I've stopped caring about left and right. I care for sincerity, wherever I find it.
There's a reason I like Hanania, Scott Alexander, and Freddie deBoer. They might have very little in common politically, but sincerity is the only possible basis for a good politics. I'd rather Freddie deBoer, an aveowed Marxist, than a conservative megachurch pastor. Even though the pastor is closer to me on the issues I care about most.
I've sort of come to the conclusion over time that the essential difference between being a radical and being a moderate is a willingness to look at issues case-by-case and adopt the appropriate solution for the appropriate context rather than simply applying an ideological program to everything.
Ideologues have one set of solutions for everything (more DEI, less DEI, more regulation, deregulation, raise taxes, lower taxes, etc) and will insist that this solution is the best one regardless of the evidence in any individual case. It's blindingly obvious in any other context that this is a wildly stupid approach, but for some reason we've come to accept it in politics.
Good governance comes from nonpartisan pragmatism, but that's not sexy and doesn't make for good slogans, so it's all too rare that it prevails among those in power nowadays.
All of these people respect the process of truth-seeking, even if they arrive at different object-level conclusions. I'm convinced that that's the key to collective sanity. To require that people respect the process of rationality while greatly tolerating disagreement. If you don't tolerate disagreement, you get groupthink. If you tolerate irrationality, you get crazies within your ranks. If you tolerate irrationality while not tolerating disagreement, you get the wildly bizarre antics that Bentham has described here.
Man, I agree with this so hard, and about those three, specifically. DeBoer is an asshole, and I basically never agree with him on specific political positions, but he is utterly authentic. Ditto for Hanania and Alexander. They care about what is TRUE, even if they're not always right. How could they be? But that's what we should aspire to.
When it comes to actual politicians implementing policy this is a recipe for disaster. The thing they sincerely believe matters more than the authenticity of their persona. I would expect most Americans would be able to see this quite clearly given the current administration.
deBoer is easily one of the most boring people on earth. I have never read a single thing of his that wasn't just a restatement of the obvious. He is about as interesting as a cat peeing in a toilet. Yeah, I guess it is kind of neat that an avowed Marxist can say even a truthful banality. Just like it is still a cat peeing in a toilet, it is still a banality.
Paraphrased from Democracy and Solidarity by James Davison Hunter: So if the cultural logic of the hybrid-Enlightenment has exhausted its resources
for American society to work through its differences, how might the public
culture be revitalized? Unfortunately, in Hunter’s account, it’s not the case that
there is simply a void where the hybrid-Enlightenment once operated within the
culture, but that void has been filled with the cultural logic of nihilism. Hunter
details four ways that nihilism has become the primary mode of operation within
our public culture: epistemic failure (absence of knowable reality), ethical
incoherence (lack of moral absolutes), existential despair (lifelong struggle to
find meaning in life), and political annihilation (“a will to bring enemies to nothing”.) This nihilism has made general solidarity impossible, and the
populace has turned to counter-publics (essentially, identity groups) where
solidarity is still possible. However, the relation of those counter-publics to any
other groups that are not adjacent to them (and the engine of their internal
I don't get why these people haven't realized that no one except the deranged black activists who are actively yelling at them cares about this stupid shit. Like, it's 2025, come on. You can get half a mil for calling a black kid the n word, and these people think the left isn't woke enough?
It's honestly unbelievable that pendulum swinging hard did not rein them in at all and they still act like it's 2019 where they had all the soft power and institutions.
There's a big contingent who thinks calling a 5 year old the n word should be rewarded with half a mil, and another who thinks telling a black person you're being antagonistic means they should be removed from a PAC they were a lead organizer of.
We're too segregated in the digital sphere for Overton window to make sense I guess.
My point was not whether the incident had to do with racial animosity, which is only conclusively assumed if the races were reversed. My point is that "racial animosity" raised over $500K for the kid's defense. Any examples of a black on black murder suspect who gets $500K on go fund me?
Oh is that why the dono messages are all either praising her or insulting black people, instead of saying something like "You did wrong but I think it is being blown out of proportion" or "Punishment should fit the crime".
These people still think it's 2020. I'm glad that they have less currency in mainstream society nowadays. It's so exhausting being around them, having to constantly walk on eggshells.
Also, no offense but it is pretty clear wokeness is a central character in your own psychodrama, while the Republicans are somewhat fargrouped, like Scott Alexander described in his Harris endorsement. I'm glad you haven't let that mindkill you and that you remain strongly opposed to Trump despite him being less emotionally salient.
You call the actions of the people involved stupid. They are many things, but not stupid.
The black activists know instinctively, if not literally, that the more the Democratic party and activists bow to their loud demands, the more they can translate that into things they want. Progressive policing, welfare, DEI, immigration, whatever. To keep that power means regularly exercising it so it doesn't wane. The activists know that they will be alienating some moderates by pressing their advantage, but they think it is worth it to make sure that they remind these new Clinton wannabes who is in charge.
The strategy worked on Dean because he's young and stupid. It wouldn't work in any other context. These people aren't capable of influencing the actual democratic platform anymore, so they stay in online influencer spaces where nothing really matters.
Also, I think most of them probably are stupid people. Can't test it, but I'd wager that most of them have a digit span of like 3.
"These people aren't capable of influencing the actual democratic platform anymore, so they stay in online influencer spaces where nothing really matters."
Everything that became DEI, woke, and the worst excesses of the post Obama world started as freaks in online cubbyholes.
No, I think wokeness started in academia. But I think that stuff has been discredited and I think that democrats are in the process of distancing themselves from it.
There are democrats who want to distance themselves from it for the good of the party, but that means little when the party itself is composed of staffers and activists who remain woke with no one able to remove them.
It's debatable and not black and white. But I do think the most extreme rhetoric, exemplified by the black activists in this story, is or is going out of fashion even among people who are somewhat woke.
It started in academia but was contained to a small handful of disciplines - at that point even the humanities were pretty free of it bar the X-studies depts. But once it took off online, it spread everywhere as it's adherents entered workplaces and academia.
It really gained steam in academic circles more than three decades ago. Eventually the indoctrinated students ended up in the online platforms. And then it picked up steam in the real world when the powers to be decided it was a good way to consume revolutionary potential.
Asking someone with an accent where they are from is perfectly acceptable. This is a hill I’m willing to die on. If someone has a foreign accent, they obviously didn’t grow up in the United States and there is nothing wrong with asking where they moved here from.
Yeah, they are a bunch of geriatrics with no governing vision at all. I don’t support Trump but the existing Democrats make it really hard to make positive arguments in their favor.
Boring bureaucrats are good for governance, actually. Haven't you had enough of spectacles in your administration? Best president is one you don't have to be reminded of every other day.
When faced with truck barreling down the road at you and the puddle to your left, you don’t need a positive argument for the puddle, the negative argument is enough.
It’s definitely worth it to clean yourself off after you jump out of the way, but that’s not a reason to just stand there and get hit by the truck.
I voted Democrat for that reason, but it's still important to be able to make positive arguments for Democrats. Especially since I'm not sure having lunatics like the people in the original post in power would be any better than Trump, so the geriatrics actually represent the best of the Democrat Party which is sad.
Agreed. I haven’t heard someone on the left make a compelling articulation as to why their side should be restored to power, other than “the orange man is bad”.
And before someone says it, no, I didn’t want Trump to be in power either. I voted third party all three times he ran for office.
It isn’t even the geriatric part for me. It is that their entire professional infrastructure and network, that is around the corner to replace them when they shuffle off, are these types of spineless woke backbiters.
It's adorable that you think that. Ranking Democrats kneeling wearing kente-cloth, or loudly declaring that men are women, actually, is nutty far left performative buffoonery.
Just a cowardly person. TikTok left is just very young and very insane, they'd eat him alive for trying to go against the racism charges, a significant contingent went after him regardless because he still went on one more trip after hearing about See.
True, but this is no longer a future problem. Biden was the last centrist dem that could rally the base and appease progressives. If the dems can’t figure out how to control the fringe elements in their party, they will not be able to platform a single good candidate in time for the next presidential election.
One of the most bizarre developments of the left is that asking someone where they’re from has become a problematic question. Luckily most of the people you would actually ask this question to have no idea it’s considered offensive to leftist college kids. In my experience, most immigrants enjoy answering the question and sharing info about their home country with curious Americans. I’ve had a lot of great conversations that started with that question.
The issue is kinda weird because it’s not offensive to recent immigrants but it could be offensive to second + generation Americans due to the implication that they surely were not born here because of their race.
Thank you for posting so I could link to a good summary and not come off as an unhinged James Lindsay type. I think it's clear that these activists are whiney and unhinged and a lot of this is just jealousy for not being deemed important and not having all their needs met by a tour such as this.
The problem is that being a part-time kommissar willing to report on and disown one's friends and associates is practically the most vital element of modern leftism
This is why I've said previously that I do my best not to associate with liberals, and that I consider my place to be on the right until or unless something changes in a big way, even if my positions on the issues were to flip completely. I could disagree massively with conservatives on most things and still be far safer among them socially than I ever will be trying to survive among lefties.
I've stopped caring about left and right. I care for sincerity, wherever I find it.
There's a reason I like Hanania, Scott Alexander, and Freddie deBoer. They might have very little in common politically, but sincerity is the only possible basis for a good politics. I'd rather Freddie deBoer, an aveowed Marxist, than a conservative megachurch pastor. Even though the pastor is closer to me on the issues I care about most.
I've sort of come to the conclusion over time that the essential difference between being a radical and being a moderate is a willingness to look at issues case-by-case and adopt the appropriate solution for the appropriate context rather than simply applying an ideological program to everything.
Ideologues have one set of solutions for everything (more DEI, less DEI, more regulation, deregulation, raise taxes, lower taxes, etc) and will insist that this solution is the best one regardless of the evidence in any individual case. It's blindingly obvious in any other context that this is a wildly stupid approach, but for some reason we've come to accept it in politics.
Good governance comes from nonpartisan pragmatism, but that's not sexy and doesn't make for good slogans, so it's all too rare that it prevails among those in power nowadays.
All of these people respect the process of truth-seeking, even if they arrive at different object-level conclusions. I'm convinced that that's the key to collective sanity. To require that people respect the process of rationality while greatly tolerating disagreement. If you don't tolerate disagreement, you get groupthink. If you tolerate irrationality, you get crazies within your ranks. If you tolerate irrationality while not tolerating disagreement, you get the wildly bizarre antics that Bentham has described here.
You consider hanania sincere?
Lol. Lmao
Yes. Have you changed your mind as publicly as he has?
He got doxxed and that was just him saving his own skin. Don’t be so naive
He wrote in support of liberal democracy before the doxxing.
There is very little artifice in his writing.
I might be naive,
You are naive. He's way up there on the shameless opportunist scale.
How long have you been reading him?
You're not wrong.
I'm on the left and I'd rather a Rod Dreher than a woke left activist.
Man, I agree with this so hard, and about those three, specifically. DeBoer is an asshole, and I basically never agree with him on specific political positions, but he is utterly authentic. Ditto for Hanania and Alexander. They care about what is TRUE, even if they're not always right. How could they be? But that's what we should aspire to.
“I like Hanania”. Opinion disregarded.
When it comes to actual politicians implementing policy this is a recipe for disaster. The thing they sincerely believe matters more than the authenticity of their persona. I would expect most Americans would be able to see this quite clearly given the current administration.
deBoer is easily one of the most boring people on earth. I have never read a single thing of his that wasn't just a restatement of the obvious. He is about as interesting as a cat peeing in a toilet. Yeah, I guess it is kind of neat that an avowed Marxist can say even a truthful banality. Just like it is still a cat peeing in a toilet, it is still a banality.
Can you explain what 'the only possible basis for a good politics' is?
Paraphrased from Democracy and Solidarity by James Davison Hunter: So if the cultural logic of the hybrid-Enlightenment has exhausted its resources
for American society to work through its differences, how might the public
culture be revitalized? Unfortunately, in Hunter’s account, it’s not the case that
there is simply a void where the hybrid-Enlightenment once operated within the
culture, but that void has been filled with the cultural logic of nihilism. Hunter
details four ways that nihilism has become the primary mode of operation within
our public culture: epistemic failure (absence of knowable reality), ethical
incoherence (lack of moral absolutes), existential despair (lifelong struggle to
find meaning in life), and political annihilation (“a will to bring enemies to nothing”.) This nihilism has made general solidarity impossible, and the
populace has turned to counter-publics (essentially, identity groups) where
solidarity is still possible. However, the relation of those counter-publics to any
other groups that are not adjacent to them (and the engine of their internal
solidarity) is by and large that of ressentiment.
I don't get why these people haven't realized that no one except the deranged black activists who are actively yelling at them cares about this stupid shit. Like, it's 2025, come on. You can get half a mil for calling a black kid the n word, and these people think the left isn't woke enough?
It's honestly unbelievable that pendulum swinging hard did not rein them in at all and they still act like it's 2019 where they had all the soft power and institutions.
There's a big contingent who thinks calling a 5 year old the n word should be rewarded with half a mil, and another who thinks telling a black person you're being antagonistic means they should be removed from a PAC they were a lead organizer of.
We're too segregated in the digital sphere for Overton window to make sense I guess.
Or the half a mil to the black kid who murdered a white kid by stabbing him in the heart because he felt disrespected?
To my knowledge, that incident had nothing to do with racial animosity
My point was not whether the incident had to do with racial animosity, which is only conclusively assumed if the races were reversed. My point is that "racial animosity" raised over $500K for the kid's defense. Any examples of a black on black murder suspect who gets $500K on go fund me?
You serious?
Oh is that why the dono messages are all either praising her or insulting black people, instead of saying something like "You did wrong but I think it is being blown out of proportion" or "Punishment should fit the crime".
Exactly , Im surprised readers of this blog don’t understand what that whole fundraiser was about still.
There is a lot of cognitive dissonance on the left over race.
On the one hand niggers are objectively the worst.
On the other:
1) If we admit why blacks are the worst, all the others losers on the left will have to admit they are losers rather then oppressed too.
2) All the people with fake jobs based around trying to uplift blacks will be out of work.
3) Blacks provide a 10 point swing in the general and basically can annoit whoever they want in the Dem primary.
*than, you fucking BOOOOP
These people still think it's 2020. I'm glad that they have less currency in mainstream society nowadays. It's so exhausting being around them, having to constantly walk on eggshells.
Also, no offense but it is pretty clear wokeness is a central character in your own psychodrama, while the Republicans are somewhat fargrouped, like Scott Alexander described in his Harris endorsement. I'm glad you haven't let that mindkill you and that you remain strongly opposed to Trump despite him being less emotionally salient.
You call the actions of the people involved stupid. They are many things, but not stupid.
The black activists know instinctively, if not literally, that the more the Democratic party and activists bow to their loud demands, the more they can translate that into things they want. Progressive policing, welfare, DEI, immigration, whatever. To keep that power means regularly exercising it so it doesn't wane. The activists know that they will be alienating some moderates by pressing their advantage, but they think it is worth it to make sure that they remind these new Clinton wannabes who is in charge.
The strategy worked on Dean because he's young and stupid. It wouldn't work in any other context. These people aren't capable of influencing the actual democratic platform anymore, so they stay in online influencer spaces where nothing really matters.
Also, I think most of them probably are stupid people. Can't test it, but I'd wager that most of them have a digit span of like 3.
"These people aren't capable of influencing the actual democratic platform anymore, so they stay in online influencer spaces where nothing really matters."
Everything that became DEI, woke, and the worst excesses of the post Obama world started as freaks in online cubbyholes.
No, I think wokeness started in academia. But I think that stuff has been discredited and I think that democrats are in the process of distancing themselves from it.
There are democrats who want to distance themselves from it for the good of the party, but that means little when the party itself is composed of staffers and activists who remain woke with no one able to remove them.
It's debatable and not black and white. But I do think the most extreme rhetoric, exemplified by the black activists in this story, is or is going out of fashion even among people who are somewhat woke.
Besides Gavin Newsom is there any evidence for this?
I think they could be call concurrent phenomena.
It started in academia but was contained to a small handful of disciplines - at that point even the humanities were pretty free of it bar the X-studies depts. But once it took off online, it spread everywhere as it's adherents entered workplaces and academia.
It really gained steam in academic circles more than three decades ago. Eventually the indoctrinated students ended up in the online platforms. And then it picked up steam in the real world when the powers to be decided it was a good way to consume revolutionary potential.
Why would black activists support policies that hurt the black community?
Tragedy of the commons - it is a payday for them personally even if it hurts their community (c.f. "BLM mansions")
They may see the net results as beneficial rather than harmful.
You all are getting this wrong. It is mainly white progressives not black activists
The Curley effect.
Asking someone with an accent where they are from is perfectly acceptable. This is a hill I’m willing to die on. If someone has a foreign accent, they obviously didn’t grow up in the United States and there is nothing wrong with asking where they moved here from.
Listening to Barpod episodes like this makes it hard to ever consider voting for Dems.
Nooooooooooo! The Democrats in power aren't the same as these nutty far-left activists.
Yeah, they are a bunch of geriatrics with no governing vision at all. I don’t support Trump but the existing Democrats make it really hard to make positive arguments in their favor.
Boring bureaucrats are good for governance, actually. Haven't you had enough of spectacles in your administration? Best president is one you don't have to be reminded of every other day.
Boring bureaucrats makes prices go up and immigration go up. Very undesirable.
That’s why I voted for Biden in 2020. But apparently most voters felt differently.
When faced with truck barreling down the road at you and the puddle to your left, you don’t need a positive argument for the puddle, the negative argument is enough.
It’s definitely worth it to clean yourself off after you jump out of the way, but that’s not a reason to just stand there and get hit by the truck.
What’s to my right?
I voted Democrat for that reason, but it's still important to be able to make positive arguments for Democrats. Especially since I'm not sure having lunatics like the people in the original post in power would be any better than Trump, so the geriatrics actually represent the best of the Democrat Party which is sad.
Agreed. I haven’t heard someone on the left make a compelling articulation as to why their side should be restored to power, other than “the orange man is bad”.
And before someone says it, no, I didn’t want Trump to be in power either. I voted third party all three times he ran for office.
It isn’t even the geriatric part for me. It is that their entire professional infrastructure and network, that is around the corner to replace them when they shuffle off, are these types of spineless woke backbiters.
It's adorable that you think that. Ranking Democrats kneeling wearing kente-cloth, or loudly declaring that men are women, actually, is nutty far left performative buffoonery.
Unfortunately, the Dems in power allowed this to grow and metastasize.
But they are like dean willing to throw people under the bus if they push back on woke dogmas.
Because Dean is a bad person.
Just a cowardly person. TikTok left is just very young and very insane, they'd eat him alive for trying to go against the racism charges, a significant contingent went after him regardless because he still went on one more trip after hearing about See.
211 of 213 voted for men in women’s sports and prisons. 211 of 213. Tell me again that Congressional Democrats are rational and not brainwashed.
Yes they are. Or at least they vote as if they are. Which is effectively the same thing.
True, but this is no longer a future problem. Biden was the last centrist dem that could rally the base and appease progressives. If the dems can’t figure out how to control the fringe elements in their party, they will not be able to platform a single good candidate in time for the next presidential election.
One of the most bizarre developments of the left is that asking someone where they’re from has become a problematic question. Luckily most of the people you would actually ask this question to have no idea it’s considered offensive to leftist college kids. In my experience, most immigrants enjoy answering the question and sharing info about their home country with curious Americans. I’ve had a lot of great conversations that started with that question.
It’s become problematic because on the left your identity can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.
The issue is kinda weird because it’s not offensive to recent immigrants but it could be offensive to second + generation Americans due to the implication that they surely were not born here because of their race.
That’s why I usually ask where the person’s family is from.
Would second gen have an accent though?
Probably not, but some people ask anyway.
Ah, so you were referring to people doing this based on appearance. Yeah, I agree people shouldn't do that. Accent does see okay to me.
When you try to unfuck America but the fuck is coming from inside the house
Thank you for posting so I could link to a good summary and not come off as an unhinged James Lindsay type. I think it's clear that these activists are whiney and unhinged and a lot of this is just jealousy for not being deemed important and not having all their needs met by a tour such as this.
I’d like to see you go to a Trotskyist meeting in Britain,from what I see/hear they are significantly more “interesting” than any American group
The problem is that being a part-time kommissar willing to report on and disown one's friends and associates is practically the most vital element of modern leftism
Justice for Z!!!!
This is why I've said previously that I do my best not to associate with liberals, and that I consider my place to be on the right until or unless something changes in a big way, even if my positions on the issues were to flip completely. I could disagree massively with conservatives on most things and still be far safer among them socially than I ever will be trying to survive among lefties.
Zee if you read this you are a good person and you sound cool
It all makes sense when you realize religion never went away. It just got replaced with something else.
Reminds me of the old joke:
Q: What’s the plural of “Trotskyist”?
A: “Factions”