"Knowing is the shibboleth into the smug style's culture, a cultural that celebrates hip commitments and valorizes hip taste, that loves nothing more than hate-reading anyone who doesn't get them. A culture that has come to replace politics itself....
The smug style has always existed in American liberalism, but it wasn't always so totalizing. Lionel Trilling claimed, as far back as 1950, that liberalism 'is not only the dominant, but even the sole intellectual tradition,' that 'the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse ... do not express themselves in ideas, but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.'"
This article is giving me insane cognitive dissonance. I shouldn't've read it first thing in the morning. Ok. So there certainly is an self-assuredness in my liberal politics. And I often do wonder, exasperatedly, how the fuck all these evil-looking and evil-sounding men (and women!) got to be in positions of power. But this author, at ten zillion words, wants me to stop and take stock of what it is I'm really doing as a liberal. Ok. I remember in my late teens having constant, overwhelming, and intruding thoughts about our planet coming to a fiery end in either a nuclear holocaust in the near-term, or from plant- and ecosystem-failure in the long-term. These thoughts were debilitating, and I only got over them when I started to realize that happiness is found only by ever focusing on what it is that you can control, whether that's when you lived without flush toilets a thousand years ago, without reasonable protection from warring tribes ten thousand years ago, or these days, when holocaust and global warming are just two of the more well-known eschatological variants. But now that I'm not suffering from under a miasma of OCD-thoughts, I'm not all of a sudden down with someone like Trump so casually insisting that more countries have nuclear weapons. Or with a field of Republican presidential candidates who dare not speak of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, for fear that they piss off a sizable contingent of voters who disbelieve any human role in planetary warming, man-made or otherwise. I'm beyond smug at how counter-productive I believe Republican elected officials to be (legislative members both federal and state, state governors, the occasional county clerk). I'm completely pissed off. Outraged. Heartbroken. The cognitive dissonance comes from the author telling us that liberals have a huge share of the blame for the current state. I don't deny that insulting the average Republican voter with labels like rube, idiot, hypocrite, and idiot, isn't going to do anything helpful other than serve a short-term interest to inflate a feeling a superiority. But I can't help but feel that the 7k-word castigation liberals are getting here -- when Republicans are dismantling the social safety net, subsidizing corporations at the expense of poor people, cutting taxes for the 1%, doubling down on climate change denial as things are only getting worse -- is completely demoralizing. I guess we should always strive for empathy and to avoid ad hominem in all we do, but damn... Who the fuck is holding Republicans accountable?If the smug style can be reduced to a single sentence, it's, Why are they voting against their own self-interest? But no party these past decades has effectively represented the interests of these dispossessed. Only one has made a point of openly disdaining them too.
You're trying much to hard. The article is a deliberate provocation that studiously ignores the deliberate attempts by the Republican Party to court the South and "values voters" and entice them to vote against their economic interests via pandering to their baser prejudices. It started with the Dixiecrats in 1948, when Strom Thurmond and the Segregationists broke away from the Democratic Party in order to forestall Civil Rights. It continued through the Southern Strategy, wherein the party of Goldwater stopped publicizing its economic platform and instead focused on God and Guns. It culminated in the wave of anti-gay-marriage amendments put forth by the Republican Party in 2000 and 2004 to convince lower-income white people to come out and vote against their economic interests and thereby defeat Gore and Kerry. This shit is straight-up AP US History high school shit. None of it is in the article. In fact, the author takes a swipe at What's the Matter with Kansas? without observing that the entire book is a chapter-and-verse refutation of his entire hand-wavey notion. - Nixon's political strategist, Kevin Philips, in the New York Times, 1970 There is no economic advantage to voting for segregation. There is no economic advantage to voting against gay marriage. The only reason to do so is to ensure that there's someone out there who has fewer freedoms than you, who is socially and economically worse off than you are. And that's the 50-year history of the Republican Party - convincing people to scapegoat someone else so they don't notice you're stealing their livelihood. The "smugness" of American Liberalism is nothing more than a jaw-open acknowledgement of this fact and, by the way, led to the climate that allowed transgender equality, the Black Lives Matter movement, Obamacare, the whole nine yards. Are you voting for something or voting against something else? Because since 1948, conservatives have been voting against progress because a rising tide doesn't raise all ships, it floods the sandcastles you've eked out while pretending you have something. That's not smugness, that's chapter'n'verse historical fact.From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that...but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats
If the facts are on your side, and if the other side explicitly admits that they're courting prejudice and bigotry, is that really "attitude?" Because that's what you're doing - you're saying that semantics and phrasing matter as much as empirical data and it's bullshit. You start with my "attitude" when what I posted were three facts. You then launch into a semantic argument about what is or isn't fact. But that's all you do. This isn't a fair and balanced discussion, there is no nuance, and waving your hands and saying "same with the other way" does not make it so. - The Dixiecrats are a thing, a real thing, that existed, for real reasons related to bigotry. 'Member back when Trent Lott got fired for saying nice things about Strom Thurmond? Strom Thurmond, 1948 - The Southern Strategy was a real thing, that existed for reasons related to rich people getting poor people to vote for them. - The marriage amendments of 2004 were a real thing, a real Republican thing, that existed to get disaffected poor voters out to clobber Adam & Steve. It happened. and even the gay Republicans got behind it. "What I do regret, and think a lot about, is that one of the things I talked a lot about in politics was how I tried to expand the party into neighborhoods where the message wasn't always heard. I didn't do this in the gay community at all." So it's not that you "didn't do a good job of making your point." It's that your point can't be made. The Republican base wasn't social conservatism until they gave up on fiscal issues. Ever looked at Goldwater's platform? Dude was against bussing but that was about it. Now here we are skunking economies for the right to tell transgender people where to pee. "Smug" is what you call someone who is right and indecorous about it. Know what? I'll wear the fuck out of that label. Beats the shit out of being WRONG."I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theatres into our swimming pools into our homes and into our churches."
"It's a legitimate question and one I understand," Mehlman said. "I can't change the fact that I wasn't in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally." He asks of those who doubt his sincerity: "If they can't offer support, at least offer understanding."
When I say "gave up on fiscal issues" I'm talking about the Republican party giving up on arguing for them on their merits. The whole point of the Southern Strategy was to dark horse the economic agenda the rich Republicans wanted by getting the poor Republicans to vote against their own self-interest. Same with "Death taxes." Same with charter schools. Same with trickle-down economics. Perhaps that's our misunderstanding: all of these social positions are gambits to get the poor to vote for shit that does them harm, they aren't some bizarre abandonment of core Republican principles. Regardless of whether you understand the issues or not, the fact of the matter remains I've given you chapter and verse facts statistics and quotes and you've produced nothing. Wishing that I haven't validated my argument doesn't make it so, and asserting that you've done otherwise doesn't prove your point. I absolutely can say "the Republican base votes against their interests" and then demonstrate a pattern of social issues used by the Republicans to build party affinity amongst people who don't benefit at all from the fiscal platform. That's the nature of debate. That's logos rhetoric. That's how we do it. Somehow insinuating that empirical data... isn't only shows that you don't understand debate.
It's not fun to go against the grain on hubski, let alone against you
FWIW, I have really enjoyed reading the back and forth in this conversation. Sorry if it's not been fun for you, but I feel like I've learned a bit as a result, so thank you. Sincerely.
Here's the basic structure of the argument thus far: ARTICLE: It is not the facts on the ground that caused the poor to side with the Republican party, it's elite liberal smugness. KB: Here, chapter and verse, are the facts on the ground that aren't even touched on by the article. TLE: I feel that the article is right and you are wrong. KB: What you feel does not contradict known, well-established facts. TLE: I feel that facts have a liberal bias. KB: That does not change their factuality. TLE: I still feel justified in disputing your facts with my feelings. Look - you don't have an argument. You have an emotional reaction. The argument of the article is that liberals don't have an argument, they have an emotional reaction and it's utterly and completely wrong. However, I recognize that this has not yet compelled you to examine your own viewpoint, nor is it likely to. Fundamentally, you are putting forth your feelings, free and unfettered by justification or fact, and demanding that I somehow acknowledge them as equivalent to historical events. You are also choosing to change the subject at will and hold me accountable for not answering assertions that you have not yet made. So look. It's like this. You register to vote. You get to choose "Republican" "Democrat" or "Independent" (or some random splinter party that nobody cares about). To vote in a primary you only get to choose "your side." How do you pick "sides?" Well, what "values" does "your team" believe in? What is its mascot? What are its colors? Who are some of its famous players? How are you doing on the away games? How are you doing at home? What's going on at the convention? Who's going to speak for "your team?" Politics are every bit as tribal as sports and it has even more money thrown at it. "Our side" is in favor of the new library expansion, a bill guaranteeing the right of gays to marry and is putting forth Jane Smith as mayor. "Their side" is against the library expansion, has put forth a bill to gut school funding and wants to put "under God" on the license plate. Oh, by the way, they're putting forth Bob Jones as mayor. You may not give the first fuck about Jane Smith vs. Bob Jones. You might not care whatsoever what goes on a license plate. But goddamn, you don't have kids, your sister sends Timmy to bible school and fuckin' A your taxes are way too high. So you're gonna come out to vote for that tax reform bill. Are you... not going to vote for Bob Jones or Jane Smith? Are you going to leave the license plate question blank? Or are you going to vote for your team? Again: I didn't come up with this. This is APUSH shit. This is Poly Sci 101. It's as settled as the Bay of Pigs. Regardless of how you feel, this is. So while I appreciate the politeness, this is not "our" misunderstanding.
Right so we'll just skate right on without acknowledging that not only did I let you derail the conversation, I humored you, answered you patiently and gave you examples. Okay. Fine. Know that there were 900 words below this. Now there aren't. Because I'm not going to play this way.
It's whatever, dude. The problem is you can't start a convivial discussion with "Your attitude is exactly what the author talks about" no matter how "respectful" you think you're being... and when your every point is answered and refuted, the "respectful" thing to do is acknowledge it. As far as "smugness" - when the people who disapprove of your lifestyle, your music, your hair, your friends, your clothing, the car you drive, the job you hold, the bar you attend, the beer you drink, the parties you throw, the food you eat, the teams you cheer, the church you attend and the way you vote are proven, time and time and time again, to be having their prejudices stoked and their best interests obfuscated, what the fuck are you supposed to be? Because aside from "freedom to carry a gun around" the conservative movement is all about restricting individual rights. Even if the average liberal reaction was pure magnanimous beatitude, shitfucks like Emmett Rensin would still call us out for condescension or some shit. This little twiddlefuck was fourteen in 2004. He boiled "the world's greatest books" down to 2800 characters but castigating liberals for being self-congratulatory? 7200 words. Maybe the cycle is too deeply set already. Perhaps the divide, the disdain, the whole crack-up are inevitable. But if liberal good intentions are to make a play for a better future, they cannot merely recognize the ways they've come to hate their former allies. They must begin to mend the ways they lost them in the first place. I have shoes older than you, bitch, and The Southern Strategy was old enough to vote itself BEFORE YOU WERE EVEN BORN. So let's not talk too much about "cycles" and "intentions" when you've only been able to vote for president three times.... at least, if you're going to pretend that history doesn't exist.This is not a call for civility. Manners are not enough. The smug style did not arise by accident, and it cannot be abolished with a little self-reproach. So long as liberals cannot find common cause with the larger section of the American working class, they will search for reasons to justify that failure. They will resent them. They will find, over and over, how easy it is to justify abandoning them further. They will choose the smug style.
Thank you for stating it plainly. I felt that since the author preempted any possible response of "well, Republicans really are convincing people to vote against their interest" I found myself backed into a corner. But really, the extent of helpful content in this article could be reduced down to "don't be asshole, it never convinces the person you're arguing against." The rest is just aggravatingly misleading, holier-than-though pontificating. I was lacking the wherewithal and experience to articulate exactly this. Cognitive dissonance is abating.And that's the 50-year history of the Republican Party - convincing people to scapegoat someone else so they don't notice you're stealing their livelihood. The "smugness" of American Liberalism is nothing more than a jaw-open acknowledgement of this fact...
Which is easy to do if you're the only party talking to them. I mostly agree, he overstates his point, be he's right that the Democratic party stopped paying attention to working class white people when it realized corporations could raise more money than labor unions. If neither party is representing your interests, but one of them is at least talking to you... I mean, if the Republicans had run with this instead of disowning it, I would have to at least consider them come election time.And that's the 50-year history of the Republican Party - convincing people to scapegoat someone else so they don't notice you're stealing their livelihood.
What a ridiculous argument to make. AFL-CIO lobbying? resoundingly democratic. The problem is, the only thing the Democrats can talk to ignorant rednecks about is economic issues because the Democratic Party has been the home of progressive liberals since FDR. The Republican Party, on the other hand, can talk about those horrible darkies that we need to build a wall against 'cuz they'll terk yer jerbs and oh by the way, gutting environmental controls will "create jobs." The argument is that people with conservative social values will listen to a social argument more easily than an economic argument so the Republicans have had an easier time getting socially conservative poor people to vote against their economic interests than the Democrats have had getting socially conservative poor people to evolve a little bit and raise themselves out of squalor while they're at it. Did that sound elitist? Goddamn right it's elitist. Hate is a better motivator than comfort and the Republicans have been selling hate for 50 years. That doesn't mean the Republicans are "the only party talking to them" that means the Republicans are the only ones saying what they want tohear.
(You copied the wrong link I think, or else the AFL-CIO's lobbyists are way more hardcore than I thought.) The unions are still solidly democratic, there just aren't enough union members to matter. That was what the whole New Democrat thing was all about, giving up on being a leftist party at all and being a kinder, gentler right wing party instead because after Reagan that looked like the best that could be done, and the New Left had already shifted the focus of the left away from labor and towards identity politics, for entirely justified reasons that still mean that it's 2016 and Bernie Sanders looks radical.
LOL. Yeah, wrong link. The unions are solidly democratic, but Republican strategy has eroded them to meaninglessness over the past 50 years. You say cause, I say effect. That's really what we're arguing about - I'm arguing that the politics on the ground create effects like the New Democrats, while you're arguing that the New Democrats are the cause of "nobody talking to the working poor." Fact of the matter remains - outside of the megachurches, outside of the South, outside of rural concentrations of "values voters", the poor vote Democratic same as it ever was.
The poor vote Democrat, the poor an white vote Republican. Democrats are the not-(as-)racist party, they're the party that isn't actively trying to make life worse for anyone who isn't white. They don't have to do a thing to address working class interests as such and they'd still get the votes they get by as least not being actively hostile. Admittedly, I'm more familiar with the politics of the South, since I live here. But the churches pretty much are the politics on the ground here. They're where the civil rights movement organized, and they're where the right organizes. In the town my father comes from the only place you'll meet a concentration of democrats is the Freemasons of all things, and as much as the conspiracy nuts would like to believe otherwise, they're more about charity than politics.
Right - the place where the 1 percenters convinced the poor to fight a war for slavery 150 years ago. The place the Democrats effectively lost when they supported desegregation. That's the whole battle - the Republicans picked up those votes by banking on hatred because they were up for grabs. My grandfather was a 32nd degree mason. From Bastrop County Texas, no less.
W. J. Cash, in 1940: But the South was still voting Democrats into House and state governments until the 90s. The Democrats lost the South's presidential votes with the Civil Rights Act, but it wasn't until Newt that the South went solidly Republican. Wikipedia has nice tables of presidential and gubernatorial. It took the Republicans Party a long time to really take over here, and I think it's naive to chalk their eventual success, decades later, up as a direct result of the civil rights movement.Proud, brave, honorable by its lights, courteous, personally generous, loyal, swift to act, often too swift, but signally effective, sometimes terrible, in its action -- such was the South at its best. And such at its best it remains today, despite the great falling away in some of its virtues. Violence, intolerance, aversion and suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an exaggerated individualism and too narrow a concept of social responsibility, attachment to fictions and false values, above all too great attachment to racial values and a tendency to justify cruelty and injustice in the name of those values, sentimentality and a lack of realism -- these have been its characteristic vices in the past. And, despite changes for the better, they remain its characteristic vices today.
In the coming days, and probably soon, it is likely to have to prove its capacity for adjustment far beyond what has been true in the past. And in that time I shall hope, as its loyal son, that its virtues will tower over and conquer its faults and have the making of the Southern world to come. But of the future I shall venture no definite prophecies. It would be a brave man who would venture them in any case. It would be a madman who would venture them in face of the forces sweeping over the world in 1940.
And not to repeat myself: 1) dixiecrats 2) Southern Strategy 3) DOMA et al. Taken more broadly, the South is an area where the rich have systematically coerced the poor into voting against their best interests for 200 years. The Contract with America only sealed the deal. A lot of that was the fact that the Democrats they were voting for were shitheels like Strom Thurmond and George Wallace.
It's really odd reading an article with liberals portrayed as being left wing. I guess that shows just how fucking up America really is. Also love how this is used in favor of Republicans being more open minded instead of being "dumb and easy to manipulate hicks". I think the article would have been stronger leaving it out altogether. Most damning, perhaps, to the fancy liberal self-conception: Republicans score higher in susceptibility to persuasion. They are willing to change their minds more often.
... an architectural style invented by the guys who brought Pseudo-Dionysus back into style. I'm fond of the Neoplatonists myself, though mostly not the Christian Neoplatonists, but says this is not the tradition to hold up in contradiction to that quote, unless it's the "irritable" part you object to.The fact is that the more we take flight upward, the more our words are confined to the ideas we are capable of forming; so that now as we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing.