what happens when you catch the short straw?! Disaster!
Anyway, looking forward to more exchanges; keep the peace.
My dad built a 6502-based MOS KIM-1 clone in '76 or so - I was in high school then, the and the neighborhood kids would come around to see it - although it wasn't much. He did hook up a surplus Teletype keyboard to it for data entry, and a Hex LED display.
A few years later, he bought an Atari 400, and we joined the local Atari User Group to swap shareware on cassettes.
I was never a developer or programmer - always a computer journalist, writing about the technology and how it was changing things.
I met Dan Gookin online on a local BBS in the late '80s, then my roommate, Andy Rathbone, wrote "Windows for Dummies" when Gookin turned it down.
I was an advisory board member and volunteer curator for the Computer Museum of American in the 1990s and early 2000s; still host their old archived web site at http://computer-museum.org.
Great, exciting fun times when the tech was still new and online was wide-open.
OOPS! Editorial error:
This sentence, starting with:
"And, by the way, I literally have interrupted my work..."
was supposed to include "in order to write this reply." That is, I am continuing that work in just a few minutes!
Bezos uses the insane profits from AWS to unwrite the huge losses on the e-commerce side putting hundreds of thousands done small business out of business.
Last time we asked, Amazon isn’t willing to support our Little League program or sponsor the 4th of July fireworks in our town like small businesses historically have done.
Ignore and don't feed the trolls-- that applies to almost every obnoxious thing in life. The "trolls" need attention to be able to use their righteousness and self appointed authority. Who died and made them god?
Agreed. To quote the Beastie Boys: "I'm like Ma Bell, I've got the the ill communication!"
Personally I think this Beastie Boys quote sums up our reality right now:
"It's not a tough decision, as you can see,
I can blow you away or you can ride with me."
"I'll ride with you if you can get me to the border.
The sheriff's after me for what I did to his daughter. "
I couldn't resist.
I did it like this!
I did it like that!
I did it with a whiffle ball bat!
Too bad they didn't choose the word "with" instead of "to."
Absolutely! That actually got me thinking of one more; Beastie Boys were almost as prophetic as The Simpsons: "So, so, so, so listen up, 'cause you can't say nothin'. You'll shut me down with a push of your button."
(Note: I must've screwed up posting this about a half-dozen times already.)
But wait, I've seen threats of violence on this website. Surely AWS will be dropping it shortly right?
Was there ever any doubt whatsoever in your mind that this would happen?
In a just society Brennan would be in prison, and Snowden would be appearing on cable news.
Brennan is building a coalition. Of enemies.
Brennan is an Authoritarian Tyrannical STATIST Communist..not a Socialist.
Think of him as Stalin and Bernie Sanders as Lenin.
I hope so.
I’d add, cancel the subscription to the Times, which is no longer an objective source of news. It was like breaking an addiction after decades, but I feel better now.
Had no trouble dropping the NYT (and its clone the Boston Globe) years ago - actually after the obscene Iraq war where they played a large role in starting it. Now it's Glenn, JimmyDore, Matt Taibbi, NakedCapitalism, Aaron Mate, Ron Placone, Chris Hedges, Lee Camp, David Swanson, Caitlin Johnstone, Max Blumenthal, Ray McGovern, Consortium News, and many other independents. I hope they survive the upcoming repression of the Biden evil doers. Look what the US is doing to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden for reporting truth about war crimes and the gov't in general.
(And its other clone, the Washington Post.) I follow some of the folks you mention, e.g. Taibbi and Hedges, and I’ve discovered that I get a lot of good perspective and news from the balanced coverage of Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti. Will look into the others. I also find myself dipping into the content of black conservatives like the brilliant Glenn Loury and his more moderate colleagues, John McWhorter and Coleman Hughes. I second your comment about Snowden and Assange. The treatment of these two is unconscionable and shameful.
I also follow Krystal and Saagar (forgot to mention them, shame on me my bad) and I also recommend their balance. They are both excellent and I follow them. I'll check out your other recommendations, thank you. Always looking for independent points of view. Long before and then when WaPo was purchased by Bezos I figured it was a goner and so just dumped it, sad considering Dan Ellsberg and the courage he displayed about the Vietnam war. Too many have sold out for $$$. Goodness I loathe capitalism these days. There are many other independent journalist like StatusCoup's Jordan Chariton and his relentless coverage of the Flint lead water crisis (and Obama's collusion) and his coverage about the North Dakota pipeline I am forgetting, my bad again. Let's hope others chip in and add more of these journalists? Also Let's hope these independents can continue safely - takes much courage these days to stand up for presenting real news. And contributions - which I do. You should too!! David Sirota as well!!
Agreed about Assange and Snowden, and Krystal, though Saagar is -YAWN!- ... but I don't know the others you cite. Hmmm... Will try and look, though time is short.
Good list AND, we should be pressureing the holy fuck out of Biden and his administration to STOP pursuing Assange and Snowden. Neither have been convicted, but a "pardon" would end the witch hunts permanently.
Biden’s approach for both will be to ignore Snowden and Assange.
He’s on board with the IC and will simply shove them down the memory hole knowing that he who controls the MSM controls the narrative.
Which is why I’m here.
I know many of you will object, but paying Glenn $50 for a 1 yr. subscription is an old media model that Rush Limbaugh was forced to adopt because corporate media doesn’t like real journalists speaking real truth to power no matter where they reside ideologically. I hope Glenn is as successful in building a direct to subscriber audience as Limbaugh has done the last 30 years.
It’s nice to know there are more Mike Royko types out there in the world of journalism than you would have expected to find at the NYT and WaPo.
My nominee for the Mike Royko Speaking Truth to Power Award for 2020 goes to Glenn Greenwald.
I vehemently disagree with him ideologically, yet he understands like Chomsky that you either believe in free speech or you don’t.
It truly is a binary choice. I choose free speech.
True conservatives and liberals actual can and do agree on defense of civil liberties. I think this is why Glenn is attracting so many of both.
Add Kevin Williamson to your list. He’s the one who writes for National Review and worked for the Atlantic of all of 1 week before being fired because the snowflakes in the newsroom don’t understand sarcasm, wit or irony.
Writing for the National Review? Nothing to brag Bout.
I cancelled WSJ. I had a subscription for 11 yrs. The newsroom is slanted now. And they still keep Peggy Noonan writing crazy old lady editorials
Peggy is 20 years past her prime, but I read the WSJ every morning to keep my sanity of skip over her “gee, why can’t this be like the 80’s?’ drivel.
Her spot ought to go to Heather McDonald from City Journal.
Well done!
It's essay writing 101 to establish credibility by pointing out how your point applies to "both sides." However, the fact that one has to go back 18 years (to a time of war, no less) to come up with a halfway decent example of "right wing" cancel culture should tell you something.
Glenn could have used the examples of Rudy Guiliani and Marjorie Taylor Greene from a few weeks ago, when they threatened to "destroy" any Republican elected officials who refused to vote to block Electoral votes from certain states. Greene called them "traitors" and said they were being added to an enemies list; Guiliani called them "Quislings" - which either displayed gross historical ignorance or, more likely, gross partisan hyperbole. Either way, it was a very timely, current example of cancel culture from the Right.
Except that Gulliani and Greene have no power to "cancel" anyone. They are more likely to get cancelled themselves.
Let's face it, everyone would cancel their opponents if they could. Only the side that controls the media and tech monopolies poses a practical threat of exercising such power.
"...everyone would cancel their opponents.." That is false. I know it's true for almost all of the left, but almost everyone I know on the right understands the value of differing opinions.
LAUGHABLY wrong. Once again, you're talking about neo-liberals NOT THE LEFT.
If you saw Jimmy Dore on with Tucker Carlson last Friday night on Fox..you’ve seen the future of Populism.
Hook up with other Populists and push for systemic change of politics as usual.....or wither on the vine.
The concept of "cancel culture" is I think grossly misused as applied to elected officials.
That is true in the sense that only the voters can "cancel" an elected official.
But what if media and tech can bombard your constituents with propaganda while blocking you from defending yourself?
(Also, If the Democrats have their way, they will legally bar the American people from ever voting for Trump again. That's a political "cancellation" if ever there was one.)
Whether it's AOC or MTG, the concept of a congressional member maintaining an "enemies list" of citizens simply for how they vote or whom they express support for is very concerning. Trying to run someone out of politics for how they vote, and using highly denigrating, dehumanizing words to describe them?
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
enemies lists are pure fascism
being a psycho asshole is pure fascism
See, even we can agree on some things.
AOC is doing what any politician does, and that’s build political capital which she can exchange for power. Real power.
Aren’t you just a little bit curious what Pelosi promised her to get her and the Squad to abandon #ForceTheVote and suckle up to her hind teet?
AOC needs 100 D members to support her ideology, but she’s too immature to understand she needs to either partner with 50-75 Trump Populists in the House and/or get an equivalent number of Democrat moderates to force some rule changes or Nancy Pelosi is going to keep treating her like the chid she is.
I'm not really sure that the example qualifies as "cancel culture." The pursuit of political power is a zero-sum game, and working to condemn political opponents to political irrelevance or impotence is the way that politics work in free societies; the alternative as practiced in tyrannical regimes, imprisonment or physical exile, would be more the equivalent of "cancel culture," where a group of people attempt to destroy the lives of people outside of the domain of concern. I strongly agree with one of the following comments: like "virtue signaling," "cancel culture" is an overly used phrase. ("Virtue signaling" was never meant to refer to direct expressions of value judgments on topics commonly understood to be bound up with values; it was meant to refer to indirect expressions of value judgments when the expressions occur in relation to topics not generally considered opportunities to express a value judgment. For example, if I say to a coworker, "I think that I'm going to go to McDonald's to get a quick bite to eat for lunch," and the coworker responds by saying, "I refuse to eat fast food," the response is very often some kind of virtue signaling. The value judgment about fast food was neither requested nor desired, and the person seizes the opportunity to offer the opinion on fast food as a way to show some kind of virtue. From the value judgment on a relatively narrow topic, you might even be able to guess nearly all of the person's other opinions. By contrast, when discussing a topic like the potential social impact of fast food, if someone claims that fast food business exploit workers and the environment, the person is directly stating an opinion and not signaling.) Opposing someone in a zero-sum game like politics isn't an example of cancel culture unless you advocate destroying the person's livelihood in all other areas and excluding the person from the nations economic life or worse, advocate imprisonment or exile as Democrats seem to regularly do these days when they pursue nakedly political prosecutions against officials as happened with Rick Perry in Texas and Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Let's not dilute the concept of cancel culture by equivocation, by suggesting that cancel culture is any vigorous opposition in any domain at all. The dilution of the concept by dishonestly or incorrectly equating its tactics with normal, everyday behaviors is the means by which the practice becomes normalized.
Those are what are known as battles..not wars.
Rudy wasn’t going to cancel anyone. He was trying to use pressure to change people’s outlook on things and without a complicit media eloping carry that message, he was no different than my Golden Retriever barking at the snow. It’s cute, but really harmless in the end. Rudy was a GREAT Mayor of NYC (they need one like him back, I’m hoping the CEO of Roivant does his IPO and runs), but when you spend too much time in the orbit of someone like Trump (Or PElosi), you don’t get to make the rules and you surely don’t walk away without heading to the showers to clean the filth off.
This is a real howler / knee slapper:
"However, the fact that one has to go back 18 years (to a time of war, no less) to come up with a halfway decent example of "right wing" cancel culture should tell you something."
Yeah, well the right has been "canceling" everyone it hated since Roman times.
!!! "Art" the "F!Art" !!!
Mindless brain flatulence
Brain dead moron
Good point!
*on the clock
And in the context of a bit. Then he went home and banged Ariana Grande. That poor dear!
Yeah, poor Pete. He really suffered consequences didn't he?
And guess who went on air and accepted his apology not wanting to be part of the Cancel Culture instead of aiming for Davidson’s head...or his career?
One aspect of cancel culture ... hell, sometimes I think our culture at large ... is that we seem to have lost our sense of humor. I didn't find the bit your refer to funny, but I sure know it was intended as comedy. I wish we'd all loosen up and laugh
Who forced him to apologize? I’m curious.
Probably Lorne Michaels because there was criticism across the board. Thankfully in this country, veteran's, especially those who have lost limbs or organs in defense of this country are held in esteem, even in most cases if they are a Republican. I would say that Davison did the minimum he needed to do and in fact over the following weeks seemed to walk it back. Crenshaw was the adult by brushing it off and accepting it. It didn't hurt Davison one bit and in fact elevated his standing among the resistance. The guy is a walking disaster though.
How in the world could a military veteran have lost limbs or organs in defense of the United States? Nobody has attacked the United States.
Define "United States" in terms of the real world.
touche...you get a thumbs up.
I see we are using the Obamacare definition of child. When I was 17 I was already in the military and did not consider myself a kid. Pete Davison was in no way a victim nor did he suffer any cancellation culture. You write as if you are either his mother or his agent.
C'mon man. Yoko had quite a set of pipes. Kiss Kiss Kiss on the Double Fantasy album was classic Ono. <JK> ROTFLMAO!
Better be careful. Biden may have a trademark on "c'mon man," or is it ESPN? Not sure.
"Walking on Thin Ice" was her revenge on a generation that blamed her for the breakup of The Beatles ...
Horseshit. Have you heard of Nazi hook burning?
Censorship can be imposed by any person or institution that has power over individuals. You know like Liberty University ... and Harvard and three popes over Martin Luther and Trump over Fauci ... ... ...
lol - I think this is where I step aside, let e.pierce hop in, and you two can scream at each other for awhile ...
hopping in is pure fascism!
Liberty University had Bernie Sanders speak during his 2016 campaign. The students were respectful. Would Donald Trump or Ted Cruz have even had a chance to speak at an Ivy League University???
Think of Charles Murray being cancelled at Middlebury College ( and his recorded speech was rated at the very center of the political spectrum) https://www.newsweek.com/charles-murray-my-free-speech-ordeal-middlebury-564419 and https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/charles-murray-defended-by-the-new-york-times
hearing anything is pure fascism
use realclearpolitics as a filter and then apply your own filter to weed out some junk on there, and you get a set of decent stuff. this greenwald article is featured. Is there a liberal version of RCP that anyone knows about - i feel like RCP includes left voices but either they're the equivalent of Alan Colmes (weak and lame on purpose) or the left is pretty vacant. I guess the left's stronger voices are Greenwald, Taibbi, etc. but they have cast them out to some sort of "center".
also, though it's frayed around the edges a bit in the past year, Reuters still plays it pretty straight.
I, personally, disagree about Reuters. Even RCP has been a let down for me, as a conservative. Just my opinion.
Excellent comment, thanks.
Indeed, one is corporate collusion, the other is the free market system.
Thank you. My feelings exactly.
A comment made in jest becomes serious when it can be perceived as a threat.
A comment made in jest becomes serious when it *is* perceived as a threat *by a reasonable person.*
The problem arises when reason is in short supply, or when, as Matt suggests here, the claimed perception of threat is disingenuous.
*Glenn
I am threatened by your comment.
Meet me on Twitter, let's get 'im!
Oh seriously? the last part of the sentence is vague and can be interrupted SO many ways. I really hate Virtue signalling
Careful that you don't choke yourself clutching your pearls.
A fine example of how the passive voice eviscerates meaning.
Guess you dont listen to comedy much
He never suggested that boycotts would protect free speech, only that they're very different than these attempts to "cancel."
What I find amusing is they dropped Dixie, but kept Chicks. Ain't that sexist? Wink.
Nope. They are now going by "The Chicks".
Very few people actually have the courage to stand against their peers and proclaim something is wrong.
I'm very happy that GG is one of those people.
Me too!!
Me 3
How telling that AntiFA can, for OVER A YEAR, hold anti-Trump rallies, burn down countless buildings, drive numerous small businesses into bankruptcy, beat a journalist into a coma, and try to barricade federal officers into a building to burn them alive, and not a peep from Twitter (or Biden for that matter). But hold ONE anti-Biden rally, and Twitter leaps in, sanctimoniously. At this point, they're just insulting our intelligence.
During the summer ANTIFA was just an idea. Now that they are protesting Biden, they are dangerous insurrectionists.
Christopher Wray testified that Antifa is "more of an idea" than an actual organization, and this is used constantly by Democrat lawmakers, and other establishment figures. Now that Antifa is (still) protesting in Seattle and Portland, (We don't want Biden, we want revenge...) and vandalized a Democrat Party office building after the inaugaration, I wonder if they will still be considered as such.
They called in the national guard the day after the election in Portland.
It's clear the "rules" have changed.
I have my doubts that these people will care. You can't control the Red Guard.
You can’t control the brown shirts. You can’t control the Brownshirts.
Lol
Yes, but I don't think the point is to insult our intelligence. I've come to believe that the blatantness of the double standard is exactly the point: it's a show of force.
My thought as well. A de-sensitization, if you will, so that more and more censorship and authoritarianism will be accepted without significant push-back.
To me it's just sort of Machiavellian: “Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? One should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved.”
I notice that you mentioned anti-Trump rallies first, as if they desecrated a cathedral.
"At this point, they're just insulting our intelligence."
...or yours anyway...
What buildings did they burn down? That Minneapolis burning wead by right wing domestic terrorists abd the cops took their sweet time identifying snd arresting ... remind you of any recent events ... ? Hmmm.
I'll send you links if you'd like, of federal buildings they set on fire. As far as small businesses, there are numerous youtube videos of business owners who've defaulted on the blocks they've taken over.
The pandemic is the most pressing cause of small business losses, not some people angry that the police shoot and kill FAR too many innocent people, not that you care of course. -shrug-
You don't have to actually burn down buildings to make your city an unlivable shithole.
People now avoid downtown Portland.
"That Minneapolis burning wead by right wing domestic terrorists"
Right.
And in a few months a gigantic bunny is going to be hopping around your yard shitting chocolate eggs that you and the other children can find and squeal in delight as you do.
"What is worth knowing, he doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know; what he knows is not true. The cardinal articles of his credo are the inventions of mountebanks; his heroes are mainly scoundrels."
~ H.L. Mencken
Building are pure fascism.
At the post-graduate/doctoral level, even at a place such as Yale, the greatest fear, certainly in the humanities, is to be wrong about something, or merely to be thought wrong. So, what happens is doctoral students end up doing a version of self-censorship. Thus research, the willingness to try, to err, and then to move on in an effort to expand our knowledge and understanding is diminished.
I know several PhDs that have changed careers because of cancel culture and the general decline of values, etc. It doesn't end even when people finish grad school.
My husband dropped out of graduate school because of this.
This is unbelievably sad. I graduated college in 79, and law school in 82. My ed experience was fantastic. Exposure to news ideas without indoctrination. Education should not be about manufacturing minions.
We are of about the same vintage. I had the same kind of experience as an undergrad and still later, mostly, as a professional student at Yale (Divinity). At the time even the most liberal of the students approached "political correctness," which was right about then coming online, with a twinkle in their eye and a certain gentle dose of irony/mockery. Exchanges of ideas and disageements were robust and passionate, but rarely were they destructive, self- or otherwise.
Gotta say it. Those were the days! Felt worked to death at the time, but even then and moreso later, I really value(d) the experience.
That's the problem with Twitter - comments are not in context. The best thing to do about Twitter is get off of it.
I struggle with this. You could well be right. I just can't decide if it is nobler in the mind to take up arms against the sea of ignorance on Twitter, and by opposing end them... or to disempower Twitter by leaving all together. Perhaps it's true that "sometimes the only way to win is not to play the game." I'm just not sure.
Having just given up social media myself, I have a lot more peace in my life. I’m reading more, and putting my phone down more. I struggled with the decision as well, and what convinced me was that I don’t want to be a part of anything that makes a profit while censoring entire viewpoints.
Thank you very much for the insights, everyone. It's a big help. I'm leaning toward toward dropping my remaining accounts. Curious, would any opinions change if it meant using ostensibly less censored platforms like Gab or MeWe?
The only need to be on Twitter is a felt need or desire. There is no necessity involved. There is no real benefit. It deals in insignificant comments more than anything else.
I beg to differ. There are a lot of very smart scientists, professors, and just plain people on Twitter I'd never hear about if it weren't for their Twitter. It's also where independent journalists have a voice. It isn't just politics. Same for youtube. I've tried to use the newer alternative platforms, but these sorts of people aren't there just yet. If you live in the relative sticks like I do now, it's still the most efficient way to get useful and accurate information on many subjects.
I'm not on Twitter, though I know it exists. And, yes, you are right as to possible beneficial uses. For instance, I have heard that there are what I guess are private Twitter chat-rooms for people in a particular discipline in which they exchange ideas and so forth. I would still argue, though, that this does not represent a necessity, but rather still a felt need. What is the acronym about being left out, or the last one to know, or some such thing? Life can go on very easily without such technology. I will admit to being a regular viewer of the PBS Space Time channel, but I also know that my life, while somewhat enriched -- and certainly intrigued -- by learning what I do there, would not be that diminished without it.
Isn't that a little silly? Other than protection from the elements, food, water and maybe sex, nothing is an absolute necessity. Am i supposed to just sit in my living room, make sure the plumbing works, and say Hi to the neighbors once in a while? Why pick only on Twitter? Let's just close down the internet altogether, then, since life can go on (we won't die) very easily without such technology.
To be sure, Twitter is an easy target. I guess what many would argue, or at least suggest, is that absent technology such as this, we would all be saying hello to our neighbors much more often than we do now. When I grew up, the worst form of parental punishment was to be told to come inside. I understand now that for children to be cast out into the out of doors away from their screens seems to them most cruel. (I am painting with a wide brush.) In the past I have strolled about neighborhoods where I know there are children, and they are ghostly. No one is outside simply playing. I am grateful that where I live now, one does see children outdoors, walking with each other, riding bikes, I even saw some with fishing poles walking to a nearby brook. All this in my eyes appears much more enriching and of lasting value, and it contributes much more to cognitive and social development. I am not alone in this. In this Guardian article we read about how there is a trend in Silicon Valley for Those Who Know to send their children to tech-free schools. This is not to banish such technology, but rather to be far more discerning in our use of it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/26/children-tech-addicts-schools
Never argue with stupid people they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. - Mark Twain
Get off twitter. I spend a lot of time reading Glenn and and the wonderful comments here. I'm not on F'book or twitter either. I have better things to do than stick emojis on stuff. Read a book like E
EPThompson's The Making of the English Working Class. Or Soul on Ice.
Soul on Ice, Eldridge Cleaver? I remember reading that in about 6th or 7th grade. it kind of sticks with you.
Hamlet? better to leave. I'm working on it.
It’s 2021. We live, work, play, shop, socialize, and date online.
Saying “just don’t have a public voice, or participate in the mainstream of social life” is not a clever comment anymore. For a Boomer retiree, it might still make sense, but few people under the age of 55 will find it easy to disconnect from online communities.
The digital commons are the commons. You’re lucky if your job does not require you to use Zoom or social media, and you can get by in life without an online presence. You’re in a shrinking minority, if so.
Ice cream socials and bowling nights aren’t coming back... and a writer for the New York Times isn’t going to develop much of a following by staying offline. We need to fix the online commons, not withdraw from them and sneer at the world.
Makes me glad I'm 64
I'm glad I'm 76, just not old enough.
"It’s 2021. We live, work, play, shop, socialize, and date online."
And you don't have to do ANY of that on Twitter OR facebook.
I'm working on it...
First they came for the Trumpers, but I wasn't one, so I cheered them on...
First they came for the pro-Palestinians, and I am one, and the Trumpers cheered them on.
Rather telling that your victimhood is so partisan. In fact, the democrats - notably Cuomo, Clinton, obie, and kamala, are all staunch anti-BDSers, cuomo going so far as to issue orders to fire any govt employee in support in any way - even speech - of the BDS movement. If you're going to play victim, you ought choose your truths and your allies a little better
Not partisan, at all. More chronological.
Another great article! I am extremely happy with my choice to subscribe, if only to support one of the most clear, courageous, and consistent defenders of free speech and journalistic integrity operating in our time. Keep it up! We will, as a society, regain our senses and return to our ideals of freedom and liberty before long.
But that isn't the way it's going, sadly. I hope you are correct, but it won't be any time soon. It took 25 or 30 years to get to where we are, and the Federal Gov't is being stacked with these people as we speak.
Those ideals only existed because there wasn't any social media to show what people actually thought.
Then we've got our work cut out for us!
The tyranny of the mob is very real
including the conspiratard cargo cultists
Define “conspiratard”...
I'm pretty sure he used it self-referentially.
"Art" the F!Art is baaaaack!
Making almost impossibly stupid comments. Again
retarded conspiracy theorist
You cannot have a decent, self-governed society filled with stupid people. The craving for social acceptance is no different than any other instinctual craving - food, sex, ect. Intelligent, self-aware people recognize their instinctual craving and aren't governed by them - which is why we have a country filled with fat slobs who spend their days browsing porn (both the carnal and MSNBC/Newsmax variety). Its an undeniable, if harsh, diagnosis that very few people are willing to accept both because most Americans lack the capacity for self-awareness and because there is no easy fix for this problem.
How do you imbue hundreds of millions of people with the ability to think critically? How do you imbue hundreds of millions of people with an understanding of history? Its would be an herculean task even if the people were ready and eager to start learning and gaining cognitive function - but they aren't. Such a campaign would represent a major shift in our nation's priorities while the oligarchs at the top have a vested interest in keeping people stupid and easily brainwashed. Fixing our broken society isn't a matter of simply filling the empty heads of our citizens with the "right" ideas, because those empty heads can be just as easily filled with the "wrong" ideas by the next demagogue to stroll along. Only the ability to think and discern the "right" ideas independently inculcates an individual against propaganda and group-think.
While anything is possible, I don't see a path towards improvement. Our society is in a death spiral of ignorance, stupidity and narcissism following the pied piper of the oligarchs and the national security state into a dystopian nightmare. But at least the people can keep up with the Kardashians along the way.
re: the beautiful, the good, and the true
dis-integration (of the Blue church) and re-integration (holistic-fluid mode)
There are a variety of proposals about anti-fragile collective sense making systems that involve four major aspects of human existence:
1. inner-individual awareness: (subjective) self-realization
this is the "consciousness raising" part of "solutions" involving the need for social change
2. inner-collective: (subjective) morals, ethics
3. exterior-individual: scientific rationalism: objective awareness of facts, evidence, material reality
4. exterior-collective: objective awareness, systems (holons, dynamic equilibrium, etc.)
in Plato's archetypes #4 is "justice" - the regulating virtue
similarly #1 is the beautiful, #2 is the good, #3 is the true
-----
So, there is a very wide area in which reforms and improvements are possible and likely given the history of cultural evolution.
This "why can't everyone be like me" argument has never obtained in the general population, yet the US was highly functional at various points in history. The qualities you extoll can only and need only exist in the ruling/upper classes. The current lot of boomers schemed to disenfranchise the country starting in earnest with Bill Clinton. Today they are close to triumphant. History shows that oligarchs have a track record of sudden collapse.
That's what I've been telling my kids. They feel so devastated and betrayed, especially with the cover up of Hunter Biden's laptop. Then they had to see him standing at the inauguration as though her were a proud upstanding citizen of America and it just FRIED them.
EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know a lot of people who feel exactly as you do.
One point unstated here by Glenn is that the whole new impeachment is based on "incitement" from a rally which was less pointed and more milquetoast than this tweet. For this tweet to be explained away as sarcasm and/or not a "call for violence," would require people giving at least a moment's pause to think that the former President might not have truly "incited violence" earlier this month.
In other words, "Too Soon."
I wonder if even Gilbert Gottfried would be brave enough to make a 1/6 joke today...
Excellent point!
Mr. Greenwald
Anytime a journalist loses their job, I find it difficult to work up much sympathy. Far from acting like the fourth branch of government, the mainstream media has lied, covered up important stories for political reasons, promoted censorship, used a different standard for rioting by the left and right, has been ridiculously biased and acted in concert with the massive monopolies in the tech industry to censor (of all things) the media and conservative voices The mainstream media acting jointly with the far left media has been disgraceful. The media has earned all of the poor ratings and skepticism of the public.
Now the left wing media is in a quandary after denouncing the police for six months as racists while supporting the defund the police movement. This all suddenly changed when right wing rioters forced entry into the United States Capitol. Suddenly the police were heroes. The National Guard were welcomed (after an editor at the New York Times was fired for publishing Tom Cotton's op ed on bringing in the military to restore order in cities with rioting and looting). Whereas, the mainstream media referred to the BLM rioters as a very tiny percentage of the protests, it was clear that the 75 million people that voted for Trump were all going to overthrow the government. The double standards and hypocrisy is breathtaking.
Finally, what does the media do about the far left antifa protesters in Portland who yesterday rioted and vandalized a police station and carried a large sign with an assault rifle drawn on the sign calling for revenge against the police and the government? You do just what most media outlets did - ignore it - and/or you go back to the same lies as before - police brutality, systemic racism and defund the police!
I have no sympathy for Will Wilkinson whatsoever.
That's unfortunate and emblematic of our challenges as a polity. Having sympathy for someone in a tough spot is human.
Refusing to have sympathy because "they deserve it" really isn't a terribly good look on anyone.
" the mainstream media has lied, ..." That IS acting like government.
Police brutality and systemic racism are real. I have no sympathy for your point of view whatsoever.
Actually, I don't think Greenwald has any sympathy for Will Wilkinson either.
*If craig really wanted unity, he would acknowledge police brutality (i've got a few hair-raising anecdotes myself!) and persistent systemic racism in the administration of justice .. . and lynch his secret MAGA hat.
#serenity now
Labeling all police brutal and racist is as fair (and false) as labeling all Muslims terrorist. The media may mean well (HaHa), but every fatal police shooting shown on TV was an African American. However, that is misleading (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjp7cOYhbXuAhUGX60KHT84BCIQFjABegQIBxAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.statista.com%2Fstatistics%2F585152%2Fpeople-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race%2F&usg=AOvVaw0YAO1jxUX7FZ1kJNX4xhj2):
".......Sadly, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 999 civilians having been shot, 226 of whom were Black, in 2020. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to 1,004. Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 34 fatal shootings per million of the population as of December 2020........"
Four hundred and thirty-two white people were fatally shot in 2020. About 22% of the fatal shooting were black people which is higher than their population (13-14%), but the violent crime rates for African Americans far outweighs any other racial group. For example, According to Heather MacDonald in the Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-11591119883 via @WSJ):
".........In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population........"
Finally, an additional study finds that violent crime "strongly predicts the race of the person fatally shot" (Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings https://www.pnas.org/content/116/32/15877):
"........ We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers. Instead, race-specific crime strongly predicts civilian race...........One of our clearest results is that violent crime rates strongly predict the race of a person fatally shot........."
I am not denying racism exists in police forces (or anywhere else), or that there are individual cases of police brutality, but police forces are more diverse and better trained than ever before - and it is a difficult job with your life on the line - so to stereotype police is absurd. The media is partially responsible for promoting this false stereotype.
Well said, Craig Summers. I like the way you back up each statement with facts. If we had more people thinking rationally based on facts, rather than emotionally based on preconceived notions, the world would be a better place. If you ever start your own substack, I will be a subscriber.
Thanks Afi.
For a split-second craig, I thought you were turning into Glenn Greenwald .. . now that's absurd (haha)! Who's side are you on anyway?
Interesting [use of] crime statistics, as usual. More on that in not-so-distant future I'm sure (new domestic terrorism laws, etc., etc.), but for now I'll leave you with Jonathan Turley's reaction to claims of racial bias in statistical analysis (and scientific process in general) you might enjoy https://jonathanturley.org/2021/01/24/rhode-island-professor-denounces-science-statistics-and-technology-as-inherently-racist/#more-168488
>"Labeling all police brutal and racist is as fair (and false) as labeling all Muslims terrorist. "
Of course, I'm not doing any of that.. . but thanks for thinking about me.
I'm most concerned #1 presently (as if there is not enough to deal with.) with an incrasingly militarized domestic police force to battle an increasingly more domestic 'terrorism' .. . and all that implies!
Turning deputy Barney Fife into fucking Rambo with a thousand-yard-stare is not going to end well, imho (see, eg, Lousiville) ... That's why Sheriff Taylor only gave him one bullet.
>"I am not denying racism exists in police forces (or anywhere else), or that there are individual cases of police brutality, but police forces are more diverse and better trained than ever before - and it is a difficult job with your life on the line - so to stereotype police is absurd. The media is partially responsible for promoting this false stereotype. "
Please. I live in a sea of MAGA hats.. . my life is always on 'the line'. \../
The point is: If you're filthy rich and/or politically 'connected', you have nothing to fear craig. .. from the police.
Otoh, they killed 'Luke' (a poor young 'white' Appalachian-hillbilly) not so long ago. He was too drunk to stand or walk, was allegedly belligerent and had a shotgun and a box of shells beside him. After a brief stand-off [sic], the police called in a 'sniper' and took him out.
*in any case, all 'terrorism', whether foreign or domestic, supersedes law. .. that's the point, craig.
Thanks Bah
I agree totally. If someone who has been fanning the flames of hatred and division gets burned by them, I consider it poetic justice.
The enemy isn't you or me. The enemy isn't liberal or conservative, black or white, gay or straight. The enemy isn't democrat or republican. The enemy are those who would divide us.
The partisan that goes along with the efforts to divide us is obviously also dividing us.
“The right-wing is acting jointly with the disgraceful mainstream media and tech companies to (of all things) censor liberal voice - their double standards and hypocrisy are breathtaking. Conservatives cast Sanders supporters as planning to install a Marxist dictatorship, the majority of Americans who want universal health care as communists. They spent 6 months demanding a violent response to protestors and got what they asked for with the shooting of an unarmed woman in the Capital riots” are not expressions of unity. The contrary combination of exaggerations, falsehoods and half-truths pitting one side against the other is no less divisive, as is cheering or at least not caring when the victim can be portrayed from the other side. Those who express such sentiments are at a minimum falling for the enemy’s tactics. Those who call-out such views are the ones trying to unite us.
"If you identify as a conservative and continue to believe that your prime enemies are ordinary leftists, or you identify as a leftist and believe your prime enemies are Republican citizens, you will fall perfectly into the trap set for you. Namely, you will ignore your real enemies, the ones who actually wield power at your expense: ruling class elites, who really do not care about “right v. left” and most definitely do not care about “Republican v. Democrat” — as evidenced by the fact that they fund both parties — but instead care only about one thing: stability, or preservation of the prevailing neoliberal order." - Greenwald
"...........They spent 6 months demanding a violent response to protestors and got what they asked for with the shooting of an unarmed woman in the Capital riots” are not expressions of unity........."
I think in all fairness Doc, they spent 6 months demanding a "violent response" to rioters, looters and the violence (in which over twenty people were killed), the torching of federal, state and private property and the toppling of historic statues.
You are such a fool
Thanks Doc.
True, but you could have gone farther; the enemy are the ultra-rich.
All ultra-rich are a threat to democratic rule; I say we cap it, but unlike the minimum wage, we need to define it in relative terms. I say if you have wealth that puts you in the richest 0.01%, you need to be taxed at 10% of your total wealth annually...
However it's done, if we don't do this, we'll likely join the Holocene event our selves and humanity will go extinct - and I don't think it'll be all that far in the future, either.
We definitely need to eliminate the tax loopholes like the carried interest loophole that allows hedge fund managers to pay a lower tax rate than wage earners. We need to eliminate the loophole that allowed Donald Trump and real estate tycoons, to lose other people’s money, then claim the losses it as their personal deduction, which is how he avoided paying taxes.
I don’t think all rich people are the enemy but there is definitely a strong correlation with lack of empathy and wealth. I remember a paper done years ago which looked at the likelihood a driver would stop for a pedestrian in a marked crosswalk. They used graduate student volunteers as pedestrians. It varied by make of car. They used make of car as a proxy for wealth. All of the Chevy drivers yielded to the pedestrian, but only 50% of the BMW drivers yielded. It doesn’t mean all BMW drivers are A-holes, but half of them are.
All ultra-rich are a threat. And, they don't need to be ultra-rich. And, they didn't do it by themselves. NOBODY deserves the kinds of wealth being amassed today, NOBODY. And, we were warned by our founders; several of them made statements about the dangers of concentrated wealth - I'm sure you can find some of them without trying very hard.
You responded to a right-wing troll who works for bellingcat; best not feed the trolls.
In a discussion I had with some graduate students at Yale 2 years ago, I heard that in doctoral studies, at least in the humanities, research is now being driven by fear of being wrong, or being thought wrong, factually and, I suppose, morally and ideologically. As a result, the pursuit of knowledge is now crimped and diminished by such fear. Therefore, more and more students are writing what they believe to be acceptable, what will benefit their careers, what will keep them respectable, and so on. We all lose.
There are a number of instances in the sciences where this has happened. For example, the low fat diet was created through a small number of limited studies starting in the 1950s. It then became dogma early in the 1960s, and by the end of that decade scientists were being denied funding if they wanted to test that dogma through genuine studies. The result was a deadly increase in obesity and diabetes.
The reason is simple: eating too little fat requires eating more carbohydrates to have enough total calories to live a normal life. But carbohydrates make you want to eat more, while fats satisfy you so you don't wan t more than you need. If you need 2000 calories a day, you can get ~300 from protein (but not much more because of kidney damage), and the rest must be from fats and carbohydrates. The old recommendation of no more than 50 grams of fats, meant that you needed 300 grams of carbohydrates.
Only in the last decade has the low fat diet been recognized as scientifically wrong, and the recommended diets are slowly being revised. An excellent book on this topic is "The Big Fat Surprise" by Nina Teicholz.
Another example is that of stomach ulcers. It long was scientific dogma that these were caused by diets that were not bland enough and a stressful lifestyle. Two medical scientists in Australia discovered the bacterium Helicobacter pylori in the stomachs of many patients with ulcers. But the scientific community did not accept this explanation, because they said the stomach was too acidic for any bacteria to live in it. So one of the scientists drank a cocktail of the H. pylori and showed what it did on himself. https://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/cjgh/2008/459810.pdf They won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2005/ceremony-speech/
A third example is Alfred Wegener, who proposed in ~1915 that drifting apart of the continents was the means by which the present ones formed. This idea was vigorously opposed by most geologists for close to 50 years: "By 1930 his theory had been rejected by most geologists, and it sank into obscurity for the next few decades, only to be resurrected as part of the theory of plate tectonics during the 1960s." https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Wegener
Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard covers this.
"For this essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and at least, inevitable, and certainly better than the other conceivable alternatives. Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the "intellectuals"
In the chapter 'How the State Preserves Itself.
Cancel Social Media. It's become the brown shirts of the 21st Century.
I've canceled most of it. This is my safe space now. Thanks Glenn.
Oh, only until the meatspace brown shirts appear. Frankly social media is high school girls passing notes in class.
That’s what rules us though.!
Thats what WE LET rule us though
For now. That’s not the media standing guard around our new Green Zone DC.
Hmmm...🤔
Clearly the comment was said in jest in an attempt at black humor. It should not require an apology let alone cancellation.
Yet there is an inescapable schadenfreude at a member of a powerful, virtue-signaling preening aristocratic class being hoisted by their own petard if only for a while. He of course will eventually return thanks to him being part of the aristocracy of our betters.
Ironically, as noted, the head of this org, Jerry Taylor himself posted both a defamatory and hatefully violent tweet towards a couple - which SHOULD have had consequences but didn’t simply because that expression of violence was directed at the “right” people.
Ultimately, cancel culture and the hypocritical contradictions it inevitably generates will eat itself.
Black humor is rarely funny and a lot of folks don't like its cynicism. The only exception I've seen recently is the hysterically funny "The Death of Stalin" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4686844/ But still most people don't like such things. It's an acquired taste.
I love Patsy and Elmos "Grandma Got Run Over by a Raindeer." But maybe that's grey humor. C'mon people, laugh!
Cute, but not black humor.
Yup, I know. Couldn't help myself
Or maybe groan
The supposed zero tolerance policy for inciting violence is just an empty platitude. All laws are ultimately backed by the threat and actuality of state violence. So in a way all non-libertarian political advocacy is a form of incitement of violence. The NYT is okay with political violence so long as it's done by the men with the right funny hats pursuant to laws that the NYT agrees with.
So a more honest way to put the NYT's position would be to say that they support the state monopoly on political violence, except when the state is oppressing their in-group and then a little summer rioting is OK.
"All laws are ultimately backed by the threat and actuality of state violence. So in a way all non-libertarian political advocacy is a form of incitement of violence."
Exactly.
“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”
~ H.L. Mencken
This is either inarticulately written or idiocy:
"So in a way all non-libertarian political advocacy is a form of incitement of violence. "
I'm hoping for the former.
My parents were Communists and were invested in that murderous ideology their entire lives. Many others in the 50s and 60s when I was growing up were not Communists themselves but were tarred with guilt by association. Many were blacklisted, lost livelihoods and were harassed by The FBI and the House Unamerican Activities Committee. There was no social media of course, but local organizations such as The American Legion got involved and kept lists. How short are the memories on the left. Substitute support for Trump or whatever ideology you wish but keep in mind that the worm always turns and even though the left is on top today, it won’t be forever.
It won't be forever, but it could very well be 70 years . . .
This is false:
"leftists of all sorts are complicit in the new culture of cancelling voices they do not like"
No, leftists don't do that. Your "neo-liberals" are not left and never have been. What HAS happened is that the neo-liberals have grown in size in the last 10 or so years.
Conflating neo-liberals as "left" is a significant error that leads to errant conclusions.
But neo-liberalism is far left in the "cultural" wars, no? The alliance between leftists in this regard and arch corporate conservatives is what keeps them in power. An example is the lefts demand for open borders based on Humanitarian grounds, and the DNC/RNC Corporatists pretending to care because it depresses wages and provides a compliant, defenseless workforce in many sectors. I don't believe this is really up for debate. A much larger percentage of the left-leaning voted for Biden than the right-leaning. Even a far left apologist commentator like Matt Taibbi admits many leftists are OK with Big Tech censorship. Jimmy Dore says so too. Not sure buy I believe Chomsky has also noted this.
Arguments focused on labels are dependent upon how the labels are defined; obviously, different definitions will lead to different results, and that’s part of the reason labels just aren’t all that informative.
For example, applying the “open borders/depressed wages” criteria to the person who said this:
"If you close the border to forbid immigration on grounds that it lowers your standard of living--which certainly is not true, but even assuming it were true--you have no right to bar others. But above all, aren't you dropping a more personal context? How could I ever advocate that immigration should be restricted when I wouldn't be alive today if it were?" - Ayn Rand https://www.ontheissues.org/Ayn_Rand.htm
. . .makes the case for labeling her a ‘leftist.’ Most people would disagree, some might take issue with the definition of leftist, others might squabble if support for open borders in the absence of other ‘leftist-tendencies’ makes one a leftist, and what exactly does ‘open borders’ mean anyway, and who is arguing for whatever you mean by it, and is that really the leftist position or do some leftists favor something else. It would all be dreary and boring.
That’s the problem with labels: the information they impart confounds insight into what is really being said. I’m not arguing Ayn Rand is a leftist, and I really don’t care if she’s called that or a ‘rightist,’ ‘upist,’ ‘downist,’ or something else. No matter how one labels Ayn Rand - or Noam Chomsky, Jimmy Dore, Matt Taibbi, or anyone else who has something to say - it’s just a lot more interesting to move past the labels and concentrate on the issues and what is being said about them.
I agree, Doc, but FAR too many people don't bother with policy... To me, that's the whole thing, and avoiding it is being used against us. For example, a lot of (idiots) are clammoring about Kamala Harris, pointing to her ethnic background and skin color instead of her POLICIES. ...They've just gone off the deep end stupid.
And as you point out, label definitions have been / are being manipulated to confuse us and keep us divided. And this works at closing down discussion because, "ew! You're of that other label I don't like!"
The question is, how do we get people to START TALKING ABOUT POLICIES as a regular matter of course.
What I often try to do is weave policy positions into my remarks... I tell people I self-identify as Progressive, then share what my policy prescriptions are. I hope it helps.
Those idiots you refer to most definitely ID as leftists/progressives. Thank you for supporting my original point. Many of them are not stupid at all, and know perfectly well what they are doing. Pro tip: if you say "I self-identiry as Progressive" it signals? you are on the left wing of the democratic party because there's no such thing as a a republican progressive, and progressives don't have their own party. Worse, we all know what "I identify as" implies. Better to deny membership of any group, like I do.
Mass immigration of low-skilled workers for slave labor w/ no benefits of any kind certainly does lower wages and opportunities for the poorest Americans. Looks like you are a shill for the deep state yourself. I am not a member of the right or the left, but act on a prioritization of issues, as you mention at the end of your comment, but your everyday Bernie-supporting progressive / leftist is largely in bed with the corporate overlord state. This is undeniable and most likely includes Taibbi. Jimmy Dore is far leftist I can respect and agree with on many issues, and he calls out progressives supporting the current regime daily, supercilious lectures from leftist purists notwithstanding.
“Mass immigration of low-skilled workers for slave labor w/ no benefits of any kind certainly does lower wages and opportunities for the poorest Americans. Looks like you are a shill for the deep state yourself.”
I was quoting Ayn Rand. I don’t agree with what she said either; I just wouldn’t label her views on immigration “leftist” as your definition does. That’s why I don’t agree with your use of labels in lieu of good faith discussion and debate. It makes no difference for whom you campaigned; labels aren’t good arguments.
Just for perspective I actually campaigned for Bernie the first time around, but he lost me in his switch to neoracism in 2020.
"But neo-liberalism is far left in the "cultural" wars, no?"
No.
Neoliberals are engaged in "culture wars", but they're not left and certainly not "far left" no matter what the talking heads in media tell you.
The reason you likely think they are is that the ultra-rich have been trying to pit the right against the left and the left against the right since at least as far back as WWII since keeping us busy with one another in argument prevents us from coming together against them. ... But the neo-liberals aren't against the ultra-rich! They, after all, include people like the Clintons, and note that Bill stacked his administration with people from Goldman Sachs and other wall street firms.
It's also the case that some actual Left people have abandoned their left principals to join neo-liberals in an unhealthy infection of anti-Trump fever. However, they are NOT left - they've left the left.
Unlike neo-liberals, the actual left recognizes many of the complaints of "the right" as legitimate, such as the fact that our elections are now and always have been insecure and we can be sure cheating has been going on as long as there's been a USA. During my half-century of observation, the Democrats mostly cheat in primaries to keep the left out, and the Republicans mostly cheat in general elections as it's often the only way they can win. But whatever the case on that, we on the left want to fix that; instead of railing at you about the idiocy of "election stolen from Trump," like the neo-liberals do, we want to encourage you to focus your anger on working with us to secure our electoral system instead of storming the Capitol building - all that does (did) is give an excuse for removing yet more of our freedoms.
We have far more in common than not. It's long past time to stop blaming your fellow victim and join together in common cause against the tyranny of the ultra-rich - I say we tax them out of existence instead of resorting to violence, but that requires political power and we can't do it if we don't join together, exactly what the ultra-rich are propagandizing us to not do. ...If someone is not rich or supporters of the rich, they're probably not your enemy.
But I am perfectly willing to work with anyone who can help defeat the current regime and fix the sorry state of the election system. As usual though, the devil is likely to be in the details.
I'm sure the ultra-rich will handsomely pay people to disrupt our efforts to overthrow their rule over us.
Art, you may want to give up the notion that leftists who don't agree with you on a single issue aren't the left.
I don't have that perception; I look at the original meanings. It's a VERY reasonable summary that if someone supports the status-quo today, they're NOT "left."
Also, the right generally hates me too, so there's that.
I don't hate you, rather I see you as a potential ally. ... I know you're not rich, you're posting here!
I subscribe to the old ACLU rules: Only things that can morally be banned are child pornography, and actual state secrets (i.e., names of our spies in hostile nations). And even there, state secrets should have a finite time limit after which they are opened up.
Didn't Comrade Jack just say kiddie porn doesn't violate Twitter rules? And in other news, the French senate just voted to lower the age of consent to 13. There's more than one way to skin a cat!
They are often the literal but also the figurative children of the old left. They are the establishment now. The old ACLU would have argued powerfully against censorship.
I hear this term quite frequently. Neo-Liberalism. What is the lay person's definition of this term, if you don't mind my asking? I find myself using it occasionally and then when I read it in text, I believe I'm misusing this word.
re: basic definition of neoliberalism
the wikipedia entry* is pretty good, but maybe too long and not focused enough on what is most important.
it is a hyper "free market" ideology driven by techno-economic disruption: network effects, interactivity, globalization (dissolution of the nation-state system's boundaries) and no moral regulation of the boundary between public and private spheres of life. public assets are "colonized" and exploited for an increase in private wealth and power.
the result is that culture is increasingly incapable of legitimating itself by generating authentic meaning and purpose. (see Habermas' theory of communicative action, which is summarized by the phrase "systems colonize lifeworld")
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
also see this popular college level book for millennials:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34498932-neoliberalism
which is a update of Rushkoff's famous "Life, Inc."
https://boingboing.net/2009/05/04/life-inc.html
Hi Susan,
First, some background on liberalism, upon which the neo-version is theoretically based, can be found here, AFTER the rather long-winded proposal and defense of a two dimensional grid system to evaluate politics - while some of that is well worth reading on this topic, for the meat, scroll past all that:
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/redefining_the_political_spectru.htm
I recommend picking it up about three paragraphs above the bolded line that reads "The position of the original "Right" against original Liberalism:"
I have some criticisms of that document, such as not covering neo-liberalism, but then it was written before it was painfully clear there had been a schism that created the distinction. And, there are some other bones to pick with it, but the historical view is pretty solid.
It is my personal observation over many decades of living with lots of "liberal" family, that "liberals" certainly mean well, and talk about equality and in general "say the right things," they are normally not willing to do anything about the injustices they see in the world, and that's what has separated the traditional liberal from Progressives - Progressives want _progress_ and that requires _action._
With that background, my "lay-person's definition" of neo-liberalism is the support of the status-quo and ultra-rich, while giving lip-service to what sound like worthy causes and claims of equality but which in reality are hollow platitudes; for the most part they don't actually take actions that genuinely serve these interests while, ironically, the actions they do take often go contrary to their stated goals.
For example, the push to de-platform and "cancel" people is profoundly anti-liberal, not to mention stupid because the same tactics will be used against them, should they ever threaten the real power in the USA - the ultra-rich.
...Hope that helps.
also:
organizational cultures that are neoliberal are good examples of how sociopathic personalities gain power through lies, deception and manipulation
good, fairly short negative assessment of neoliberalism:
https://medium.com/@inprogress/neoliberalism-good-or-bad-e07973fdad2
The last element that has to be added to this in practice is that the regulations that remain cement the position of established players in both politics and the markets. That is, when lip service is paid to social responsibility it is used to constrain upstarts from doing what the currently established players did (and often are still doing) to attain their position.