What scares me the most about the Democrats in this episode isn't the extremists, who will always be there. What scares me the most is how much the more moderate leaders are willing to pander to the extremists. If you give the party power, that's what you have to worry about the most.
Agreed. Pretty much killed kamala campaign when shevwas chasing after the votes of the pro paly crowd who was calling her a genocidal monster. All she did was lose votes.
Meanwhile zionists and Palestinians love Trump. Maybe for different reasons or maybe because a fucking chaos demon rampaging through middle east diplomacy is what we all need after decades of miserable status quo.
Idk if Palestinians love trump, I haven't seen that. And even if US activist for Palestine love Trump (I haven't seen that either), views amongst the majority of Palestinians on the ground in Palestine could differ from those US activists.
This article talks about some Arab-Americans who voted for Trump because they'd somehow got it into their heads he was closer to their position on Palestine than Kamala, and who were then regretting that decision:
Thanks, that was refreshing to read. It still seems misleading to say Palestinians--as a group--love Trump just because there are some activists for Palestine (many who may not even be Palestinian!) and a few Palestinian diaspora voters who threw their lot in with him.
Yes, more accurate to say some galaxy brain Palestinian activists thought they could play 4D chess by goading the Dems into a more pro Palestinian position by making trouble for them. And independently, a few working class Arabs voted for Trump in Michigan just like many of their working class buddies of other backgrounds. Doesn't really constitute "Palestinians love Trump"
Ahh got it. They are religious US immigrants in working and rising middle class with commensurate concerns and I wouldn't take for granted that they are voting single issue or even primarily on the Palestine issue.
The main problem with your sedevacantist analogy is that American conservatives actually are completely insane (and much more mainstream ones than the comparably insane liberals) and constantly say and do things that should be mortifyingly embarrassing. There are even many Republicans denouncing the Pope (Steve Bannon, Laura Loomer, MTG etc.) and Catholic conservatives are just silent.
In normal circumstances this would cause infighting and voter backlash, but it isn’t because the personality cult surrounding their leader keeps the moderates in fear and the radicals unified. There is no comparable unifying figure on the left, and perhaps there shouldn’t be.
Well it is a problem. You use the sedevacantist analogy to try to show how insane behavior on the right would be a problem for them, just as it is for the left. But as Schneider points out, insanity on the right isn't a problem for them.
Try the argument in reverse. A Reagan conservative pointing to woke insanity in the Democratic party as evidence that embracing the crazy right that is MAGA would be a problem for them. They did just that and turns out it wasn't a problem for them.
Some Democrat could argue we too should embrace the cray from the nutty left because it worked for the other side.
Although embracing the Republican version of "woke" works for them, it DOESN'T work for Democrats. The situation is *not* symmetrical, and so the analogy doesn't work.
What exactly is the sedevacantist analogy? Sedevacantists are not a catastrophe for the Catholic Church. They are a splinter group that doesn’t accept the current leadership. Not really analogous to what you are discussing.
I would argue that embracing crazy is not working especially well for Republicans. Of the 3 general elections Trump has contested, he lost 1 and very narrowly won 2. His approval rating is inferior to that of past presidents:
I'd furthermore argue that there is little alpha in Democrats embracing crazy more than they already have. They've done a fair amount of that post-Obama, and they still lost the presidency in 2024. It's not some sort of cheat code.
>There is no comparable unifying figure on the left, and perhaps there shouldn’t be.
There is no such figure, there should be no such figure, and there *will* be no such figure. The nature of the far-left crazies is that they instinctively resist authority, to the point of dysfunction. My understanding is that no one even wants to lead left-wing organizations like the ACLU anymore because the employees are so rebellious. Forget about leading the entire left wing when you can't even lead a single organization.
If you had a Republican who was opposed to cutting social security and a federal abortion ban, and also wasn't a constantly-dishonest narcissistic putschist who surrounds himself with sycophants and does stupid shit all the time for no reason, he'd get a hell of a lot more than 49.8% of the popular vote.
No one wants to touch social security but reality is going to assert itself over the situation eventually. Trump gave the religious right their long fight victory over Roe v Wade but then ran away from the issue. The idea that the GOP is going to commit electoral suicide over abortion is fear porn for retarded underfucked women like OP here
You know what, I admit to misreading you. My bad. Apologies for insulting you based upon that. Truly though, do you REALLY think a majority of the country could get behind cutting suicidal security and proposing a nationwide abortion ban? That sounds to me like a 60/40 own goal blow out. Again, sincerely sorry
If politicians and parties never chose the wrong side of a 60/40 issue, the two parties would be nigh-indistinguishable. As far as reasons to choose the wrong side goes, "I believe tens of millions of dead babies have died since Roe v. Wade and since Dobbs the abortion rate has gone up, not down" would be pretty high up there.
But also the point still stands. There's not a politician alive that's gonna propose cutting SSI and no Republican running for national office is gonna say let's ban abortion
Trump's actual positions on many policy issues are quite carefully triangulated, such as Social Security and abortion. People get confused, though, because he is also demonically evil, so they perceive him as being "radical" and "far right" and similar things. This issue appears on the right and the left - the right, overestimating their victory to be some type of total and implacable defeat of the left, and the left, seeing something similar (but often phrased in terms of the center being defeated).
The reality is that it is so easy to win elections by moderating on the issues that it works even for someone who literally tried to overthrow the US government in a coup d'etat.
You didn’t refute what I said about his positions on Social Security or a federal abortion ban, you just vomited up a meaningless word salad. The only place where Trump wants to do those things is apparently in your head
The Democrats and Republicans are mostly coherent parties with goals and motives that regularly trade control of the legislature and executive in competitive elections. The dynamic of Republicans falling in line as a large bloc with a leader is so old there are multiple cliches for this, like "Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line." the Will Rogers line "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." and so on and so forth.
Why would Catholic Republicans care about a right-wing influencer or House member yelling something? This is the most Catholic-inclusive version of the party ever. The older Republican party was far more wary of pre-Vatican II Catholicism, such as the 1928 campaign that polarized heavily by denomination. Consider the political cartoons and speeches made by Northern Whigs or Know-Nothings that later migrated into the new Republican party in the mid-19th century (and which performed abysmally with the largest urban immigrant group, Irish Catholics.) By contrast today, Republicans regularly put devout Catholics on the Supreme Court and the voters do not care at all. No, Laura Loomer tweets are not a useful heuristic for this at all.
Neither are woke activists, who also get plenty of attention but generally win and lose influence with Democrats to the extent they can temporarily claim to represent actual minority ethnic or interest group that votes for the party. Defund The Police was an embarrassment to Democrats, and they began all loudly denouncing it the hour after the final votes from young adults came in for Biden. Had no influence this cycle despite plenty of "Abolish Police" people online. Silicon Valley polyamory has gone virtually nowhere in influencing Democrats making law. Trans rights have gone very far with Democratic policymakers by contrast. One cause cares to argue it's a bloc that will vote and donate, the other does not. But both are highly "woke" by any normal American's sense of the word, and one can find embarrassing pundits for both online.
The broader point is that if crazy people are causing problems internally in right-wing organizations, they aren't indulged. You can't cause a right wing organization to melt down by accusing the people running it of not being conservative enough. The upside of being more ideologically inflexible means that you can kick people out on ideological grounds. It's also why outright vulgar Marxist organizations aren't paralyzed like this, instead they just endlessly split, which is actually more productive.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention David Hogg, who seems to be outed in fact for supporting candidates in primaries, but legally is being ousted for a woke technicality in the DNC charter that argues that the voting method favored white males.
Separately, it’ll be interesting if the left ever fixes this. Woke people being annoying has kept me a Republican for my entire life, despite Trump. I’ve voted against him 5 times now but I still think it’s more likely that the Trump successor is reasonable than the left stops being annoying.
Hogg is a great example. I’m not crazy about the guy, but when he puts on a suit and tie, he seems at least like somebody who might win an election or at least a primary. So of course he had to be defenestrated.
It always does. The political left is full of people who KNOW they ate correct all the time. They dont get along with others. Most leave when they want nuance. Some stick around and get steadily more pathetic (fuck off noam chomsky and his genocide apologetics) and others go the opposite way. Mussolini going from socialist to founding fascism wasn't a rare thing.
When this shit was ascendent, circa 2015, it was completely predictable how this would turn out. Yet, when you tried to explain this to anyone, you were told to “touch grass”, that you’re over exaggerating, that I’m echoing right wing talking points, or (my personal favorite) it’s not happening.
Then one day, every one of a certain ilk adopted this frame work and became insufferable mirror images of late 80’s- early 90’s conservative moralist. After 2021, many stated that we were past “peak woke” - even typing that makes me cringe- and that 2024 was its death knell but I insisted that framing incorrect. While the tsunami water may have receded the landscape has been fundamentally altered and pools of standing non-potable salt water dot the changed landscape.
Yascha Mounk’s last piece assesses the current situation accordingly in my opinion. It’s tragic because I can’t trust policy pushed forward by raving mad, emotional manipulative, identity obsessed authoritarians. We desperately need something other than this slop.
"One should vote on policy, not on how personally unpleasant left-wing activists are."
How about "I wouldn't put people this neurotic and dysfunctional in charge of a petting zoo, let alone any form of government with power over me"? You can't reduce the objections to voting Dem over the influence of insane progressives to some sort of petty reaction to their personal conduct, they're a genuine menace, and the state of various blue cities they control demonstrates that.
"One should vote on policy, not on how personally unpleasant left-wing activists are."
How is this irrational? Even if you agree with people on policy, it's possible to think that they can't possibly be trusted with any sort of power or responsibility.
At least the phrase "throw shade" implies a certain amount of intentionality. The defining characteristic of "microaggressions" is that the person who said them didn't even intend to cause offense, and yet is still expected to grovel on hands and knees as if they did.
When you’re inside the belly of the beast I understand the inability to see the seriousness of the issue, because you don’t have a point of comparison. But I can’t understand people who aren’t in these orgs acting like this is no big deal. Offices just cannot function with this sort of internal culture. It doesn’t solve any of the issues of inequality, it just makes everything extremely self centered and divorced from reality.
I wouldn’t say I’ve ever worked in a healthy office culture per se but at least we actually like. Worked on things!
There are some parallel with the Protestant fragmentation problem (internal conflict often leads to a church split). The culture of the community creates instabilities. While sensitivity to minority concerns is not laudable, it makes consensus very difficult. Operationally it's not functional. You need to balance considerations for the fringe with a strong center.
There was an old joke that the first item on the agenda of every Irish leftist party is the split. I think by now there are at least three different explicitly Communist parties in Ireland, without a single elected representative between them.
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
The Left famously has bitter factional fights, way, way before Woke. Think of it - activist groups are often made up of people who passionately believe in doing the right thing even at notable personal cost, not pragmatists who prize compromise and coalition. This isn't news to anyone with any acquaintance with these organizations.
Thus, I think yes, the "covering it is blowing it out of proportion" point has some merit from that. I'd put it a bit differently, as, "WHY are you doing this?". There's a big contextual difference between roughly in-group "Folks, stop doing this stuff, it's self-destructive", versus roughly out-group "Ha Ha ha, look at the weirdos, aren't they bad?". If you come off as the latter not the former, what do you think is going to be the result?
Yes, but this used to cause leftwing orgs to split into factions rather than lapse into incoherent paralysis. This is because the disputes used to be real and have actually ideological content. These disputes don't cause ideological splits because they aren't coherent demands for anything except personal attention. It's also because a lot of liberal organizations are just careerist grifts.
'This internal infighting ends up wasting an extraordinary amount of time. One activist, in the wake of 2020, said “My last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife.”
This is fairly shocking. Left-wing activism has been reduced to total paralysis, not by external saboteurs, but by overzealous internal activists. It would be like if almost every conservative organization couldn’t function because a group of rogue sedevacantists kept raising personal grievances under the guise of conservatism.
The problem of over the top left wing insanity isn’t just a talking point of the far right. In fact, those like me who are on the left should most want these practices to be expunged. Not only have they torpedoed the effectiveness of left-wing activism, reducing it to a muddle of personal grievance and infighting, they’ve also succeeded in making the left look totally insane.'
>One should vote on policy, not on how personally unpleasant left-wing activists are.
I disagree. Of course policy should be a big part of how you decide to cast your vote, but if a politician is standing for election, it's sensible for voters to carry out an assessment of that candidate's personal qualification for the role, independent of their policy package. People who routinely throw tantrums when they don't get their way, who cravenly acquiesce to all demands no matter how unreasonable, who can be reduced to tears because someone in their vicinity said "homeless person" rather than "person suffering from homelessness" or used gendered language, who throw valued friends and colleagues under the bus in order to advance their own careers - these sorts of people, in my view, are not suitable candidates to hold public office. And even if these crazy people are not personally standing for election, it has not escaped voters' attention that they appear to wield a disproportionate amount of power and influence within the Democrat coalition.
This is obviously true on the other side - based on his personality traits alone, I believe Trump would be a terrible President even with a wholly different set of policy positions.
You may have already written on this, but why do you say you are "on the left"? It seems your moral commitments are totally orthogonal to partisan politics.
I've been thinking about a version of the median voter theorem in which candidates and parties are policy-motivated instead of just victory-motivated.
When one party goes insane and lunges right or left, the other party could just sit back and win, fat and happy and secure that the median voter will come to them. I think that's what the original median voter theorem would predict?
But if the activists, donors, and candidates who lead the party are motivated by policy preferences as well as victory, one party lunging to the side is an invitation for the other party to lunge in the opposite direction.
Worse: if the activists, donors, and candidates are miscalibrated/delusional about where exactly the median voter lies, one party will lunge left, then the other party will lunge right just to the point where they *think* they've still got the marginal voter, then the first party will lunge left juuuust to the point where *they* think they've still got the marginal voter, then ... etc.
Came to mind when reading this. I just want one party to "just be normal" but it's hard to see how to get back to that equilibrium.
Americans are used to thinking of 3rd parties as dead-on-arrival. But 3rd parties have been successful in other FPTP systems like Canada and the UK, winning a few seats in Parliament.
At this point, we're in such a bad equilibrium that any sort of disruption seems like it can only be good. The ultimate solution, IMO, is the same sort of creative destruction that causes dysfunctional corporations to be replaced by functional ones. We need that for both failing corporations which no longer make good products, and also failing political parties that are no longer trying to please voters.
What scares me the most about the Democrats in this episode isn't the extremists, who will always be there. What scares me the most is how much the more moderate leaders are willing to pander to the extremists. If you give the party power, that's what you have to worry about the most.
Agreed. Pretty much killed kamala campaign when shevwas chasing after the votes of the pro paly crowd who was calling her a genocidal monster. All she did was lose votes.
Meanwhile zionists and Palestinians love Trump. Maybe for different reasons or maybe because a fucking chaos demon rampaging through middle east diplomacy is what we all need after decades of miserable status quo.
https://marlowe1.substack.com/p/job-chapter-36
Idk if Palestinians love trump, I haven't seen that. And even if US activist for Palestine love Trump (I haven't seen that either), views amongst the majority of Palestinians on the ground in Palestine could differ from those US activists.
This article talks about some Arab-Americans who voted for Trump because they'd somehow got it into their heads he was closer to their position on Palestine than Kamala, and who were then regretting that decision:
https://www.ymeskhout.com/p/palestinian-activists-have-shattered
Thanks, that was refreshing to read. It still seems misleading to say Palestinians--as a group--love Trump just because there are some activists for Palestine (many who may not even be Palestinian!) and a few Palestinian diaspora voters who threw their lot in with him.
I agree, I highly doubt that the modal Palestinian has a positive opinion of Trump.
Yes, more accurate to say some galaxy brain Palestinian activists thought they could play 4D chess by goading the Dems into a more pro Palestinian position by making trouble for them. And independently, a few working class Arabs voted for Trump in Michigan just like many of their working class buddies of other backgrounds. Doesn't really constitute "Palestinians love Trump"
Well obviously. American activists buy into hamas propaganda. I'm talking about Palestinians living in the u.s. who aren't camping out.
You have any evidence for the Palestinian claim? The only Palestinian I know personally hates Trump.
Ahh got it. They are religious US immigrants in working and rising middle class with commensurate concerns and I wouldn't take for granted that they are voting single issue or even primarily on the Palestine issue.
Thank you Ben. My concerns exactly.
The main problem with your sedevacantist analogy is that American conservatives actually are completely insane (and much more mainstream ones than the comparably insane liberals) and constantly say and do things that should be mortifyingly embarrassing. There are even many Republicans denouncing the Pope (Steve Bannon, Laura Loomer, MTG etc.) and Catholic conservatives are just silent.
In normal circumstances this would cause infighting and voter backlash, but it isn’t because the personality cult surrounding their leader keeps the moderates in fear and the radicals unified. There is no comparable unifying figure on the left, and perhaps there shouldn’t be.
I agree with that but I don't think it's a problem for the analogy.
Well it is a problem. You use the sedevacantist analogy to try to show how insane behavior on the right would be a problem for them, just as it is for the left. But as Schneider points out, insanity on the right isn't a problem for them.
Try the argument in reverse. A Reagan conservative pointing to woke insanity in the Democratic party as evidence that embracing the crazy right that is MAGA would be a problem for them. They did just that and turns out it wasn't a problem for them.
Some Democrat could argue we too should embrace the cray from the nutty left because it worked for the other side.
Although embracing the Republican version of "woke" works for them, it DOESN'T work for Democrats. The situation is *not* symmetrical, and so the analogy doesn't work.
But that wasn't what I said. I built into the sedevacantist analogy to show that if:
1) a group is politically disastrous for a side.
2) the group is insane
then
3) they have a problem with the group.
What exactly is the sedevacantist analogy? Sedevacantists are not a catastrophe for the Catholic Church. They are a splinter group that doesn’t accept the current leadership. Not really analogous to what you are discussing.
I would argue that embracing crazy is not working especially well for Republicans. Of the 3 general elections Trump has contested, he lost 1 and very narrowly won 2. His approval rating is inferior to that of past presidents:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/04/23/trumps-job-rating-drops-key-policies-draw-majority-disapproval-as-he-nears-100-days/pp_2025-4-23_trump-100-days_00-03/
I'd furthermore argue that there is little alpha in Democrats embracing crazy more than they already have. They've done a fair amount of that post-Obama, and they still lost the presidency in 2024. It's not some sort of cheat code.
>There is no comparable unifying figure on the left, and perhaps there shouldn’t be.
There is no such figure, there should be no such figure, and there *will* be no such figure. The nature of the far-left crazies is that they instinctively resist authority, to the point of dysfunction. My understanding is that no one even wants to lead left-wing organizations like the ACLU anymore because the employees are so rebellious. Forget about leading the entire left wing when you can't even lead a single organization.
If you had a Republican who was opposed to cutting social security and a federal abortion ban, and also wasn't a constantly-dishonest narcissistic putschist who surrounds himself with sycophants and does stupid shit all the time for no reason, he'd get a hell of a lot more than 49.8% of the popular vote.
Trump is opposed to cutting social security and has absolutely no plans for a federal abortion ban, what strange world are you living in?
No one wants to touch social security but reality is going to assert itself over the situation eventually. Trump gave the religious right their long fight victory over Roe v Wade but then ran away from the issue. The idea that the GOP is going to commit electoral suicide over abortion is fear porn for retarded underfucked women like OP here
> The idea that the GOP is going to commit electoral suicide over abortion is fear porn for retarded underfucked women like OP here
Sexist and illiterate, a classic combo.
You know what, I admit to misreading you. My bad. Apologies for insulting you based upon that. Truly though, do you REALLY think a majority of the country could get behind cutting suicidal security and proposing a nationwide abortion ban? That sounds to me like a 60/40 own goal blow out. Again, sincerely sorry
If politicians and parties never chose the wrong side of a 60/40 issue, the two parties would be nigh-indistinguishable. As far as reasons to choose the wrong side goes, "I believe tens of millions of dead babies have died since Roe v. Wade and since Dobbs the abortion rate has gone up, not down" would be pretty high up there.
But also the point still stands. There's not a politician alive that's gonna propose cutting SSI and no Republican running for national office is gonna say let's ban abortion
Apparently one where you can't read.
Trump's actual positions on many policy issues are quite carefully triangulated, such as Social Security and abortion. People get confused, though, because he is also demonically evil, so they perceive him as being "radical" and "far right" and similar things. This issue appears on the right and the left - the right, overestimating their victory to be some type of total and implacable defeat of the left, and the left, seeing something similar (but often phrased in terms of the center being defeated).
The reality is that it is so easy to win elections by moderating on the issues that it works even for someone who literally tried to overthrow the US government in a coup d'etat.
You didn’t refute what I said about his positions on Social Security or a federal abortion ban, you just vomited up a meaningless word salad. The only place where Trump wants to do those things is apparently in your head
I didn't refute what you said because I never disagreed with it, you fucking illiterate retard. Is that clear enough for you?
e: Here, have an AI explain it to you: https://i.imgur.com/kIS22q3.png
So you admit you were wrong, apology accepted
The Democrats and Republicans are mostly coherent parties with goals and motives that regularly trade control of the legislature and executive in competitive elections. The dynamic of Republicans falling in line as a large bloc with a leader is so old there are multiple cliches for this, like "Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line." the Will Rogers line "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." and so on and so forth.
Why would Catholic Republicans care about a right-wing influencer or House member yelling something? This is the most Catholic-inclusive version of the party ever. The older Republican party was far more wary of pre-Vatican II Catholicism, such as the 1928 campaign that polarized heavily by denomination. Consider the political cartoons and speeches made by Northern Whigs or Know-Nothings that later migrated into the new Republican party in the mid-19th century (and which performed abysmally with the largest urban immigrant group, Irish Catholics.) By contrast today, Republicans regularly put devout Catholics on the Supreme Court and the voters do not care at all. No, Laura Loomer tweets are not a useful heuristic for this at all.
Neither are woke activists, who also get plenty of attention but generally win and lose influence with Democrats to the extent they can temporarily claim to represent actual minority ethnic or interest group that votes for the party. Defund The Police was an embarrassment to Democrats, and they began all loudly denouncing it the hour after the final votes from young adults came in for Biden. Had no influence this cycle despite plenty of "Abolish Police" people online. Silicon Valley polyamory has gone virtually nowhere in influencing Democrats making law. Trans rights have gone very far with Democratic policymakers by contrast. One cause cares to argue it's a bloc that will vote and donate, the other does not. But both are highly "woke" by any normal American's sense of the word, and one can find embarrassing pundits for both online.
The broader point is that if crazy people are causing problems internally in right-wing organizations, they aren't indulged. You can't cause a right wing organization to melt down by accusing the people running it of not being conservative enough. The upside of being more ideologically inflexible means that you can kick people out on ideological grounds. It's also why outright vulgar Marxist organizations aren't paralyzed like this, instead they just endlessly split, which is actually more productive.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention David Hogg, who seems to be outed in fact for supporting candidates in primaries, but legally is being ousted for a woke technicality in the DNC charter that argues that the voting method favored white males.
Separately, it’ll be interesting if the left ever fixes this. Woke people being annoying has kept me a Republican for my entire life, despite Trump. I’ve voted against him 5 times now but I still think it’s more likely that the Trump successor is reasonable than the left stops being annoying.
Hogg is a great example. I’m not crazy about the guy, but when he puts on a suit and tie, he seems at least like somebody who might win an election or at least a primary. So of course he had to be defenestrated.
It always does. The political left is full of people who KNOW they ate correct all the time. They dont get along with others. Most leave when they want nuance. Some stick around and get steadily more pathetic (fuck off noam chomsky and his genocide apologetics) and others go the opposite way. Mussolini going from socialist to founding fascism wasn't a rare thing.
https://marlowe1.substack.com/p/job-chapter-36
When this shit was ascendent, circa 2015, it was completely predictable how this would turn out. Yet, when you tried to explain this to anyone, you were told to “touch grass”, that you’re over exaggerating, that I’m echoing right wing talking points, or (my personal favorite) it’s not happening.
Then one day, every one of a certain ilk adopted this frame work and became insufferable mirror images of late 80’s- early 90’s conservative moralist. After 2021, many stated that we were past “peak woke” - even typing that makes me cringe- and that 2024 was its death knell but I insisted that framing incorrect. While the tsunami water may have receded the landscape has been fundamentally altered and pools of standing non-potable salt water dot the changed landscape.
Yascha Mounk’s last piece assesses the current situation accordingly in my opinion. It’s tragic because I can’t trust policy pushed forward by raving mad, emotional manipulative, identity obsessed authoritarians. We desperately need something other than this slop.
"One should vote on policy, not on how personally unpleasant left-wing activists are."
How about "I wouldn't put people this neurotic and dysfunctional in charge of a petting zoo, let alone any form of government with power over me"? You can't reduce the objections to voting Dem over the influence of insane progressives to some sort of petty reaction to their personal conduct, they're a genuine menace, and the state of various blue cities they control demonstrates that.
"One should vote on policy, not on how personally unpleasant left-wing activists are."
How is this irrational? Even if you agree with people on policy, it's possible to think that they can't possibly be trusted with any sort of power or responsibility.
I can’t tell you how much I hate the word micro aggression 😡😳😁
I am Gen X and we would call it “throw shade.” Same ole, same ole.
At least the phrase "throw shade" implies a certain amount of intentionality. The defining characteristic of "microaggressions" is that the person who said them didn't even intend to cause offense, and yet is still expected to grovel on hands and knees as if they did.
When you’re inside the belly of the beast I understand the inability to see the seriousness of the issue, because you don’t have a point of comparison. But I can’t understand people who aren’t in these orgs acting like this is no big deal. Offices just cannot function with this sort of internal culture. It doesn’t solve any of the issues of inequality, it just makes everything extremely self centered and divorced from reality.
I wouldn’t say I’ve ever worked in a healthy office culture per se but at least we actually like. Worked on things!
There are some parallel with the Protestant fragmentation problem (internal conflict often leads to a church split). The culture of the community creates instabilities. While sensitivity to minority concerns is not laudable, it makes consensus very difficult. Operationally it's not functional. You need to balance considerations for the fringe with a strong center.
There was an old joke that the first item on the agenda of every Irish leftist party is the split. I think by now there are at least three different explicitly Communist parties in Ireland, without a single elected representative between them.
Emo Phillips tells a great joke about Protestant factionalism. Don’t have it at my fingertips.
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
😹😹😹😹😹
Yes!
The Left famously has bitter factional fights, way, way before Woke. Think of it - activist groups are often made up of people who passionately believe in doing the right thing even at notable personal cost, not pragmatists who prize compromise and coalition. This isn't news to anyone with any acquaintance with these organizations.
Thus, I think yes, the "covering it is blowing it out of proportion" point has some merit from that. I'd put it a bit differently, as, "WHY are you doing this?". There's a big contextual difference between roughly in-group "Folks, stop doing this stuff, it's self-destructive", versus roughly out-group "Ha Ha ha, look at the weirdos, aren't they bad?". If you come off as the latter not the former, what do you think is going to be the result?
Yes, but this used to cause leftwing orgs to split into factions rather than lapse into incoherent paralysis. This is because the disputes used to be real and have actually ideological content. These disputes don't cause ideological splits because they aren't coherent demands for anything except personal attention. It's also because a lot of liberal organizations are just careerist grifts.
“The left looks for heretics, the right looks for Converts.” Old saying.
'This internal infighting ends up wasting an extraordinary amount of time. One activist, in the wake of 2020, said “My last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife.”
This is fairly shocking. Left-wing activism has been reduced to total paralysis, not by external saboteurs, but by overzealous internal activists. It would be like if almost every conservative organization couldn’t function because a group of rogue sedevacantists kept raising personal grievances under the guise of conservatism.
The problem of over the top left wing insanity isn’t just a talking point of the far right. In fact, those like me who are on the left should most want these practices to be expunged. Not only have they torpedoed the effectiveness of left-wing activism, reducing it to a muddle of personal grievance and infighting, they’ve also succeeded in making the left look totally insane.'
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx3VXcxMceF_iP59aXUBs3puchwmFkbazK?si=BfJeLBCYsQtnPTT2
welp
>One should vote on policy, not on how personally unpleasant left-wing activists are.
I disagree. Of course policy should be a big part of how you decide to cast your vote, but if a politician is standing for election, it's sensible for voters to carry out an assessment of that candidate's personal qualification for the role, independent of their policy package. People who routinely throw tantrums when they don't get their way, who cravenly acquiesce to all demands no matter how unreasonable, who can be reduced to tears because someone in their vicinity said "homeless person" rather than "person suffering from homelessness" or used gendered language, who throw valued friends and colleagues under the bus in order to advance their own careers - these sorts of people, in my view, are not suitable candidates to hold public office. And even if these crazy people are not personally standing for election, it has not escaped voters' attention that they appear to wield a disproportionate amount of power and influence within the Democrat coalition.
This is obviously true on the other side - based on his personality traits alone, I believe Trump would be a terrible President even with a wholly different set of policy positions.
You may have already written on this, but why do you say you are "on the left"? It seems your moral commitments are totally orthogonal to partisan politics.
Left wing organizations are vulnerable to hijacking from a specific kind of jerk.
I don't have a solution, but for a start I wish we had a name for this phenomenon.
The People's Front of Judea.
I've been thinking about a version of the median voter theorem in which candidates and parties are policy-motivated instead of just victory-motivated.
When one party goes insane and lunges right or left, the other party could just sit back and win, fat and happy and secure that the median voter will come to them. I think that's what the original median voter theorem would predict?
But if the activists, donors, and candidates who lead the party are motivated by policy preferences as well as victory, one party lunging to the side is an invitation for the other party to lunge in the opposite direction.
Worse: if the activists, donors, and candidates are miscalibrated/delusional about where exactly the median voter lies, one party will lunge left, then the other party will lunge right just to the point where they *think* they've still got the marginal voter, then the first party will lunge left juuuust to the point where *they* think they've still got the marginal voter, then ... etc.
Came to mind when reading this. I just want one party to "just be normal" but it's hard to see how to get back to that equilibrium.
I'm really excited about this initiative to elect more independents to the House:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/10/independents-two-party-system-house/
Americans are used to thinking of 3rd parties as dead-on-arrival. But 3rd parties have been successful in other FPTP systems like Canada and the UK, winning a few seats in Parliament.
At this point, we're in such a bad equilibrium that any sort of disruption seems like it can only be good. The ultimate solution, IMO, is the same sort of creative destruction that causes dysfunctional corporations to be replaced by functional ones. We need that for both failing corporations which no longer make good products, and also failing political parties that are no longer trying to please voters.