The Obama daughters, I read today, already have 6-figure accounts for their college.
But the mailman's kid in Des Moines has it so much easier than them because he is a straight white male? Because someone at Harvard Law will say something mean to an Obama daughter?
This has gotten crazy.
First of all, World of Warcraft doesn't have difficulty settings. Sure, dungeons in it do (some of them), and some character options are sort of like different difficulty settings, but not the game itself and they aren't the kind of thing you'd even know about before you've been playing for a long time. Second, WoW is still the biggest MMORPG, but it's shrunk in recent years, and with its monthly fee it's probably less common among college freshmen than many games out there. Third, I admit I probably stick with the defaults more than most people - digital Luddite here - but I really can't imagine why anyone would mess around with key bindings before even starting to play.
And to continue pointing out problems with the analogy as Scalzi continued it beyond the blockquote - I can't think of any game with any difficulty setting in which "The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for." Again, I don't play too many different games so maybe I'm just revealing my ignorance, but I can't think of at least three games with difficulty settings in which they don't work like that, and none in which they do.
Comments 1-2 wonderfully illustrate the sublime wisdom of the Great Analogy Ban.
I'm not sure it matters so much that it's not all corresponding to a single game. It's still all game-relevant concepts; most shooters, like Halo, have difficulty settings, as I understand.
then this is like the a super-long, extensive dead animal, perhaps a brontosaurus
Brontosauruses being triply dead: not just dead and extinct, but even their conceptual existence having been killed.
Yeah, the Obama daughters aren't an outlier situation at all.
And to continue pointing out problems with the analogy as Scalzi continued it beyond the blockquote
But you understand what he's getting at, surely? Does it matter if we can't deduce from what he says that he had some particular game in mind? No, it doesn't.
5 I guess that falsifies the theory which is mine.
"If life were a game of Dungeons and Dragons, straight white mails would have an automatic +3 to their saving throws" would have been a lot more clear.
Brontosauruses being triply dead
Bullshit. Brontosauruses are one of the five canonical dinosaurs, way better than any crap-ass "apatosaurus."
6:No they aren't. To say they are, that there are no privileged blacks, is racist.
More importantly, the mailman's son in Des Moines isn't an outlier.
SWM, poor and stupid, won't get you very far in Tokyo or Shanghai.
Privilege and opportunity is complicated and contingent and social, not binary, and almost everybody has some.
Oh well, like I said. Crazy.
"If life were a game of Grand Theft Auto..."
#12 - fuck off. Obama's children are the ultimate outlier. Go away.
To say they are, that there are no privileged blacks, is racist.
Yeah, thats exactly what I was saying. Guess I'm a big 'ol racist.
"If life were a game of Dungeons and Dragons, straight white mails would have an automatic +3 to their saving throws" would have been a lot more clear.
A lot more people play video games than Dungeons & Dragons. Even fewer people play Dungeons & Deliveries.
I thought that Scalzi's analogy actually does a decent attempt to capture the outliers - in both directions - with the points stuff. Regardless of difficulty setting, one can be dealt a better or worse hand, which doesn't change the difficulty setting but which can explain why someone on a high difficulty setting does well while someone on a low setting does poorly.
The link is worth a read, in other words.
Bullshit. Brontosauruses are one of the five canonical dinosaurs, way better than any crap-ass "apatosaurus."
What is this "dinosaur" you speak of?
Perhaps an outdated name for a variety of extinct birds?
Even fewer people play Dungeons & Deliveries.
The game for real mails!
17: Yeah. The only people who can't understand what Scalzi was getting at are here and Sheldon Cooper.
This thread, on the other hand, is already setting records for dumbness.
Playing as an Obama kid is an awesome cheat code.
The analogy ban has become installed in my brain like some self-preserving er...fear of fire or something. So reading this piece was like that scene in The Manchurian Candidate where evil Angela Lansbury shows Laurence Harvey the deck full of queens-of-hearts and his brain breaks.
The comments are just unbearable. The worst part, so far, is that Sc/alzi makes up this kinda forced analogy and then yells at people when they discuss what he is obviously, explicitly discussing by its actual name so they don't have to fumble after additional ridiculous components to the metaphor and figure out, like, what part of the history of racial discrimination is a twelve-sided die &c &c &c.
17:Scalzi was bullshit.
Saying which factors are socially determined (race, gender, preference) and "unfair" and which are "accidents" and contingent (height, looks, family wealth, innate intelligence) is the promotion of an ideology, I think a democratic capitalist meritocratic ideology.
And it has the relative importance of factors completely and intentionally backwards.
I will take black LGBT female, with an IQ of 120 and a million dollars. You can have straight white male, IQ of 80 and born in poverty.
"All things aren't otherwise equal" is exactly the point. They never are.
Anyway, I think the linked post is quite good, but 3 still gets it exactly right.
Playing as an Obama kid is an awesome cheat code.
This is what I was expecting here. (Hand) Stretch that analogy.
Angela Lansbury shows Laurence Harvey the deck full of queens-of-hearts and his brain breaks.
Now *that's* what halford and urple needed to mention!
Please, Unfogged! Put the analogy down and step away slowly!
I will take black LGBT female, with an IQ of 120 and a million dollars. You can have straight white male, IQ of 80 and born in poverty.
I don't think double dating works that directively.
30 killed me.
Like a chaotic evil cleric with a million hit points. (Googling to make sure I wasn't making up terminology, I had the terrifying expression of typing "dungeons and dragons" and nothing coming up on google autocomplete. I thought: if nobody has ever googled this phrase, I have probably gone mad.)
One last, cause I know I can't get through to you all.
Granted, give two Harvard Law Grads, one S-W-M one B-LGBT-F. the SWM is relatively privileged.
Granted, two mailman's kids, as above, the SWM is privileged.
BUt I happen to believe what is more important, or at least relatively important to me, is the vast gap in privilege between Harvard Law grads and blue-collar kids.
And I find y'all incomprehensible. Honest-to-God, at FDL yesterday there was a post complaining that there was only one woman at the JP Morgan Chase London trading desk. The commenters were equally outraged at the sexist oppression in multi-millon dollar bonuses to vampire squids.
I'm like: "The Horror. The Horror."
(Can't believe I'm going to engage this...)
But isn't the Harvard-blue collar privilege gap perpetuated for the most part because Harvard grads tend to be from the racial/gender privileged group? That is, for historical reasons most Harvard Law grads are S-W-M therefore they work and have the power to preserve that privilege even if a few minorities slip into their privileged sphere?
What if the straight white male has a brain tapeworm?
That makes the video game easier- your brain can eat more information.
35: Thanks. I'd been feeling a bit mentally slow today. I thought it was just sleep deprivation but it's obviously brain worms. God dammit!
Bob's right that social class is the massive fucking elephant in the room when it comes to this analogy. And social class isn't just the result of racism and sexism, per 34 [which is so wrong you can't really think that, no?].
God, why am I wading into this . . .
I don't think the point of the original analogy was that gender/race/orientation advantages are more significant than social class advantages. I think it was more aimed at those who argue that gender/race/orientation advantages don't exist at all.
30 - Did 30 actually kill you? Because I believe once you reach negative HP, you don't actually die -- you just lose one HP a round until you hit -10. Maybe someone can cast cure light wounds.
38 - It's a good thing that Bob is here to tell John Scalzi that he needs to think about poor white people, because Scalzi certainly wouldn't have done so otherwise.
Being born rich is like being able to watch a walk-through of the video game on You Tube before playing.
I mean it's basically like FPS except better graphics, but what happens if I get lag out there? I'm dead! I mean, I even heard there's no respawn points in RL.
re: 39
I think it was more aimed at those who argue that gender/race/orientation advantages don't exist at all.
Well, sure. There are also a lot of people who hold exactly the same views about social class, too. And there's an awful lot of people who take race and gender issues very seriously but not class.* So it doesn't seem entirely pointless to point out the weakness of the analogy.
* this is a hackneyed criticism of the 'identify-turn' on the left -- sometimes of course wrapped up with a bit of bullshit nostalgia for the good old days, when it was all about white manual labour, or whatever -- but there is some truth to it.
Wasn't it Sinatra that showed Harvey the deck of queens?
I read the article, and I'm pretty sure he extends the analogy to things like money, class, and intelligence.
44: My criticism of the identity turn is that it excludes people like me for having boring-ass strait white people identities. I'm being oppressed!
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, "Straight White Male" is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
Would this be true if all difficulty levels referred to the averages of the relevant demographic? Sure seems like the game would be easier to play with a character whose stats were the averages for Straight White Male rather than for Lesbian Black Female.
This thread is making me want to buy Civ V. The amount of time I've already spent on the other thread reminds me of what I broke my Civ IV cd into little pieces.
Just read the linked article. Never mind.
45: It was indeed! My mistake.
I read the article, and I'm pretty sure he extends the analogy to things like money, class, and intelligence.
Not really, he very much wants to consider money, class, intelligence different in kind than race, gender, orientation and I don't think he adequately explains why.
b) I have to view these things concretely, not as averages, abstractions, universals. "Privilege" is observed in a very specific social situation and never assumed going in.
Sexism may be more important than wealth in an Afghan village, and wealth may not help a lot if you want to be a Navy Seal. There could be surprises on Broadway.
Who gets what, where, how, why?
I do care, a little, that only one of twelve London derivative traders was a woman. I do. Just not very much. Does that mean this class warrior is pushing women to the back of the bus?
No, it means I'm pushing fucking derivative traders to the back of the freedom bus.
The Great Analogy Ban is, like, the Prime Directive.
Privilege and opportunity is complicated and contingent and social, not binary, and almost everybody has some.
This is absolutely right and common sense. Trying to turn 'privilege' into a unidimensional hierarchy with straight white males on the top isn't just an approximation that's a little off, it's a fundamentally misleading depiction of the situation. (And is itself a highly dubious analogy even before you bring video games into it).
Trying to turn 'privilege' into a unidimensional hierarchy with straight white males on the top
Seriously, is anybody advocating this model? That's certainly not what the video game analogy is asserting.
This article seemed relevant.
When we talk about privilege, some people start to play a very pointless and dangerous game where they try to mix and match various demographic characteristics to determine who wins at the Game of Privilege. Who would win in a privilege battle between a wealthy black woman and a wealthy white man? Who would win a privilege battle between a queer white man and a queer Asian woman? [...] Playing the Game of Privilege is mental masturbation--it only feels good to the players.
Oh Jesus fucking Christ I just clicked through the link in 35. I will never sleep again.
58 gets it exactly fucking right.
The analogy ban has become installed in my brain like some self-preserving er...fear of fire or something.
I find myself apologizing extensively to people in real life if I happen to find myself reaching for an analogy. I'm apt to say things like "Look, I know everyone hates analogies and I don't want to overstate it, but..."
which is so wrong you can't really think that, no?
Well, if you put it that way, I guess not. Help, I'm being oppressed!
41: I was hoping someone would link to that so I wouldn't have to go google it. For that matter, I'm grateful to 14 for telling bob to fuck off, because I would have felt compelled to do that, too.
52: bob, do you want me to respond to this in good faith, or do you want me to be an asshole? I'm asking in good faith.
57: internet commenter is the easiest setting in the Game of Privilege.
On reflection I think that the intersection of race, class and privilege is best understood by imagining that life is a game of Silent Hill 3.
The analogy ban has become installed in my brain like some self-preserving er...fear of fire or something tapeworm larva.
Given the importance of precedence for legal reasoning, it is surprising how little resistance there has been to the analogy ban from the lawyers here.
As I have said before, I am fundamentally an analogical thinker. The analogy ban is discrimination against my kind.
I love the analogy ban and enforce it in real life.
As I have said before, I am fundamentally an analogical thinker.
So is everybody.
But that said, the great benefit of the analogy ban is that it makes you think about whether your internal analogies make enough sense that you can express the similarities non-analogically.
57 is simply saying what I have been saying in this thread. With the usual caveated prolixity.
64:You mean you really really care about gender balance on London derivative desks? Fire away, I'm all atremble at my imminent destruction
People intend to abide by the analogy ban? Weird. It kind of reminds me of how Les Nessman on WKRP demanded that people respect the walls of his imaginary office.
The analogy ban is like my favorite stuffed animal, and I'm going to snuggle up to it forever.
Oh. I did almost cut this from 57.
President Barack Obama enjoys a great deal of privilege. He is wealthy, educated, young, and extraordinarily successful. He is in what appears to be a loving marriage. He has two healthy children. He is the president of the United States and, arguably, the most powerful man in the world. Even as he enjoys such immense privilege, Obama knows what all successful people of color know. All the wealth and power in the world won't shield you from racial epithets, assumptions about how you've achieved your success, and resentment from people who feel that the trappings of privilege are their rightful due.Given that even very privileged people can be marginalized,
Cry,cry for marginalized Obama.
I bet Obama whimpers into his pillow every time some Republican cracker even thinks the n-word, but he is strong and has the support of his friends and family. And...It's Getting Better!
How come bob is lecturing us about what its like to be poor and white anyway? He isn't white, he's Irish.
64: On the internet, nobody knows you're the easiest setting of pet privilege.
This thread blows. Wait, that's not quite accurate. Bob blows, and he blows so badly that he also makes people in his gravitational field blow, in proportion to their level of engagement with him. Now I'm going to bed before he makes me blow, too.
Too late, I guess. I already blow.
Somebody asked Roxanne "Why? Why privilege now?" That's the question I'm interested in.
I'm the one who posted here This from Adolph Reed
Ironically, as the basis for a politics, antiracism seems to reflect, several generations downstream, the victory of the postwar psychologists in depoliticizing the critique of racial injustice by shifting its focus from the social structures that generate and reproduce racial inequality to an ultimately individual, and ahistorical, domain of "prejudice" or "intolerance."
Or Roxanne's confession to the church of acknowledged privilege. Watch out for the ones who say they're sinners.
I'd go further than Reed, something about atomistic individualism and the search for an intentional sociality maybe. But like him, I think identity politics is driven more by historical and material forces than individual vices.
I have to view these things concretely, not as averages, abstractions, universals.
Fuck off. If you really did, you wouldn't constantly advocate bloody revolution.
Well that's weird. Certainly glad I managed to put my email address out there in nicely parseable format. Can someone clean that up?
14: Yes, the top 1% are outliers, so the 99% have only themselves to blame for their problems.
74:Half-German, and 1/64 Powatomi Pottawatomi Native American.
Single drop, not white at all.
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I'm full of buyer's remorse. I looked at two really nice apartments today. One was conveniently located and had a ridiculously nice kitchen and dining area and generally looked well-maintained and pleasant. The other was crazy fucking awesome and just as conveniently located and had all the utilities included in the rent and idiosyncratic but gorgeous color schemes and super-shiny new appliances, and five other people or groups of people seeing it at the same time all saying "zomg I must have this apartment." So, I signed a lease on the first one, figuring the odds of somehow beating all these other people to the second were low. But now I'm like, how I can I live anywhere else when I know the platonic ideal of apartments actually exists? And thinking of crazy schemes to apply for the second one anyway and somehow cancel my lease for the first even if it means eating the fee. But that would be stupid. But I wasn't under that much time pressure and probably should have let the first one go, knowing others like it must exist. Anyway, I will stop boring you all now.
|>
The thing that amazes me about my sister, and part of the reason that her life appears so enviable, is that she always does the work to trade up. Since other people don't see the work (finding a way to win the second apartment and eating the fee) but do see the end result, she looks incredibly lucky. She is lucky, but she also worked like a dog to get there.
I am keeping all this in mind, because a duplex that is very near to perfect for my communal living schemes was listed just today. Getting the loan and moving sounds like a painful amount of work when I already have an awesome place. But being in there for a decade with great people on the same lot would be even better, if I can just face all that effort now.
To Bob:
Now, once you've selected the "Straight White Male" difficulty setting, you still have to create a character, and how many points you get to start -- and how they are apportioned -- will make a difference. Initially the computer will tell you how many points you get and how they are divided up. If you start with 25 points, and your dump stat is wealth, well, then you may be kind of screwed. If you start with 250 points and your dump stat is charisma, well, then you're probably fine. Be aware the computer makes it difficult to start with more than 30 points; people on higher difficulty settings generally start with even fewer than that.
Likewise, it's certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn't change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.
The thing that amazes me about my sister, and part of the reason that her life appears so enviable, is that she always does the work to trade up.
My thought, at this moment, is that it would be good to have the rule, "put the work in for those cases where the marginal benefit to me would be greater than the average marginal benefit." But I am lazy and don't want to spend my time fighting with other people who are more motivated than I am.
She is lucky, but she also worked like a dog to get there.
This isn't what you're talking about, but that is what privilege looks like. I mean, I know nothing about your sister but the aspects of my own life about which I would say both. "I was lucky" and "I worked my ass off for that" are areas which reflect the fact that I started with a lot of privilege.
85: This is like the inverse of the puppy decisions being discussed a while back.
I just read some of Scalzi's comments. Not the thread, because it's infinite, but only some of the comments written by Scalzi. Is he always like this? It seems like he's only engaging with the trolls, and engaging only by calling them morons. I've never read him, other than skimming the occasional thing someone links to, but is he driven by vitriol like that usually? The thread is reminding me of PZ Myers-- someone who's probably capable of writing interesting stuff, but seems to prefer to spend all of his time telling stupid people how stupid they are in really vicious ways.
72 is so wonderful it almost justifies this thread.
I don't understand video games, so this particular analogy makes even less sense to me than it does to the rest of you. I couldn't bear to click through to the rest of the guy's piece.
90: Scalzi seems to have a heart in the right place but never to be able to offer a thought that hasn't previously occurred to the reader, a combination that suits him to the Internet and SFF fandom.
You also can't masturbate to Chuck Brown any more. If you didn't do it before, you are wishing you did now.
Not referring to anyone in particular, but my takeaway from this thread is that "Not giving a fuck about making any sense whatsoever, and just repeating a load of personal hobbyhorses and non sequiturs and expecting to be taken seriously, no matter how many times it has been pointed out to you that you're demonstrably wrong" might be an even easier difficulty setting.
Not referring to anyone in particular, but anyone claiming to have prevented a bankrun in Greece, besides having a ridiculous ego, is probably protecting a position, hoping to make money from...oh god knows what kind of unethical quasi-legal schemes banksters can come up with. Books should be examined.
That problem seems to have intensified significantly in the wake of the recent election. From May 6th to May 15th, for instance, Greeks were yanking deposits from their banks at a clip of approximately €700m per day.
All this coded talk is just impossible to follow.
Maybe you've got the difficulty setting on the blog set too high?
Comment about trying to manipulate Euro money markets by withholding information from the public.
Here's the FT Alphaville post that has everybody talking.
One comment says the the ECB and other PtB will have to, have to cover the Greek Banks until the next election and round of talks. Somewhere around 170 billion, I think.
A bank run now could save a lot a Greeks from starvation down the line, because they won't be able to buy food with drachmas, but would cost rich Germans and rich British a bunch of money.
I do like "pushing fucking derivative traders to the back of the freedom bus," mostly because of the quaint goofiness of "freedom bus."
From first link in 101.
Interesting
"a catastrophic bank run in Greece, a few days earlier than they were due one anyway"
Don't know what he knows, and whatever he said now I wouldn't believe him, but it looks like a bank holiday this Friday, with default, conversion, and capital controls over the weekend. Or something like that. Of course the elderly Greeks with their savings in the banks would probably like to know. Meanwhile, someone who had this knowledge could make a bunch.
The point is always to manage Greek horror with the least cost to fat core banksters, even if it means death to the Greek people.
"how did this economy pass the bar to Euro membership in the first place?"...Thoma'sAnd how did all those homeowners qualify for their mortgages?
Cui bono?
Cui bono?
Bono is Irish, not Welsh.
Bob, you are ruining the play thread!
104: Bono is Irish, not Welsh
well he didnt write "cwm Bffnff"
105:I'm gone. Commentary track on Hiroshima mon amour , and more rooting around in Svankmajer's dirty ragged shorts.
I'm not much for comedies tonight. Maybe I'll try one of the new Sherlock Holmes shows.
I received an email from a high school FB friend saying that someone whose name I very vaguely remember (but who I do not remember as a person, at all) wants my address re: "our reunion". What's that, now? High school was tremendously fucked up at the end there, but apparently people don't realize it.
It seems rude not to comply with the address request. The reunion-ish committee already has it anyway, judging by the mailings I got about the last reunion. So who is this person I do not remember and why is she asking for my address, and will there be anything incumbent upon me if I am not rude, and comply?
Don't watch the Hound of Baskersville one.
95 - Fortunately for us all, "Da Butt" is safe.
I think mcmanus has a point for once. Defining privilege in terms of male vrs female, white vrs non-white and straight vrs gay instead of say rich vrs poor, smart vrs stupid and sane vrs insane is not a neutral choice.
And I am not convinced male is even particularly privileged. Is the Mitt Romney character easier to play than the Ann Romney character? You have a lot more men than women in prison, dying young etc. so where is the big advantage?
112
C'mon, be less obvious. Rich vs. poor was covered in the post (though not explicitly enough). Smart vs stupid and sane vs. insane are covered by the fact that *you're the one playing the game*, i.e. your personal skills can overcome other kinds of disadvantages (difficulty level).
As far as I can tell the last sentence is a direct contradiction of the second sentence, since neither Ann nor Mitt Romney had a snowballs chance in hell of ending up in prison short of killing someone.
This may have been noted upthread at some point, but Freddie deBoer's post on this is good.
113
... since neither Ann nor Mitt Romney had a snowballs chance in hell of ending up in prison short of killing someone.
Maybe not but Mitt did manage to get arrested once.
And isn't all the hand wringing about class a little ironic given this?
113
... Smart vs stupid and sane vs. insane are covered by the fact that *you're the one playing the game*, i.e. your personal skills can overcome other kinds of disadvantages (difficulty level).
This makes no sense to me. Gender, race and sexual orientation are personal traits just like intelligence and sanity.
Do you even read what you link?
"Remarkably, Romney's word was enough to convince those in the courthouse to suspend the charges."
Gee, I wonder why?
118
Being a straight, white male didn't stop him from getting arrested. Straight, white women like Ann Romney are less likely to be arrested. So where is the male advantage?
I must say you're being really dense, Shearer.
116 - Mentioned in 41, but John Scalzi continues to be the Eichmann of liberal fascism.
121: Ah. Yeah -- I don't think that's what deBoer is on about really, though. He's not complaining that Scalzi doesn't know what it's like to be poor. See the link at his Update, here. It's an ongoing, developing theme of his. I find it interesting, but it may well not have much to do with Scalzi at this point.
Whoops, I misread and thought 121 was to 114. Well, deBoer is interesting anyway.
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Hiroshima mon amoue
1) Criterion commentary...not so great.
2) The movie at the least belongs to Marguerite Duras (script) as to Alain Resnais, and Duras is gigantic, and gets it.
3)About lots of things, many interpretations, blah. But the radicalness of the juxtaposition of the personal story in Nevers and the world-historical political event of Hiroshima is probably twenty years ahead of its time. And I think there very close parallels, by metonymy.
4) Duras at this time was very interested in what is not said. Our heroine is haunted by her dead first lover of 1944, and the brutality of her town's treatment of her. But what she does not speak of is the guilt and shame of her affair with a German soldier in occupied France. Was her shorn head, ostracism, and being hidden in the basement in some sense deserved? This is never contemplated. Her tragedy was something done to her.
5) For a while, like immediately post-war and during the occupation, the overwhelming guilt and shame, felt in various ways, of many or even most Japanese people cannot be overestimated, can barely be understood. Okay, not enough for their victims overseas, but definitely for themselves and their own.
Hiroshima, and much else, but especially Hiroshima, meant "How the fuck did we do this to ourselves?" The blame got shifted, to the Emperor, the military, but never much to the Americans, and secretly every Japanese felt an overwhelming shame, even if only at losing the war. The anti-militarism was real. Never again is real.
And Duras gets it, makes it problematic, just a The Lover is problematic for colonialism and sexual exploitation. What is great is how subtly and indirectly the movie shows history being forgotten or buried or distorted, and the questions it asks about the utility of memory.
It is a little hard to put ourselves in the attitudes of 1945 or 1959. She fucked a Nazi in occupied France. Individual freedom vs social power? The other story (in the movie, some) is about how the West (America) dragged Japan kicking and screaming (literally, riots) into the Cold War. That's also about power.
Fascinating from John Dower that the Americans asked, in 1950, the Japanese to rebuild an Army of 500,000 men, to help fight in Korea. The stupidity is awesome.
The Japanese said fuck you.
Fuck America.
Watching HMA, I was wondering what I messed from the 60s.
Maybe the guilt and shame, the personal responsibility, the uncertainty about whether I/we could commit the horrors I grew up with.
Now, of course, it's all the Republican's fault, isn't it?
118: you think that his word was believed because he's male? That would be news to Cory Maye.
94 has now completely explained Scalzi's prominence in the world to me.
120: Maybe you don't think you can convince Shearer, but I'd like to hear the argument.
Do you think that men are monotonically privileged? (Which I suppose would be a disagreement with the "patriarchy hurts men too" line.) Or do you just think that the balance of privilege is so strong as to make any disprivilege for men trivial? Or do you think some other thing?
"Not giving a fuck about making any sense whatsoever, and just repeating a load of personal hobbyhorses and non sequiturs and expecting to be taken seriously, no matter how many times it has been pointed out to you that you're demonstrably wrong" might be an even easier difficulty setting.
Especially if it gets you a slot on the opinion pages.
That "Rumpus" post is good. I will make my usual point that, observably, hardly any UK institutions care as much about race, gender, or sexuality than the trade unions, whose very raison d'etre is economic equality. As in, they literally built this stuff into their constitutions when it was neither popular nor profitable to do so.
Ken Livingstone is a case in point. His centrist/brooksite/blairite enemies loved to accuse him of being a liberal wanker ignoring the very real concerns yadda yadda, but also of being a Tammany Hall urban machine pol sucking up to immigrant communities (this is after they gave up just calling him a commie). The "tell" here is that both cannot be true. The constituency he spent his time sucking up to was the working class.
127: I'm not F, but I assume the thinking was that there are many fronts on which Mitt Romney appears privileged that may help him in a courtroom setting: white/straight/male, sure, but also wealthy, politically well-connected, well-spoken, nicely dressed, potentially from the same social class and social circle as the judge.... I'd guess that those last ones helped him out more than the first, but the first set is part of why he was able to rise to the level of prominence that he has. (There are some black families with intergenerational wealth and/or political connections, of course, but I think we can all name white ones more easily. And I can't think of any openly gay politicians who've gotten elected on the strength of their family names and connections rather than by realizing they would have to work hard to overcome prejudiced voters' initial opinions.)
The boat dock incident is actually a good example because it shows that certain displays of privilege ("I'm rich and I can pay this and my children deserve to have fun rather than risk disappointment!") can backfire in certain scenarios and it may have been the smugness of the provocation that led to the arrest. I have no problem believing there are poor black men who'd make the same kind of display of bravado in a similar situation, but I think it would read as a different sort of provocation.
The last time I had anything to do with Scalzi it ended hilariously badly, & I am bitter and not particularly charitable to him.
But I do think that this is one of those rather glib nerd analogies that I just can't fucking stand. Still, as a straight white male, none of my business, and if other people find it useful good on them.
When you play the Game of Life, you win AND you die.
134: Then the fact that he was arrested at all is strong evidence that he has some disprivileged attribute (to counterbalance what we agree is his extreme wealth privilege), and the court taking his word is not very strong evidence for male privilege in particular, since he has so many other traits that could better explain it (e.g. white, rich, well-connected).
And yes, being an asshole is a handicap some people have by upbringing, genetics, or circumstance. It seems like men are more likely to be the kind of asshole that gets arrested, and while that can be bad for those they interact with, it's also bad for the assholes.
for the benefit and information of people with credibility, accusing someone of talking their bok and manipulating the market unethically is obviously an extremely serious accusation that makes you really look like a malicious clown if you can't back it up. So, (not that anyone except Bob would ever need to be told this) don't do that, unless you are playing on the really easy clown-shoes "exorbitant privilege" difficulty setting.
And I can't think of any openly gay politicians who've gotten elected on the strength of their family names and connections rather than by realizing they would have to work hard to overcome prejudiced voters' initial opinions.
Colorado representative Jared Polis is openly gay and is worth about $70 million. Also he is an avid League Of Legends player.
137: Yeah, I must have missed anyone who was arguing that was specifically MALE privilege at play, although I think his wealth and blah blah blah are there in part because he's male. Men are definitely disprivileged when it comes to certain kinds of open assholishness, as well as prostate cancer, and certain other things. I don't think there's any kind of privilege that gives a person the upper hand at all times, outside of maybe being the kind of emperor who is also considered divine and even then you have to worry about sneaky assassination attempts from those who'd like to be divine emperor next.
I don't think there's any kind of privilege that gives a person the upper hand at all times
To be born British is to have won first prize in the great lottery of life.
139:Your own words, you boasted of killing a news story that would have caused a bank run.
Example:
Jamie Dimon:"Well, I managed to talk the NYT reporter in delaying that story that would have caused a massive sell-off in JPMC stock."
And what do the smart observers do next? Check Dimon's stock sales.
No, I don't have my hands on your portfolio. Or maybe not your book, but your institution, that promotes you and pays bonuses.
Shouldn't brag about burying news.
142: Great. I'll dig an extra ton for you today.
Your own words, you boasted of killing a news story that would have caused a bank run.
bob is objectively pro-Potter.
137
... and the court taking his word is not very strong evidence for male privilege in particular, since he has so many other traits that could better explain it (e.g. white, rich, well-connected).
It is also possible that disorderly conduct arrests under similar circumstances were routinely dismissed and there is nothing to explain.
ProPublica's argument for JP Morgan accountability.
145:I presume the injudicious comment will get disappeared.
Occupy is dead. Peaceful non-destructive protest has proven ineffective.
Electoral politics? Anybody hear Obama shilling for his buddy Dimon? Obama has tens of millions drawing interest in JPMC.
So what, we are going to have 50% Spanish youth unemployment for another decade?
No, we won't. Le Pen in France, Neo-Nazis in Greece, Hungary, Romney...I told you in in 2008, liberals/social democrats hang the banksters from lampposts or the fascists will come.
And it will be your fault. Obama should have been Public Enemy No 1 by summer 2009.
The story, Bob, was wrong. I "killed" it by explaining to the journalist that he had mistaken a technical change in the ECB's collateral arrangements for a cancellation of emergency credit to the system. I have no positions positive or negative that might benefit from this, only a general interest in the survival of the Eurosystem. It was basically a job that the ECB press office could and should have done, but they were not picking up their phones for some reason.
I realise that you want everything to collapse, in order to accelerate your very odd concept of revolution (and to have more things to blame on Obama and liberals) but people who aren't clowns don't necessarily share your worldview.
And what do the smart observers do next? Check Dimon's stock sales.
And, having done so, what would smart observers learn? That Dimon made no suspicious trades.
Really, bob, you might want to let this thread go.
Anecdotally, I will say that the whole straight white male thing has worked out well for me.
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Babies Are Assholes is a fun-to-read takedown of Attachment Parenting.
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149.1 is exactly how I'd assumed things went down, for whatever it's worth.
I have nothing nice to say about Jamie Dimon, particularly when it comes to how stupid he sounds when he talks.
So what, we are going to have 50% Spanish youth unemployment for another decade?
No, we won't. Le Pen in France,
Le Pen? bob, Le Pen lost!
154:
Marine Le Pen, Far-Right Candidate, Wins Huge Portion Of Vote> April 22
Hitler didn't win in 1928 or 1930, either.
I think Hollande is gonna sellout.
People named Le Pen have been not winning elections for a very long time.
That's actually your argument?
Le Pen's going to take over and turn France into a fascist dictatorship, because she didn't win, and you know who else didn't win? HITLER!
149: oh, I thought you were talking about the ECB-ELA-Greece one and was going to point out that they ran it after all...
Something I don't understand: Why would anybody keep their money in a Greek bank?
They have mattresses in Greece.
Might be hard to make a payroll or something from your bed.
Le Pen percentage of the vote
1988 14.4% (fourth place)
1995 15.0% (fourth place)
2002 16.9% (second place, then 17.8% in second round)
2007 10.4% (fourth place)
2012 17.9% (third place)
Sentez le Penmentum!
130: 120: Maybe you don't think you can convince Shearer, but I'd like to hear the argument.
I'm happy to let Thorn's 134 speak for me. (It's not clear to me what "monotonically" means in any case.)
Isn't there some kind of statistics thing where you're supposed to realize that even though there are a lot more men than women in prison (per 112.2), that doesn't mean that in any given single case, some specific man is more likely to be sent to prison than some specific woman? I hear the phrase "in the aggregate" mentioned a lot in connection with this.
I think the reductionist way that "privilege" gets used nowadays is somewhat harmful to the overall goal of ending white supremacy. It seems that abstracting privilege into this sort of ineffable force (like The Force) tends to elide the very real political and economic decisions that go into enforcing the color line. What is more effective for white folx to do: "Check their privilege" or "resolve to be a race traitor"?
Same rules apply for other loci of oppression.
I'm not saying it doesn't make sense to address privilege, and certainly, as in the linked post, if your audience is clueless white boys, you're just going to have to be somewhat reductionist and give an over-simplified reading of the concept. I've seen and heard about plenty of "Anti-racism 101" workshops, but I think there needs to be a greater emphasis, in the graduate seminars, on looking at concrete political organizing. Too often, the people who care the most get bogged down in these endless discussions with people who have a decidedly pre-intellectual appreciation of the issues in play.
tl;dr: What Adolph Reed said.
On the prison question, both Lee and I got a lot out of reading Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow.
Something I don't understand: Why would anybody keep their money in a Greek bank?
Language skills? Difficulty/cost of withdrawing money from a foreign account, the fact that most wealthy Greeks don't keep the bulk of their cash in Greek banks anyways?
164: I think there needs to be a greater emphasis, in the graduate seminars, on looking at concrete political organizing.
Natilo, Freddie deBoer, linked upthread at 122 and 114, talks about this to an extent. Not sure that the graduate seminars are the only place a greater emphasis is needed.
Also, I haven't read the Scalzi piece, but the excerpted portions I've seen, speaking in terms of difficulty level setting from the outset of life, strike me as not much different from the thought experiment Rawls asks us to engage in from the original position.
From that perspective, Scalzi's thing isn't awfully egregious.
157: yes it was that story (not that journo though) but you should have seen the alarmist crap that was swilling around...
168: Well, that's a good point too. Put people out doing real shoe-leather organizing first and worry about the finer theoretical points later. I think the danger is minimizing that there ARE finer points, which seems to lead, in my experience, to people getting burnt out and going back to mainstream Democratic Party activism.
141: I thought that was implicit in Scalzi's "difficulty level" analogy (which implies monotonic privilege). Did I miss the part where we all agreed he was wrong?
163: I guess "strictly dominant" might have been more precise. Implicit in modeling race, sex, and orientation as difficulty settings, is the judgment that there is nothing that's easier for people playing on "hard" in any way.
There are plenty of other RPG setting/character traits that would be better analogues. "Race" and "career" typically come with a mix of advantages and disadvantages, even if some are on net easier to play than others.
But "straight white men have it easier more often than not" is apparently too boring a sentiment for Scalzi.
134: Then the fact that he was arrested at all is strong evidence that he has some disprivileged attribute
One might profitably wonder if the fact that he was arrested was a result of his circumstances, and not his having some "attribute." (Scalzi's videogame analogy, BTW, specifically allows -- as he did very explicitly point out -- that playing on the lowest difficulty setting doesn't guarantee that you will never encounter a problem of any kind, or even that you will do better than 100% of the players of some higher difficulty setting. That actually is part of what makes it apt as an analogy for privilege.)
In response to 90: while 94 is correct that Scalzi is far from a deep thinker, he actually has been remarkably polite and tolerant in any online setting in which I've seen him, until that thread. It seems to me that aggressively clueless dorks just really piss him off.