This conversation takes the viewpoints of trans ideologues way too respectfully and seriously in terms of the strength and purpose of their arguments. Well-meaning gays, lesbians like myself, and liberals in general, long ago sacrificed our integrity when we chose, in the name of tolerance, to uncritically concur with the pseudo scientific assertions of trans ideology. Sex is real. People cannot change their sex. Sex is not assigned at birth (it is determined at the moment of conception). Gender identity divorced from sex is a social construct. These are true statements in the same way that the earth travels around the sun is a true statement. The literal embrace of gender ideology is the left's equivalent of QAnon. Fear of being called bigots has made us stupid. I assert that it is not necessary to throw 500 million years of human evolution in the river in order to support every person's right to do what they want with their body. I support the right of trans people to transition and to live their lives unencumbered by discrimination in all spheres of life. But I will never nod my head like a fool when they assert that men competing in women's sports is perfectly fair and just and to not allow it is transphobic discrimination. Why do we participate in this pernicious game of the Emperor's New Gender when we know better?
Pitting women's rights against the rights of trans people is benighted and evil. One group's rights must not be privileged over the rights of another. There can and should be a third option so that both groups can flourish in safety and respect. Yet, the current administration seems to feel that it's perfectly fine to throw women under the bus. Why are liberals, including feminists, willing to pretend that men self-identifying as women are not a danger to women in prison? We've already seen that they are. Repeating over and over again the mantra that “transwomen are women” does not make transwomen women. When all the stars of the girls' track team are boys, as is now happening in Connecticut, this is not a giant step for womankind. The erasure of girls’ and women's bodies and rights would cease if people who know better yelled FOUL at the top of their lungs.
The kind of ideological bullying that Glenn and Katie are subject to now is nothing new. It's just another day in the life of trans ideologues, who for years have harassed anyone who points out that the world is not flat and that trans identity is not the default position for the entire human race. Abigail Shrier, author of "Irreversible Damage" (which the ACLU tried to ban), testified before the Senate yesterday in opposition to the current version of the Equality Act. She said that she's interviewed more transgender people than just about anyone in the country, and she knows that the majority of them do not agree with the pseudo scientific nonsense promulgated by trans ideologues. But they keep their mouths shut because they're as intimidated as everyone else by the bullying of trans activists.
There's strength in numbers and in the truth. There can and should be room for us all, but it's going to take many voices speaking out from a place of objective reality. I suggest we do it soon.
"The erasure of girls’ and women's bodies and rights would cease if people who know better yelled FOUL at the top of their lungs." Many Americans do, frequently. They were dismissed by Clinton as "deplorables" and not worthy of a voice.
I don't want to get into a debate over trans politics here, but I do want to push back against the idea that these people are in any way representative of the community - to be honest, I'm reluctant to even call them "trans activists" at all. I mean, I guess they are in some sense, but what I'm really seeing here is depressingly familiar: a toxic online clique of bloggers, writers and Twitter addicts, centered around the nebulous (and faintly ironic, given that they are mostly horrible, abusive people) concept of "social justice" in a very particular American sense.
This clique has been around for a very long time; they have their roots in aughties blogs like Shakesville, Feministe, and Doyle's own Tiger Beatdown. Mostly but not exclusively white women, their defining traits include a belief in social identity as the primary factor in human experience, a clear preference for ideology and narrative over truth and nuance, strict political litmus tests, a penchant for rancorous flame wars with anyone who fails those litmus tests, and (relatedly) a certain interpersonal cruelty often masquerading as disaffected snark. These latter aspects have gotten more pronounced over time as the community migrated to Twitter (which is to say, one endless comment thread).
This shitty clique used to be primarily concerned with feminism and women's issues; It is only recently that they have become consumed with trans politics (and LGBT issues more broadly, though the T is at the center). In addition, a few in their number (Doyle among them) have managed to get a foothold (maybe a toehold) in mainstream publications; the combination of social media and greater institutional legitimacy means that we see their weird pathologies spreading more readily.
I don't equate transgenderism with bullying as a whole, and I said as much. But I disagree that there are no trans activists, only a fringe group of white women making offensive noises online. I know who you're talking about, and I agree that they're toxic. They exist within the lesbian community itself. We also see them at BLM demonstrations and on college campuses, screaming in the faces of black police officers and calling them racists.
But a malevolent stream of trans activism is very widespread, and it has significant real-world consequences. As an old lesbian, I have first-hand experience with the self-entitlement and misogyny of a segment of the trans community that identifies as lesbian, going back to the mid 1970s. In the present day, lesbians are kicked out of Lesbian Pride marches and called transphobic because we're not interested in having sex with trans women (with penises intact). The Los Angeles unified school district has made gender ideology mandatory for all students starting in kindergarten. That's right, parents cannot opt-out their five year-olds. This curriculum is the work of educators, not girls on Tumblr. Martina Navratilova, one of the world's most respected and exemplary female athletes, lost her position on an LGBTQ advisory board for pointing out that it’s unfair for men to compete in women's sports. Beth Stelzer, a power lifter who tirelessly testifies in state legislatures in defense of women's sports, is subject to constant harassment and death threats. Her husband is a target as well. Last summer, 300 female athletes who signed a petition in support of women’s sports for women were doxxed by an organization called OutSports. A couple of years ago, Canadian actor and drag performer Sky Gilbert was kicked out of the successful theater company he founded in 1979, Buddies in Bad Times, because gender activists on the board decided that the drag tradition was transphobic. Professors are special targets. University of Alberta anthropology professor Kathleen Lowrey was fired from her job as chair of the undergraduate program for pointing out that men cannot get pregnant. Trans man and ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio went on a fortunately unsuccessful campaign to ban Abigail Shrier's book. During last year’s Reddit purge, the gender critical, lesbian, and radical feminist subreddits were removed for “transphobic hate speech," and the subreddit for detransitioners was forced to censor its allowable discussion topics and language in order to avoid being banned. Detransitioners are Exhibit A for harassment. These disenfranchised and victimized individuals commonly report the same story: they decide to detransition, or simply question their transition, and consequently lose their "trans families” through harassment and shunning. I could go on and on...
I agree with you that social media is a huge problem. And my original post places a lot of responsibility on liberals who silently go along with illogical and pseudo scientific claims. I'm also certain that, as I've already stated, the majority of trans people are not actively involved in these forms of bullying. But with all due respect to your observations, I can't agree with your desire to minimize the powerful reach and influence of trans activism.
I’m glad you found my comment useful. There’s another extremely serious thread that I intentionally omitted: the wholesale transitioning of adolescents via the affirmative model. If you haven’t read Abigail Shrier’s book, “Irreversible Damage,” please do. She focuses on girls because they are far more likely these days to transition (about 70% of teens seeking transition services now are girls) but boys as well as girls are affected.
Maybe this has always been true of people, and just more apparent today, because there are a wide range of media outlets where people have the opportunity to express opinions. People seem very comfortable with seeing things as your a good guy, or a bad guy, your a friend or an enemy. We like to categorize things, and yet the world is very complex and nuanced and the truth is only derived when we don't simplify things which seems to be going on in regard to this topic, and many others. Greenwald is right, ask questions, have a more nuanced perspective when evaluating things.
I don't disagree. It's too easy to demonize people, entire groups of people, which is very unfair. I'm an old woman and have myself been demonized for on the basis of my "identities" (female, lesbian, Jew), so I know how it feels. I believe in nuance and I think I've expressed that here. The trans issue is one I'm very familiar with, and for many years. My comments are borne of experience, a lot of observation, and investigation. I don't generalize. As Dan Crenshaw said the other day in his interview with transman Scott Newgent (which I recommend by the way), "When I see a trans person, I see...a person."
I'll repeat what I said in my post: I support people's right to live in the body of their choice without harassment. As a lesbian and a woman I expect the same.
My brother was gay, and died of AIDS, and we were close friends. After he died I attended a bereavement group at Saint Vincent's hospital. The nun that led the group asked me if I ever spoke to my brother about his homosexuality. I hesitated, and thought about it, and said no, and she asked why. I had to think about it for a while, and then said, well he I never spoke to him about my heterosexuality. My mother had a great deal of acceptance, not my father, but the rest of us just followed my mother's lead. Interesting that within my father's family my brother was subjected to a lot of prejudice, meanness, and now the daughters and sons of these aunts and uncles, well four of them, have gay children and they are totally accepting and are very open about it. Things change. Thank God.
Fran, I'm terribly sorry for your loss. To lose a sibling under any circumstances is very painful, and a death from AIDS particularly so. I can understand why you would feel so protective of your brother's memory.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but my issue is not with trans people. It's with the pseudo scientific aspects of the ideology, and the aggressive bullying of trans activists toward those who doesn't accept the ideology's claims. There have always been trans people, just as there have always been gay people, and our human project should be to figure out how to get along with one another so that nobody's toes are stepped on. We're not there yet. But I agree with you: thankfully, things can and do change for the better. That's certainly my hope.
I also direct readers to the results of a just released nation-wide poll commissioned by WoLF (Women’s Liberation Front) regarding voters’ attitudes towards transgender rights as a standalone issue and vis-a-vis women and children:
Click through to the National Poll Results section and note that the overwhelming majority of voters support transgender rights in every sphere as long as they do not infringe upon the sex-based rights of women.
You shouldn't be surprised at the question about your passing biology courses.
The word-choice of the far-right is highly offensive with their bullshit about being "pro-life" - capitalized, of course, as you did - as it's a blatant effort to try and paint people they disagree with as anti-life.
The reality is that so far as I have ever seen, 100% of those who take a "Pro-Life" position are, firstly, ignorant about biology, secondly, very anti-life in the sense that they're against the success of existing organisms, and, thirdly, they are close to universally hypocritical about their concerns for what they claim to be concerned about, and fourthly behave as sanctimonious assholes, literally trying to "lord over" those they disagree with, trying to make out those who disagree with them as unethical (esp. when they themselves are being unethical); instead of having genuine dialogues, they try and shout down opinions they don't like, belittle and put-down others - others who have until that point never done a damned thing to them. AND, far too often, such people are ready to murder people over their beliefs.
That said, I'll just presume you meant well, just inadvertently stumbled your way into making a remark easily seen as offensive (in both senses of that word).
Note that so far as is known, there's only ever been ONE life on this planet, and we are all a part of that life. There is no new life created at conception, only a carry-over of existing life from existing parents - denial of that is denial of reality. And, following from that, we should be concerned about organisms that are already independent beings rather than zygotes and fetuses; to put a priority on a potential organism over an existing one is, in my view and using the right-wing vocabulary, Anti-Life.
REAL pro-life would be concerned about the lives of would-be parents, the lives of the existing biosphere in light of obviously massive over-population that will crash some day, and related issues that are directly opposed to the idea that every zygote or every fetus - much less every sperm as some idiots seem to think - should continue into adulthood. (It's also both hypocritical and highly bigoted to not apply the same principals to non-human organisms, by the way.) And, finally, it's anti-life to abandon said organism at birth, as if they are only important while in the womb, and the moment a baby is born are to be abandoned with a poor, single mother with insufficient means of raising a child that these same lunatics want to compel to be born.
...Presuming you're not one of these right-wing extremists, if you don't want to get "both barrels", best maybe to be more careful when weighing in on that subject as your opening line was stereotypical of the opening line of the right-wing verbal assault on the topic.
Glenn, thanks for being prolific in these times when we all really need your voice. You've published some great things lately, and a lot of them. I worry about you a little. Please don't wear yourself out. We're still going to need you down the road, so, please pace yourself!
I appreciate that! I'm not meaning to publish so often but I keep getting pulled into things that I think require coverage. But you're absolutely right: it's important to pace oneself to avoid getting burned out. Appreciate the reminder!
Great piece Glenn. Like you, I'm a person with lefty, liberal values but critical of the current woke approach. I'm always on the lookout for more writers with a similar framework. As a perspective, it feels vanishingly rare. I don't know if I'll ever get over the heartbreak of watching the ACLU shift from an absolutist free speech advocate to another identity politics interest group. Thanks for being one of the smart, reasonable, voices. I wish I knew how this moment in history ends.
Let's hope. I'm more reluctant to predict the future than I used to be. I remember years ago wondering if there was an off-ramp for the tough, post-modern cynicism that defined my Gen X college years. Where could culture go when everything was a joke? Little did I know the pendulum would swing so hard into absolute utter earnestness, the culture destruction of sarcasm, and the embrace of fragility and trauma as cultural capital. I think what we're seeing is the back and forth nonsense that happens when the heart of a global empire is on the way out. I wonder if the last days of Rome felt like this?
I would say yes. I often think about this analogy. In the last days of Rome, the same things that lead to their downfall is what's happening to America or in the process of occurring. Weakened army from a false sense of security, inflation, feudalism, overtaxation, a massive trade deficit, among other things. The rise of christianity was also probably a result of a degradation of Roman culture/political malfeasance. But essentially, like America, they lead to their own downfall, and what happened to them will happen to America. And what happened to the world after the fall of Rome will happen to the world after the fall of "liberalism" - and what we're seeing now with CRT, and the way they wield identity cards like an ancient bloodline, and the way they see everything in terms of power structures, and their takeover of governments, and essentially changing the way we speak blah blah blah we all know what it is - this is a taste of things to come. CRT is to America liberal secularism like Christianity was to Greco-Roman culture. Christians were persecuted once too, until a Roman ruler decided it was politically prudent to enforce Christianity as the national religion. So too CRT has its roots in people who were historically persecuted. I'm literally making these connections as I type, but I do think it could be an apt analogy. Christianity had a certain rigid world view structure and it changed the world. How detrimental was Christianity to human rights? Depends on who you asked. At its core its ideology is somewhat liberal - seeing G-d as one of lovingkindness, do good, forgive (I don't know much about it TBH) etc; however, people and nations used Christianity to oppress, murder, destroy, while at the same time binding nations and people. It was a mixed bag. CRT is not rooted in an ideology of lovingkindness. It's rooted in marxism, which has historically been terrible. So I don't see this ending well. We're regressing. Human nature hasn't really changed that much in 2000 years. It's okay, buckle up, enjoy the ride, the pendulum eventually swings back. In a millennium or two.
Only one who knows and understands the complete of human history can know the truth. If we were able to grasp our history and hold it in our tiny human brains, a lot of the problems we face now would go away, because we would see our disastrous patterns for what they are.
Like Matthew Arnold wrote in his famous Dover Beach poem: "And we are here as on a darkling plain/Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight/Where ignorant armies clash by night."
While it has been logical and widely accepted to acknowledge that America's empire will fall under the weight of its nihilism and debt, the condition of the world, post-USA, is unlikely to resemble Western civilization after the fall of Rome. What will be will be and it is possible we will enter a world of tribalism, violence, and a repeat of the Dark Ages, it is equally possible that China was claim its place as the new ruler of the world.
LOL. Has China done anything to suggest that they want to be "ruler of the world"? Oh, big woop, they want to control their own historical territorial lands and waters, same as the USA, UK, India, and many others. But when's the last time China invaded a foreign country or toppled a democratically elected leader? China and Russia aren't interested in "ruling the world" and if you *could* ascribe a motive to them it would be establishing a multi-polar world order with mutually beneficial (and in some cases detrimental - to western private finance) results. The USA is trying like crazy to gin up the will to provoke or attack China, and so far they're not flinching. China, like any smart non-empire, will play the long game and when it's over, they won't be establishing any colonies.
I wish you would travel to borders of India, Nepal or places in Africa or Northern Italy to see what China is up to.
Orange Hitler was a bit of a change but now that he's gone, I won't be surprised Biden starts feeding the military industrial complex again as they did during Obomber years. Nobody's denying the regime change wars US has started thanks to Bush, Obomber (and even other presidents before Bush). But denying what China is doing is straight up propaganda.
I don't think you're wrong, but I suspect you may have misinterpreted the intent behind the comment. I won't speak for Charles, but I will say in my experience, Asia, more generally than China, feels ascendent when you visit, in a way the US does not. They build new cities while our bridges collapse. Their children report optimism on surveys while our young people anticipate living more poorly than their parents. I'd argue that ground zero for cultural creation has moved over the years, from Vienna to Paris to London to New York to L.A. to Tokyo and is now in Seoul. So no, I wouldn't argue that China as a nation-state wants to rule the world in the way of a classical empire. But I would say that SE and East Asia in particular feels like the future when the west feels like the past.
Yes, it will resemble America in superficial ways, but it will be a more totalitarian state, less true justice, less meritocracy. It wouldn't have to be barbaric - but it might be!
Intriguing and interesting parallel - I would only challenge that CRT is in any way rooted in Marxism, at least not in the Marxism that old school lefty like me would recognize. CRT is just an handy ideological fad to disunite (for the lack of better term) the 99%. I think it is already rapidly losing its usefulness, at which point the owner class will come up with something else. But what will remain is the association in people's mind between Marxism and CRT. Which is exactly the point. The only true thing the owner class cares about is to prevent any political or social movement that will effectively advocate or accomplish transfer of wealth from few to the many.
I am not a Marxist scholar, but if you replace exploited working class with anything else, I don't think that is Marxism any more. It would like replacing Jesus with Mohammed and still call it Christianity.
Your reference to fragility and trauma as cultural capital is insightful. It wasn't so long about that overcoming trauma and being resilient was considered a virtue. Now those are impediments to cultural sainthood. Most definitely not "John Wayne".
... I think that's a bit of a stretch, in particular because of what "woke" is (or isn't).
That is, there's nothing at all wrong with being "woke," it's only a state of awareness of so much that the previously dominant narrative desperately wants to ignore; the problem isn't the awareness, it's the inappropriate activism from the Neo-Liberals which actually constitutes attacks on their fellow citizens. THAT is where the problem lies, not with the awareness itself.
For example, by definition, I've been "woke" since decades before the term existed, because I had profoundly close relationships with many different marginalized groups, from racial minorities to "sexual deviants", and so forth. But, my "activism" has only been defensive, not offensive; when someone else was attacking one of these disadvantaged friends of mine, THEN I'd respond in their defense and otherwise not bring it up. And therein - defense vs offense - lies the real issue.
I've long been of the opinion that sexuality is a spectrum, and that apart from political questions, LGBTQ labels are somewhat arbitrary. By most standards I'd be a straight male, and I've refrained from taking any particularly strong stances in this discourse.
But there's no denying that the culture war is one of the primary political facts today, and it is troubling to see that critical discussions of these cultural trends are almost exclusively had on the right, and it's never in good faith. If the left can't have conversations on this without fear of being labeled a TERF or bigot, then we may as well kiss dreams of a mass political project goodbye. Culture is complicated and if there is no room for critique, then cultural liberalism has morphed in to something extremely illiberal.
There's a large swath of the population - maybe not a silent majority, but a majority that is ignored by the 'very online' - who do not accept or even understand all of the core tenants of cultural liberalism. Hell even most on the cultural left don't agree with each other but lack the space to even find where those disagreements lie. Disagreement is not synonymous with bigotry, but too many people can't see the difference. As Glenn said, "If we're the enemies, the who are the allies?"
Unfortunately, longform discussions don't translate very well to twitter, so the mob will have the upper hand so long as the dominant cultural medium is the digital validation machine known as Twitter.
In the old Soviet Union, the state enforced speech restrictions through its dominating bureaucracy. In the US, restrictions are imposed by the market. You are correct, there is very little space left to have broad, open discussions on culture. The penalty for having a “wrong” view is imposed through the workplace market. Much of the “left,” broadly defined, of the professional class is tied to large institutions that are showing themselves willing to remove anyone who causes discomfort or possibly tarnishes the institutional image. The fear of losing one’s career and the negative effect on family is causing people to keep their heads down. As I wrote below, this silence does not equal agreement. It is simply self-preservation. You are also correct that the people most likely to speak up are on the right. They are used to being called names. This also deters people from speaking up out of fear of being considered a right-winger. This broad left has boxed itself in with identity politics and its demonization of anyone on the right.
The so-called "culture war" is a manufactured method of maintaining control of all of us by the ultra-rich - just yet another mechanism to divide us and keep us conquered. Whoever doesn't see that doesn't understand modern politics.
I really appreciate this discussion challenging the new orthodoxies, from people with the standing to do it. (Based on, as Katie said, the irony that they are in a great position to use identity as legitimacy, even as they really dislike "identity politics."). Glenn and Katie can say what others want to say but have no standing to do so.
And yet it so needs to be challenged these days. Glenn and Katie shared the ugly examples of smearing and "purity tests" that began on twitter and other social platforms. Some of the more subtle manifestations of the new "Oppression Status Hierarchy" can in the long run be significantly damaging too, as it shuts down entire topics and the right to have them. In workplaces and in meetings of community organizations, for example, the Oppression Status Hierarchy has now infected the way meetings are conducted (and bogged down). A facilitation technique called "progressive stack," for example, requires that facilitators and participants list people in the order of the number of their "intersectionalities." This list then determines who CAN speak and / or in what ORDER. A prime example of what Glenn has described as the special deference owed to some identities over others.
Listing who can speak and / or in what order based on their "oppression identity" is not how a group thought process or an analysis of a problem, considerations of possible solutions, or planning of a strategy can proceed. Instead, this listing in order of presumed oppression forces the presumably oppressive categories of people to hold onto their comment or their logical challenge to topic or sub-topic #1 until everyone above them on the stack has spoken. By that time, the discussion has moved to sub-topic #7, and the person who had a comment 30 minutes ago then inserts their now out-of-date perspective, causing the group to have to loop back to the discussion that began 30 minutes ago. Not only is this inefficient, it doesn't affirm a group in their ability to build on each others ideas in a spontaneous way. Instead, if a white guy happens to have an important question to ask, he has to wait until everyone else has spoken.
As a professional facilitator, this is appalling and unnatural. It removes spontaneous thought. It doesn't reward a natural drawing out of others. It also causes people, as Glenn and Katie discussed so well, to come up with new identities in order to boost their name closer to the top of the list. It subtly stigmatizes some people as inherently "dominators" and elevates others who, based on their "oppression" are presumed to have a wiser, "trauma informed" or "lived experience" perspective. Also presumed is that those in "the dominant identities" will, by their very expression of ideas, stifle the "voice" of bisexual, trans, native, bipoc, black, lesbian, gay, disabled participants, and that this is the only way to ensure that this won't happen.
But it is absolutely NOT the only way. A skilled facilitator has many sophisticated techniques for assuring not only a logical progression of ideas or analysis toward solutions or decisions, they also know how to equalize participation. They know how to encourage participants to build on each other's ideas, to active-listen the preceding comment before they add their own, to deliberately try to draw out the assumptions and reasoning and conclusions of others.
My strong opinion: there is no reason to assume that such an artificial tool as "progressive stack," based on a continuum of oppressed to oppressor identities, will improve outcomes or relationships. I have observed it reduce meetings to wheel-spinning and silence,, a prime example of the dysfunctionalities of "identity" dynamics that Glenn and Katie have described.
Your comment here makes me think that the folks behind "progressive stacks" aren't really interested in equality or justice. They're just trying to build their own version of the power structures they see oppressing them and theirs. It's not about dismantling unjust hierarchy, but making sure the hierarchy in place suits them.
In other words, it's about power (with a side order of revenge). What do you think?
I do agree. With one nuance: I think that many of the ideologically doctrinaire among us are quite convinced that they (and they alone) ARE about "equality and justice." i don't think they see the power play they are manipulating, and which Glenn and Katie described so well as "identity appropriation." I think their belief in their own righteousness bolsters their tendency to shut people down, demand censorship, and so on (I witnessed a horrible example of this at Portland State University). My conclusion is that most folks who try to limit what can be discussed and the vocabulary for discussing it are doctrinaire conformists who have little or no actual political economic analysis. They can "identify" as "Marxists" or "Anarchists" without actually having any grasp of the actual historic or theoretical source of either, and without having ever read anything on either. (I say this as a person with a degree in Political Science). ;)
I never argue or try to influence when this sets in, unless I'm facilitating. I just crab-step away from the "woke."
Strikes me as the certainty of youth. I was certainly guilty of that, decades ago. These days, all I can do is encourage folks to scratch under the surface of words they claim - you always find a deeper, more satisfying understanding when you do.
So right about the tendencies of youth! I observe too that many of the "woke" crowd are still in their teens or twenties. But I notice in meetings I attend (now only by Zoom, ugh!) that the older folks who likely are not themselves actively PROMOTING or enforcing the conformity and the walking-on-eggshells type of speech are nonetheless falling in line with it. They have given in to letting it dominate the dynamic. My sense is that some of this capitulation stems from the way that many people (of all ages) in this country internalize the dreaded nouns of "racism," "sexism," "able-ism" and so on, as personal failings that, if discovered / accidentally revealed will taint them as people who are irreparably horrible and harmful--by nature and down to every last molecule of their being. They know they can easily be labeled (including self-labeled), shunned, and driven from these rooms and from their causes. It's fear.
But some of it just seems so stupid to me. All of those '-isms are powerful in their institutional form. The interpersonal form of the -'isms (i.e., "micro-aggressions") are NOTHING in potency compared to the MACRO-aggressions of income inequality, disparate sentences, over-policing of BIPOC communities, predatory interest rates for low income people, and on and on. Yet we have people like Robin DiAngelo dominating the discourse on anti-racism, with her entire book (and lucrative practice) reflects basically NO comprehension of institutional racism. She finds the cure instead in massive collective apologizing and symbolic gestures to the populations that have been wronged. She sells her workshops to large corporations in the form of employee training, while these same corporations lobby against the minimum wage and Medicare for all.
I'm all for apologizing for wrongs, but when the whole strategy begins and ends with the interpersonal, we're lost.
I think the truth about Robin DiAngelo is pretty obvious; she knows there is a market for faux anti-racism so she’s going to exploit it to make profits.
Al Sharpton has been doing it for over 40 years and he flies private planes now and has a show on msnpc. Race baiting sells. Ambulance chasers like Ben Crump make tons of money.
Yes! Exactly that one! Thanks for dredging that up. I had already read Kristian Williams piece before the event and was applauding it as being one of the first explorations of the dangers of "cancel culture," (though likely that term was not used? I'll check). The title alone ("the politics of denunciation") was a perfect expression of what I had been trying to summarize for myself. Way back then, few were articulating a critique. The crowd that prevented the panel from going ahead was crazy and ugly and just embarrassing. And it is not the only one like this that I have witnessed, and not even the worst. I'm no fan of Bret Weinstein for quite a few reasons, but the horror of what happened to him at Evergreen is another grotesque and frightening example. What is it like at Evergreen now?
I'm not at Evergreen, I teach at a different college in town, and it's hard to say where things are because of a year of Covid. We did see some of the loudest voices of the woke/cancel culture/identitarian sorts this summer here in Oly, but less formally. I will say that they, and the college admins who aquiese them, have doubled down on their position. No self-reflection, no attempt at reasonableness, no understanding of the split between the traditional left and this mess. Like you, I'm no fan of Weinstein, but I'm also a long time union advocate. I was shocked to see the Evergreen admin call of campus security and allow the guy's life to put in danger. You also may not know that his children also had to leave Olympia public schools because of routine threats against THEM.
I advised a very active lefty student club for 13 years in Olympia that tore itself apart in 2014 over these issues. It was tragic, because it was the most effective, largest, and well known student group in town (it was through it that I met Glenn when we brought him as a speaker many years ago, pre Snowden). As a result I saw this coming a bit earlier than most. I've been considering writing a book about all of it, and I've read SO MUCH on the topic over the last 7 years (maybe I should just publish a massive bibliography?). But as everyone is aware, I don't necessarily want the mob's gaze turned on me. I'm a life-long lefty. I have pretty impressive set of activist credentials (I was very involved in organizing the WTO protests for example) and 2 decades of teaching and scholarship to back it up. And I don't think any of that would protect me for a minute if the online woke mob decided I was the next best target. Didn't Robespierre get beheaded by the very revolution he inspired?
This is also my perspective: I am a life-long, extremely left, until-recently tenured academic who taught Foucault and Adorno for a living and when the mob came for me, in 2016, none of it mattered a bit. Every time I think about writing about the ensuing ordeal of a secret tribunal that ensued, I pull up short. 1) I left my career, moved to a new city, eliminated any residual online presence I still had, and even still I'm afraid of them coming at me again. I lack the cultural capital of GG or MT and, even I did, every person who reads these comments section has read or heard my story a hundred times before: the details differ, but it's all part of the same ideological purge.
you're right, i didn't know they had threatened his children!
I can certainly see how--given your position on a campus--you could be targeted too. I'm not "out there" like that, and even so, I do carefully choose where I do and don't make comments about "wokeness" and my opinions on how it has morphed into something frightening over the past 6 or 7 years. I've twice spoken up to The Woke in public meetings where they were ostracizing people who SIMPLY ASKED A LEGIT QUESTION (!!), not because I thought I could change anything, but only to speak up in support of those they had literally banned from the meeting. i risked being banned on the spot myself, to which I would have replied, "Thanks!!"
I do engage my critique of the excesses of wokeness on social media to some degree, but have disengaged from some "anti-racist" forums because of the phenomenon of white women attempting to metabolize their own guilt by attacking other white women for their racism--in some of the most ridiculous and even laughable ways possible. When, unwisely, I spoke up about what I was observing in the moderators online "instructions," I was mobbed by all them, and told to rewrite all my comments and posts in such a way that I could purge them of the words, "I," "me," and "my," or be blocked from the group. To most of us, it should be obvious that when relating a personal experience or insight, those are helpful words to access. If not, you bleed out all life out of the writing, and instead write in academic-research-mode. And others within that forum who had commented on my post simply complied, and rewrote THEIR comments on my post to omit those words! One woman who had been a decades-long amazing activist and organizer feel into abject apologies to the moderators, as she had at first "liked" and added a supportive comment to what I had written. I was stunned at how easily a strong person can be beaten down this way. The circular "logic" of it is that you can't critique their approaches to anti-racism in the first place because by definition that is irreparably racist. And if you critique the illogic of shutting down discourse while at the same time claiming the space to be a "learning environment," you now are worthy of expulsion.
I'm sure you're familiar with "centering" as the overall label given to the effort to get those of us who are white to reflect on how we sometimes reflexively turn the topic back to ourselves and our feelings. And it's a valid critique. But the ham-fisted advocates of anti-centering have zero idea of how to share their insights or advice about how to avoid doing it.
I look forward to seeing your bibliography! Maybe we can come up with a pseudonym for you. :)
It's all about power. These people who talk about disrupting power structures (whatever that means) are just obsessed with power. Everything they say abt other people is a projection of their own sins. They SUCK.. Lol. But they are hell bent on pushing everyone out of their space. So let them. They will eventually push themselves out. There's a deep anxiety here in America. No one at the top of the cultural sphere or anyone interested in being something is really happy. They have to keep creating new identities and definitions of morality to keep themselves busy. Okay. Let them. They are ALL clowns, running on the hamster wheel of the cage they've created for themselves. I'm content to laugh at them from afar. It's not a great situation, I know. But I pity them, they're moronic.
Thanks, Glenn for not pulling punches. I find it fascinating, brave, brilliant, even brash. But those are the qualities you WANT in a serious, investigating journalist. You are an example to many (particularly journalists) who have lost their way. Who have grown up in the world of Twitter, and assume that finding a few tweets (from absolute nobodies) as the sum total necessary for writing a decent article.
You've also tapped into a zeitgeist. There's a huge swath of people (not unlike many Foxnews viewers) who are happy to listen to a voice of sanity, whether on the right or left, provided it's spoken without the massive baggage of an authoritarian agenda.
Your reasoned and determined defense of free speech makes many of us a lot more open to your arguments in other areas.
So glad to have found your site and become a part of this community!
“Despite having what I regard as rather banal liberal politics (she was an ardent advocate of the moral imperative of voting for Joe Biden)”
Well well well. It’s time for her to lay in the bed she made, isn’t it? While I am certainly about to watch the video because of you Glenn, I do find it amazing that she advocated for voting for Joe Biden, the dude who has exploited identity politics to the max including his claim of the reason for running for president being due to orange man calling white supremacists “fine people” - a blatant lie by the media and leftists. How can she claim to hate identity politics when she claimed moral superiority in voting for it? Hypocritical isn’t it??
One of the foundations of being an overt political minion…
And, it’s pathological hypocrisy, you and I would perhaps say something and do the opposite that’s somewhat innocuous, like “be quiet at night” and then we’re loud ourselves, but, the left tells us to shut up and submit, and then they go around and terrorize and expect to be applauded…
I agree that we all are hypocrites to some extent. But I do think I have some self awareness. For example, I am right leaning on most things but I found it indefensible when Trump didn't pardon Assange, Snowden, Ross etc despite him constantly talking about freedom of speech, deep state attacks against himself, spying on his campaign, political persecution and abuse of judicial system etc. So I am willing to call out Trump for his poor decisions of not pardoning them - the very victims of things Trump talked about for 5 years. But I often find too many of the leftists lack complete self awareness on how they themselves don't pass the purity tests they want others to pass.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Certainly won’t be me.
Humility and shame are buried next to pride and ownership, but you’ll never find any of these concepts in this country because they’ve been brutally hacked by blunt blades, dismembered, burnt to crisps, and scattered among an uncharted forest
Note that that page documents the changes of the use of these terms from origin through the modern political moment in the USA - it's rather long, of course, to accomplish that.
You are not going to like this, but the offense you feel from the trans community now ambushing you after having lived your life basically (although maybe inadvertently) paving the way for their movement, I see as parallel to the offense conservatives feel when they are accused of being oppressors by gays. Imagine the war vet, for example, who fought for American freedom, now being called a racist bigot. Do you see the irony? Much love and respect. Thank you for bravely forging ahead and investigating the important questions in search of truth. Genuinely appreciate your work.
The only war vets who have fought for American freedom are the veterans of the armed struggles of the Central Americans against the United Snakes and its clients. Nobody who fought for the United Snakes was, objectively if not subjectively, fighting for any "freedom" except the freedom to oppress.
I believe the most persecuted members of our society are working class white, straight men. Vilified, discriminated, belittled by the college educated white upper class men and women. Not one of whom has had a fleeting interaction with any of them. As for the political and academic race hustlers I’m willing to bet that they have no black or Hispanic acquaintances aside from their maids, nannies, gardeners and the entire. servant class. Not one of them have ever been to an inner city neighborhood. Not one has ever had a conversation or a beer with any working man or women. They look for self promotion, self enrichment, and opportunism for advancement by keeping the lower class working people in their place by setting one against the other. Devide and conquer. So I’m not interested in the hand wringing, teeth gnashing, giant tears being shed by the upperclass rulers claiming being holier than thou for having suffered longer than the mew arrivals.
It's not just in blue collar; try being a middle aged SWM in tech. The age bias alone closes far too many doors. An assumption of sexism and misogyny. And of course, we fail to brandish our Woke merit badge. I find it ironic that as the only outwardly conservative manager at my company, i get the best reviews from my directs that include women and 30 somethings. Go figure.
It's just remarkable that these nouveau activists would go after Andrew Sullivan. I actually remember reading his article in the New Republic arguing for gay marriage, and changing my mind in favor of it. How many of these "journalists" have won over anyone on any topic?
" I do not question the legitimacy of their self-proclaimed identity, and I support the full panoply of legal rights and societal respect that they are due."
This is one of the reason why these types of people will win. It's an obvious grift. Call out their BS. They use your goodwill and grounded morals to see to it that you're obliterated. Their grift is one about power. While regular people find this kind of action repellent, they don't care. "Bake the cake bigot!" becomes "It's a private company so twitter can do whatever it wants."
Gad Saad has been all over this topic for years. It's poisonous. Call out the grift and call their BS from the start. Lived straight for 35 years with children .. now 'trans' and calling GG out? Please.
Glenn, I believe that I may have proven myself to be your most devoted subscriber today. I am an old, straight, conservative, white guy who took a break from reading the Federalist Papers (I am on No. 65) to watch and listen to the conversation you posted with Katie. You are without question the only person in the world who could convince me to listen to two gay people discuss the trans movement for over an hour.
And, to your point about the politics of inclusion being about “convincing”. vs. “coercing” those who are different from you, I learned more about gender dysphoria in those 90 minutes than I had learned in the prior 55 years. I have always been and will always be against discrimination of any kind against any group, but some issues are quite complicated (such as gender dysphoria) and preventing discrimination against one group can produce it against another.
While I still don’t know what all of the answers are, I am more informed about the issues. What I do know is that shutting down honest and well meaning debate will never advance understanding and reduce bigotry.
We need some investigative reporting on who are the PR firms that are managing the current political dialog and who is paying them. Base on timing, content, and verbiage of many of the public communications on various issues, it is obvious to me that PR firms are driving this and must be making a whole lot of money.
Neil, OldLeft said, "the agenda is more about politics and social control than money," and I'd like to point out to you both that if the politics isn't in the hands of someone genuinely interested in "the man on the street" - We, The People - (a vanishingly rare thing to find in politics today) then the "agenda" is always and only about money & power (which are reasonably interchangeable, though not always).
In the 2016 cycle, of the major two parties (plus one "independent") there were only three candidates that really fit that, Bernie, Tulsi, and Yang. I'm sure some might claim Trump himself, though I think his interest in The People is / was, at best, misguided, and possibly - since I'm not inside his head - non-existent.
You are right that there seem to be very few politicians who care about normal folks and that power and money are their focus. I don't think Bernie cares much for the average guy; I think he's as selfish as they come. I think Tulsi does, which is why she has been run out of the Dem party. I never paid much attention to Yang, so don't know. I think Trump was very concerned with the average person, as evidenced by the impact of his policies - lower and middle class wages rising fast, increasing minority employment, decreasing regulation, decreasing taxes on them while increasing on the rich, ... unfortunately, we was fought "tooth and nail" by all the Dems and many of the Repubs.
I would like to see a Haley/Gabbard R ticket in 2024.
...Because, unlike Tulsi, Niki has a (deservedly in my view) negative appeal "on the other side."
In my view, Niki is a dimwit. If that's mistaken, well, she hasn't done much that I've seen to show any particular intellectual capacity above that of "dim lightbulb."
It is PR firms. If you read Sharyl Atkisson's "The Smear" you will be shocked to learn about the industry that has developed to do just what I state above.
"Public relations" is a propaganda term. It's really synonymous with propaganda, just without the negative connotation. My first graduate course in propaganda, one assignment was to interview the head of a major public relations firm.
When you build an engine of oppression, there is always the risk that it will be used against you. Whether or not Glenn is guilty of so doing, whether or not he benefitted from others so doing, it has nonetheless been done. As above, it is now being used against those whom it was (allegedly) built to protect. This is a lot like Orwell's observation that you don't establish a tyranny to protect the revolution, you have a revolution to establish the tyranny. In other words, I don't believe for a femtosecond it was built to protect anyone, even as I acknowledge a lot of well-meaning but overly naïve people did believe it during the building phase, and therefore supported its creation. We are now seeing that it is not an innocence defender* engine.
(Parenthetically (is it proper to put actual parentheses around paragraphs that begin with that word? Bygones.), Glenn has always been susceptible to appeals to emotion, especially compassion. I don't hold that as a fault, nor do I level it as a criticism; it's just part of life, learning that there are people who will cynically and ruthlessly exploit our compassion, and learning how to detect that, and counter it, while not losing our compassion. It's not easy - being an adult rarely is. Glenn is emphatically not the same guy that Obama suckered with his hope and change schtick. He's seen too much from the pointy end of THAT engine of oppression to ever be that guy again. And yet he retains his compassion, even as he's learned to be more skeptical with it.)
Until we all get a lot more aggressively skeptical of people claiming they need absolute power in order to save us from ourselves, we're going to all suffer from this principle in action.
*I visited Sheffield, England on a work trip. While there I bought two bottles of fruit smoothies at the local shop. Months later my wife found the receipt in my jacket pocket: 2 innocent defenders at 2 pounds each. It was a funny phone call.
This conversation takes the viewpoints of trans ideologues way too respectfully and seriously in terms of the strength and purpose of their arguments. Well-meaning gays, lesbians like myself, and liberals in general, long ago sacrificed our integrity when we chose, in the name of tolerance, to uncritically concur with the pseudo scientific assertions of trans ideology. Sex is real. People cannot change their sex. Sex is not assigned at birth (it is determined at the moment of conception). Gender identity divorced from sex is a social construct. These are true statements in the same way that the earth travels around the sun is a true statement. The literal embrace of gender ideology is the left's equivalent of QAnon. Fear of being called bigots has made us stupid. I assert that it is not necessary to throw 500 million years of human evolution in the river in order to support every person's right to do what they want with their body. I support the right of trans people to transition and to live their lives unencumbered by discrimination in all spheres of life. But I will never nod my head like a fool when they assert that men competing in women's sports is perfectly fair and just and to not allow it is transphobic discrimination. Why do we participate in this pernicious game of the Emperor's New Gender when we know better?
Pitting women's rights against the rights of trans people is benighted and evil. One group's rights must not be privileged over the rights of another. There can and should be a third option so that both groups can flourish in safety and respect. Yet, the current administration seems to feel that it's perfectly fine to throw women under the bus. Why are liberals, including feminists, willing to pretend that men self-identifying as women are not a danger to women in prison? We've already seen that they are. Repeating over and over again the mantra that “transwomen are women” does not make transwomen women. When all the stars of the girls' track team are boys, as is now happening in Connecticut, this is not a giant step for womankind. The erasure of girls’ and women's bodies and rights would cease if people who know better yelled FOUL at the top of their lungs.
The kind of ideological bullying that Glenn and Katie are subject to now is nothing new. It's just another day in the life of trans ideologues, who for years have harassed anyone who points out that the world is not flat and that trans identity is not the default position for the entire human race. Abigail Shrier, author of "Irreversible Damage" (which the ACLU tried to ban), testified before the Senate yesterday in opposition to the current version of the Equality Act. She said that she's interviewed more transgender people than just about anyone in the country, and she knows that the majority of them do not agree with the pseudo scientific nonsense promulgated by trans ideologues. But they keep their mouths shut because they're as intimidated as everyone else by the bullying of trans activists.
There's strength in numbers and in the truth. There can and should be room for us all, but it's going to take many voices speaking out from a place of objective reality. I suggest we do it soon.
"The erasure of girls’ and women's bodies and rights would cease if people who know better yelled FOUL at the top of their lungs." Many Americans do, frequently. They were dismissed by Clinton as "deplorables" and not worthy of a voice.
Yes, I recall that. But that doesn't mean we have to stay silent now.
I don't want to get into a debate over trans politics here, but I do want to push back against the idea that these people are in any way representative of the community - to be honest, I'm reluctant to even call them "trans activists" at all. I mean, I guess they are in some sense, but what I'm really seeing here is depressingly familiar: a toxic online clique of bloggers, writers and Twitter addicts, centered around the nebulous (and faintly ironic, given that they are mostly horrible, abusive people) concept of "social justice" in a very particular American sense.
This clique has been around for a very long time; they have their roots in aughties blogs like Shakesville, Feministe, and Doyle's own Tiger Beatdown. Mostly but not exclusively white women, their defining traits include a belief in social identity as the primary factor in human experience, a clear preference for ideology and narrative over truth and nuance, strict political litmus tests, a penchant for rancorous flame wars with anyone who fails those litmus tests, and (relatedly) a certain interpersonal cruelty often masquerading as disaffected snark. These latter aspects have gotten more pronounced over time as the community migrated to Twitter (which is to say, one endless comment thread).
This shitty clique used to be primarily concerned with feminism and women's issues; It is only recently that they have become consumed with trans politics (and LGBT issues more broadly, though the T is at the center). In addition, a few in their number (Doyle among them) have managed to get a foothold (maybe a toehold) in mainstream publications; the combination of social media and greater institutional legitimacy means that we see their weird pathologies spreading more readily.
I don't equate transgenderism with bullying as a whole, and I said as much. But I disagree that there are no trans activists, only a fringe group of white women making offensive noises online. I know who you're talking about, and I agree that they're toxic. They exist within the lesbian community itself. We also see them at BLM demonstrations and on college campuses, screaming in the faces of black police officers and calling them racists.
But a malevolent stream of trans activism is very widespread, and it has significant real-world consequences. As an old lesbian, I have first-hand experience with the self-entitlement and misogyny of a segment of the trans community that identifies as lesbian, going back to the mid 1970s. In the present day, lesbians are kicked out of Lesbian Pride marches and called transphobic because we're not interested in having sex with trans women (with penises intact). The Los Angeles unified school district has made gender ideology mandatory for all students starting in kindergarten. That's right, parents cannot opt-out their five year-olds. This curriculum is the work of educators, not girls on Tumblr. Martina Navratilova, one of the world's most respected and exemplary female athletes, lost her position on an LGBTQ advisory board for pointing out that it’s unfair for men to compete in women's sports. Beth Stelzer, a power lifter who tirelessly testifies in state legislatures in defense of women's sports, is subject to constant harassment and death threats. Her husband is a target as well. Last summer, 300 female athletes who signed a petition in support of women’s sports for women were doxxed by an organization called OutSports. A couple of years ago, Canadian actor and drag performer Sky Gilbert was kicked out of the successful theater company he founded in 1979, Buddies in Bad Times, because gender activists on the board decided that the drag tradition was transphobic. Professors are special targets. University of Alberta anthropology professor Kathleen Lowrey was fired from her job as chair of the undergraduate program for pointing out that men cannot get pregnant. Trans man and ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio went on a fortunately unsuccessful campaign to ban Abigail Shrier's book. During last year’s Reddit purge, the gender critical, lesbian, and radical feminist subreddits were removed for “transphobic hate speech," and the subreddit for detransitioners was forced to censor its allowable discussion topics and language in order to avoid being banned. Detransitioners are Exhibit A for harassment. These disenfranchised and victimized individuals commonly report the same story: they decide to detransition, or simply question their transition, and consequently lose their "trans families” through harassment and shunning. I could go on and on...
I agree with you that social media is a huge problem. And my original post places a lot of responsibility on liberals who silently go along with illogical and pseudo scientific claims. I'm also certain that, as I've already stated, the majority of trans people are not actively involved in these forms of bullying. But with all due respect to your observations, I can't agree with your desire to minimize the powerful reach and influence of trans activism.
Wow...what an articulate and forceful summary of isssues. Thank you!
I’m glad you found my comment useful. There’s another extremely serious thread that I intentionally omitted: the wholesale transitioning of adolescents via the affirmative model. If you haven’t read Abigail Shrier’s book, “Irreversible Damage,” please do. She focuses on girls because they are far more likely these days to transition (about 70% of teens seeking transition services now are girls) but boys as well as girls are affected.
Maybe this has always been true of people, and just more apparent today, because there are a wide range of media outlets where people have the opportunity to express opinions. People seem very comfortable with seeing things as your a good guy, or a bad guy, your a friend or an enemy. We like to categorize things, and yet the world is very complex and nuanced and the truth is only derived when we don't simplify things which seems to be going on in regard to this topic, and many others. Greenwald is right, ask questions, have a more nuanced perspective when evaluating things.
I don't disagree. It's too easy to demonize people, entire groups of people, which is very unfair. I'm an old woman and have myself been demonized for on the basis of my "identities" (female, lesbian, Jew), so I know how it feels. I believe in nuance and I think I've expressed that here. The trans issue is one I'm very familiar with, and for many years. My comments are borne of experience, a lot of observation, and investigation. I don't generalize. As Dan Crenshaw said the other day in his interview with transman Scott Newgent (which I recommend by the way), "When I see a trans person, I see...a person."
I'll repeat what I said in my post: I support people's right to live in the body of their choice without harassment. As a lesbian and a woman I expect the same.
My brother was gay, and died of AIDS, and we were close friends. After he died I attended a bereavement group at Saint Vincent's hospital. The nun that led the group asked me if I ever spoke to my brother about his homosexuality. I hesitated, and thought about it, and said no, and she asked why. I had to think about it for a while, and then said, well he I never spoke to him about my heterosexuality. My mother had a great deal of acceptance, not my father, but the rest of us just followed my mother's lead. Interesting that within my father's family my brother was subjected to a lot of prejudice, meanness, and now the daughters and sons of these aunts and uncles, well four of them, have gay children and they are totally accepting and are very open about it. Things change. Thank God.
Fran, I'm terribly sorry for your loss. To lose a sibling under any circumstances is very painful, and a death from AIDS particularly so. I can understand why you would feel so protective of your brother's memory.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but my issue is not with trans people. It's with the pseudo scientific aspects of the ideology, and the aggressive bullying of trans activists toward those who doesn't accept the ideology's claims. There have always been trans people, just as there have always been gay people, and our human project should be to figure out how to get along with one another so that nobody's toes are stepped on. We're not there yet. But I agree with you: thankfully, things can and do change for the better. That's certainly my hope.
I totally agree.
Things have gotten better. Sorry not soon enough for your brother. So glad he knew your love.
Thank you Jennifer, I really appreciate that.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
I also direct readers to the results of a just released nation-wide poll commissioned by WoLF (Women’s Liberation Front) regarding voters’ attitudes towards transgender rights as a standalone issue and vis-a-vis women and children:
https://www.womensliberationfront.org/news/national-poll-support-for-womens-spaces
Click through to the National Poll Results section and note that the overwhelming majority of voters support transgender rights in every sphere as long as they do not infringe upon the sex-based rights of women.
"Sex is not assigned at birth (it is determined at the moment of conception)."
Just curious. Are you Pro-Life?
Not a chance.
So, to what is sex assigned at conception?
A zygot, of course. What, flunk biology?
No. I did not flunk biology.
You shouldn't be surprised at the question about your passing biology courses.
The word-choice of the far-right is highly offensive with their bullshit about being "pro-life" - capitalized, of course, as you did - as it's a blatant effort to try and paint people they disagree with as anti-life.
The reality is that so far as I have ever seen, 100% of those who take a "Pro-Life" position are, firstly, ignorant about biology, secondly, very anti-life in the sense that they're against the success of existing organisms, and, thirdly, they are close to universally hypocritical about their concerns for what they claim to be concerned about, and fourthly behave as sanctimonious assholes, literally trying to "lord over" those they disagree with, trying to make out those who disagree with them as unethical (esp. when they themselves are being unethical); instead of having genuine dialogues, they try and shout down opinions they don't like, belittle and put-down others - others who have until that point never done a damned thing to them. AND, far too often, such people are ready to murder people over their beliefs.
That said, I'll just presume you meant well, just inadvertently stumbled your way into making a remark easily seen as offensive (in both senses of that word).
Note that so far as is known, there's only ever been ONE life on this planet, and we are all a part of that life. There is no new life created at conception, only a carry-over of existing life from existing parents - denial of that is denial of reality. And, following from that, we should be concerned about organisms that are already independent beings rather than zygotes and fetuses; to put a priority on a potential organism over an existing one is, in my view and using the right-wing vocabulary, Anti-Life.
REAL pro-life would be concerned about the lives of would-be parents, the lives of the existing biosphere in light of obviously massive over-population that will crash some day, and related issues that are directly opposed to the idea that every zygote or every fetus - much less every sperm as some idiots seem to think - should continue into adulthood. (It's also both hypocritical and highly bigoted to not apply the same principals to non-human organisms, by the way.) And, finally, it's anti-life to abandon said organism at birth, as if they are only important while in the womb, and the moment a baby is born are to be abandoned with a poor, single mother with insufficient means of raising a child that these same lunatics want to compel to be born.
...Presuming you're not one of these right-wing extremists, if you don't want to get "both barrels", best maybe to be more careful when weighing in on that subject as your opening line was stereotypical of the opening line of the right-wing verbal assault on the topic.
Thank you!
Agreed. That might be your best post, ever, but I'm thinking you'll probably top even this; thanks for writing.
Well said, Beeswax.
Glenn, thanks for being prolific in these times when we all really need your voice. You've published some great things lately, and a lot of them. I worry about you a little. Please don't wear yourself out. We're still going to need you down the road, so, please pace yourself!
I appreciate that! I'm not meaning to publish so often but I keep getting pulled into things that I think require coverage. But you're absolutely right: it's important to pace oneself to avoid getting burned out. Appreciate the reminder!
It is a target rich environment lately.
Get pulled into things, it's okay, you'll survive. You haven't come across as one bit tired all this week, and you are full of energy on this video.
Great piece Glenn. Like you, I'm a person with lefty, liberal values but critical of the current woke approach. I'm always on the lookout for more writers with a similar framework. As a perspective, it feels vanishingly rare. I don't know if I'll ever get over the heartbreak of watching the ACLU shift from an absolutist free speech advocate to another identity politics interest group. Thanks for being one of the smart, reasonable, voices. I wish I knew how this moment in history ends.
Hopefully without a hard swing back to the John Ashcroft era. Can we dream of open, honest, inclusive discourse?
Let's hope. I'm more reluctant to predict the future than I used to be. I remember years ago wondering if there was an off-ramp for the tough, post-modern cynicism that defined my Gen X college years. Where could culture go when everything was a joke? Little did I know the pendulum would swing so hard into absolute utter earnestness, the culture destruction of sarcasm, and the embrace of fragility and trauma as cultural capital. I think what we're seeing is the back and forth nonsense that happens when the heart of a global empire is on the way out. I wonder if the last days of Rome felt like this?
I would say yes. I often think about this analogy. In the last days of Rome, the same things that lead to their downfall is what's happening to America or in the process of occurring. Weakened army from a false sense of security, inflation, feudalism, overtaxation, a massive trade deficit, among other things. The rise of christianity was also probably a result of a degradation of Roman culture/political malfeasance. But essentially, like America, they lead to their own downfall, and what happened to them will happen to America. And what happened to the world after the fall of Rome will happen to the world after the fall of "liberalism" - and what we're seeing now with CRT, and the way they wield identity cards like an ancient bloodline, and the way they see everything in terms of power structures, and their takeover of governments, and essentially changing the way we speak blah blah blah we all know what it is - this is a taste of things to come. CRT is to America liberal secularism like Christianity was to Greco-Roman culture. Christians were persecuted once too, until a Roman ruler decided it was politically prudent to enforce Christianity as the national religion. So too CRT has its roots in people who were historically persecuted. I'm literally making these connections as I type, but I do think it could be an apt analogy. Christianity had a certain rigid world view structure and it changed the world. How detrimental was Christianity to human rights? Depends on who you asked. At its core its ideology is somewhat liberal - seeing G-d as one of lovingkindness, do good, forgive (I don't know much about it TBH) etc; however, people and nations used Christianity to oppress, murder, destroy, while at the same time binding nations and people. It was a mixed bag. CRT is not rooted in an ideology of lovingkindness. It's rooted in marxism, which has historically been terrible. So I don't see this ending well. We're regressing. Human nature hasn't really changed that much in 2000 years. It's okay, buckle up, enjoy the ride, the pendulum eventually swings back. In a millennium or two.
Only one who knows and understands the complete of human history can know the truth. If we were able to grasp our history and hold it in our tiny human brains, a lot of the problems we face now would go away, because we would see our disastrous patterns for what they are.
Like Matthew Arnold wrote in his famous Dover Beach poem: "And we are here as on a darkling plain/Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight/Where ignorant armies clash by night."
While it has been logical and widely accepted to acknowledge that America's empire will fall under the weight of its nihilism and debt, the condition of the world, post-USA, is unlikely to resemble Western civilization after the fall of Rome. What will be will be and it is possible we will enter a world of tribalism, violence, and a repeat of the Dark Ages, it is equally possible that China was claim its place as the new ruler of the world.
LOL. Has China done anything to suggest that they want to be "ruler of the world"? Oh, big woop, they want to control their own historical territorial lands and waters, same as the USA, UK, India, and many others. But when's the last time China invaded a foreign country or toppled a democratically elected leader? China and Russia aren't interested in "ruling the world" and if you *could* ascribe a motive to them it would be establishing a multi-polar world order with mutually beneficial (and in some cases detrimental - to western private finance) results. The USA is trying like crazy to gin up the will to provoke or attack China, and so far they're not flinching. China, like any smart non-empire, will play the long game and when it's over, they won't be establishing any colonies.
Sounds like Chinese propaganda but okay.
I wish you would travel to borders of India, Nepal or places in Africa or Northern Italy to see what China is up to.
Orange Hitler was a bit of a change but now that he's gone, I won't be surprised Biden starts feeding the military industrial complex again as they did during Obomber years. Nobody's denying the regime change wars US has started thanks to Bush, Obomber (and even other presidents before Bush). But denying what China is doing is straight up propaganda.
Annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of...
I don't think you're wrong, but I suspect you may have misinterpreted the intent behind the comment. I won't speak for Charles, but I will say in my experience, Asia, more generally than China, feels ascendent when you visit, in a way the US does not. They build new cities while our bridges collapse. Their children report optimism on surveys while our young people anticipate living more poorly than their parents. I'd argue that ground zero for cultural creation has moved over the years, from Vienna to Paris to London to New York to L.A. to Tokyo and is now in Seoul. So no, I wouldn't argue that China as a nation-state wants to rule the world in the way of a classical empire. But I would say that SE and East Asia in particular feels like the future when the west feels like the past.
I spent some time in Taiwan a couple of years ago, and I'd say that seems much more likely.
Yes, it will resemble America in superficial ways, but it will be a more totalitarian state, less true justice, less meritocracy. It wouldn't have to be barbaric - but it might be!
Intriguing and interesting parallel - I would only challenge that CRT is in any way rooted in Marxism, at least not in the Marxism that old school lefty like me would recognize. CRT is just an handy ideological fad to disunite (for the lack of better term) the 99%. I think it is already rapidly losing its usefulness, at which point the owner class will come up with something else. But what will remain is the association in people's mind between Marxism and CRT. Which is exactly the point. The only true thing the owner class cares about is to prevent any political or social movement that will effectively advocate or accomplish transfer of wealth from few to the many.
Nah, its marxist, it's just replaced working class with 'oppressed racial minorities". The actual working class can go f themselves to these people
I am not a Marxist scholar, but if you replace exploited working class with anything else, I don't think that is Marxism any more. It would like replacing Jesus with Mohammed and still call it Christianity.
That remark illustrates a propagandized perception of Marxism.
Your reference to fragility and trauma as cultural capital is insightful. It wasn't so long about that overcoming trauma and being resilient was considered a virtue. Now those are impediments to cultural sainthood. Most definitely not "John Wayne".
I would hope so, but it will be tough. With so much damage inflicted on the "non-woke", the desire for retribution will be great.
... I think that's a bit of a stretch, in particular because of what "woke" is (or isn't).
That is, there's nothing at all wrong with being "woke," it's only a state of awareness of so much that the previously dominant narrative desperately wants to ignore; the problem isn't the awareness, it's the inappropriate activism from the Neo-Liberals which actually constitutes attacks on their fellow citizens. THAT is where the problem lies, not with the awareness itself.
For example, by definition, I've been "woke" since decades before the term existed, because I had profoundly close relationships with many different marginalized groups, from racial minorities to "sexual deviants", and so forth. But, my "activism" has only been defensive, not offensive; when someone else was attacking one of these disadvantaged friends of mine, THEN I'd respond in their defense and otherwise not bring it up. And therein - defense vs offense - lies the real issue.
I've long been of the opinion that sexuality is a spectrum, and that apart from political questions, LGBTQ labels are somewhat arbitrary. By most standards I'd be a straight male, and I've refrained from taking any particularly strong stances in this discourse.
But there's no denying that the culture war is one of the primary political facts today, and it is troubling to see that critical discussions of these cultural trends are almost exclusively had on the right, and it's never in good faith. If the left can't have conversations on this without fear of being labeled a TERF or bigot, then we may as well kiss dreams of a mass political project goodbye. Culture is complicated and if there is no room for critique, then cultural liberalism has morphed in to something extremely illiberal.
There's a large swath of the population - maybe not a silent majority, but a majority that is ignored by the 'very online' - who do not accept or even understand all of the core tenants of cultural liberalism. Hell even most on the cultural left don't agree with each other but lack the space to even find where those disagreements lie. Disagreement is not synonymous with bigotry, but too many people can't see the difference. As Glenn said, "If we're the enemies, the who are the allies?"
Unfortunately, longform discussions don't translate very well to twitter, so the mob will have the upper hand so long as the dominant cultural medium is the digital validation machine known as Twitter.
In the old Soviet Union, the state enforced speech restrictions through its dominating bureaucracy. In the US, restrictions are imposed by the market. You are correct, there is very little space left to have broad, open discussions on culture. The penalty for having a “wrong” view is imposed through the workplace market. Much of the “left,” broadly defined, of the professional class is tied to large institutions that are showing themselves willing to remove anyone who causes discomfort or possibly tarnishes the institutional image. The fear of losing one’s career and the negative effect on family is causing people to keep their heads down. As I wrote below, this silence does not equal agreement. It is simply self-preservation. You are also correct that the people most likely to speak up are on the right. They are used to being called names. This also deters people from speaking up out of fear of being considered a right-winger. This broad left has boxed itself in with identity politics and its demonization of anyone on the right.
The so-called "culture war" is a manufactured method of maintaining control of all of us by the ultra-rich - just yet another mechanism to divide us and keep us conquered. Whoever doesn't see that doesn't understand modern politics.
Who has decided that Twitter was "dominant" ? Just ignore these idiots!
I really appreciate this discussion challenging the new orthodoxies, from people with the standing to do it. (Based on, as Katie said, the irony that they are in a great position to use identity as legitimacy, even as they really dislike "identity politics."). Glenn and Katie can say what others want to say but have no standing to do so.
And yet it so needs to be challenged these days. Glenn and Katie shared the ugly examples of smearing and "purity tests" that began on twitter and other social platforms. Some of the more subtle manifestations of the new "Oppression Status Hierarchy" can in the long run be significantly damaging too, as it shuts down entire topics and the right to have them. In workplaces and in meetings of community organizations, for example, the Oppression Status Hierarchy has now infected the way meetings are conducted (and bogged down). A facilitation technique called "progressive stack," for example, requires that facilitators and participants list people in the order of the number of their "intersectionalities." This list then determines who CAN speak and / or in what ORDER. A prime example of what Glenn has described as the special deference owed to some identities over others.
Listing who can speak and / or in what order based on their "oppression identity" is not how a group thought process or an analysis of a problem, considerations of possible solutions, or planning of a strategy can proceed. Instead, this listing in order of presumed oppression forces the presumably oppressive categories of people to hold onto their comment or their logical challenge to topic or sub-topic #1 until everyone above them on the stack has spoken. By that time, the discussion has moved to sub-topic #7, and the person who had a comment 30 minutes ago then inserts their now out-of-date perspective, causing the group to have to loop back to the discussion that began 30 minutes ago. Not only is this inefficient, it doesn't affirm a group in their ability to build on each others ideas in a spontaneous way. Instead, if a white guy happens to have an important question to ask, he has to wait until everyone else has spoken.
As a professional facilitator, this is appalling and unnatural. It removes spontaneous thought. It doesn't reward a natural drawing out of others. It also causes people, as Glenn and Katie discussed so well, to come up with new identities in order to boost their name closer to the top of the list. It subtly stigmatizes some people as inherently "dominators" and elevates others who, based on their "oppression" are presumed to have a wiser, "trauma informed" or "lived experience" perspective. Also presumed is that those in "the dominant identities" will, by their very expression of ideas, stifle the "voice" of bisexual, trans, native, bipoc, black, lesbian, gay, disabled participants, and that this is the only way to ensure that this won't happen.
But it is absolutely NOT the only way. A skilled facilitator has many sophisticated techniques for assuring not only a logical progression of ideas or analysis toward solutions or decisions, they also know how to equalize participation. They know how to encourage participants to build on each other's ideas, to active-listen the preceding comment before they add their own, to deliberately try to draw out the assumptions and reasoning and conclusions of others.
My strong opinion: there is no reason to assume that such an artificial tool as "progressive stack," based on a continuum of oppressed to oppressor identities, will improve outcomes or relationships. I have observed it reduce meetings to wheel-spinning and silence,, a prime example of the dysfunctionalities of "identity" dynamics that Glenn and Katie have described.
Your comment here makes me think that the folks behind "progressive stacks" aren't really interested in equality or justice. They're just trying to build their own version of the power structures they see oppressing them and theirs. It's not about dismantling unjust hierarchy, but making sure the hierarchy in place suits them.
In other words, it's about power (with a side order of revenge). What do you think?
I do agree. With one nuance: I think that many of the ideologically doctrinaire among us are quite convinced that they (and they alone) ARE about "equality and justice." i don't think they see the power play they are manipulating, and which Glenn and Katie described so well as "identity appropriation." I think their belief in their own righteousness bolsters their tendency to shut people down, demand censorship, and so on (I witnessed a horrible example of this at Portland State University). My conclusion is that most folks who try to limit what can be discussed and the vocabulary for discussing it are doctrinaire conformists who have little or no actual political economic analysis. They can "identify" as "Marxists" or "Anarchists" without actually having any grasp of the actual historic or theoretical source of either, and without having ever read anything on either. (I say this as a person with a degree in Political Science). ;)
I never argue or try to influence when this sets in, unless I'm facilitating. I just crab-step away from the "woke."
Thanks for the reply! Your nuance is well noted.
Strikes me as the certainty of youth. I was certainly guilty of that, decades ago. These days, all I can do is encourage folks to scratch under the surface of words they claim - you always find a deeper, more satisfying understanding when you do.
Also: "crab-step?" lol :)
So right about the tendencies of youth! I observe too that many of the "woke" crowd are still in their teens or twenties. But I notice in meetings I attend (now only by Zoom, ugh!) that the older folks who likely are not themselves actively PROMOTING or enforcing the conformity and the walking-on-eggshells type of speech are nonetheless falling in line with it. They have given in to letting it dominate the dynamic. My sense is that some of this capitulation stems from the way that many people (of all ages) in this country internalize the dreaded nouns of "racism," "sexism," "able-ism" and so on, as personal failings that, if discovered / accidentally revealed will taint them as people who are irreparably horrible and harmful--by nature and down to every last molecule of their being. They know they can easily be labeled (including self-labeled), shunned, and driven from these rooms and from their causes. It's fear.
But some of it just seems so stupid to me. All of those '-isms are powerful in their institutional form. The interpersonal form of the -'isms (i.e., "micro-aggressions") are NOTHING in potency compared to the MACRO-aggressions of income inequality, disparate sentences, over-policing of BIPOC communities, predatory interest rates for low income people, and on and on. Yet we have people like Robin DiAngelo dominating the discourse on anti-racism, with her entire book (and lucrative practice) reflects basically NO comprehension of institutional racism. She finds the cure instead in massive collective apologizing and symbolic gestures to the populations that have been wronged. She sells her workshops to large corporations in the form of employee training, while these same corporations lobby against the minimum wage and Medicare for all.
I'm all for apologizing for wrongs, but when the whole strategy begins and ends with the interpersonal, we're lost.
I think the truth about Robin DiAngelo is pretty obvious; she knows there is a market for faux anti-racism so she’s going to exploit it to make profits.
Al Sharpton has been doing it for over 40 years and he flies private planes now and has a show on msnpc. Race baiting sells. Ambulance chasers like Ben Crump make tons of money.
Was this the PSU event you referenced? BTW, undergrad in political science and grad in political sociology here, professor for the last two decades in Olympia. I feel ya. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/05/13/speaker-shouted-down-portland-state-university
Yes! Exactly that one! Thanks for dredging that up. I had already read Kristian Williams piece before the event and was applauding it as being one of the first explorations of the dangers of "cancel culture," (though likely that term was not used? I'll check). The title alone ("the politics of denunciation") was a perfect expression of what I had been trying to summarize for myself. Way back then, few were articulating a critique. The crowd that prevented the panel from going ahead was crazy and ugly and just embarrassing. And it is not the only one like this that I have witnessed, and not even the worst. I'm no fan of Bret Weinstein for quite a few reasons, but the horror of what happened to him at Evergreen is another grotesque and frightening example. What is it like at Evergreen now?
I'm not at Evergreen, I teach at a different college in town, and it's hard to say where things are because of a year of Covid. We did see some of the loudest voices of the woke/cancel culture/identitarian sorts this summer here in Oly, but less formally. I will say that they, and the college admins who aquiese them, have doubled down on their position. No self-reflection, no attempt at reasonableness, no understanding of the split between the traditional left and this mess. Like you, I'm no fan of Weinstein, but I'm also a long time union advocate. I was shocked to see the Evergreen admin call of campus security and allow the guy's life to put in danger. You also may not know that his children also had to leave Olympia public schools because of routine threats against THEM.
I advised a very active lefty student club for 13 years in Olympia that tore itself apart in 2014 over these issues. It was tragic, because it was the most effective, largest, and well known student group in town (it was through it that I met Glenn when we brought him as a speaker many years ago, pre Snowden). As a result I saw this coming a bit earlier than most. I've been considering writing a book about all of it, and I've read SO MUCH on the topic over the last 7 years (maybe I should just publish a massive bibliography?). But as everyone is aware, I don't necessarily want the mob's gaze turned on me. I'm a life-long lefty. I have pretty impressive set of activist credentials (I was very involved in organizing the WTO protests for example) and 2 decades of teaching and scholarship to back it up. And I don't think any of that would protect me for a minute if the online woke mob decided I was the next best target. Didn't Robespierre get beheaded by the very revolution he inspired?
This is also my perspective: I am a life-long, extremely left, until-recently tenured academic who taught Foucault and Adorno for a living and when the mob came for me, in 2016, none of it mattered a bit. Every time I think about writing about the ensuing ordeal of a secret tribunal that ensued, I pull up short. 1) I left my career, moved to a new city, eliminated any residual online presence I still had, and even still I'm afraid of them coming at me again. I lack the cultural capital of GG or MT and, even I did, every person who reads these comments section has read or heard my story a hundred times before: the details differ, but it's all part of the same ideological purge.
you're right, i didn't know they had threatened his children!
I can certainly see how--given your position on a campus--you could be targeted too. I'm not "out there" like that, and even so, I do carefully choose where I do and don't make comments about "wokeness" and my opinions on how it has morphed into something frightening over the past 6 or 7 years. I've twice spoken up to The Woke in public meetings where they were ostracizing people who SIMPLY ASKED A LEGIT QUESTION (!!), not because I thought I could change anything, but only to speak up in support of those they had literally banned from the meeting. i risked being banned on the spot myself, to which I would have replied, "Thanks!!"
I do engage my critique of the excesses of wokeness on social media to some degree, but have disengaged from some "anti-racist" forums because of the phenomenon of white women attempting to metabolize their own guilt by attacking other white women for their racism--in some of the most ridiculous and even laughable ways possible. When, unwisely, I spoke up about what I was observing in the moderators online "instructions," I was mobbed by all them, and told to rewrite all my comments and posts in such a way that I could purge them of the words, "I," "me," and "my," or be blocked from the group. To most of us, it should be obvious that when relating a personal experience or insight, those are helpful words to access. If not, you bleed out all life out of the writing, and instead write in academic-research-mode. And others within that forum who had commented on my post simply complied, and rewrote THEIR comments on my post to omit those words! One woman who had been a decades-long amazing activist and organizer feel into abject apologies to the moderators, as she had at first "liked" and added a supportive comment to what I had written. I was stunned at how easily a strong person can be beaten down this way. The circular "logic" of it is that you can't critique their approaches to anti-racism in the first place because by definition that is irreparably racist. And if you critique the illogic of shutting down discourse while at the same time claiming the space to be a "learning environment," you now are worthy of expulsion.
I'm sure you're familiar with "centering" as the overall label given to the effort to get those of us who are white to reflect on how we sometimes reflexively turn the topic back to ourselves and our feelings. And it's a valid critique. But the ham-fisted advocates of anti-centering have zero idea of how to share their insights or advice about how to avoid doing it.
I look forward to seeing your bibliography! Maybe we can come up with a pseudonym for you. :)
Write under a pen name!
Your analysis is spot on Trudy. You should start a newsletter of your own. 'Confessions of a Community Facilitator'...
LOL! Thanks!
In other other words, They Aren't Progressives, they merely want to smear the good name of Progressives while further dividing us.
I come from a lefty-activist-facilitation background as well, and this is super insightful and helpful. Thanks.
It's all about power. These people who talk about disrupting power structures (whatever that means) are just obsessed with power. Everything they say abt other people is a projection of their own sins. They SUCK.. Lol. But they are hell bent on pushing everyone out of their space. So let them. They will eventually push themselves out. There's a deep anxiety here in America. No one at the top of the cultural sphere or anyone interested in being something is really happy. They have to keep creating new identities and definitions of morality to keep themselves busy. Okay. Let them. They are ALL clowns, running on the hamster wheel of the cage they've created for themselves. I'm content to laugh at them from afar. It's not a great situation, I know. But I pity them, they're moronic.
Thanks, Glenn for not pulling punches. I find it fascinating, brave, brilliant, even brash. But those are the qualities you WANT in a serious, investigating journalist. You are an example to many (particularly journalists) who have lost their way. Who have grown up in the world of Twitter, and assume that finding a few tweets (from absolute nobodies) as the sum total necessary for writing a decent article.
You've also tapped into a zeitgeist. There's a huge swath of people (not unlike many Foxnews viewers) who are happy to listen to a voice of sanity, whether on the right or left, provided it's spoken without the massive baggage of an authoritarian agenda.
Your reasoned and determined defense of free speech makes many of us a lot more open to your arguments in other areas.
So glad to have found your site and become a part of this community!
“Despite having what I regard as rather banal liberal politics (she was an ardent advocate of the moral imperative of voting for Joe Biden)”
Well well well. It’s time for her to lay in the bed she made, isn’t it? While I am certainly about to watch the video because of you Glenn, I do find it amazing that she advocated for voting for Joe Biden, the dude who has exploited identity politics to the max including his claim of the reason for running for president being due to orange man calling white supremacists “fine people” - a blatant lie by the media and leftists. How can she claim to hate identity politics when she claimed moral superiority in voting for it? Hypocritical isn’t it??
Ah, once again the unjustified slurs and slander against the left: "a blatant lie by the media and leftists." You know better: http://thetroypress.com/articles/art/20210314/art.20210314.html
Yes, we do know better, and you know nothing, you dishonest disingenuous disdainful douche bag…
One of the foundations of being an overt political minion…
And, it’s pathological hypocrisy, you and I would perhaps say something and do the opposite that’s somewhat innocuous, like “be quiet at night” and then we’re loud ourselves, but, the left tells us to shut up and submit, and then they go around and terrorize and expect to be applauded…
I agree that we all are hypocrites to some extent. But I do think I have some self awareness. For example, I am right leaning on most things but I found it indefensible when Trump didn't pardon Assange, Snowden, Ross etc despite him constantly talking about freedom of speech, deep state attacks against himself, spying on his campaign, political persecution and abuse of judicial system etc. So I am willing to call out Trump for his poor decisions of not pardoning them - the very victims of things Trump talked about for 5 years. But I often find too many of the leftists lack complete self awareness on how they themselves don't pass the purity tests they want others to pass.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Certainly won’t be me.
People who tell you they never lie, are lying…
Humility and shame are buried next to pride and ownership, but you’ll never find any of these concepts in this country because they’ve been brutally hacked by blunt blades, dismembered, burnt to crisps, and scattered among an uncharted forest
Here, you mis-identify the perps:
"the left tells us to shut up and submit, and then they go around and terrorize and expect to be applauded"
Nope, those are Neo-Liberals. There are sections on this page outlining how they're neither Left Nor Right (nor "center" either): http://thetroypress.com/articles/art/20210314/art.20210314.html
Note that that page documents the changes of the use of these terms from origin through the modern political moment in the USA - it's rather long, of course, to accomplish that.
Oh FART, take your disingenuous stench elsewhere...
You are not going to like this, but the offense you feel from the trans community now ambushing you after having lived your life basically (although maybe inadvertently) paving the way for their movement, I see as parallel to the offense conservatives feel when they are accused of being oppressors by gays. Imagine the war vet, for example, who fought for American freedom, now being called a racist bigot. Do you see the irony? Much love and respect. Thank you for bravely forging ahead and investigating the important questions in search of truth. Genuinely appreciate your work.
The only war vets who have fought for American freedom are the veterans of the armed struggles of the Central Americans against the United Snakes and its clients. Nobody who fought for the United Snakes was, objectively if not subjectively, fighting for any "freedom" except the freedom to oppress.
I believe the most persecuted members of our society are working class white, straight men. Vilified, discriminated, belittled by the college educated white upper class men and women. Not one of whom has had a fleeting interaction with any of them. As for the political and academic race hustlers I’m willing to bet that they have no black or Hispanic acquaintances aside from their maids, nannies, gardeners and the entire. servant class. Not one of them have ever been to an inner city neighborhood. Not one has ever had a conversation or a beer with any working man or women. They look for self promotion, self enrichment, and opportunism for advancement by keeping the lower class working people in their place by setting one against the other. Devide and conquer. So I’m not interested in the hand wringing, teeth gnashing, giant tears being shed by the upperclass rulers claiming being holier than thou for having suffered longer than the mew arrivals.
It's not just in blue collar; try being a middle aged SWM in tech. The age bias alone closes far too many doors. An assumption of sexism and misogyny. And of course, we fail to brandish our Woke merit badge. I find it ironic that as the only outwardly conservative manager at my company, i get the best reviews from my directs that include women and 30 somethings. Go figure.
It's just remarkable that these nouveau activists would go after Andrew Sullivan. I actually remember reading his article in the New Republic arguing for gay marriage, and changing my mind in favor of it. How many of these "journalists" have won over anyone on any topic?
" I do not question the legitimacy of their self-proclaimed identity, and I support the full panoply of legal rights and societal respect that they are due."
This is one of the reason why these types of people will win. It's an obvious grift. Call out their BS. They use your goodwill and grounded morals to see to it that you're obliterated. Their grift is one about power. While regular people find this kind of action repellent, they don't care. "Bake the cake bigot!" becomes "It's a private company so twitter can do whatever it wants."
Gad Saad has been all over this topic for years. It's poisonous. Call out the grift and call their BS from the start. Lived straight for 35 years with children .. now 'trans' and calling GG out? Please.
Whoops - forgot to put "DOZENS of readers" .... bbwahahaha GG never lets me down!! lol
"Bake the cake bigot!" becomes "It's a private company so twitter can do whatever it wants."
Exactly. Absolute lack of self awareness in the leftists. Or maybe they are fully aware but don’t care.
Glenn, I believe that I may have proven myself to be your most devoted subscriber today. I am an old, straight, conservative, white guy who took a break from reading the Federalist Papers (I am on No. 65) to watch and listen to the conversation you posted with Katie. You are without question the only person in the world who could convince me to listen to two gay people discuss the trans movement for over an hour.
And, to your point about the politics of inclusion being about “convincing”. vs. “coercing” those who are different from you, I learned more about gender dysphoria in those 90 minutes than I had learned in the prior 55 years. I have always been and will always be against discrimination of any kind against any group, but some issues are quite complicated (such as gender dysphoria) and preventing discrimination against one group can produce it against another.
While I still don’t know what all of the answers are, I am more informed about the issues. What I do know is that shutting down honest and well meaning debate will never advance understanding and reduce bigotry.
Thanks for the enlightenment.
We need some investigative reporting on who are the PR firms that are managing the current political dialog and who is paying them. Base on timing, content, and verbiage of many of the public communications on various issues, it is obvious to me that PR firms are driving this and must be making a whole lot of money.
Neil, OldLeft said, "the agenda is more about politics and social control than money," and I'd like to point out to you both that if the politics isn't in the hands of someone genuinely interested in "the man on the street" - We, The People - (a vanishingly rare thing to find in politics today) then the "agenda" is always and only about money & power (which are reasonably interchangeable, though not always).
In the 2016 cycle, of the major two parties (plus one "independent") there were only three candidates that really fit that, Bernie, Tulsi, and Yang. I'm sure some might claim Trump himself, though I think his interest in The People is / was, at best, misguided, and possibly - since I'm not inside his head - non-existent.
You are right that there seem to be very few politicians who care about normal folks and that power and money are their focus. I don't think Bernie cares much for the average guy; I think he's as selfish as they come. I think Tulsi does, which is why she has been run out of the Dem party. I never paid much attention to Yang, so don't know. I think Trump was very concerned with the average person, as evidenced by the impact of his policies - lower and middle class wages rising fast, increasing minority employment, decreasing regulation, decreasing taxes on them while increasing on the rich, ... unfortunately, we was fought "tooth and nail" by all the Dems and many of the Repubs.
I would like to see a Haley/Gabbard R ticket in 2024.
Haley as in Niki Haley? ...That's not gonna fly...
Why not? She would have a tough time getting through the primaries but she is a good enough politician to do so.
...Because, unlike Tulsi, Niki has a (deservedly in my view) negative appeal "on the other side."
In my view, Niki is a dimwit. If that's mistaken, well, she hasn't done much that I've seen to show any particular intellectual capacity above that of "dim lightbulb."
If that's wrong, please do enlighten.
Upon what do you base your conclusion? You know she has a pretty solid record, don't you?
It is PR firms. If you read Sharyl Atkisson's "The Smear" you will be shocked to learn about the industry that has developed to do just what I state above.
"Public relations" is a propaganda term. It's really synonymous with propaganda, just without the negative connotation. My first graduate course in propaganda, one assignment was to interview the head of a major public relations firm.
Atkisson is everything an investigative journalist should be. I admire her integrity and persistence tremendously.
Anyone else reminded of the Seinfeld episode where he thinks dentist Tim Watley converted to Judaism just so he could tell Jewish jokes?
When you build an engine of oppression, there is always the risk that it will be used against you. Whether or not Glenn is guilty of so doing, whether or not he benefitted from others so doing, it has nonetheless been done. As above, it is now being used against those whom it was (allegedly) built to protect. This is a lot like Orwell's observation that you don't establish a tyranny to protect the revolution, you have a revolution to establish the tyranny. In other words, I don't believe for a femtosecond it was built to protect anyone, even as I acknowledge a lot of well-meaning but overly naïve people did believe it during the building phase, and therefore supported its creation. We are now seeing that it is not an innocence defender* engine.
(Parenthetically (is it proper to put actual parentheses around paragraphs that begin with that word? Bygones.), Glenn has always been susceptible to appeals to emotion, especially compassion. I don't hold that as a fault, nor do I level it as a criticism; it's just part of life, learning that there are people who will cynically and ruthlessly exploit our compassion, and learning how to detect that, and counter it, while not losing our compassion. It's not easy - being an adult rarely is. Glenn is emphatically not the same guy that Obama suckered with his hope and change schtick. He's seen too much from the pointy end of THAT engine of oppression to ever be that guy again. And yet he retains his compassion, even as he's learned to be more skeptical with it.)
Until we all get a lot more aggressively skeptical of people claiming they need absolute power in order to save us from ourselves, we're going to all suffer from this principle in action.
*I visited Sheffield, England on a work trip. While there I bought two bottles of fruit smoothies at the local shop. Months later my wife found the receipt in my jacket pocket: 2 innocent defenders at 2 pounds each. It was a funny phone call.