Finally: I kinda think the Rhianna song is terrible. I'm sorry.
Don't apologize; I suspect this is a post where I'm being wrong in public, and figuring that it will prompt responses when people correct me.
Also, for the record, I find the combination of song and video more interesting than the song itself.
I did watch the video. It is true that I watched it on 2x speed, but I'm sure that chipmunk speed is irrelevant to whether or not I connected emotionally.
It feels like a skillful version of a video that a 15 year old would make-- it just throws in the most dramatic images that fit the theme. It's completely over the top by normal standards of good taste, but I also kind of love it.
Of course good taste is the enemy of politics, and of course claiming a cheesy patriotism that celebrates resonant aspects of American identity is good politics. I sometimes feel like these takes fail to acknowledge who Democrats actually run for office. What do people want different from *Biden*, not rando lefty on Twitter. Isn't Biden middlebrow patriotism?
Yes, yes he was. The campaign he ran had ads that were relentlessly positive and patriotic. Then Trump would come on the radio and call Nancy Pelosi a whore without mentioning Biden.
Yeah, doesn't appeal to me as a song either, but the aesthetic is something to consider.
Something in the same family is Janelle Monae's Americans, which actually is from the Trump era and whose main lyrics are from the first-person POV of a white Trumpist man (with a translucent authorial mask), but is still a great bop and brings me to a nicely contradictory love-hate feeling. And one of the bits near the end is a sincere political sermon with the theme "as long as [long list of faults] this is not my America... but I tell you today that the devil is a liar, because it's gonna be my America before it's all over."
The two share, I think, a particularly Black style where acknowledging the country's many horrible aspects and working for change is part of how you love it. Admittedly, that is a more establishment strain, but still.
(Frankly, the song is so catchy I could see it being appropriated by future Republicans without regard to lyrics. Born in the USA was similarly on-the-nose.)
Would Republicans appropriate a song by a black artist?
Point of order: I don't think the t-shirt is an important part of the video. That said, I'm struck every time I see Rihanna, which isn't often, that she must be one of the most beautiful people ever to walk the earth. I'd vote for her for president a lot.
8: They could have Kid Rock remake it and appropriate that.
As I mentioned in the OP, the first time I saw the video it made me think of cyperpunk. It seems like the sort of thing that would be playing on a video screen when you go out to pick up NERPs*
I want to connect that to the patriotism idea (I can't promise this will work, but I'll try).
I remember reading that people are less likely to remember things if they know that it will be easy to look them up as needed (e.g., maps, or casts of movies). Remembering things takes some effort and the brain won't work to sustain it if it doesn't have to.
I also remember seeing that oral cultures are much slower and more resistant to change than written cultures -- if the way things are remembered is that everybody sings a song about them together, it takes a while for new things to be introduced and accepted. That also implies that everyone is doing the work of retaining their portion of the collective memories in their head.
Digital culture means that there are a lot more things that fall into the category of, "can look up as needed." Not only facts but, "what are the members of my tribe thinking about X; let me check twitter"
I speculate that this is why it was so easy, in 2016, for Republicans to go from, "Russia is our biggest threat" to "Russia is great" because people weren't making any effort to maintain those beliefs in their own headspace; it was something that they could care about if it came up and ignore if it didn't.
I think that shift makes it harder to evoke the "cheesy patriotism." If people stop maintaining their own mental model of "cheesy patriotism" and instead know that they can reference it whenever they need then you get less shared patriotism and, instead, patriotism becomes (partially) replaced with, "what are the members of my tribe thinking about X; let me check twitter" which fills some of the same emotional need, but functions very differently politically.
*New Exciting Retail Products
They're forced to choose between one movement that vilifies the idea of America, and another that vilifies the America that actually exists.
Noah Smith means well and he seems like a nice guy, but he's kind of a dope. In fact, if you don't like either of these alternatives there is an entire political party devoted to a third alternative -- one that routinely gets the most votes in national elections.
The party of staying home and not voting?
Watched the Rihanna video. Titties, hooray. It's sexist of me to not say more about it than that but I don't think much about music in general and can't remember the last music video I watched in particular.
Read the post by Kevin Drum and skimmed the articles by Noah Smith and Amanda Marcotte. My first thought it that it sounds logical, but someone other than me is going to have to do something about it, because acting cheerful and upbeat would be harder for me than door-to-door canvassing, and I haven't managed to do that since 2008. I don't think I'm particularly miserable in daily life, but I'm definitely not the upbeat type.
It's always a good idea to eat leafy greens while at a Rihanna-playing house party.
The song seems to exist as a soundtrack to the video. Apparently, the song apparently is supposed to be a political statement, but the lyrics say close to nothing.
19: Apparently, peep? Well, at least you are an authority on saying nothing.
Some people on Twitter were trying to generate positivity about Biden. Look at that job report! The economy is kicking ass! And on that topic, how about that ISIS leader, Biden killed! Hurray!
I suppose that kind of rah-rah is necessary, but I don't have to like it.
two thoughts:
1. I'm not gonna go read whatever drivel Noah wrote. The Dems "vilify the idea of America" ? Really? Really? Tell us what's your idea of America, Noah, and maybe we'll find out you're a despicable person in that process. I have ideas of what America is, and they celebrate America and Americans, in all our imperfections and hopeful attempts at perfection.
2. I live in SF, and before Covid, I used to routinely see mixed-race groups of young people (OK, anybody
The two incredibly adorable kids, each time with at least one parent, were a lovely picture of America. Or at least, California. The masses of mixed-race groups of young people enjoying themselves (or just out for a lunch break from work, hey, they're adults downtown!) to me signify California.
3. In the Before Time, I saw a video from Canada. I can't remember where I saw it, but I'll recount it. First, though: it brought me to literal tears, and I'm the sort of person who cries at videos, or even at all. Gushing tears. It starts with a little girl (ok, maybe teen) in Syria in an obviously bombed-house and town. It progresses to her packing her few belongings with her family, flying, and then arriving in Canada, being greeted, taken to her new home, in school (IIRC), etc. And there's this swelling feeling if "this is who we are as Canadians!" It's incredibly positive about being Canadian, about rescuing this kid's family, making them part of Canada. And Canada is presented as multicultural, too.
Why did I cry? Because I wanted my country to be like that. And under TFG, it wasn't, it was the opposite: my country were the ones who wanted to rip the kid away from her family and throw her into a prison cell.
I think Noah fails to see all the other kinds of positive imagery of America. Or maybe, as a member of the media, he refuses to pass along that positive imagery to his readers. There's money in that, after all.
The fund raising emails from the Democrats are really gloomy in the subject line. I wish they'd stop that.
I should have added: the video is skillfully edited, in a way that I'm unable to get across. There's a real emotional line to the situation in which the girl and her family start, and where they end up: it starts low, is painfully low and then, upon arriving in Canada, starts to rise rapidly to a real emotional crescendo. It was really skillfully edited. Which doesn't change it's emotional impact. I really did just gush tears, watching it.
Yeah, Smith has some good things to say but I fear he's been failing the white man's perpetual struggle to not slowly evolve into a pretentious blowhard, especially as he moved onto substack.
Yeah, Smith has some good things to say but I fear he's been failing the white man's perpetual struggle to not slowly evolve into a pretentious blowhard, especially as he moved onto substack.
I like his podcast with Brad DeLong but, yes, his substack is hit-or-miss.
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Also, the one other video from Rihanna that has caught my eye is the version of "Four Five Seconds" edited with a montage of clips from Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant with the Thunder. If you're a basketball fan it's really well done: https://vimeo.com/118779084
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I'm not going to watch that because if I do like it, I don't have time to be a basketball fan.
During the Trump era, politicians and other public figures often would say "This is not America". At some point my twitter feed became full of people pointing out that cruelty, prejudice, xenophobia etc are totally American and to suggest that Trump was unprecedented and peculiarly unamerican was only to reveal your own ignorance of our history.
Maybe that's the kind of thing that Noah Smith could point to as an example where the left "vilify the idea of America".
I mean 29 is true, but again that's lefties on twitter not Joe Biden. I just hate all these articles that are all "Why can't the Democrats talk like Obama, Biden, Kelly, and Warnock do?" Those are the Democrats! Unlike the Republican party, we don't nominate twitter trolls for office!
29: Yeah, those people aren't wrong, but they are Not Helping in a way that they often don't seem to realize. One of the challenges with progressive politics in the US is that an accurate understanding of the problems with America is neither necessary nor sufficient for fixing them. Indeed, it's often actively counterproductive.
But 30 is also correct. Actual politicians do understand this and that's why they're so fond of patriotic rhetoric even when it's not strictly accurate. They're often also unable to succeed in making things better, because there are lots of other barriers beyond this one.
29 reminds me that I had a back-and-forth with a friend about this Ibram Kendi article which annoyed me.
"Let me be very clear: The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America. Do not represent who we are," President-elect Joe Biden said during Wednesday's siege.
...
To say that the attack on the U.S. Capitol is not who we are is to say that this is not part of us, not part of our politics, not part of our history. And to say that this is not part of America, American politics, and American history is a bald-faced denial. But the denial is normal. In the aftermath of catastrophes, when have Americans commonly admitted who we are? The heartbeat of America is denial.
It is historic, this denial. Every American generation denies. America is establishing the freest democracy in the world, said the white people who secured their freedom during the 1770s and '80s. America is the greatest democracy on Earth, said the property owners voting in the early 19th century. America is the beacon of democracy in world history, said the men who voted before the 1920s. America is the leading democracy in the world, said the non-incarcerated people who have voted throughout U.S. history in almost every state. America is the utmost democracy on the face of the Earth, said the primarily older and better-off and able-bodied people who are the likeliest to vote in the 21st century. America is the best democracy around, said the American people when it was harder for Black and Native and Latino people to vote in the 2020 election.
By contrast, I thought this covered the same ground in a way that didn't bother me.
There's no disputing that the assault was remarkable. But "un-American" is the wrong adjective. A better way to make sense of the news of the past few days -- not only the violent occupation in Washington but also the historic Senate victories by Democrats in Georgia -- is as a long-run contest between two competing American traditions: one committed to preserving the status quo racial hierarchy and one fighting to advance equality.
Maybe if there were a well-conducted, good reparations/reconciliation project, we could get past "you have to understand American cruelty." 'Cause we do, but then we have to move on to whatever that understanding prompts.
We will never fix the underlying problems with America until GSA members stop flaming me on Twitter!
Land back, reparations, addressing intergenerational trauma, stopping new offenses against the people wo always get hurt. Like that.
The accurate assessment that America has a real mean streak is only useful if it leads to something.
Monae's song reminded me of an older work that concludes:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
https://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again
I really did just gush tears, watching it.
I, too, am a sucker for that liberal patriotism shit. This one still gets me. Also this one.
All, all the stretch of these great green states
Are they trying to tell Arizona to fuck off?
39: I'm not that much of a sucker. I want to do a remix of "Yes We Can" with a voice responding each time "But, no, we won't."
Upon further reflection, maybe you hear that voice already, and that's what makes you cry.
I sometimes reflect on the fact that many of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists were carrying American flags. This went largely unremarked. Everybody -- on the left, on the right, in the media -- knows what the American flag stands for nowadays. Decency and patriotism have always had a troubled relationship, but in the US today, they seem incompatible.
33: This is comically weak. A list of crushing indictments including actual slavery and:
America is the utmost democracy on the face of the Earth, said the primarily older and better-off and able-bodied people who are the likeliest to vote in the 21st century.
MORE OF SOME VOTER DEMOGRAPHICS VOTE MORE THAN OTHERS WHAT IS THIS SO-CALLED DEMOCRACY YOU SPEAK OF AND BY THE WAY I TROD IN DOG SHIT ON THE WAY HERE WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT THAT
Left-wing activists complain about America a lot. Right-wing activists also complain about America a lot for opposite reasons. Right-wing politicians are closer to their activists than left-wing politicians are. In terms of the popular vote, the median American is closer to the left-wing politicians than the right-wing politicians. But in terms of electoral college or Senate math, it's harder to say, and the second thing is what matters these days.
"Yes We Can" featuring words from President Barack Obama's concession speech and performances by will.i.am, John Legend, Common, Nicole Scherzinger, Scarlett Johansson and more.
Jeez, will i am, you are maybe very talented but also a huge dope.
I'm probably just grump because however skeptical I was about Obama, I was nowhere near skeptical enough.
And this was the Bernie Sanders video that made me sob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Syln8IkOIqc
Everybody -- on the left, on the right, in the media -- knows what the American flag stands for nowadays.
The right took an American flag, changed it to black and white and literally drew a big blue dividing line across the middle - desecrating the fuck out of it, and somehow this is considered patriotism.
It's obviously not patriotism, but it sure does make it easier for me to avoid people.
48: That's some very negative stuff. I agree with Noah Smith that it was a big mistake giving you and Bernie Sanders control of the messaging for the Democratic Party. Especially you.
Why did you kill Erica Garner, pf?
There were also more than a few Confederate flags flying at the Capitol on Jan 6
11: It seems like the sort of thing that would be playing on a video screen when you go out to pick up NERPs*
Also when you are in a head restraint with your eyelids forced to be open.
54: As Joe Biden wants schoolkids to happen to masked schoolchildren
I think it's catchy when she goes "whoa-oh"
I don't think I understand the distinction Nick is making in 33, but the shouty 44 seems misguided. Ibram Kendi is making a complaint here that is so obviously correct it's rather banal: The US political economy continues to produce systematic discrimination that isn't acknowledged by the beneficiaries of that discrimination. Not a terribly original observation, but it does seem to be necessary to keep reminding people.
It seems to me that John Kerry went hard on patriotic messaging and is the only Democratic presidential candidate this century to have lost the popular vote.
That "reporting for duty" shtick was supposed to swing a lot of people in the center, but nah.
Didn't someone compare W. to Gilligan? I think it was supposed to be a compliment.
The right took an American flag, changed it to black and white and literally drew a big blue dividing line across the middle - desecrating the fuck out of it, and somehow this is considered patriotism.
This never occurred to me in quite this way.
OTOH, there's also a lot of persnickety flag rules that no one thinks about when they're buying their jingotastic garb for the 4th of July, or for storming the castle.
Elsewhere, President Bush mourned the passing of actor Bob Denver, calling the "Gilligan's Island" star "a great American and a role model for me personally."
http://web.archive.org/web/20051126022118/http://borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1212
(not that this is from The Borowitz Report and is not an actual quote from the former President. I do not want to be responsible for the spread of misinformation)
Nobody would confuse W. with the fundamentally honest and decent Gilligan.
65.3: It's hard to remember this, but there was a time way back when I was young, when it was a counterculture thing to stick the US flag on clothing, and this was seen as disrespectful.
65: Or leaving the flag out and unlit at night, like my one neighbor with the asshole Trump signs.
58: When Kerry referenced the poem in 38, a lot of activists got super-mad in exactly the way that Kendi does.
Left-wing activists complain about America a lot. Right-wing activists also complain about America a lot for opposite reasons.
See, this is false equivalency. Lefties get angry at the very idea of saying something good about America--again, see above--while rightists praise "real America" in the course of attacking actually-existing America. There is an interesting symmetry at play, but it is very much not a mirror. And thinking that hoi polloi see them as identical is just self-delusion.
69: I guess there was that one episode where they waterboarded the Muslim who washed up onshore.
I don't think there's strong political valence to normal American flags. They might even lean Democratic. Republicans have Trump flags, confederate flags, thin blue line flags, etc. Lefties fly rainbow flags.
72: The bad stuff is all the Skipper's fault.
As for the whole "it doesn't matter what lefties say, elected Dems are normies" thing: Today's Democratic Party is very much comprised of Black people, well-educated people of all colors, and a modest majority of non-Black/non-white groups. The second of those groups is largely comprised of people who think Kendi is correct, or possibly understating things.
Look at this thread full of well-educated white people repelled at the notion of vulgar patriotism or saying, without caveats, that the President they voted for has done good things. This is not a DSA site, nor is it the fringe of the Democratic Party. We very much represent a big chunk of the small donors upon which the modern Dems rely, and disclaiming the influence of people like us is a lot more self-deluding than thinking that Americans might not be the worst people on earth.
: It's hard to remember this, but there was a time way back when I was young, when it was a counterculture thing to stick the US flag on clothing, and this was seen as disrespectful.
There was a time when I was young, where there was an album cover which was a close-up of a bikini, colored like the flag, featuring a very full bush underneath with plenty of twiggies sticking out. And this was seen as disrespectful.
Huh. In my memory it was way bushier.
I am now learning that it was originally a Hustler cover, back when peep was young.
Guys. I think I know how to make the Democratic party fun again.
My point isn't that it doesn't matter, obviously it does matter and an awful lot of people's voting is determined primarily by personal animus towards me and you. My point is that this has nothing to do with political practice. The Democratic party can't pretend away the existence of a bunch of people, it's utterly outside of the realm of politics or the control of the Democratic party. And even if you somehow changed the minds of 90% of those people, the remaining 10% would still be enough for the rightwing outrage machine. They only need one main character each week. And the take quoted in the post was "But someone needs to try patriotism soon, because to not do so would be madness." That's an argument about political figures like JFK, and it only makes sense if you're saying that Joe Biden and other major Democratic political figures aren't trying that. They are! It doesn't work because a lot of people hate lefties much more than they love their country.
75: I would add to 81 that these conversations inevitably get muddled when we take advice aimed at politicians and apply it to regular folks -- or vice versa. It's true that the Democratic Party contains a lot of politicians who get elected as normies, and a lot of Democratic voters have opinions that are not politically saleable, even if they are correct. Should those voters be drummed out of the party? Or should we be explaining to, say, black people that they need to be quiet about the whole racism thing.
If it's the latter, I am compelled to point out the in the actual world, a whole lot of black people are really, really quiet about the racism thing. It was black people who put Normie Joe Biden over the top in the primaries. The victims of oppression in this country have been historically quite willing to seek compromise and build coalitions.
The United States is in the grip of a crisis of bad history. Distortions of the past promoted in the conservative media have led large numbers of Americans to believe in fictions over facts, making constructive dialogue impossible and imperiling our democracy.
In Myth America, Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer have assembled an all-star team of fellow historians to push back against this misinformation. The contributors debunk narratives that portray the New Deal and Great Society as failures, immigrants as hostile invaders, and feminists as anti-family warriors--among numerous other partisan lies. Based on a firm foundation of historical scholarship, their findings revitalize our understanding of American history.
Replacing myths with research and reality, Myth America is essential reading amid today's heated debates about our nation's past
I have it on good authority that a participant in this very thread may be involved in this anti-American project.
https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/kevin-m-kruse/myth-america/9781541601390/?utm_source=SocialPromo&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_campaign=Kruse_MythAmerica_Preorder_Preorder_BA_9781541601390&utm_content=Politics&utm_term=Author_Krusefollowers_GenPop
And what would it mean to drum them out of the party anyway? You can't stop someone from voting for a party if they want to.
84: You can't stop them from voting for you, but you can condemn them. Or as political pundits love to suggest -- you can have a Sister Souljah moment.
85: For example, Biden could attack the 1619 project. He could say something like, "Our country was founded in 1776, not 1619! It was founded to promote liberty, not slavery!"
86: He could do that the day after he nominates a liberal African-American woman to the Supreme Court.
We should ask Sister Souljah's to confirm that. Her ancestors have been here longer than mine.
I don't think Democrats need to do more to prop up their own patriotism, but I do think they need to do more to attack Republicans for their lack of patriotism. Republicans use patriotism as a core part of their brand, but their actual, in-practice patriotism is a huge edifice of bullshit.
Patriots don't try to overthrow democratic elections, or make it harder for people to vote, or spread propaganda to intensify a pandemic, or throw in with the likes of Vladimir Putin. Republicans that do these things are being unpatriotic AF and its useful to point that out.
And what would it mean to drum them out of the party anyway?
peep is on fire in this thread, and I hesitate to try to improve on the wisdom we have already received, but I will add this: We know that these voters can be drummed out of a political party because the Republicans already did it.
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Did anyone save the original "IT'S MOLE" post? From Craigslist, I want to say? I know we were saying "It's mole" at the drop of a hat as early as 2010.
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I'm on fire! Anybody got any water???????????
First we need to be sure you aren't also somehow being electrocuted too. If yes, we need the chemical extinguisher.
They only need one main character each week.
I still think we should go straight for "they". "They" is actual platforms and media. Bring back the Fairness doctrine! Regulate online media!
I know that you can get artisanal handcrafted anti-liberal frenzy by going to online forums. But a lot of it is still mass-produced and could be reduced by regulating a few producers.
Patriotic AF: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/gary-chambers-jr-confederate-flag-louisiana-senate-1297202/
95: I was just coming here to post that! It would have been more on this theme if instead of just showing the US flag at the start, the Confederate flag-burning part then ended by a pan over/up to return to it.
91: it was rfts and snarkout who found it, right? Was it actually on rfts' blog, or am I completely misremembering (very possible)?
Can I admit that I never quite got the joke? I was joke-adjacent but never quite got there.
I thought it was animal/Mexican sauce/6.02 * 10^23.
Careful you don't get arrested by the gazpacho.
Cold soup isn't the worst thing in history, but it's pretty close.
I sometimes wonder if she doesn't do stuff like that on purpose just for the sympathy after getting dunked on so much.
Maybe, but it seems like she really is that stupid.
It's likely that she comes by it honestly, but maybe not.
My theory is that much of the support for the modern conservative movement is because some people have a great fear of being exposed or thought of as stupid. It's like George being seen with his penis shriveled from cold water, except this time the penis is a metaphorical penis and the cold water is anyone who actually knows stuff. So you trigger that nerve and you case them to grab their dick.
But I like the theory still. It explains how a guy could die from a preventable illness while complaining about Fauci on Facebook up to the moment of sedation.
112 and 114 are profound and correct. 113 is also true.
Just because you call it a metaphor doesn't mean we don't all know its an analogy.
97: I think I might have found it first, because my very first apartment was in that complex.
Moby: "wonder if she doesn't do stuff like that on purpose just for the sympathy"
You elicited a bunch of thoughts:
1. "those that can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities". Uttering absolute idiocy like this is a great way to sieve the true believers from the dilettantes.
2. How could we tell if she is that stupid, or only pretending ?
3. They used to say that TFG would take every side of every issue except *one*: Russia. And there, he was steadfastly on Putin's side. In a similarly manner, sure, she might be stupid about all sorts of stuff. But she's never stupid about White Supremacy. Never.
I tend to believe that she's *not* that stupid, that at most she mis-spoke, but once having done it, she realized that it was good press, so why should she correct it?
That reminds me of the time when I didn't know who Morrissey was and got him confused with Jim Morrison and people thought I was making a good joke.