Are we living through a decisive turn from a liberal culture to an authoritarian “successor ideology” (as conservatives and some liberals fear) or a long-awaited reckoning with white supremacy and and patriarchy and inequality (as many progressives hope)?
. . .My bet is still on the second scenario, stultifying but sustainable, rather than the revolution in full. But then again I haven’t personally experienced a Full Cancellation yet.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen.
When Douthat says “yet,” I sense that he believes he could be next. And that is why he started writing on substack.
Substack may not be completely safe from meddling either. So much for free speech. I honestly don’t understand the illiberal left.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-start-demanding-substack
As Greenwald points out, there is another dimension beyond left vs. right: traditional journalists — Greenwald calls them “corporate journalists” — vs. alternative media. I’ve noticed in the past that nothing animates traditional journalists more than when someone (a politician, celebrity, academic) criticizes traditional journalists. Regardless of political orientation, they circle the wagons when that happens. One might argue that all professions do that, but traditional journalists are unique in that they get to air their grievances in the traditional press while shutting out their critics. It’s a conflict of interest when journalists report on stories of which they themselves are a part.
The internet has created all sorts of competitors to traditional media — blogs, social media, now Substack — and notice that traditional media attacks all of them.
There was a wonderfully candid post on this about a month ago, by Washington Post public editor.
On behalf of the public, I say.
Please remind me when you are able to find a conservative corporate journalist that has ever called for the elimination of little mom-and-pop journalists posting on a blog, Twitter, Substack, etc.
Until such time, I’m gonna go ahead and frame it as the illiberal left vs. everyone else since that seems most accurate.
On Cancellation
https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-teachers-target-parents-critical-race-theory-hacking
A group of current and former teachers and others in Loudoun County, Virginia, compiled a lengthy list of parents suspected of disagreeing with school system actions, including its teaching of controversial racial concepts — with a stated purpose in part to “infiltrate,” use “hackers” to silence parents’ communications, and “expose these people publicly.”
Members of a 624-member private Facebook group called “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County” named parents and plotted fundraising and other offline work. Some used pseudonyms, but The Daily Wire has identified them as a who’s who of the affluent jurisdiction outside D.C., including school staff and elected officials.
…
In recent years, Loudoun’s school system has flooded its curricula and policies with racial rhetoric, paying about $500,000 to one racial consulting company alone. It required all staff to undergo “Equity in the Center” training that promoted a sense of injustice and urgency.
…
As part of the school system’s racial initiatives, Loudoun pays 93 teachers $3,820 extra a year to take on additional duties as “equity leads.” For Dr. VonEnde Coleman, that appeared to mean joining the mob against parents. “As an equity lead at one of the high schools, please let me know how I can help,” she wrote.
Wow.
In some ways this isn’t new, I encountered this back in the 1990s. When all of us wanted to go to the magnet school in our county we got a lot of pushback and harassment from the school district. Same old stuff. “The school isn’t diverse enough (read overwhelmingly Asian and Jewish)” and “it will take money from the local school district (we operated on a budget far below the per pupil spending at the local level)” and “it undermines public education and exacerbates inequality (we had several meetings going over what changes we wanted at the local high school to stay and got stonewalled)”.
They tried to kick me out of getting busing in middle school as retaliation and my mom had to do the two mile walk in the cold several times to prove that, like every single one of my neighbors to all sides of me, we were eligible for busing.
The superintended that did that and tried to shut down our magnet school several times then sent his own daughter who was picked up last and dropped off first every single day even though it meant I was on the bus for hours every day.
My best friend for my entire childhood wasn’t so lucky. He had three younger siblings and his mother was on the school board. They didn’t want the PR loss of someone from the school board going magnet. So they told her that if he went then his younger siblings would be targeted at school. So he didn’t get to go with the rest of us.
This certainly has some new elements (more religious fervor, paid informants) but it’s the same bullshit.
But, is the world better off with you having attended a magnet school? All that it seems to have done is made your racist and homophobic comments on this blog slightly more refined…and not much else. Honestly, how many poor man Steve Sailers does the world need?
That all you got Kurt?
Whenever you are confronted with an obviously unjust system or action, you always blame the victim. So far the only idea you’ve ever come up with to show agency is to run away and hope things don’t collapse before you die.
Personally, I loved my time in magnet school. It helped me a lot and I do think it made my life turn out a lot better. Most of my classmates have the same opinion.
And yes, attending the magnet school did make me more racist. Beyond the injustice of the above, Asians are an eleven out of ten on any white persons racism scale and being around them and living in Asia taught me that racism was just fine.
“So far the only idea you’ve ever come up with to show agency is to run away and hope things don’t collapse before you die.”
Nope. We just voted with our feet vs. wasting our time casting ballots. Strength in numbers. Our city voted 2/3 Republican in 2020 and the schools are top notch.
Also, do you have any idea how fun it is to walk into a cowboy shop to buy some hq boots and a hat? How about the experience in a local gun shop? And, the people are so friendly. We wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. We love embracing a different culture that is more embracing of our values.
Honestly, how many poor man Steve Sailers does the world need?
One possible (and terribly depressing) answer is, “hundreds, to balance out the hundreds of poor man Ibram X. Kendis out there.”
He hasn’t been cancelled yet because he’s a fairly obedient, milquetoast NYT opinion writer with a style that is more Byzantine than Straussian, which is odd given how absolutely boring he is.
But don’t worry, he’ll update his views the moment he’s cancelled. Thanks, Ross. Just for that, I promise to abandon Flat Earth Theory the minute I’m finally able to hop a ride in an Elon Musk rocket and see it all for myself.
Now that I think about it, maybe he really is being Straussian here: “Cancel me already, would you please! In fact, have you really cancelled anything if you haven’t cancelled me? I mean, I’m super controversial, but the deep kind. Cant’ you see? Kind of like that Scott Alexander guy over there. Look, I’m even on Substack.”
While one could certainly write many things about Douthat, he has at least shown the bravery to link to Steve Sailer and Moldbug, which is something I would think would get someone cancelled so I share some of his surprise.
Douthat does express serious disagreement with the NYT ideology (e.g. he has written about his opposition to abortion there), he just does so very politely because, I assume, he believes writing for the NYT is the most effective way to reach a large audience of prospective converts. It’s a strategic decision, so i think he deserves to be distinguished from, say, David Brooks, who’s job is to play act as a conservative and forfeit nearly every round to the progressive side, which the audience likes to see.
I’d bet Douthat will outlast many of the writers to his left there. He more tactful than most of them and the NYT can hardly claim to be the paper of record without a single conservative ‘voice’ (and I think even most progressives would agree that David Brooks doesn’t count).
My impression of Douthat is that pieces like “Can the Right Escape Racism?” tend to be 2/3 premise agreement and sincerity and 1/3 quasi-edgy devil’s advocate schlock. Meanwhile, the real controversial ideas are outsourced to the Sailers and Moldbugs of the world so as to provide Douthat with a sufficient degree of separation from sacrilege.
So while I hear you, I’d argue that you can afford to link to those guys so long as you make sufficient offsets on the other side of the idealogical ledger (“The American right has a racism problem.”)
Sure, but I guess I’m grading him on a “works for the NYTimes curve.”
Fundamentally, anyone to the right of woke that wants to keep a prestigious job has to engage in a lot of obfuscation. Tyler Cowen obviously taking the cake for his Straussian ability to avoid taking a stand on anything.
It’s not just race stuff. Take the linked article. Is spending $1.9T we don’t have on pork barrel bullshit a brave break from decadence or a reinforcement of it? “Trust fund slacker blows inheritance on consumption” seems like decadence defined. He doesn’t take a stand other then “its different, so there’s that at least.” Bolshevism and Fascism were “different” too, and many intellectuals were intoxicated by the prospect of something new simply for the fact that it was new. At least it wasn’t BORING. You could pontificate about it!
In the article I linked above the anti-CRT parent says the all he wants to do is have a BBQ and take his kids to soccer practice without it being a political event. Is that decadence or sanity? Douthat wants to remain aloof as to whether cynical CRT or zealous CRT is better. Take a stand dude. He wants to entertain the idea that radical programs are “anti-decadence” without grappling with the idea that they are insane.
+100
Contra Douthat’s optimism, the rest of the world seems to see the Bidenista’s authoritarianism as a serious threat to basic human rights. Under Biden, the USA is devolving into a pariah state. https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=17032
Reasonable, normal people need to push back against the woke strategy.
And they will eventually, at some equilibrium which may be even more costly than even the miserable climate today. But appeasement won’t accelerate forever; it can’t.
I feel like we had this conversation 10 or so years ago. Robby Soave, who reported on this ideology more than anyone else in the world, argued that campus ideology would keep spreading and eventually enter the real world, and couldn’t be written off as some ephemeral, fringe overreaction to ostensible racism, sexism, etc. People made fun of him for making a big deal out of college halloween costumes.
Now it’s 2021, Soave was proven right. Only most of the sensible progressives from 2010 seem to have decided that the crazy ideas from 2010 were actually right all along. But now they say, ‘but I’m sure this is as far as it goes, 2021-crazy ideas have had their day.’ Contrary to literally all evidence, including opinion polls showing that the younger people are, the more illiberal they are. I see no reason things won’t keep going in the same direction for the next 10 years, rather than reaching some ‘stultifying’ equilibrium.
An authoritarian legislature stamping out inequality leads its country to ruin, such as
Soviet Russia
Nazi Germany
1950s China
N Korea
Venezuela
and no doubt lots more.
Douthat claims that the actions of the Federal Reserve and Congress have “finally killed off the inflation anxiety that hampered policymaking in the Obama years,” enabling unlimited federal spending. The investor saying is that when the last bear capitulates and buys into the bull market, a crash is inevitable. Analogously, when the last fiscal conservative buys into unlimited money creation and spending, is inflation inevitable?