I find it more satisfying just to whap 'em upside the head with a rolled-up newspaper. It works as often as anything else.
Aside from saying that no such phenomena exists, we also need to be saying "Providing welfare to families who need it is so important that it's worth it if a few lazy people get welfare, too."
Won't help; "so you admit that people cheat, but you still want to do it? Liberals just want to waste my tax money!"
Pwned, I guess.
People do cheat. It's just more important not to waste excessive resources scuttling it out.
But, of course, most people who are up in arms about welfare cheats are not up in arms because they know somebody who is doing that. They are up in arms because they've heard (false) anecdotes third-hand. So if you say "well, yes, people do cheat" you're saying (as far as they're concerned) "sure, the anecdotes you've heard are all true and the system is riddled with frauds who don't want to work, but nonetheless it's important that we help the occasional person who doesn't fit those criteria."
Two-pronged response! Argue against the riddled with frauds as inaccurate, and still deal with the underlying fear.
Now you've doubled the complexity of your argument -- "well, one, it isn't that common, and two, you really shouldn't be scared of it because the benefit transcends the cost" -- into two premises that are difficult to back up without reference to convincing numbers (I doubt these exist) and convincing personal anecdotes (I've got an honest former welfare mother who pulled herself up by her bootstraps right here!), respectively.
I also don't think the problem is best described as "fear", exactly.
I don't get how "you're right, but..." would resolve the underlying fear, nor how to make the case that "it is far better to take care of our vulnerable people and a few greedy people" when many conservatives, correctly or not, believe that they believe that a generous safety net would stunt the individual instinct to advance, retard economic and technological development, trammel productive citizens' right to self-actualize with involuntary obligations to others, etc., etc.
I've not found rebutting that sort of thing with facts to make much of a dent. Because, IME, it generally has far less to do with the costs of system-cheating than it does with the race of the people they believe are doing the cheating. Just like it isn't looting or rioting unless black people do it. I mean, if you want to address waste and fraud, the military budget offers so many more fat, easy targets, but nobody on that side is working themselves into a lather about the many billions of dollars that just vanished out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
I've got an honest former welfare mother who pulled herself up by her bootstraps right here!
Well, there's J.K. Rowling.
two premises that are difficult to back up without reference to convincing numbers
Their side doesn't have convincing numbers, though.
Some of where I'm getting this from is from talking with conservative students who are presumably channeling their parents. Because I have weight of authority, I can declare that the numbers are exaggerated. But the students even concede that, and then just can't let go of the possibility of an occasional cheat. The only way I've successfully discussed this is by letting that reality stay intact, and getting into a values discussion about why the social program is worth it, despite that.
Discussing fear or anger with a stranger seems about as useful as discussing abortion.
I agree that the usual way of talking about this isn't productive, that conversation misses an emotional component.
"America is better than that" is a vague sentiment that can bridge some disagreements. In this case, pointing out that there's a black middle class that grows in size each generation is a useful fact; potentially, discussing how people (like that nice Condi Rice), families, and neighborhoods can improve over time comes next.
I also don't think the problem is best described as "fear", exactly.
Better described as being a whiny asshole, maybe?
Better described as being a whiny asshole, maybe?
But when people are being assholes, there's often a fear underneath. Fear turns people into little shits.
Their side doesn't have give a good goddamn about convincing numbers, though.
See: climate change isn't happening, the budget can be balanced by cutting foreign aid and welfare, the government just took over the entire health care system, Social Security is broke, white Christians are an oppressed minority, etc.
Some people just find it intolerable that other people get something for nothing. They can't sleep at night, because some people get health insurance for free, while they have to go to work day after day to get health insurance. And going to work day after day without being able to sleep at night can make a person very cranky.
white Christians are an oppressed minority
No, no, that one's true. Didn't you hear?
re: 14
Sure. I'm just not sure that much of that fear is responsive to reasoned appeal and respectful compassionate pandering. The centre and centre-left has been bending over backwards to assuage the concerns of a bunch of unreasonable whining cowards for decades; cowards who are utterly unresponsive to factual evidence or appeals to empathy with their fellow humans. They are arseholes. They need to be _beaten_.
If only we could all be free riders! [Sigh]
Associating a lack of empathy with either weakness or the vanished past or both would redirect pride and anger in less destructive directions.
cowards who are utterly unresponsive to factual evidence or appeals to empathy with their fellow humans.
Because neither of these deal with the fear. I'm not saying that fear justifies acting like a complete shit; just that you don't get anywhere with them if you don't address their fear.
Counterargument: it takes two to have a conversation. If they won't honestly engage, there's nothing to be said. But on occasion, you do have a sincere conversation with someone who holds abhorrent views.
[C]owards who are utterly unresponsive to factual evidence or appeals to empathy with their fellow humans. They are arseholes. They need to be _beaten_.
But who will bell the cat beat the people whose emotions are unlike mine own?
Associating a lack of empathy with either weakness or the vanished past or both would redirect pride and anger in less destructive directions.
This risks making the other person feel manipulated. "Couldn't you take your existing POV and come to my conclusions via these routes?"
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NMM to Farley Granger
Side Street, Edge of Doom, Senso are lesser known gems. He had a good run for a while.
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re: 21
People have been addressing their fear for decades. The sorts of things you suggest in the OP are exactly the sorts of things that everyone always tells them. Obviously, you are interacting with college students, who are at the sort of age where possibly their minds can be changed by friendly debate. That's fine. But as Apo and others have said above, you aren't going to alter the collective mind of the 'right'.
I'd be interested in hearing more of Heebie's (and anyone else's) successful conversations with conservatives about this sort of thing. It's pretty obvious that any impersonal channel is going to be dismissed out of hand, but discussions between people familiar with each other should have more success, and it's my impression that most people tend to avoid this sort of personal confrontation despite it being perhaps the only method of reaching the opposition.
What Apo said was:
I've not found rebutting that sort of thing with facts to make much of a dent. Because, IME, it generally has far less to do with the costs of system-cheating than it does with the race of the people they believe are doing the cheating.
Fear underlies racism.
Fear isn't some sort of magic universal explaining acid that dissolves away moral and political problems.
William Greider's follow-up book Who Will Beat the People? was greeted with confusion from his fans.
re: 27
And I was referring to 15.
I'd be interested in hearing more of Heebie's (and anyone else's) successful conversations with conservatives about this sort of thing.
College really does have a liberalizing effect on students, although I imagine the effect goes away pretty quickly if you're re-immersed in conservative people. I bet Helpy-chalk has a decent answer to this question.
Because the topic only comes up for me incidentally, I don't ever have ongoing conversations about politics with students. So while they'll often appear gratifyingly thoughtful during the conversation, I don't know what sticks when they walk out the door.
28: Fear of outgroups is a pretty good general explanation for conservative thought, though.
Because the topic only comes up for me incidentally, I don't ever have ongoing conversations about politics with students.
You say this, but I bet you're teaching math with a liberal bias.
30: 15 is about the people putting the propaganda out. I said in the OP that the people putting the propaganda out are corrupt crooks, but the people susceptible to the propaganda are fearful.
Also:
Fear isn't some sort of magic universal explaining acid that dissolves away moral and political problems.
Fear underlies everything. Being unwilling to reflect on your fear makes you an immoral asshole. A person is not absolved from being an asshole just because there's fear underneath. But you're not going to get anywhere with them, unless you acknowledge their fear.
re: 32
Up to a point, yes, but it's also just another way of saying 'they are arseholes'. I'm being glib, but all these attempts to understand and reach-out to conservatives are just another thing for them to make use of in their acquisition and retention of the power to do ill.
I sit on a church board that gives out funds for the poor. Fear that donated funds are being used for unintended purposes takes up about 10-20% of our conversation.
That being said, I can't think of very many people we've turned down. (1 in 10? We're not well advertised, and we try to stay that way.)
College really does have a liberalizing effect on students
I'm reminded of that Neiwert article Witt(?) linked recently that offered College as one of the primary causes of people leaving closed groups. Here again the main mechanism is being exposed on a personal level to diverse viewpoints.
But you're not going to get anywhere with them, unless you acknowledge their fear.
But their fear is repeatedly pandered to and acknowledged. Both our countries are assaulted by endless waves of legislation and talk about legislation that's designed to pander to the fear these immoral assholes feel. Never has there been a bunch of more molly-coddled whinging fucks. They don't live in a world in which their fears are continually mocked, or disparaged, in which their cowardice and moral bankruptcy is held up as the pathetic weak-minded idiocy it is. People aren't calling them on this to their face. If we did live in that kind of world, I could buy the whole 'we need to acknowledge' their fear, but we don't.
Has anybody tried calling them on it? Rechristening 'Red America' as 'Yellow America'? Telling them to grow a pair Asking if they sleep with the light on whenever they start? As a sort of constant drumbeat the way they hammer their little lies.
Heebie, I'll grant that talking to college students is likely to have a better chance of success than with almost any other group.
Never has there been a bunch of more molly-coddled whinging fucks.
God, no kidding. Half the time, the only proper response to their fears is "Are you on drugs?"
Take the link in 17 (please) of Gingrich speaking to John Hagee's flock of broketooth morons. "I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists." What kind of secular atheist country is dominated by religious fundamentalists?
Both our countries are assaulted by endless waves of legislation and talk about legislation that's designed to pander to the fear these immoral assholes feel.
Pandering to a fear is not what I'm talking about. Legislation designed to do so just provides infrastructure that legitimizes original propaganda.
A person deals with fear by considering what would happen if the fear came true. A welfare system with a few cheats is a world that is pretty great.
Would heebie's approach sound more productive if it were described as debunking rather than acknowledging? What she's talking about is convincing people "Even if you're right about the facts you're asserting [e.g., that welfare cheats exist], they're not worth being afraid of. I understand your fear, and can assure you that the thing you're afraid of really isn't scary."
Like everyone says, this is only going to work on the young and flexible, who aren't really committed to their ideological positions. But there's not much that's going to work on anyone else.
In my experience, sometimes it's fear and sometimes it's projection. It took me a long time to understand that sometimes people are really saying "I'm afraid that if I were in that situation, I would try to cheat the system."
You can't confront that head-on, of course, so what I try to do is reaffirm my own values -- "Well, I'd rather live in a world where we gave a few people food stamps that don't really need them, than a world where we were so scared of somebody getting a little extra that we let other people starve."
The usual response is to tell me I'm naive about the percentage of cheaters (left unsaid is that the cheaters are of an racial/ethnic group other than the speaker's). The only answer at that point is is just a calm, firm, "Well, I'm afraid I disagree with you there."
Anyway, I'm off to the hospital to meet my friend's new baby.
In my experience, sometimes it's fear and sometimes it's projection. It took me a long time to understand that sometimes people are really saying "I'm afraid that if I were in that situation, I would try to cheat the system."
I'd buy this as a corollary.
re: 43
Well, yeah, as I said above [and Apo in 41.1] maybe college students are a reachable audience. But this sort of debunking explanation just _is_ the sort of thing that liberals do all the time.
sometimes it's projection
This having been quite well established in a multitude of cases of prominent anti-gay agitators.
It's never a bad bet to assume projection with conservatives.
41: Yglesias explains Gingrich http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2011/03/gingrich-warns-america-may-become-a-secular-atheist-country-dominated-by-radical-islamists/#
Isn't it kind of sad that Apo is so out of touch with his own people that he needs trust-fund boy Yggles to explain Red America to him?
But when people are being assholes, there's often a fear underneath. Fear turns people into little shits.
Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
Alternately, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to having your limbs cut off and being left to die on a lava field. So, yes, it's important to confront these fears.
And of course most people won't respond; most people won't respond to anything. The question isn't what's likely to work, but what's least unlikely to work. I'm not surprised that Heebie's approach has had some success, and the fact that it's unlikely to reach everyone shouldn't negate that.
Yeah. I think "fear" is kind of a charitable explanation. I mean, yes, most people are frightened of something, including people who are not whinging assholes. The fear itself is not the problem, and, you know, you're never, ever going to get rid of it, because bad stuff happens and the world is an uncertain place. It's channeling fear into mean-spirited resentment and hate that is a problem.
Moreover, there are people who just live their lives with a lot of fear. People who don't do well with change or new experiences? Yeah, they're always going to be afraid, no matter what. So you have to deal with what they perceive as socially acceptable ways to express or manage that fear. I favor making the most objectionable expressions of this fear unacceptable through more fear, because goddammit they understand it and it works: public shaming, mockery, and loss of status.
And you know what? They should be shamed and mocked, not just because it might work (I mean, like an organized effort that will never happen, but whatever), but because they are fucking moral cowards who should be ashamed.
Alternatively, the white Christian tribalism thing isn't gonna go away until they are very definitively not a majority any longer.* (Welcome, hispanics!) And probably it's going to get crazier before that happens. So. Fun for everyone!
*I mean, it's not gonna go away even then, but maybe it will be less of a force.
The problem with dealing with people's very real concerns, etc, etc, is that it's too fucking long. Everything the enemy uses is short. They speak in headlines and write in advertisements for themselves.
This principle is observable in all sorts of settings. In the UK, what comes to mind is that all the funny baroque twists on the welfare system introduced to cheer up the arseholes, as well as being very difficult to navigate, are damned expensive. There are hordes of people up in the National Insurance processing centre in Longbenton (a whole suburb of Newcastle with its own postcode that exists solely to process enormous numbers of forms) who are basically there to implement the pandering.
Mockery is fun, but I'm not convinced it wins many converts.
I mean, like an organized effort that will never happen, but whatever
Why not? They can do it. What's wrong with the good guys?
the white Christian tribalism thing isn't gonna go away until they are very definitively not a majority any longer
I don't follow. Seems like that would intensify the tribalism.
56: I don't think aiming for "converts" in the sense that I normally understand it is really the goal. How many people are really engaged with politics and have well defined beliefs? How many have opinions about policy on the merits? Like, four. Most people just go with what they consider to be socially acceptable or beneficially for themselves within the context of their own social groups, large and small.
Conservatives only care about free riders when it suits them. The whole philosophy of economic libertarianism is built around the free ride of protecting one's fortune from the expectation that one should contribute back to the society that fostered it.
59: Yeah, but a relatively smaller tribe has less ability to fuck everything up for everyone else. Theoretically. I mean, they will absolutely lose their shit, but maybe it will be just by themselves in a corner and they won't blow anything up. You know, if we're lucky.
I just reread 62, and it seems hopelessly optimistic, to the point of denial. Probably we're kind of fucked.
I don't think aiming for "converts"
meet
Most people just go with what they consider to be socially acceptable
To explain, mockery is more likely to make people withdraw into a more comfortable social circle and consider you a source of disinformation.
The only way I can think of beat the fear mindset is to figure out what scares these people more than whatever it is they are afraid of. Then present your solutions as the anti-dote to that. The reason a lot of the economic reforms of the 1930s manage to get through was that the upper class was even more afraid of the alternative - Bolshevik revolution.
For example, people seem to be unreasonably(to my mind) freaked out about radioactivity right now... there ought to be a way to turn that fear into broader support for renewable energy sources.
I think the fear is not necessarily of others, primarily, as much as it is fear of not being the default American. It's a stupid fear, compared to the fears of the groups they're attacking. But stupid fears are the really horrible ones to endure because you know how stupid they are. When you fear something real, you can get motivated and angry. When you fear something dumb (like not being able to make that really funny darkie joke at work without being called a racist), you just get resentful and clannish.
(darky? darkey? I guess I usually see it in the plural--darkies.)
I really disagree that shaming is going to lead to good outcomes. Shame, guilt and fear only produce more shame, guilt and fear.
I think we're conflating two different things here. As was said upthread, there's not much to be done about the political figures who bank on fear to win. The issue is what about the many thousands of individual, not-very-political people who hold barely-examined reflective beliefs that are actively harmful to others? And in that case, I think heebie is exactly right: It's worth having conversations, it's important not to be manipulative or condescending, and you do have to honor (not validate, but acknowledge) the fear that people feel.
One of the most important parts of my conversations on these issues is to understand that sometimes, change feels like a loss. If you don't acknowledge that, then you end up sounding like just another rah-rah cities are great, diversity is great, free trade is great, more education will get you higher on the ladder true believer.
For people who associate cities with financial costs and crime, think diversity is having Irish and Italian Catholics on the same block, have watched the jobs of their youth dry up and disappear offshore, and are now watching their adult children struggle to get a decent job with a boatload of postsecondary education and debt, not acknowledging their perceptions is tantamount to erasing their experience. And ain't nobody ever liked having their experience erased.
The existence of contractors who cheat on military contracts is a compelling case for shutting down the military. Bernie Madoff is a compelling reason to shut down all hedge funds. Dishonest advertizing is a reason to shut down all markets. Violations of the analogy ban are a reason to shut down the blog.
Mocking the other side is a good means of rallying your own troops, however.
Wasn't there a good discussion here and on Coates' blog about how to deal with expressions of racism? This seems like an analogous problem.
darky? darkey?
The Scrabble dictionary accepts both.
"I've not found rebutting that sort of thing with facts to make much of a dent. Because, IME, it generally has far less to do with the costs of system-cheating than it does with the race of the people they believe are doing the cheating. "
I was going to say something like this. In a racially homogeneous society, it is easy to assume that the person getting support is someone like you. In a racially heterogeneous society, the person getting support may not be someone that looks like you. For some reason this can work people up. I believe this is the reason we don't as good of a safety net as every other first world country.
It's not all racial. My mom recently told me that two of my crazy right-wing cousins are having an epic fight over FB because one is a fundamentalist Quiverfull type on welfare who is naming the first of his many many children an obscure ancient Hebrew name, and the other is a xenophobic libertarian birther who thinks Cousin 1 is just stealing her personal money so he can give all his sperm disgusting anti-American names.
I.e., I think we can use Facebook to tear these two constituencies apart. Yay!
In the long term, sure, people's views can be changed. Much of our society is massively more liberal than it once was, and the tenor of our discourse has shifted over time through the gradual accumulation of effort. It's not for nothing that the right has been engaged in a 40 year war to roll this back. However, it has taken them decades and a fuck-ton of money. Of course efforts should be made to shift public discourse back, and to change what the media portray as the sensible, normal default world view. But it'll take a long time.
I'd still argue that the way to do it is going to have involve a lot more aggression, piss-taking, outright hostility, and a lot less rolling over and playing dead whenever the right gets its dander up. In the short term, we need to stop these fuckers.
re: 75
That's an overly simplistic answer, I think. You get the same hostility to welfare claimants here, and it's often not wrapped up on racial hostility, rather it's about social class. The basic form of the discourse, and the way it's exploited by the evil bastards in the right-wing press and political parties is near identical, though.
and a lot less rolling over and playing dead whenever the right gets its dander up
I don't think anyone here is arguing this.
I would agree that aggression and mockery have shown some effectiveness against the gatekeepers in the press.
This isn't "fear". "Fear" is the perception of a risk that something bad but currently unknown might happen to you. But in general the tax bill and the cost of the welfare system is a known quantity; people aren't complaining that welfare cheats might increase in number and thus drive up the cost, they're complaining about the welfare cheats getting something out of the existing and known pot of welfare spending right now. The word for that emotional reaction is "hate", not "fear".
Viz, the misnamed "homophobia", which is not really a "fear" that other people are having gay sex; also, the idea that people who are opposed to gay marriage are telling the truth when they claim that they "fear" that it will have deleterious effects on their own relationship is one of those rare instances when it is actively insulting to people to take them seriously.
82: On the contrary, I think some of it absolutely is fear. It's fear that there won't be enough, fanned by leaders who capitalize on perceived scarcity and zero-sum thinking to pit people against each other.
I'd love to stay and argue this further, but lunch is over and I need to get ready to for a conversation about why education and workforce spending is not either/or.
"homophobia", which is not really a "fear" that other people are having gay sex
More often than not, it's a fear that, deep down, they themselves would enjoy having gay sex.
I really disagree that shaming is going to lead to good outcomes.
I'm not sure what else was really in Martin Luther King's toolkit.
I mean. I would argue that the left has been trying to engage these people on a good faith basis in a painfully earnest way for years, in an attempt to change their minds and deal with their fear and all the rest, and it hasn't worked at all. Time for something new.
I really disagree that shaming is going to lead to good outcomes.
Also, at some point, it's going to become obvious that being nice isn't going to work.
Also, isn't there inherent good in calling out moral cretinism (thanks, neb!) for what it is? I think we're all damaged when we fail to do so loudly and without compromise, when we fail to meet it with the aggression warranted by a true existential threat. I mean, torture is accepted now. What the fuck, you know?
I do think there is fear that everything they grew up learning had world-endingly bad consequences might not, and so they have to be enforced, because otherwise why did they live their lives this way? If you could live your life without self-loathing, what is the point?
I have the debate with my mom about health care all the time. She keeps saying, "You know how some people are. They'll just go to the doctor, like, just to take advantage." This is coming from a woman who hasn't seen a doctor since she broke her foot in 1989 because she fears them so much. "Mom, no one goes to the doctor for no reason. Everyone hates it. They go because they're sick." Her fantasy is that people who live without her personal phobia treat going to the doctor like some kind of great party that she's missing out on, so fuck them.
87: I say this with as little sarcasm as possible, but could devising some new, more persuasive arguments for some new, interesting liberal positions be the answer? I like to think I'm as liberal as the next narcissistic loner, but I feel like I've been seeing and hearing liberals -- even the most vigorous happy warrior-types -- running through the same few arguments for the same few proposals/policies for my entire existence.
And a pool cue. I love this picture so very much.
76 is funny in a sort of sad way.
83: For some people it really is fear. The god of the fundies is a nasty bastard. He shellacked New Orleans because of girls showing their boobies for beads. He'll do a hell of a lot worse for rampant buttsex.
Argh -- one last time -- there is a major difference between bad-faith leaders (I mean media personalities and pundits at least as much as elected officials) and individual ordinary citizens, who are just as likely NOT to be arguing in bad faith, and for whom a presumption of good faith is a vital precursor to any kind of dialogue.
Oh, and I'm most familiar with MLK using shame next to a vision of you as your best self and the country as its best self. Not merely as a whip to beat people and say how terrible they are and how ashamed they should be.
Incidentally, Kotsko is blogging up a storm on somewhat related topics on An und Fur Sich at the moment.
re: 90
Yes!
re: 93
Suave!
Oh, and I'm most familiar with MLK using shame next to a vision of you as your best self and the country as its best self.
Yeah, this is what I would like more of. Shaming only works if people have the option of being part of the group who aren't being shamed. But it needs the shame to work.
To expand on 86, a lot of my Southern buddies would tell you that the civil rights movement only pushed the hatred under the surface. "You can't coerce open-mindedness," they would say.
And there's a certain truth in that. But you can get people to behave better, and that matters a lot.
It is repugnant to say "four-year-olds don't deserve to have healthcare," and people who say things like that ought to be ashamed. A climate of shame is something decent people ought to - and, in fact, do - cultivate.
I would argue that the left has been trying to engage these people on a good faith basis in a painfully earnest way for years, in an attempt to change their minds and deal with their fear and all the rest, and it hasn't worked at all.
Um, yes it has. It hasn't produced a perfect utopia, and there are often setbacks and retrenchment, but as Ttam said, "Much of our society is massively more liberal than it once was, and the tenor of our discourse has shifted over time through the gradual accumulation of effort." The Voting Rights Act got passed, miscegnation laws struck down, gay marriage is legal in a growing number of jurisdictions, etc. etc. etc. These results haven't been caused exclusively by earnest, good-faith engagement, of course, but that's been an important part of the mix in swaying public opinion in the right direction.
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Can anyone (probably UKers) explain the meaning and usage of the phrase "it's so moorish"? From searches and context it seems something like the American "it's so rich" (i.e. tasty but fatty), and the OED says it can mean "soft, spongy," but the searches also have so much punning usage (travel articles about Morocco and southern Spain) that I wonder I'm misspelling it, and all my search results are either deliberate puns or accidental misspellings.
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Aww, #1 won the thread at the beginning, except i don't subscribe to a newspaper so some other implement will have to do
*isn't.
Further: we've normalized monstrosity by not calling it monstrosity, but assuming there's some validity to the feelings that give rise to it. You know what, I don't care if their feelings are valid. This is a fucking problem.
For people who associate cities with financial costs and crime, think diversity is having Irish and Italian Catholics on the same block, have watched the jobs of their youth dry up and disappear offshore, and are now watching their adult children struggle to get a decent job with a boatload of postsecondary education and debt, not acknowledging their perceptions is tantamount to erasing their experience. And ain't nobody ever liked having their experience erased.
Strangely, "the niggers took all the welfare and there's none left for anyone else" doesn't appear in this list of experiences because they didn't have that experience. Nobody did. If the "perceptions" they wanted "acknowledged" really were jobs and average earnings growth, we wouldn't be having this argument. We would, in fact, have already won. If the other side were forced to defend their record on those issues, well, they have nothing worth defending and nothing to defend it with.
So, of course, they try to argue about a lot of old fearmongering bollocks instead as a substitute.
101 - Isn't it "moreish"? Addictively delicious. And thus "moorish" is the pun.
101: I'd always assumed it was "more-ish" as in it makes you want more. E.g. "heroin isn't addictive, it's just extremely moreish".
"it's so moorish"
Not spelled that way. It's so more-ish, i.e. makes you want more.
105: That looks like it. Nice word, I'd never heard it.
To be absurdly optimistic for a moment, I do think it's possible for people to change, especially after going through a period when they're forced to say what they really think to or in front of a potential victim of their fear/hatred. My faith is genuinely on the side that you have to be almost non-functionally psychotic to be a young person (I've given up on the old ones) who can say to someone you know, to their face, that you deserve things from the government that they don't, on the basis of your being white, male, straight, American, Christian, or whatever. I just think that they spend most of their time in little huddles with their people talking about Them.
I've got this bullshit kid in one of my classes this semester who is going through this tough time. There are moments when we're talking about oppression or political rhetoric when he's nodding or jaw-dropped and then nodding, but then he just has to interrupt me if I talk about sexism (which, btw, I pride myself on being SUPER GOOD AT with patriarchy-loving dudes) to tell me he thinks I'm too ugly to have to look at for 75 minutes, and that's just how "people" are; women professors just have to take good care of their bodies bc evolution and the veldt and stuff.
Why is he so fucking rude? He's rude because he's confronting himself, and that makes people act crazy. He's rude for the same reason that I get students wanting to tell me about their favorite rape scenes in movies or the kind of shit they most like to take when we read Swift--because it's disturbing to read something that makes you see yourself in a new way, and it makes you act crazy.
But I think you only have a prayer of becoming a decent human if you go through the crazy part. I have a right to tell people exactly what I think of their crazy bullshit, and I do, but I think it is important for them to get it out somehow.
112: No you're not. I want absolutely no more of your pwning, sir.
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This simply shows how much the demos, recalls, and lawsuits/courts have terrified Walker and The Repubs, right?
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100: I'm not gonna speak to stuff that I only know about from books, because, well, I feel like I don't know what I'm talking about. (Although my understanding of the civil rights movement is not that it's a success story primarily of the American left.)
But gay rights? You know what I didn't see until it became riskless to do so? Politicians of the American left saying anything good about gay rights. To my memory, politicians did not lead on gay rights. They followed demographic shifts. And those demographic shifts happened because the gay rights movement -- you know, gay people, not the American liberal political class -- worked fucking hard at visibility and attaining a sense of normalcy.
Maybe we have different notions of what we mean when we refer to the American left. If you're talking about established political institutions, I think you're wrong. These changes have been brought about by the sustained effort of the groups affected by them; the left just accepted it earlier.
I haven't most of the thread, but IMO the relevant fear has been midiagnosed. I don't think your average conservative on the street is very (or very sincerely) concerned about people cheating the system in a strict manner -- i.e., people who have not met all of the technical legal requirements to get SSI or disability benefits or whatever. They have a more general fear that there are people out there who are getting "something for nothing" which is a two-sided fear; both that the welfare recipient's acceptance of charity without work somehow denigrates the (supposedly) hard work that the conservative guy does, and is therefore unfair, and (more charitably) that there is something personally degrading to the welfare recipient in getting something for nothing. It's a kind of a theory of justice, not just some kind of fear that people aren't meeting legal requirements.
I haven't most of the thread, but IMO the relevant fear has been midiagnosed. I don't think your average conservative on the street is very (or very sincerely) concerned about people cheating the system in a strict manner -- i.e., people who have not met all of the technical legal requirements to get SSI or disability benefits or whatever. They have a more general fear that there are people out there who are getting "something for nothing" which is a two-sided fear; both that the welfare recipient's acceptance of charity without work somehow denigrates the (supposedly) hard work that the conservative guy does, and is therefore unfair, and (more charitably) that there is something personally degrading to the welfare recipient in getting something for nothing. It's a kind of a theory of justice, not just some kind of fear that people aren't meeting legal requirements.
re: 100
Yes, but I wouldn't endorse all of that. I think a lot of these battles were substantially fought decades ago, when the left was a damn sight more pipe-swinging than it is now. And there has been a substantial and well-funded effort to roll it back.
further to 100, and to 119:
Yeah, maybe this is partially because the left has been almost completely fucking sissified since I've been paying attention.
re: 113
Yet more evidence for how you are a more forgiving person than many.
he just has to interrupt me if I talk about sexism ... to tell me he thinks I'm too ugly to have to look at for 75 minutes
"Or how about you fuck out of out my class and don't come back. BTW, you've failed."
Part of it is that conservatives in general--and *Christian* conservatives in particular, with the centrality of the crucifixion torture narrative--have an entire worldview that is built around punishment. The resentment isn't that somebody might get an undeserved reward; it's that somebody might not get a deserved punishment. Therefore, oppose birth control because might not get stuck with a unwanted baby for having premarital sex. Oppose condom or clean needle distribution because somebody might not get the deadly disease they obviously deserve. Oppose social programs because somebody might not end up homeless. Et cetera.
theory of justice
Right. It's a real terror that the system of inflexible-perfection-or-death that they grew up with isn't actually enforced. What if premarital sex doesn't lead to single pregnant women tragically hanging themselves in the backyard? What if not getting straight A's doesn't mean you end up an unemployed alcoholic living with his mother at 45? Honestly, this is the kind of shit I grew up hearing, and my students grew up with it, and they are deeply disturbed when I say I have had a pretty successful grad school run with C's and F's on my undergrad and high school transcripts, or that I did drugs in college for a while before deciding I wasn't into it.
Yeah, AWB, that dude just sounds like a woman hater. You being in a position of authority with respect to him has got to drive him completely insane. Do you honestly think there's a chance he comes out of this experience not hating women so much? With a changed view of the world? Or maybe just having the seed planted?
God that sounds like a tough job.
This scapegoating of undereducated poor whites is eerily similar to the conservative scapegoating of poor minorities, who apparently have nearly unlimited power to hold the budgeting process hostage -- such that going against their interests is a brave or, as the discourse usually has it, a "tough" choice. Who is to blame for our nation's problems in this framework? Is it the politicians who are primarily accountable to the people who fund their campaigns? Is it the economic elites who always choose narrow self-interest over anything recognizable as the public good? No, it's our fellow citizens, who are either stupid or lazy depending on whether you're a Democrat or Republican.This is a truly bipartisan feat of weaponizing debate: mobilizing the fantasy that political outcomes are determined by a broad public debate in order to get us to turn against our fellow citizens as enemies rather than what they mostly are -- fellow sufferers who are continually being screwed over and have no idea what to do about it.
121: Believe me, it took all my power not to say, "Maybe I should grade you based on my experience of having to look at your ugly fucking face for 75 minutes at a time, rather than on what a stupid shithead you are." But it wasn't really necessary. The kid is a douchebag because he was raised by douchebags, and he's getting a chance now to find out how far being an asshole is going to get him outside of that circle.
how far being an asshole is going to get him outside of that circle.
If there's one thing assholes aren't good at, it's getting very far outside the circle.
Part of it is that conservatives in general--and *Christian* conservatives in particular, with the centrality of the crucifixion torture narrative--have an entire worldview that is built around punishment.
This, and AWB's 123, strike me as insightful, likely very true, and profoundly depressing.
What do you do with that? Seriously? And when and why did they stop focussing on the afterlife as the appropriate venue for Sweet Punishment and Rue, and start thinking it should happen now, today, with those people over there that they don't like?
128: Prolapse is no laughing matter, my friend.
122 -- I'm sure Rob Bell is not the hero of anyone on this blog (he's not mine), but the awesome fury with which his fellow megachurchers have turned on him once he started questioning the centrality of Hell to American evangelicals is impressive to behold.
More often than not, it's a fear that, deep down, they themselves would enjoy having gay sex
we should all have such fears ...
Surely, the only way this would make a lick of sense is "fear that they would enjoy having gay sex, which would make them gay, and they hate gays". It ain't fear.
See what happens when you stray from the path?
129: The first thing they have to do is learn to forgive themselves. They want to see justice externalized because they both fear and want it for themselves. If they don't have the balls to fuck up the way I have and test the justice system, they long to see it enacted on others. That's why gay dudes are the meanest homophobes in the world, because they hate themselves but fear judgment. They want to get the pain vicariously.
With homophobic students, I always just say that I'm sorry their own experiences with gay sex were so unpleasant, but some of us really enjoy it.
They want to get the pain vicariously.
...and I'll add that this is why they love seeing Jesus get beaten in the Passion plays so much. Seeing someone else take on the burden of your own sin is the release they're always looking for.
It's a real terror that the system of inflexible-perfection-or-death that they grew up with isn't actually enforced
Again, something of a first world problem. Christ, they're scared of liking gay sex, scared of not being punished ... at some point you have to say a guy is just fucking yeller.
I mean, what else are they scared of? Delicious hamburgers? Winning at basketball? Puppies?
If they don't have the balls to fuck up the way I have....
When you hear the words "You think you're better'n me?," you have not been as persuasive as you think.
Puppies?
The little bastards have surprisingly sharp teeth.
Delicious hamburgers?
PRIONS! AAAAAUGH!
I have never seen shaming that relies on calling people assholes ever motivate anyone to better behavior. All that does is lead to digging the trenches deeper. (If anyone can think of a counter example, I'd be happy to accept it, I just literally can't think of a single one.)
Shaming that relies on the message that "you are better than this" does work, and that was what was at the core of MLK's appeal. (And oh, the appeal that you are better than the USSR, so stop treating your minorities badly, that helped too.)
Of course, I have no idea how you translate the message of "you are better than this" to people who already think they are better, or who actively derive pleasure from punishing many for the failings of a few.
116: I was responding to 87 and your apparent claim that what has been tried up to now hasn't worked at all and it's time for something new. I took that to mean that you perceived there to have been no progress whatsoever. You now seem to be claiming that there has been progress. I agree with you, and my further point was that engagement is part of the mix in bringing about such changes.
As you said, "These changes have been brought about by the sustained effort of the groups affected by them; the left just accepted it earlier." Do you think engagement had no part to play in creating that acceptance? Was it all done with riots and megaphones?
I haven't read the thread, but I think the phrase "eerily similar" should be restricted to things like the Kennedy and Lincoln had vice presidents named Johnson etc. stuff. Which isn't really eerie, but is at least kind of odd.
There's a very strange if ... then logic at work behind this steady stream of questions and questioners. The idea seems to be that if you believe that Jesus said to feed the hungry, then you must not believe that Jesus was the Christ, the only begotten Son of God. Or if you believe that the origin stories of the early chapters of Genesis were not written as journalistic accounts ("Dateline: Eden") and thus should not be read as such, then you must not believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, vindicated by God and victorious once and for all over sin and death.
Very, very strange logic, that. I do not see how the supposition follows, but I am no longer surprised to see the supposition made. (It's being made again, right now, as the next wave of inquisitors parses the words "for all" in the paragraph above. I shall be hearing from them shortly, I'm sure.)
Ultimately, I suppose, the logic of this illogic is the idea that any Christian who is not precisely and exactly the kind of Christian that one's particular megapastor or favored author or radio host demands all Christians to be isn't really a Christian at all, just a "liberal" impostor claiming the name to lead the unwary astray. For most of my inquisitors, it seems, the world is filled with such impostors. And that makes the world a very scary place.
I remember being taught what it meant to live in such a frightening, perilous world. It was not pleasant.
Do you think engagement had no part to play in creating that acceptance? Was it all done with riots and megaphones?
And television. I'm not kidding. My memory of the evolution of gay rights is primarily that of watching a lot of angry gays march and protest and be really loud, and then get themselves on television and other cultural venues while politicians sold us out, constantly. Honestly, the political landscape was bleak. I was attuned to this with the paranoia of someone who came from a gay family, and was often in the position of having to be closeted about it either for my own safety or to protect my parents' employment.
I think more than anything people just got used to the idea of gay people, and that had almost everything to do with gay people making sure they were seen and heard. And when it was safe, political institutions* and politicians followed. They really don't get to take credit for it now.
*I'm not speaking of those created by the gays themselves, obviously.
. . . political institutions* and politicians followed. They really don't get to take credit for it now.
I don't think I implied that they did, or in fact even mentioned political institutions and politicians. I seriously feel that we're having two different conversations.
I seriously feel that we're having two different conversations.
This seems increasingly likely, yes.
145: Gays are more accepted now for the same reason that there is less anti-semitism. Gays, like Jews, were able to reach the masses through their infiltration of the entertainment world.
149: Clearly the fact that Will and Jack were so angry all the time and went around yelling at people and punching them was what made them seem like such normal Americans.
The resentment isn't that somebody might get an undeserved reward; it's that somebody might not get a deserved punishment.
This is exactly right. (There is fear underlying this resentment - fear that your belief system is a house of cards, etc, but this is exactly the mechanism.)
I can't believe no-one has yet called apo on his racist scrabble-rousing in 73, or at least tried to talk to him about his obvious fear of losing a match to a social inferior.
12[23] make sense of the link between conservatism and corporal punishment in child-rearing. Which, I guess, makes 1 even more correct.
150:
I didnt hit anyone! In fact, I was very nice to Sir Kraab.
154: Stop trying to engage me earnestly, will. You know that's never worked, and it won't now.
On the general topic of "how is the left doing" I've long believed that the baisc story is that the individualistic left is doing specatcularly well and the communitarian/social solidarity left is doing terribly. Clearly this is the best time in world history to be a gay man or woman, but if you want a steady job with less risk and a community you could feel attached to and taken care of by, you were better off in 1950 and things just get worse and worse. Unsurprisingly, those parts of the left agenda that match up well with capitalism do well, those that don't, don't.
That is also why my view is that the real enemy is libertarianism, not fundamentalist christianity. The biggest part of the conservative story is an internalization of the notion that punishment must be justified and enforced in order for capitalism to work.
I think it's the strong individualism (really, the prior sense of a just order based on punishment) that undergirds the worst part of modern right-wing American religion, rather than the religion underlying the individualism. We know that desert-based punishment versions of protestantism are consistent with a pretty wide range of social solidarity mechanisms (e.g., the puritans in New England had something close to a welfare state, as do even the Mormons in their way); the new-school conservative megachurches seem driven by a particular version of individual desert that doesn't have much to do with religion per se but that has a lot to do with the ideological apparatus of Wal-Mart.
desert-based punishment versions of protestantism
Well, the Sinai is pretty prominent in the Old Testament.
the new-school conservative megachurches seem driven by a particular version of individual desert that doesn't have much to do with religion per se
I don't remember any individual deserts though. Probably not nearly as popular with the megarich as owning one's own island.
As a liberal paleo diet guy, I don't believe in either desert or dessert.
Or was Robert talking about these dudes?
The only way to win arguments like this is to change the topic of conversation. This is the main rhetorical trick the right uses, which is how we end up arguing about welfare queens. The reply should be: 3% of the people own 97% of the wealth in this country. Did they _create_ 97% of the wealth? Of course not. They took it, from people like you and me.
In general, I think trying to motivate liberal policies as charity leads to a weak rhetorical position. Self-interest works better, which is why its easier to cut food stamps than Social Security.
162 is true, too. Also its converse, that social programs are better funded and thus work better when they apply to all people, instead of just poor people.
social programs are better funded and thus work better when they apply to all people, instead of just poor people.
Hmmm, I'd be careful about that second part. I think that idea, that "programs for poor people become poor programs" is a valuable rule of thumb, but I don't think it's universally true and I'm not sure that it leads to better functioning programs.
First off there are the obvious potential economic inefficiencies involved in expanding a program to cover everybody -- see for example the proposals to means-test Social Security benefits.
Secondly I think this is most true where you not only have a program that covers everybody, but where everybody has a similar experience. Free public education is (more or less) universally available but that doesn't prevent there from being all sorts of instances of people playing one district off against another of favoring one district over another (it also isn't federally administered, but neither is Medicaid).
Finally I'd make vague hand wavy gestures at the UC system as something which was intended to benefit people across the class spectrum (in California) and which derived a great deal of good will and prestige from that fact but which is still being massively underfunded at the moment.
165.First: The economic inefficiencies are minor, and don't, in any case, hurt the functioning of SS.
165.Second: Public education in this context should be viewed as a patchwork of programs, some covering poor people and some covering richer people. Guess which work better.
165.Finally: Do you think this would work better were the UC system targeted at the poor?
165.First: The economic inefficiencies are minor, and don't, in any case, hurt the functioning of SS.
I see that I wasn't clear, which is probably my fault.
I'm not arguing against the idea that universal coverage improves the perception of a program. In addition to the fact that the program may be more fair, I think it's also beneficial for more people to come in contact with a program.
I'm just arguing that this is only one part of what makes a program successful.
I would also argue that SS is more or less ideally suited to being the sort of universal program that we're talking about -- because it can be centrally administered and because most people will eventually be in a situation to take advantage of SS.
On the other hand, I would expect that programs like public education where the goal is to deliver services rather than checks, will always tend to function differently in wealthy areas than in poorer areas and that the universality of the program doesn't protect them in that case.
Mostly I was just being overly pedantic in response to a comment which seemed mostly correct but overgeneralized.
Not the kind of article I expect to see in a Wall Street Journal property. I wonder how long the author will remain employed by them.
well i completely support this "cheating"
it probably means someone making slightly more than minimum wage bought some asparagus or something. saying its 'cheating' is already conceding too much. cheating when welfare systems are about rights qua humanity, instead of 'charity'. conservatives love charity.
The whole point of 'restrictions' is to coddle the conservative's fantasy of self-reliance. Thats what they hate about social security: everyone gets it and it mean anything about one's superiority, they way church charity can function.
"Her fantasy is that people who live without her personal phobia treat going to the doctor like some kind of great party that she's missing out on, so fuck them"
I think this is right. Nobody is afraid of mardigras sluts or welfare chisellers or potheads. Its fear that other people are having fun. People with shitty jobs and lives that revolve around vicarous living through kid's little league know they aren't having fun, and hate that anyone else might be, so they at least have the self-righteousness.
The attachment isn't based on fear so much as self-flattery. They must be mocked.
On the other hand, I would expect that programs like public education where the goal is to deliver services rather than checks, will always tend to function differently in wealthy areas than in poorer areas and that the universality of the program doesn't protect them
I think it can easily be overstated how natural/inevitable a problem that is. School districts put a lot of work into drawing lines and policing outsiders who want to attend their schools (like that story last week about the woman convicted of a felony for sending her kid to a school in the wrong town). I think that economic residential segregation is, in a lot of places, finegrained enough that without that sort of effort, schools would naturally end up pulling from both richer and poorer areas.
Those who say cheating does not exist:
Pigford.
Look it up. Read an unbiased review of how much cheating is going on.
Several billion dolars given away to cheats.
I'm not against moral superiority, really. It seems like a just benefit for being morally superior. Its just bullshit when you eg think being straight is some big moral action.
Read an unbiased review
I'd suggest you do the same. Breitbart, The National Review, and Washington times don't count.
Several billion dolars given away to cheats.
Given that less than a billion dollars has been distributed in total, I'd say you need to do some more extensive looking up first.
Billy Bob is afraid doncha know. He's not, at heart, a racist.
For forty years, "liberals" and "centrists" have been pondering how to "reach out" better to conservatives. The answer that concludes the post has been used for a long time. As have many other approaches.
There's a fundamental flaw with this:
1. Rational conservatives are capable of arguing honestly. Micro-tuning about which argumentative angle to take isn't really necessary, because these forms of conservatives -- in fact liberal in the strict poli-sci sense of the word -- will actually respond to fact-based argument. They may dispute and wrangle over those facts for a while, but eventually, confronted enough times by the reality that they are wrong on certain facts, they will actually change their minds. This is not like a unicorn sighting: I've seen this happen, in real time.
2. The hardcore movement conservatives aren't interested in talking to you. They weren't reasoned into what they believe and will not be reasoned out of it. Worrying about how best to reach out to them in an argument is a waste of energy; it only confirms in their minds that you're a stuck-up egghead type who thinks you're smarter than they are. They've spent the last forty years and more teaching themselves that you're an evil, Satanic enemy. Decades of attempts at "dialogue" and "compromise" and "reaching out" later, this hardcore has never budged so much as an inch out of their worldview.
So the whole "how do we talk to conservatives?" exercise seems rather pointless to me.
I am not sure who on the left has ever claimed that no one on government services has ever tried to get as much as possible out of government services. We aren't having that argument, are we?
I'm going to subtly start saying "dolars" instead of "dollars" and see if anyone notices.
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My office finally hired the volunteer who's been working for free! (New administration lifted the hiring freeze, or made an exception for her, I'm not sure which.) It's still a scandal that we won't be paying her eighteen months worth of back pay, but at least she's got a job now.
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I always say "thalers," but since it's pronounced exactly the same, nobody notices.
College really does have a liberalizing effect on students, although I imagine the effect goes away pretty quickly if you're re-immersed in conservative people. I bet Helpy-chalk has a decent answer to this question.
Not really. I did once have a student change her stance on abortion from pro-life to pro-choice between the rough and final draft of her paper once. (My first thought was that she had figured out where I stood and was trying to kiss up to me.)
Stuffwhitepeople Like University had an amazing track record for turning apolitical rich kids into left wing activists, but that is an easier transition to make.
177: Are there no irrational softcore movement conservatives?
Wait, the fact that some black people got an equal take on some corporate welfare proves something?
The only thing i can think this proves is that conservatives, especially this BillyBob guy, are more racist than i had thought.
The whole 'talk to reasonable conservatives' thing has just meant all the reasonable conservatives are now democrats, and the GOP has gained the lion's share of the crazies.
183: Sure, but argument wouldn't interest them either. They're the ones who will actually consider jumping ship when the umpteenth anti-gay Republican senator is caught smoking meth with rentboys.
183: Seriously, college kids, or at least that age bracket. If you've got someone who's been brought up badly, gently encouraging them toward sanity may work better than a kick in the ass.
187: What liberalizes college kids is generally speaking a change of setting, isn't it?
If they're someone who's grown up with winger parenting in the whitest available suburb of Paleville, Iowa -- generally speaking the most dedicated conservative territories are also the most unrelievedly Caucasian -- then it's being jarred out of that setting that leads to all the rest. Either it opens them up or they reflexively retreat into Young Republican groups (or in Canada, Young Conservatives). But if they wind up at a liberal and reasonably diverse college, good argumentation is already something of a focus of the curriculum. If they wind up at a Bible college that replicates the rest of their childhood, they'll never get any of the "reaching out" firsthand anyway.
Either it opens them up or they reflexively retreat into Young Republican groups
I don't have data here (even anecdotal - I don't have occasion to interact with college kids). But I'd think this is the issue -- that you don't want to drive them back into the cocoon.
I TA'd a 20th century US history course in 2004 where the foreign policy readings included the Bush National Security Strategy. One student announced that though he was a Republican and supported the Iraq War initially, he could not support Republican policies that were essentially a blueprint for endless intervention and war.
I don't know, I do work off the premise that at least some of the hardest core movement religious conservatives can be flipped 180 degrees in a Road to Damascus once was blind conversion experience kind of thing. They will not be flipped by persuasion and liberal tools but by circumstances, compassion, and the power of unconditional love with buttsex, and they will perhaps not be good liberals after conversion but I have no problem with fervent irrationalist fanatics on my side.
I mean the right gets its some of its strongest partisans this way, why not us?
189: The system is insane and unjust. But at least this one competent lawyer now has a job and can start paying back her loans.
But I'd think this is the issue -- that you don't want to drive them back into the cocoon.
I misread "cocoon" as "ocean" and didn't see the problem.
190: Except educators have to be primarily concerned about teaching them to argue properly (and research properly, and master whatever discipline they're studying), and fellow students have to be concerned with learning these things by practising among themselves. It really isn't practical for any of those parties to be worrying about how to fine-tune outreach to the movement conservative mindset; whether they retreat into the cocoon is largely a question of their own competence, or courage, or conscience, or all three.
Maybe external campus outreach groups could take it on, I guess. That's a possible outlet.
I agree with every word Heebie's written here, and have long thought that you can't change people's opinions without changing their underlying emotions.
What I'm about to say is so trite that it is embarrassing to repeat, but I still think it matters that TV is a medium that pumps people full of fear pretty much every second. The news is angry men shouting at you against a flickering background, telling to stick around to hear about the statistically rare horrible thing that happened on your block, unless it reassures you that you don't have radiation in your milk from Japan YET. The rest of it is beautiful people living lives you'll never measure up to on no visible means of support. Of course there are cheats everywhere, since everyone on a sitcom clearly isn't living by the rules of the world.
Yes, I think fears should be addressed, but that's a running battle against the TV. It isn't that you can't assuage fears, it is that they get replenished every time the TV comes on.
Fear isn't some sort of magic universal explaining acid
That is almost exactly how I think of fear. As a magic universal explaining acid that bends people's souls in a very bad direction. Shame, too.
I thought MLK was pairing shame with taking away the fear of animalistic Black savages who are out to rape the white women. Look! Blacks are damn near saints in the face of dogs and firehoses, so that fear can't persist against those images.
192: I don't know, I do work off the premise that at least some of the hardest core movement religious conservatives can be flipped 180 degrees in a Road to Damascus once was blind conversion experience kind of thing.
Oh I agree. It's just that arguments won't have much to do with it.
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It's really awesome when someone misspells my last name in my email address in urgent messages several times and then tries to get me fired on the basis that I won't respond to emails.
It's doubly awesome when I get repeated emails at my correct address from someone who has the evidence that the emails were sent to the wrong address who keeps telling me that I used to be a good and responsible employee but am clearly failing to do my job anymore.
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It's doubly awesome when ... who keeps telling me that I used to be a good and responsible employee but am clearly failing to do my job anymore.
Uggghh . . .
There is little that will make me frustrated at work as quickly as having a boss not only fail to have my back, but to do so based on an inaccurate sense of the situation.
Thankfully it doesn't happen often, but that is one of the very few things that I find unforgivable.
187: What liberalizes college kids is generally speaking a change of setting, isn't it?
i'd say the combination of meeting some of the scary gay/atheist/poor boogeypersons, and (making a start toward) being financially responsible for yourself.
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The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site.
Not yet quite buying this. The spent fuel rods in 1 & 2 are still missing AFAIK, and the radiation ain't quite high enough. But they got troubles, all they can appear to do for now is add and drain water without repairs.
"Lahey said: "It won't come out as one big glob; it'll come out like lava, and that is good because it's easier to cool."
Nuclear lava? That's a relief.
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It isn't that you can't assuage fears, it is that they get replenished every time the TV comes on.
TV doesn't just go in one, fear-producing direction. There are plenty of examples of the television increasing exposure to others and reducing or limiting that fear -- gay rights is a recent and prominent example but there are so many others -- as well as creating the opportunity for an extension of empathy. I do agree that TV serves a capitalist culture (hello, paycheck!) and tends to reflect many of its values (including a tendency to avoid realistic depictions of poverty, but even those certainly do exist an have for a long time). But it's silly to think of TV as solely a vehicle for reinforcing fear of the other.
In fact, there's a good argument that the MLK civil rights movement would have been impossible without television -- it was precisely the ability of the images of abuse to reach the wider world that lent them so much impact. I don't know if I'm fully sold on that argument, but it's not a crazy point.
68: Are you familiar with the original lyrics to the state song I grew up with--"My Old Kentucky Home"? By the time I was singing it in elementary school chorus, it had made its way from " 'tis summer, the darkies are gay" to " 'tis summer; the old folks are gay" which I assume now has migrated yet further from things that would cause unwanted mirth...unless the tea-baggers, ever eager to banish the encroaching dark of political correctness, have decided to change it to " 'tis summer, the n*****s are f**s."
If it weren't a lovely melody, I'd say just abandon the thing. As it is, I guess some awkward bowlderization isn't so bad.
I don't think I ever properly learned the song, but I'm kind of remembering "'tis summer, the children do play".
202: TV is always in service of a narrative, unlike real life, which just is.
This seems like it would increase belief in just-world-hypothesis.
When i read "my old kentucky home" i almost thought i had heard the song.
I was thinking of the two songs on "The Tennessee Fire", which back to back are
"Nashville to Kentucky" &
"Old Sept. Blues
we've normalized monstrosity by not calling it monstrosity, but assuming there's some validity to the feelings that give rise to it. You know what, I don't care if their feelings are valid. This is a fucking problem.
No but you can't approach these things from the perspective of We're Right They're Wrong, at least not unless your only goal is to feel outraged. Monstrosity doesn't think of itself as monstrosity; it's motivated by something. I think Heebie is absolutely right that you have to engage on good faith and even a little beyond unless you're content with much discourse being as productive as a college abortion debate.
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So are there any other federal gummint leeches here? Are you excited for your Californication?
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debate can be productive even the closing argument doesn't contain a mea culpa
and
207 pwnified by 141. What, I was reading the Single-Blind thread all day. (Ugh.)
p.s. I love, love, love The Tennessee Fire.
209 would be a nice closing comment for the blog.
207: No but you can't approach these things from the perspective of We're Right They're Wrong,
Actually, you can and should. You just can't stop there, or count on social consensus to do the rest of the work. The parts of the other side interested in talking to you are already doing so; the others have decided that you're the enemy and have mobilized and organized for decades to destroy you. And without counter-mobilization and counter-organization, they'll succeed. Another decade spent futilely wondering "how can we just talk nicer to them?" will ensure that outcome, guaranteed.
No but you can't approach these things from the perspective of We're Right They're Wrong
Seems to me the last, oh, 30 years of political history argue against this. Torture, for instance, used to be wrong. Gay marriage, too.
And the thing that changed this was that some people with conviction stood up and said: We're right and they're wrong.
Stephen Foster's original lyrics to My Old Kentucky Home used the word "darkies." The state legislature turned it into "people" when they made it the state song.
Fun fact: Although Foster made his fortune writing songs about the southland that were used in blackface minstrelsy shows, he never went south of the Mason Dixon line.
No but you can't approach these things from the perspective of We're Right They're Wrong ... I think Heebie is absolutely right that you have to engage on good faith and even a little beyond
I think that these two statements are contradictory, or at least suggest an imprecise use of the term "good faith."
Fact is, there are some very easy issues that can only be framed in terms of We're Right They're Wrong. And pretending otherwise, whatever the merits of doing so, is not correctly characterized as "good faith."
There is also usefulness is making sure people who are open to both sides realize that conservatives are assholes. You need net gain, not just gross.
156.1 makes me nervous. Both because it's only a great time to be queer in tiny parts of the country (so please let's not consider it a settled thing) and because it runs the risk of making class politics the enemy of (if I can use the phrase without its baggage) identity politics. That's the hallmark of the kind of leftism I run from, like my Marxist friend who referred to feminism as "a diversion" and in fact put some kind of baffling scare quotes around feminism, at that.
People with shitty jobs and lives that revolve around vicarous living through kid's little league know they aren't having fun, and hate that anyone else might be, so they at least have the self-righteousness.
It's a good thing that there isn't any self-righteousness or joykilling schoolmarmity on the left.
218: There's no way to get rid of the baggage of identity politics. And the kind of leftism that ignores or downplays class is an obvious disaster at this point; the retreat from it has made possible the onslaught now being waged against the last remnants of unionism in the US. Once that end game is finished you can kiss any trace of progressivism in either major political party goodbye.
bob in 192:
I have no problem with fervent irrationalist fanatics on my side.
Also: The Green Bay Packers have no problem with football players on their side.
(I can't believe this was left hanging for more than 25 comments. If the commentariat gets any lazier around here, we're going to have to hire unpaid interns to harvest low-hanging fruit.)
it seems to me that the new deal economic structure was a major factor enabling the civil rights movement to succeed. Do you think the parallel will occur?
||
So should I be underwater holding my breath waiting for an apology for the situation in 198? I think so. Definitely, it will come any second now.
|>
222: "Is occurring" or "has occurred" might be more accurate.
223: Your innocence moves me. Have you ever played this game? It's called three-card monte. It's easy. How much money do you have on you?
225: It's sarcasm, actually, but thanks for the offer!
Yes, imprecise use of "good faith"--you're right. What I mean by it, I guess, is not assuming that the person who holds the view contrary to your own is stupid or...unreachably irrational for thinking what they think. You have to suspend your disbelief some and try to get under the rock of their reasons, or everyone's just going to get more entrenched.
This doesn't mean thinking they might be right. It means being willing, and this is galling sometimes, to engage and not consider their questions and misgivings stupid.
Gay marriage didn't happen because we were declared how right we were and people said "oh, maybe so." It happened for a lot of reasons, chief among them the slow work of visibility on a personal level. My own anecdotal experience is that that visiblity involved a great deal of patience with people's weird questions and misgivings. And sometimes I was furious and impatient and indignant and obviously right. But I don't think that helped.
Are you sure you didn't bring any money?
220: So leftism is a zero sum game between class and identity? Possibly I am reading you wrong, but if I'm not, I need this explained.
227.1: You want to get "under the rock" of their reasons? Start by dismantling the alternate-reality echo chamber of a media/think-tank structure that provides the reasons. Start by fighting back actively against the network of organizations pumping out union-busting legislation. You are past sitting down and having a nice chat. Decades past. A generation past. How bloody obvious does the other side need to make this to you before you'll see it?
229: Hey man, I'm not the one talking about getting "nervous" at the mention of class. It is obviously not a zero-sum game; rather both have to present in the analysis for either of them to be assessed accurately.
"||
So should I be underwater holding my breath waiting for an apology for the situation in 198? I think so. Definitely, it will come any second now.
|>"
I think you've already gotten an apology. You should make sure and let them know you accept it!
Gay marriage didn't happen because we were declared how right we were and people said "oh, maybe so." It happened for a lot of reasons, chief among them the slow work of visibility on a personal level.
There's a distinction contained here that I'm having trouble recognizing. The mere act of visibility, by my reckoning, has been the rough equivalent of saying "Fuck you."
Two scenarios:
1 - You are part of a lesbian couple raising a child.
2 - You are part of a straight couple arguing - firmly, and with conviction - that lesbians ought to be able to raise children.
Number 1 strikes me as being overtly in-your-face - and I honestly think it was/is perceived that way. No. 2 does not.
By referring to the time-frames of change, you're glossing over the key issue. Nobody is contending that calling someone a racist is going to change their minds overnight. It was "the slow work of visibility" that MLK harnessed, despite the fact that he did so in an overtly offensive and in-your-face kind of way.
230:
I know you were getting at something else, but thats still rearguard action.
You START by taking it to them.
First we balance the budget by property taxes, shutting down all the coal plants, gay marriage legalized, etc.
which is what someone else said, about not arguing on the other side's turf (or your own turf. i'm not sure what kind of sports metaphor i'm using).
Nervous "at the mention of class" is, wow, really reframing my comment to make me sound like an asshole. I just reread it to see if I was being vague, because sometimes I am, and I think it's clear that what makes me nervous is the pitting of class against identity with the implication that identity is a dangerous distraction.
I suspect our politics aren't so far apart, and I don't think this needs to turn snitty, but 230.2 does strike me as dirty pool.
233.2: It's nice in theory, but without organization you can't have policies. At least not policies that will endure.
234.1: Well, I'm all about clean pools. I just didn't see any other way to read your remark; Halford fairly evidently (it seemed to me) wasn't endorsing making class the enemy of "identity," he was describing a class dynamic that plainly happened, and correctly pointing out that if the class dynamics go to shit, the identity politics aren't really all that meaningful*. Talking about being "nervous" because he did this struck me, indeed, as being "nervous at the mention of class." If I have wronged you, I apologize.
(* For example, racial "identity politics" has come an awfully long way since the Civil Rights movement. The economic status of the ghetto hasn't, which means the bulk of American black people are in the same shit they've always been. It's just that now, they can be even more efficiently screwed over by a political and business class that also contains a tiny minority of blacks.)
230.1 resonates for me.
I see an element of this conversation that echoes the whole "reality-based community" trope. Liberals need to understand that we lost that argument - that labelling oneself part of the Reality-based community is often to label oneself a chump.
BillyBob in 171 is not trying to discern reality here, he's trying to create reality.
Start by dismantling the alternate-reality echo chamber of a media/think-tank structure that provides the reasons.
If anything is progressive, it's wanting to shut down speech that one doesn't agree with.
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Okay just read 332 comments about Fukushima and Japan over at the Oil Drum. I won't even link.
No, I don't think I'll say anything more.
|>
I want to get back to the ideas of justice discussed by Halford and Bear in 117 and 123. I agree with Halford that what is diagnosed as fear is actually a sense of justice, but I would go further and suggest that it is a perfectly normal, laudable motivation. There isn't any weird conservative justice going on here.
Look, there are some basic virtues that go into being fair-minded which are necessary for any cooperative system to work. People have to want to play fair. People have to believe they should ask for exactly their share, no more no less. People should want to see justice done.
Haven't you ever worked hard on a project, only to see most of the credit go to some guy who slacked off but was good at getting his name attached to things? Don't you get mad when you see some people working hard while others steal the surplus value of their labor? Isn't this idea of justice at the core of progressive leftyness?
Anger at welfare cheats is totally understandable. I feel some anger at the people who take our college's Pell grant money and then never come to class.
The issue isn't a flawed conception of justice at all. It is a false conception of where most of the free-riders are.
238: Progressiveness does not require tolerance for institutionalized fraud, libel and slander, but nice try.
Start by dismantling the alternate-reality echo chamber of a media/think-tank structure that provides the reasons. Start by fighting back actively against the network of organizations pumping out union-busting legislation.
Great idea! How do we do this?
The OP and most of this thread, as I read them, are concerned with how one should handle confrontations at an individual level. Of course in public debates liberals should slap them around.
241: I would argue that progressivism doesn't require, and isn't well-served, by whining like Milhouse Van Houten when conservatives say things we dislike or disagree with.
242.1: Good question. I think a useful starting point would be to take as much as possible of the time spent uselessly worrying about how to interact with conservatives "at an individual level" and spend it on building progressive organizations. Once you have the time set aside, the most logical starting point from there would be some analysis along the lines of "what basic goals do all our political agendas have in common" and "in pursuing those goals, how do we go from reacting to right-wing outrages to actively pre-empting them," followed by the fundraising, recruitment, and relationship-building needed to support those initiatives.
243: I would completely agree. Good thing I'm really obviously not talking about mere "dislike" or "disagreement." Now pull the other one.
243 is odd. What does it refer to?
"Haven't you ever worked hard on a project, only to see most of the credit go to some guy who slacked off but was good at getting his name attached to things? Don't you get mad when you see some people working hard while others steal the surplus value of their labor? Isn't this idea of justice at the core of progressive leftyness?
Anger at welfare cheats is totally understandable. I feel some anger at the people who take our college's Pell grant money and then never come to class."
i think the problem here is the 'person who gets all the credit' is in any way analogous to someone on food stamps or whatever, instead of the obvious analogy of "person who gets all the credit"="person who gets all the money"
I'm unconvinced that time spent talking with conservative acquaintances and friends is exchangeable for time spent building think tanks.
Excuse me. Time spent worrying about talking with conservative friends.
248: Time spent talking with them, no. Time spent agonizing about how to change their views by talking to them, absolutely.
There isn't any weird conservative justice going on here.
What they described is a desire to see those who violate their strict code of behavior punished. I guess at some level that is a sense of justice, involving fair-mindedness, but saying "there isn't any weird conservative justice" is strange.
I've mostly caught up with the thread, which is an excellent one!
Halford gets it right in 156 that the real enemy is libertarianism, and in 117 that there's a theory of justice in play among many conservatives. These things do play into some kinds of religious fundamentalism in the form of prosperity theology, the realm of many of the megachurches, as far as I understand it.
It's also worth remembering that political movement conservatism's 30- or 40-year mission to undermine and overthrow the welfare state, through a massive PR campaign backed by lots of money, doesn't just stoke and appeal to a single emotional strain -- as though we have to decide whether the rank and file conservative is motivated by hatred rather than fear, or just fear, or mostly hatred -- but has been multi-pronged. A couple of people have noted upthread that not all small government, anti-welfare state conservatives are alike. Stoke 'em on every available front and something will probably stick!
Regarding the form of shaming that emphasizes "You are better than this," a friend of mine who's a public school teacher and has worked in a number of urban schools over time told me the other day that his new response to fellow teachers who privately express conservative and/or racist attitudes is to take issue, outline an alternative, and then say, "It's the Christian thing to do." Apparently this totally confounds his coworkers, who consider themselves Christians, after all.
I betcha anything I should have previewed in the time it took me to write this.
I cry when I do long division and there's a remainder left over because the welfare cheats always steal the remainder.
I would say the biggest problem the left has in the lack of anyone doing politics who wants to make things better. slowing the bleeding isn't a very useful goal.
look at the 2010 gop House freshmen. They didn't do something like "hey, we can stop obama from doing much else, hope he loses more popularity, and wait around 2 years so maybe we can will both houses and the presidency and then think about doing some bipartisan changes."
And i don't think you change this by demanding more of existing congresspeople. you organize primaries to take out a couple of the worst every year, and you radicalize the next generation of politicians.
I have no idea about the megachurch exurb culture. maybe talking more concretely.
253 is something
half the reason i go to church is i think religion is powerful and you shouldn't let conservatives have the weapons all to themselves.
Anger at welfare cheats is totally understandable. I feel some anger at the people who take our college's Pell grant money and then never come to class.
That makes sense, but misses the point I was trying to make. I don't think conservatives are actually very worried about welfare cheats, per se -- that is, folks who are gaming the system as it exists. They dislike the entire notion of welfare tout court. The idea that money should be distributed to the poor without regard to desert is itself what they find "unfair" and unjust, not gaming of the system like to accepting Pell Grants and not showing up to class.
The "welfare cheat" stories are indeed important to conservatives, but not because they point out problems of abuse in the existing system. Welfare cheat stories are important because the underlying assumption is that at a deep level all provision of services to the undeserving poor is akin to cheating, a scheme (by softheaded or softhearted elites) to transfer money from the deserving to the undeserving.
And just to clarify for Smearcase, the summary by DS pretty much exactly gets at what I was trying to say, namely that I wasn't endorsing making class the enemy of "identity," he was describing a class dynamic that plainly happened, and pointing out that if the class dynamics go to shit, the identity politics aren't really all that meaningful.
A left wing movement needs both class and identity politics, but almost all of the recent success has been in the identity politics area and the story of the class-based, social justice left has been pretty much nothing but total unmitigated disaster for my entire lifetime.
Up to the present where we have a new great depression, but the notion of a new new deal is laughable.
I think the welfare cheat stories* work both ways. For the die hard, sure, they represent the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with the very idea of welfare. But the stories also were able to turn people against welfare who might have otherwise been charitable. Reagan used the Cadillac welfare queen image precisely this way, and that was really the move that ended the European style social net in this country. By the time Clinton came around, there was nothing for a poll watching politician to do but give in to the idea that "welfare as we know it" had failed.
*Two former roommates of mine set out on a bike trip across the country, but they ran out of money in Wisconsin and then lied to a welfare officer to get the money they needed to finish the trip. A good decade later Molly and I tried the same bicycle trip, and ran out of energy in Wisconsin, but managed to limp down to Chicago.
the class and 'identity' have to be the same story. neither a grumpy boss who doesn't like who you sleep with or chinese imports that lost you a job should put you out on the street.
Regarding Smearcase's disturbance voiced in 218 about 156.1's distinction between what Halford there called the individualistic left vs. the communitarian/social solidarity left, well: that's a long-standing issue.
I'm not sure I understand why Smearcase would think It runs the risk of making class politics the enemy of (if I can use the phrase without its baggage) identity politics. The enemy? No, it's just that when you're deciding how to frame your proposed social reforms, and building coalitions, it's incredibly tempting to think that you can or should overlook identity in favor of class. Or overlook class in favor of identity. Social justice movements have struggled with this perpetually. Certainly the women's movement did, and does. There's no straightforward answer.
Shorter me: don't fight, you guys!
Because statistically, the person taking advantage of the system is insignificant. But anecdotally, they are very, very real. Dismissing a conservative person's reality just hardens their position. The correct response also includes "Yes, occasionally people cheat the system. And it is far better to take care of our vulnerable people and a few greedy people, than to risk throwing out any vulnerable people in an attempt to weed out the greedy people."
The first sentence is often wrong. Which is not surprising in view of the last sentence which if taken literally would imply liberals (or at least heebie) would support a program that assisted a thousand cheats for every intended recipient.
262 cont'd: Crap. This thread is densely-packed, and Halford has clarified for his own self, after DS.
56
Mockery is fun, but I'm not convinced it wins many converts.
Sure it does, it has built a large political movement with nothing in common but a shared hatred of liberals.
265: Yes, but on the other side, we are just a large political movement united by our hatred of conservatives, as this thread shows.
It is easy to build movements around hate. It is harder to get those movements to, in turn, build something really good.
Hatebeak is both built around hate and is something really good.
Really, though, I agree with 266.2 completely.
Ok. It was a billion stolen. Not several billion.
I feel much better about Pigford.
I notice no one disputed it was stolen, just the amount.
Of course if the 70,000 late comers appeal succeeds, it will be 3 billion.
Winning a class action lawsuit alleging discrimination against African Americans in a ag subsidy is theft? Seriously, we've come to expect better trolls than this.
Now that I've googled it, I realize that I had heard of Pigford v. Glickman, and thought of it only as a victory against one of the more corrupt parts of the federal government.
266
Yes, but on the other side, we are just a large political movement united by our hatred of conservatives, as this thread shows.
Not really as shown by your failure to get along with libertarians.
268: die in a fire you racist asshole.
270: Libertarians aren't conservatives? What?
268 really isn't getting into the spirit of the whole reach out to conservatives with love and understanding thing.
I mean 271. Another evening, another joke blown through typos.
To put Pigford into some perspective:
The US pays out $20 billion a year in direct farm subsidies. Total government agricultural support is well over $100 billion year.
In 1910, black farmers owned 15 million acres of farmland; in 1982, black farmers owned 3.1 million acres of farmland.
But I am probably erring by even engaging.
I notice you didn't dispute that your only reason for calling it theft was that black people got treated fairly.
I notice you didn't dispute that you fuck pigs. Badly.
This is just to say that Kotsko is indeed on fire at An und Fur Sich, per 96 and 125 upthread.
230.1: It seems to me that until conservatives stop reproducing, there will always be a new generation who have not yet had the opportunity to change their minds based on evidence and reasoned argument.
Baptist, anyone leading with Pigford in that way is seeking to provoke. So I choose to be provoked.
JP, I believe the $10B in plastic-wrapped palettes of cash that disappeared (per my link) also serve to establish the scale of the real waste and abuse.
Also the thing togolosh links in 168 is pretty surprising. Journalistically.
g'night!
I haven't read the whole thread, which is unfortunate, because it sounds like a doozy, and because I'm going to bed soon, so this is just going to be hit-and-run. (Also, sorry I didn't get around to responding about theories of revolution in the other thread, it was a busy day.)
Anyhow. I think part of the error here is to see "the conservatives" or even "the libertarians" as monolithic. They're just not. The 25 year-old kid in the Army in Afghanistan who listens to rightwing podcasts on his iPod is not the same as the 55 year-old Tea Party grandmother who gets freaked out by chain-emails about death panels and is not the same as the 38 year-old commuter who listens to Jason Lewis because it's "funny" and he doesn't like taxes. There's a certain portion of the conservative voters that are never going to be turned. I'd say it's less than the 27% crazification factor though. Believe me, I've met a hell of a lot of crazy people at leftwing events. You're never going to get the hardcore prolifers, or the really vicious con artists (unless you make them part of the party machine, of course) or the white sheet brigade. But a hell of a lot of other people who've been voting Republican for the last 30 years are still in play. The trick is peeling them off, section by section. Sometimes you can just triangulate policy positions a bit, but I think most of us here agree that this is suboptimal. Other times you might want to use some dirty tricks. Or some really effective propaganda. Or mess around with electoral districts to isolate them. Lotta ways to do it. Sadly, your side doesn't have the possibility of an analog to the Southern Strategy, yet. But when is the US majority-minority? 2045 or something? It's not really that far away. There's already this weird tension around Republican appeals to voters of color. Exploit that, over and over and over again, until you're blue in the face and sick of hearing about it yourselves. Then you might see the tide turn.
Fuck this shit. This is what I want to say:
She was a great big woman
She had great big legs
She [indecipherable]
She [indecipherable]
She's a noted rider
OOh she ain't no good
She got drunk this morning
Woke up my neighborhood.
In 279, "baptist"'s/b "halford."
But when is the US majority-minority? 2045 or something? It's not really that far away.
I still want my Republican extinction clock, showing the results of recent elections corrected for future demographics.
Bring me a-little water Sylvy
Bring me a-little water now
Bring me a-little water Sylvy
Every little once in a while.
Wait, we need to shift gears:
Gimme back the Berlin wall
Gimme Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder.
I should go to bed before I progress from Becks-Style to Btocked.
Natilo is totally right, and what he says is compatible with DS's general point that what we have to do is organize. And sometimes organizing just is having conversations with people who aren't entirely on our side, patiently explaining things, looking stuff up and emailing them links to news stories or whatever, using a personal connection to get them to look at the issue another way. That's not the only kind of organizing we have to do, by any means, but it's vital.
I also want to disagree a bit with something politicalfootball said in 232 in response to Smearcase talking about how being out as gay is part of this process of persuasion. The mere act of visibility as a queer person or couple or family or whatever communicates different things to different audiences, depending on their priors as well as how the the visibility is enacted. Some people are going to perceive it as a fuck you, sure. But my experience of coming out to very conservative people who were close to me was that almost every time our personal relationship kept them from perceiving my sexuality as a fuck you. They weren't always happy and supportive about it (although plenty of people were), but I think most of them got a message from my coming out that was something like "I'm making myself vulnerable to you by sharing this fact about myself" or "I trust you." They then had to deal with my sexuality, and the fact that they had a family member or friend who was gay, and different people dealt with that differently. But the point is that personal visibility as a sexual minority often bypasses a lot of defense mechanisms that conservatives use to maintain their prejudices about such minorities and forces at least some kind of reconsideration.
281:I interrupt my Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice to repeat myself, to say again that numbers count for less than intensity.
History can help inform strategy. Yes in 1932 and 1964 (and those extreme majorities didn't last that long) grotesque majorities of Democrats were elected, but remember both times a large proportion of those were fairly conservative Dixiecrats. Yes wondrous things were done. How, each time? A larger percentage, although still far less than a majority, of passionate liberal approaching leftists, determined and intransigent and hardass.
The majority-minority America is very likely to not be as progressive as you would like on many issues. What it takes are people like Francis Perkins and Robert Dornan who will not take no for an answer, to be frank, people like the current Tea-Party congresspersons who are driving Boehner nuts. People who will shut the House down or fuck it all up to get what they want.
Without those people you may get blue dogs, and 75 blue dogs will get you squat. It ain't about the numbers, it's about the meanness, the unrepentant assholery.
Sorry, I'm not reading the comments yet, but I saw this and it reminded me of an experience I had today. My mom's doc was keeping her waiting for ages, and I badly needed caffeine, so I left the waiting room to go to a nearby Safeway to get a soda. It was the middle of the day, which is probably why most of the people in the store were either elderly or moms with little kids, and why there were only two open checkout lines--regular and express-limit-of-15-items. With just a soda, I got in the latter line, but it was a bit slow---suddenly the elderly white woman between me and the youngish African American woman at the front turned around quite violently and practically spat at me, or in my general direction, "I'm getting out of this line! It's taking too long! THESE people always TAKE TOO LONG! For WHAT!" I was really taken aback, so I stopped day dreaming and actually looked ahead. The cashier was carefully checking a few slips of printed paper to a binder she had for each item, so even though the African-American woman didn't have that much stuff, it was really slow. The customer was blushing as much as it is for brownish people to blush, and looked horribly uncomfortable after the old lady's outburst. I realized the slips of paper were some sort WIC vouchers, with "WIC" printed on them in big, big letters. I still don't know what the binder was for. I noticed the contents of the cart: eggs, generic shredded wheat and Cheerios, bread, apples and milk. Besides smiling like an idiot, I had no idea how to communicate with this customer, who was practically cringing away from me, that I wasn't impatient and didn't mind the wait. I felt really bad for her. This is not unlike the other few times I've been in line behind someone using WIC or similar voucher type things--it always seems awkward and slow and hostile, and the person is always buying the most basic, generic things. I don't really see how anyone would take up WIC or something like that unless they goddamn had to.
287.2: Yeah. I can see that.
272
Libertarians aren't conservatives? What?
This is news to you? Libertarians and conservatives differ on all sorts of social issues like religion, drugs and sex and some economic issues like immigration. Nevertheless they get along better than either does wth liberals but that is just because liberals are so unlikable rather than because libertarians and conservatives have so much in common.
279: JP, I believe the $10B in plastic-wrapped palettes of cash that disappeared (per my link) also serve to establish the scale of the real waste and abuse.
Oh yes that too, did not mean to minimize that. And with regard to that, one development in the "oversight" of Pentagon spending back then that just continues to blow my mind was when notorious Whitewater liar ( some background from David Neiwert at Orcinus*) L Jean Lewis was appointed chief of staff of the Pentagon Inspector General in 2003. It merited a few mentions in the media (Krugman, Conason) but otherwise nothing.
*She was the RTC investigator who referred the Madison Guaranty case (tried to do it before the 1992 election), sold "PRESIDENTIAL BITCH" t-shirts from her office and almost certainly committed perjury (but the most unethical prosecutor in Washington history, Kenneth Starr** didn't give a shit ... but I digress) in her testimony before the Senate. Just imagine her mirror equivalent getting appointed to a position in a Dem administration (or that her shenanigans were only indifferently reported back during Whitewater--she "swooned" after being caught in her lies before the Senate and had to be carried out, yet the fucking Times which was 24x7 Whitewater at the time didn't even mention it in their article the next day. )
**Contrast Susan McDougal, the woman who spent 18-months in prison for contempt of court for not answering questions in a civil trial.
291: just because liberals are so unlikable
Like me, like me , like me, I'm a lib-errr-ul.
This is news to you? Libertarians and conservatives differ on all sorts of social issues like religion, drugs and sex and some economic issues like immigration.
I would have said that libertarians are a form of conservative. Certainly a large part of the Republican policy agenda is driven by libertarian or quasi-libertarian economic goals.
But you like us, James, don't you? Don't you?
Oh, and as long as you're here, maybe you could answer a question that's been bugging me: would you say you fear a black planet or hate a black planet?
291: This is news to you?
It is to me. The number of libertarians who actually take a stand against "conservatives" when push comes to shove is minuscule. They're honorable exceptions, but the rule is that libs are thoroughly in the bag for the GOP. And they've contributed plenty of what characterizes the big conservative tent. The "limited government" bullshit that the "Tea Party" uses to sell its authoritarian, pro-wealth agenda is basically libertarian rhetoric. The ideological obsessions of your Alan Greenspan -- and other financiers who enthusiastically crashed your economy and then demanded their millions in bonuses for their hard work -- are libertarian. The supposed efficacy of trickle-down economics is a primarily libertarian delusion.
(The above have other sources than libertarianism too, of course, for the most part. "Limited government" goes way back as Southern Strategy code-language for "we won't give your money to n*****s, for instance... and that of course is what it mostly still means. But libertarianism has done much to give that code-language plausible-sounding ideological cover.)
Besides smiling like an idiot, I had no idea how to communicate with this customer, who was practically cringing away from me, that I wasn't impatient and didn't mind the wait.
I bet if you had hit the elderly white woman in the head with a 12-pack of Coke, the customer would have felt supported.
If only we could all be transposed to this wonderful world where you would be hit in the head if you did not pull your weight. Libertarians and conservatives share the nostalgia of wanting to be back to "purer" times. Maybe that is why many of the extreme left wind up switching sides.
The problem is that intensity is good, but not sufficient. Intensity without control = Bob. Ideas without intensity = Isaylegs. Intensity without ideas = Assrocket. Now, if you were to say that discipline mattered more than numbers I'd agree, but the corollary would be that you'd have to shut up.
I went to a marvelous lecture by Mic/hael War/ner, who spoke about the evangelical language of current American political discourse, especially w/r/t sexuality, even among the left. His point was that when we talk in terms of faith, conversion, spirit, etc., even when we're arguing against conservatism, we've already lost the argument for cultural diversity and acceptance. At least, that was part of what he was saying.
Then the craziest thing happened. A bunch of Old Radical types all got up to the mic and started, no shit, testifying to their faith in the holiness of the sexual body, and the need to win those souls over to the light and blah blah blah. One of them started shaking with such passion at the mic that she had to be carried out of the hall. But all of them started with, "I agree with Professor War/ner!" Uh, no you don't.
It was disturbing. But it did make me even more aware than I was that, in my role as a college instructor, I am not an evangelist. I sort of got yelled at by someone who doesn't know me on another blog for even the possibility that I may not have forced a student of mine to agree with me about a social/political issue. I think there is an older mode of political thinking that says that every soul you encounter is craving the Water of Life that only comes from your political stance, and they need to repent.
I am much more for getting people to agree with me by preferring emotional laziness to intellectual laziness. Hating people and getting freaked out by who's taking yours takes a LOT of energy. Rather than getting your proverbial panties in a twist about "those people," why not try shaking your head and muttering, "fucking human beings, man." You'll sleep easier! Life is difficult and stressful enough without being at passive-aggressive war with some significant percentage of the human population. Also, being calm about human difference is a lot more sexually attractive than acting all fragile about things that don't concern you. Or maybe this approach only really works with NYC teens.
If there's anyone who I find likable it's John Stossel and the Fonzi of Freedom.
300:
How strange that waves yet come to Urashima,
When all the things of old have gone their way.
The plant of which you speak bloomed very briefly.
It opened at dawn to wilt in the summer rains, and is not what it used to be.
I sigh into my sleeve, wet with the dews of spring.
Also, being calm about human difference is a lot more sexually attractive than acting all fragile about things that don't concern you. Or maybe this approach only really works with NYC teens.
If you could invent a perfume that would make you very sexually attractive to all but only NYC teens, that would still make you a fuck-ton of money.
300:Intensity without control = Bob.
You know, maitre, why don't you take your discipline, control, and triumphant will and strap it on with black leather and brushed silver buckles and swing it around the parade ground at the other dudely dudes.
Just kidding, buddy, I know you meant it affectionately.
But what I didn't get around to last night after the comment about intensity was parte deux:spontaneity.
Not knowing when to go too far, but knowing how to go too far. This has obviously been not just devalued since the 60s, but I think actually forgotten by the left in its permanent defensive crouch.
The right hasn't forgotten, hasn't lost its ability to overreact. 9/11 happens, they go fucking full-tilt gonzo...and win. Too much war, too big tax cuts, too arrogant disrespectful contemptuous, they're fucking crazy. Fucking A. The liberals and left become paralyzed by catastrophe, over and over I have seen it. Oooooh, goodness what will the people think of us if we make a mistake. Check out the pathetic old man's demo thread at CT.
Don't even try to tell me the problem with the left is an inadequate caution and restraint, a lack of deliberation, a lack of discipline. I'll die laughing.
Libertarians and conservatives differ on all sorts of social issues like religion, drugs and sex and some economic issues like immigration. Nevertheless they get along better than either does wth liberals but that is just because liberals are so unlikable
James gives us the reductio ad absurdum of heebie's argument.
As the foster parent of a three-year-old, I get WIC and we basically don't use it because it's such a pain. It largely covers things I'd rather buy organic and specifies NO ORGANICS. Juicy Juice 100% juice is on the list but cheaper store brand 100% juice is not. (That's what the binder is for, to see what's allowed. And at least here, the list changes frequently and you don't get notification about that.) WIC only covers things like milk (or formula if you have a baby, which would totally make the annoyance worthwhile), juice, cheese, bread, vegetables or fruit.
In our state, WIC also requires quarterly visits to the county public health office, bringing the child for every other visit. These tend to last between one and three hours, maybe two minutes of which involves checking that the address they have in the system is correct, five-ten minutes with the public health nurse talking about what the child eats and drawing blood from the child, which goes over about as well as you'd expect, and then you often have to sit for about an hour before getting to the twenty-second part where they hand you the envelope of WIC coupons and tell you when to come back in three months.
I also have a theory that I have a lot more empathy for the families of kids in care than most of the foster parents I see online because I'm not a Christian and because Christian narratives either look at suffering/punishment as a good thing or as a sort of bottom before conversion, so when parents keep refusing to get better or relish their punishment, they're automatically bad and the kid is better off with the foster family in the mindset of the foster parents. I'm sure it's a lot more complicated than that, but I do think it's partly because I'm an atheist that I just think, "Wow, your life must basically suck if the best response you can come up with is hitting a little kid" or whatever applies.
(Sorry if both of those make it sound like I think I'm awesome at suffering and at empathy and everyone else is a loser. I do think I'm doing a good job caring for Mara and I think there are probably things the average foster parent could learn from me, but I'm not in the running for sainthood or anything. Just don't have time to write in a nuanced way today.)
Don't even try to tell me the problem with the left is an inadequate caution and restraint, a lack of deliberation, a lack of discipline. I'll die laughing.
What on earth makes you think I mean anything like caution or restraint? I mean message control, unity of aims, unity of action. In a word, discipline. It doesn't even require organisation as usually understood. With your profound study of the 'baggers, I'd have thought this was obvious.
re: 310
Yes, the notorious internecine fighting on the 'left' [and not just in hard left groupuscles] is a big part of the problem. The right exercises much tighter discipline.
Goes with the authoritarianism, I would expect.
(Also, to continue my observations of this new band AC/DC, "Thunderstruck" just came on my pandora, and I keep hearing "THUNDERsnooooww" and thinking, oh, poor Stanley.)
"(The above have other sources than libertarianism too, of course, for the most part. "Limited government" goes way back as Southern Strategy code-language for "we won't give your money to n*****s,"
what? the only thing new about 'libertarianism' is the word 'libertarianism'. The rich always have thought the moral standards they held their workers to don't apply to them.
289: Besides smiling like an idiot, I had no idea how to communicate with this customer, who was practically cringing away from me, that I wasn't impatient and didn't mind the wait. I felt really bad for her.
Reminds me of the time I was at the supermarket waiting (in the non-express line) while a family of recent E. African/Horn of Africa immigrants were making a pretty large purchase, including WIC and coupons and stuff, and the Native woman who was between them and me turned around and came out with some perfectly xenophobic comment along the lines of "why do they have to come here and leech off the system? they should stay in their own countries!" To which I had no good response. It was uncomfortable.
To which I had no good response.
"Yeah, we probably should"?
I don't remember if I've told this here before, but whatever, relevant. So one time, my boss at the time/friend was waiting in line at Trader Joe's, and the guy in front of him was really dickish about his bagging requirements and the 50 yr old aging hippy who was bagging his groceries evidently didn't do it to his satisfaction, bc Mr. Dick starts screaming at him. Really abusive shit, calling him stupid, no wonder you're bagging groceries, etc etc. Everyone's really uncomfortable, and the 18 year old manager comes over, and then Mr. Dick starts screaming at her, too. Finally my boss just can't take it anymore, and taps the guy on the shoulder or whatever. Mr. Dick turns around, and my boss screams right back at him:
"WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
Mr. Dick: "Excuse me-"
My boss: "WAAAAAAAAAHHH!"
Mr. Dick: "Who -"
My boss: "WAH!"
And so on, a la Dr. Evil. The whole crowd started laughing at this douchebag, and he was shamed into sputtering silence.
In conclusion: mockery and shame should be used more often! Some suggested responses to the described situations:
"Why do you have to be such an asshole?"
"Do you plan on stealing Christmas again this year?"
"Why don't you go back to black hearted mountain you climbed out of, you gold-fucking troll."
Etc.
re: 318
That is totally great.
Mockery and shame are completely called for when someone is abusing someone else. Especially if they think you're on their side.
Mockery and shame are completely called for when someone is abusing someone else. Especially if they think you're on their side.
EXACTLY. My issue is I see the GOP as generally abusive, so I am constantly bothered by the urge to mock, the urge to shame. It is not good for my blood pressure.
Well, the GOP is certainly abusive, as is the rhetoric used by their followers, but different tactics are required when you are trying to covert people as opposed to when you are trying to protect people from abuse (or at least trying not to be complicit).
316/317: Yeah, I was thinking along those lines, except the last thing I wanted to do was come off as preachy or condescending to this Native woman, decades older than me, who's almost certainly dealt with WAY more shit in her life than I'll ever have to worry about. And then once I had been thinking for a minute, it would have seemed REALLY weird to come back with something, no matter how clever and self-effacing.
At least you avoided being condescending.
Frankly I can't get past Natilo's story long ago about seeing some dude punch an old man at the bus stop and his jeering the notion of calling the police.
the Native woman who was between them and me turned around and came out with some perfectly xenophobic comment along the lines of "why do they have to come here and leech off the system? they should stay in their own countries!"
"Actually, I quite like Thanksgiving".
326: Whaddya mean? I should have called the police on this old Native woman? That seems kinda harsh.
I still maintain that if you see an adult whom you believe to be in distress, it is a much better idea to ascertain whether they would like you to call the police or whether that would, in fact, considerably worsen their already-bad day. There was no way the yuppie guy could have seen what led to the altercation, as indeed, I was closer to it and there for more of it, and I still couldn't tell if one of those guys was more in the wrong than the other. Of course, I don't believe that people should simply walk around punching other people for no reason, but that wasn't the case here. From what little I saw of the incident, it seemed to me that the younger fellow might have had a legitimate reason to be angry at the older fellow. Then too, there was the issue of the yuppie guy's attitude, which could charitably be put down to naivete, but which, at the time, certainly smacked of enwhitelment. Clearly, it was a racially marked situation that wouldn't have occurred in an equal, free and democratic society.
I do like the term "enwhitelment." It also kind of sounds like something that happens to you on a terrible, fateful night, like, the enwhiteling, and then ever after you are cursed with enwhitelment.
I keep hearing "THUNDERsnooooww" and thinking, oh, poor Stanley
Why poor? Because of the earworm?
307: That's what I guessed, but I wasn't sure. Seems like it wouldn't be so hard for Safeway to install software that automated that process and sped up their customer service/eliminated the drawn out humiliation opportunities.
331: And then Safeway would become the preferred store for WIC recipients, driving class-conscious and racist shoppers elsewhere. The former of these overlapping categories are also likely to be among the most profitable.
Screwing the poor is often good for business, which is why the government ought to step in with a mandate that barcode scanners read WIC coupons and apply discounts directly as if they were store coupons. I wouldn't be surprised if it's something like five lines of code and a bunch of entries in a database which could be supplied directly by the government. As long as the first adopter endangers their profits it will never be done without the government stepping in.
Perhaps a more libertarian-ish version would be to offer the store tax breaks for WIC coupons processed and let the stores figure out how to implement a system. I think I might prefer this option if it were implemented in a way that wasn't simply a big giveaway to corporations.
which is why the government ought to step in with a mandate that barcode scanners read WIC coupons and apply discounts directly as if they were store coupons
That would imply WIC Coupons had barcodes on them or any other way to automatically enter them. From what I can find online they seem to be just printed with a list of allowed items on them.
331 & 332: If I'm going to use my WIC vouchers I don't go to the shiny new grocery store in the fancier neighborhood but to the one that's dingier and doesn't have as much variety or good produce, because they do indeed know how to use it properly and so it's not as big an ordeal.
Since I happen to have the WIC vouchers in my bag, I'll give you the details. First, I point out that what we get in one month is spread out over three vouchers. If you don't buy everything off your voucher when you use it, you don't get a second chance. For us, this means we never buy as much milk as we could because even though Mara drinks a lot, she doesn't drink that much especially now that she goes to school. At least here, WIC vouchers look sort of like a cashier's check or something and require the grocery store cashier to fill part out and initial. The parent also has to sign.
Each month, this is Mara's WIC allotment:
1. Fresh fruits and/or fresh vegetables, amount not to exceed $6.
2. 64 oz. juice; 2 gals 2%/1%/1/2% or skim/fatfree milk; 36 oz. cereal; 1 dozen eggs; 14 or 16 oz brown rice OR 16 oz. whole wheat/corn tortilla; 16 oz. dry beans/peas OR 4 15-16 oz. cans beans/peas OR 1-18 oz. peanut butter.
3. 64 oz. juice; 1 gal same milk as above; 1 quart same milk as above; 1 lb. cheese; 14 or 16 oz. brown rice OR 16 oz. whole wheat bread OR 16 oz. whole wheat/corn tortilla
I may not add value, but I can add details!
Fresh fruits and/or fresh vegetables, amount not to exceed $6.
Good lord, that's much worse than I would have guessed.
Six dollars doesn't buy very many fresh fruits or vegetables.
I wish there was a way of shaming companies into doing it, but since apparently none of them do it, a boycott would be ineffective.
335 & 336: And I forgot to put the NO ORGANICS part there. When we use WIC, that's the easiest coupon to use. But I like to get milk without hormones, eggs from happier chickens, all sorts of other things that wouldn't be covered. I haven't yet gotten a chance to use the WIC-for-farmers'-markets option, but hope to this spring. No one who works for WIC has ever mentioned it to me either, but I've only been there twice.
WIC isn't supposed to cover all your food needs for the month. It's to supplement and to force healthier choices. General "food stamps" have a much broader range of acceptable options. (I have no idea what cereals are allowable because Mara doesn't really eat cereal, but I know that's a point of contention for a lot of people using WIC.) I have no idea what the politics of getting your product certified as WIC-approved are either for the companies that make these products. Basically all I know is that the WIC office doesn't get WiFi and I can't get a decent 3G signal either, so I have to make sure I bring a long book to fill the time.
and to force healthier choices
I disagree.
333: Adding barcodes is simple.
334: Thanks. I hadn't realized just how fine grained the restrictions are.
Wow. I knew WIC was bad, but not that bad.
It's to supplement and to force healthier choices.
Is this a joke?
Adding barcodes is simple
It is certainly possible. I am just pointing out it isn't like the stores are making the process hard because they hate poor people. The program isn't giving them much to work with for automation in the first place. It seems like the easiest thing for everybody would be to just roll it into EBT somehow.
344: Agreed about EBT, or even better a program that gave people a single card that covered all social service programs, food assistance, medical bills, prescription drugs, the whole shebang. Eliminate some of that inefficiency that gives conservatives such conniptions.
Halford, I was being somewhat sarcastic and thought I had "healthier" in scare quotes, but I do think that's pretty much how the government describes WIC. It's about pushing a specific diet on young kids and pregnant women. It's not supposed to be all your food for the month, just a help in buying the things WIC thinks you should eat.
I keep Mara's WIC going because doing things like that leaves a paper trail that I'm a diligent foster parent and also because I want to someday get her records from the public health nurse, especially now that I know they differ from her doctor's files in some significant ways including lead exposure readings. She'll still be eligible for WIC after adoption but I can't imagine we'd stay with it. I find it adds 15-20 minutes to my shopping trip and saves less than $15 and I guess Iz'm just not frugal enough to consider that good math.
Eliminate some of that inefficiency that gives conservatives such conniptions.
While I applaud the goal, I'm not entirely sure making social services easier to use would placate conservatives, even if it saved money on inefficiencies.
347 - It absolutely would not placate them. In fact I bet there would be major opposition from the right to any effort to make delivery of services easier, more efficient, or more effective.
Probably my last WIC comment, but at least here it's mandatory to make your WIC buys a separate transaction from regular groceries, which also slows things down. So yes, I'd feel bad for anyone behind me in line when I do a WIC transaction. I've never had a negative response, though, probably because I both am and look white and middle-class.
On the other hand, we've never had a copay of any sort with Mara's health card. We do have to show the card at WIC appointments and she goes to a doctor who only treats patients with state insurance or no insurance. On the other other hand, the company that was supposed to give us her nebulizer never did get in touch though I've bugged her doctor multiple times. So we have two bags of albuterol for nebulizers and nowhere to put them. Luckily she's never needed any and has only barely needed her inhaler.
Thorn, I know you said that was your last WIC comment, but if you're still there, point of clarification:
First, I point out that what we get in one month is spread out over three vouchers. If you don't buy everything off your voucher when you use it, you don't get a second chance.
Does this mean that you get three vouchers at the beginning of each month, each one listing those items in 1, 2, and 3 (so #1 is just for Fresh fruits and/or fresh vegetables, amount not to exceed $6, and you have to buy this $6 worth of fruits and vegetables at one visit to one store ... to last the entire month?
If so, who on earth is designing this? Not only is $6 of fruits and veggies a pathetic amount, but you'll use them up in a week. I can't quite figure out what the thinking is; maybe I'm misunderstanding.
350: I had the same questions/confusion.
Also, 332: Screwing the poor is often good for business is so sadly too often true. It's pretty obvious in the Baltimore area which grocery stores (not just which chains, but which locations of a given chain) cater primarily to what are considered lower-class citizens: they routinely keep far fewer check-out lanes open, so that the lines are much longer, to an absurd degree in some cases, and the selection is comparatively abysmal.
Contrary to 332.1, though, it's not clear that this is done in order to secure the business of class-conscious customers. It seems simply that these stores do not care about their customers, and perhaps feel fairly confident that the customers have no other choice but to shop there. I've had a couple of conversations over time with people in line with me at one such locale (people who are not white like me) that confirm that they're aware of it, sometimes walk in, eye the lines, and walk back out, and sometimes put down their grocery baskets and leave after giving the line a 15- or 20-minute wait. Two check-out lanes open with 17 people in each line is a bit much.
(/end discourse)
Completely OT:
Where Bro meets SWPL, and SWPL meets Bro.
353: Nobody has standards any more. The country that is bored with itself tweaks itself. Etc. Cry, cry, masturbate, cry. This comment is brought to you by Flippanter, less elaborately.
Not only is $6 of fruits and veggies a pathetic amount, but you'll use them up in a week. I can't quite figure out what the thinking is; maybe I'm misunderstanding.
I suppose the idea is "well, that's six dollars more fruits and/or vegetables than they'd have otherwise" (or maybe up to eighteen dollars more?), which isn't so horrible in itself, if it weren't for the incredible amount of hassle and inefficiency and general crapitude that goes along with it.
"You know how some people are. They'll just go to the doctor, like, just to take advantage." This is coming from a woman who hasn't seen a doctor since she broke her foot in 1989 because she fears them so much. "Mom, no one goes to the doctor for no reason. Everyone hates it. They go because they're sick."
Your mom's not entirely wrong but it doesn't really make a difference. ER and EMS abuse is largely shitty people who aren't paying the bill anyways. A certain amount of that will always go on. Might as well have UHC and improve access and cost control for the rest of us.
355: Sure. I don't suggest that it's worse than nothing; it's obviously not. It's just not clear to me why it comes with the condition that it has spent/bought all at once, in one place. Maybe it's just easier, bureaucratically, that way, but it seems stupid.
I imagine that if you're using WIC vouchers as a supplement to your regular monthly food expenditures, you'd just designate for yourself that a given week's fruit & veggie purchases will come from WIC funds this time. Assuming fruits & veggies are a regular part of your diet, that is. If they're not, and WIC is in fact intended to force healthier choices, as Thorn said in 340, then providing enough of a voucher for one week's worth is better than nothing, but isn't remotely optimal.
354: I do hate foodies, bros and this godless culture, but masturbation has nothing to do with it.
For a depressing number of WIC users the guidelines really do force healthier choices. It's not perfect but it sure did help us when we were partaking back in '97.
359: Sorry about that part. I was free associating.
350: I get the three vouchers, numbered 1, 2, and 3 in whatever comment I used to list them. Together they add up to Mara's monthly WIC allotment, which is supposed to meet (or, rather, supplement) her specific nutritional needs as a three-year-old, which is why whole milk is disallowed on ours. I think if she were two, that would still be okay, and I'm not sure how formula figures in because I haven't ever parented a baby.
The idea is not that it will feed a family for a month but that it will help round out the family's regular diet with some staples. I have no idea whether people who are on WIC because of true need, which is just about everybody except some of us foster parents, do indeed buy everything on the list every month. I know we'd have a hard time knocking out our monthly peanut butter allotment, but for families who eat differently or have multiple kids (and each kid under either five or six, I forget which, is WIC-eligible) I suppose that's reasonable. To me, it's a weird setup, but I don't live in a food desert.
Oh, and I suppose that's another point, that I assume all your local inner cities have those corner shops with hand-lettered signs saying they accept WIC, which means that at least the food options I listed will be available to families in the general vicinity. Would they carry dried beans if they didn't know that most of their customers would have a monthly order for them? I don't know, but I'd sort of be surprised.
In New York there's an "electronic benefit card" (EBT) that works like a debit card. It seems from the website to be able to compile different benefit programs, although I wasn't able to figure out whether it is also used for the WIC benefits. A lot of the grocery stores and bodegas around here post signs not just in the windows but on eligible items on their shelves. I swear, I've never seen this binder to which everyone is referring, and I've been living in the target neighborhood for these sorts of programs for years.
I think EBT is a national standard, and it can include WIC, though food stamp equivalents are more common.
The bit I find most amazing about WIC is that the fruit/veg allocation was only added a couple of years ago. Secret dairy subsidy ahoy!
294
I would have said that libertarians are a form of conservative. ...
Perhaps if you label everyone who isn't a liberal conservative.
... Certainly a large part of the Republican policy agenda is driven by libertarian or quasi-libertarian economic goals.
The Republican party doesn't solely consist of conservatives and is quite divided on some issues like immigration.
Just to clarify, James: it's your belief that libertarians have significant, principled differences with the Republican party, but they choose to ignore them because liberals are mean?
which is why whole milk is disallowed on ours.
Which, by the way, is one of the bullshitty things about federal nutrition guidelines and their consequences that makes me nuts. People patting themselves on the back for putting low-fat cheese in school cafeterias is the manifestation that has made me sad in the past: what misplaced effort!
366
Just to clarify, James: it's your belief that libertarians have significant, principled differences with the Republican party, but they choose to ignore them because liberals are mean?
Not with the Republican party, with conservatives. They sometimes choose to downplay them because that is how coalition politics works. As for why they generally ally with conservatives rather than liberals, mutual distaste between liberals and libertarians likely has something to do with it.
365: The Republican party doesn't solely consist of conservatives
Inasmuch as most of it is now far too radically to the right to be considered "conservative" in any real sense, this is correct.
368: As for why they generally ally with conservatives rather than liberals, mutual distaste between liberals and libertarians likely has something to do with it.
Not likely. When libertarians actually stand up for the values most of them just affect to believe in, they can get on quite famously with liberals. (The latter might find their ideas about government or the speed limit fanciful, but are far likelier to admire than to demonize people like Radley Balko or Justin Raimondo. OTOH if it's mere affectation and when push comes to shove they get off on war and whacking hippies with two-by-fours... well, cf. the opinion of much of the Unfoggedtariat in re: Megan McArdle.)
The distaste isn't "mutual" at all. It arises because the bulk of libertarianism is dedicated to and originally issues from the conservative big tent, with all the preconceptions that entails.
Late to this thread, but it looks like DS has it covered.
Be it duly noted that I have Jesus on my side. Nobody fucks with the Jesus.
I don't think Shearer's being all wacko crazy here. Socially very liberal but my own father "always votes [his] pocketbook", meaning GOP. He's not exactly alone.
It's an image problem for Democrats. (Ask anyone about the Obama tax cut. Blank stares will greet you.)
I don't think Shearer's being all wacko crazy here. Socially very liberal but my own father "always votes [his] pocketbook", meaning GOP. He's not exactly alone.
That doesn't seem to be Shearer's point.
It's an image problem for Democrats. (Ask anyone about the Obama tax cut. Blank stares will greet you.)
This comes closer to Shearer's point. Sure, Obama cut the hell out of taxes, but he didn't do it as an acknowledgment of the inherent superiority of the moneyed classes. He did it as an economic exigency in a recession. That's an insult.
Yes, Glenn Greenwald pretty much spends his entire professional life promoting "libertarian" causes, but he'll never be a real libertarian, because he's "unlikable," by James's description.
367: They tried to tell me not to even let Mara have 2% for fear of obesity. She's 43 inches tall and 39 lbs at three years and almost five months and she needs the fat to build her brain and body more than she needs bullshit restrictions and milk that tastes watery. And we let her drink chocolate milk from our local independent dairy that tastes like real chocolate, so take that!
