8 ms·

For a counterpoint, read this scathing review by Moira Weigel of his book The Coddling of the American Mind: Like Trump, the authors romanticise a past before

by dcre 8y ago

For a counterpoint, read this scathing review by Moira Weigel of his book The Coddling of the American Mind: Like Trump, the authors romanticise a past before “identity” but get fuzzy and impatient when history itself comes up. “Most of these schools once excluded women and people of colour,” they reflect. “But does that mean that women and people of colour should think of themselves as ‘colonised populations’ today?” You could approach this question by looking at data on racialised inequality in the US, access to universities, or gendered violence. They don’t. They leave it as a rhetorical question for “common sense” to answer. Their narrow perception of history severely limits the explanations Lukianoff and Haidt can offer for the real problems they identify. Can you understand the “paranoia” middle-class parents have about college admissions without considering how many of their children are now downwardly mobile? How are college teachers supposed to confidently court controversy when so many of them have zero security in jobs that barely pay above poverty wages? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/20/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/20/the-coddling-o...

moosey 8y ago
I have never been thoughtful enough to realize that the exclusions mentioned (women, POC) throughout US history fit the definition of 'identity' or 'identity politics' so well. I'm always impressed when someone comes up with such a rock solid example that points out _specific_ hypocrisies. Normally, using hypocrisy to counter someones argument is a logical fallacy, but the omissions present, and the effects of historical politically enforced inequalities must be taken into account when discussing these issues philosophically, especially when dealing with those who suggest that this is only a contemporary issue. This issue is only contemporary in the fact that we are still burning far too much energy knocking down these doors in the first place, or trying to keep them open, when it comes to women's rights, and the issues present in "The Color of Law". I'm impressed.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  the omissions present, and the effects of historical politically enforced inequalities must be taken into account I say this as a lifelong Democratic party member and voter. (Until recently.) In 2019, inequality is propagated through differences in access to effective educational environments. It's the Democratic party which opposes school vouchers and funding increased choice in education for disadvantaged neighborhoods. I know that such choice is an important issue for inner city parents. I've been approached by an inner city mother asking how she could get a coding education for her son. As was mentioned in the Watergate scandal, always "follow the money." (Or eyeballs. Or fame. Or votes.) Who benefits from disadvantaged neighborhoods? Who benefits from encouraging large populations to refuse to assimilate into their host society?
  - dbt00 8y ago
    > I say this as a lifelong Democratic party member and voter. (Until recently.) In 2019, inequality is propagated through differences in access to effective educational environments. It's the Democratic party which opposes school vouchers and funding increased choice in education for disadvantaged neighborhoods. I know that such choice is an important issue for inner city parents. I've been approached by an inner city mother asking how she could get a coding education for her son. One, this is completely off-topic for this article. Two, and this is important, I find the "I, an anonymous person, used to believe X, so you should believe me when I espouse political beliefs that are antithetical to X" school of debating incredibly tiring. Just make your case, skip the "as a ...." introduction. Third, and this is important -- almost all school voucher programs are designed to take public money and put them into subpar schools with few to no standards. Voucher programs with standards get support, voucher programs that exempt private recipients of funds do not. > Who benefits from encouraging large populations to refuse to assimilate into their host society? Most democrats and public education supporters are for integrated education. Most voucher supporters are not.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      One, this is completely off-topic for this article. Not at all. If you want to look at how disadvantage is propagated, that is exactly what it is in the US. I find the "I, an anonymous person, used to believe X, so you should believe me when I espouse political beliefs that are antithetical to X" school of debating incredibly tiring. Just make your case, skip the "as a ...." introduction. Then just take my advice and start "following the money." If you believe there is systemic discrimination which has lasted decades, there must be a reason for it. Start ferreting out the incentives. Who profits in terms of money and power? https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/14/a-legacy-of-liberalism https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/14/a-legacy-o... Third, and this is important -- almost all school voucher programs are designed to take public money and put them into subpar schools with few to no standards. Voucher programs with standards get support, voucher programs that exempt private recipients of funds do not. Feel free to link some articles about this. Standards could be used as a political tool to repress competitors, or there could be real concern about standards, or there could be a mixture of both. Most voucher supporters are not. Many voucher supporters are the very disadvantaged people we are supposed to be helping!
stcredzero 8y ago
“But does that mean that women and people of colour should think of themselves as ‘colonised populations’ today?” You could approach this question by looking at data on racialised inequality in the US, access to universities, or gendered violence. The groups who succeed are all about integrating themselves into the current order. Sometimes by hook. Sometimes by "crook." Most often by both at once. This is what the Irish did, and the typical Irish peasant in the 1st half of the 19th century was about half as well off as the typical American slave. Chinese immigrant groups often arrived on the shores, poorer than the median poor of the new country, but still raised themselves up after a few generations. In fact, in the 100 years after slavery, this is also what African Americans in the US were doing. There was astonishing progress in areas like literacy. (There were also huge reversals, but many of these came after 1960!) However, there are some historical patterns found in the study of immigrant groups that come with the continued disadvantage of a group. Many of these involve unfair laws. These were eliminated in the US civil rights movement. Another historical pattern involves the cultural isolation of a group while the group's own elites exploit the group's cultural isolation for their own relative wealth and power. Always ask yourself, who benefits? Follow the money. Or eyeballs. Or votes. Who benefits from the poor urban districts? Who benefits from illegal immigration and disadvantaged hispanic neighborhoods? https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/14/a-legacy-of-liberalism https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/14/a-legacy-o... How are college teachers supposed to confidently court controversy when so many of them have zero security in jobs that barely pay above poverty wages? That is true. However, how is it that tenured professors are being hounded out of their jobs for asking questions and for pointing out a particular ethnicity's accomplishments? (I'm talking about the medieval studies professor who wrote the article about awesome things white people did.) What's been pointed out above is also valid, but without the freedom of thought and expression, what exactly is the solid wage and job security protecting?
- schimmy_changa 8y ago
  This is what the Irish did, and the typical Irish peasant in the 1st half of the 19th century was about half as well off as the typical American slave Citation needed However, there are some historical patterns found in the study of immigrant groups that come with the continued disadvantage of a group. Many of these involve unfair laws. These were eliminated in the US civil rights movement. That is a very ... optimistic and a very inaccurate representation of the state of American law and law enforcement. Please check out: http://newjimcrow.com/about http://newjimcrow.com/about (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow)
mpweiher 8y ago
Here's a reply to this so-called "review", which amounts to little more than name-calling[1]. https://quillette.com/2018/10/14/moral-pollution-in-place-of-reasoned-critique/ https://quillette.com/2018/10/14/moral-pollution-in-place-of... The book actually contains a footnote anticipating exactly this kind of response: "44. In fact, we can make a prediction right now, while writing this book in 2017: Most of the negative reviews and responses to this book will at some point note our race and gender and then directly assert or vaguely hint that we are racists or sexists who are motivated primarily by the desire to preserve our privilege. We will then respond in the spirit of Mark Lilla, the author of a critique of identity politics titled The Once and Future Liberal. Lilla, an avowed liberal who wrote his book to help the Democrats start winning elections, responds to repeated name-calling by saying, essentially, “That is a slur, not an argument. Make an argument and I’ll respond to it.”" The reply goes on: Instead, the rhetorical approach exemplifies precisely the aspects of the moral culture we identify and criticize in the book, and the tactics are ad hominem: guilt by association, and misrepresentation. And so on... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_D...
- dcre 8y ago
  That's not what the review does at all. That's one or two sentences of it.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    Hmmm “Lukianoff and Haidt share some benefactors and allies with the well-established right that funded Bloom and D’Souza. (Lukianoff works at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit group that receives funding from the Scaife and Olin families.) But, reading The Coddling of the American Mind, I was more struck by their points of proximity to the newer Trumpist right.” “Lukianoff and Haidt quote “Jonathan Rauch, a scholar at the Brookings Institution”” “The rhetorical appeal, here, shares a structure with the appeal that carried the enemy in chief of political correctness to the White House” “This is the incredulity of people who have never feared being stereotyped. It can turn to indignation, fast.” “the two-step from shame to rage about shame may be what brings it closest to the Trumpists” “Nassim Taleb, whose book Antifragile Haidt and Lukianoff credit with one of their core beliefs and cite repeatedly as inspiration, is a fixture of the far right “manosphere” that gathers on Reddit/pol and returnofkings.com.” “The commonality raises questions about the proximity of their enthusiasm for CBT to the vogue for “Stoic” self-help in the Red Pill community,” “Lilla admits to envying the effectiveness of the “right-wing media complex”. It is hard to imagine that Haidt does not feel some such stirrings about Peterson, who is, after all, selling more copies of self-help books ” “Lukianoff and Haidt quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago as an epigraph and key inspiration; Peterson, who frequently lectures on the book, wrote the introduction to the 50th-anniversary edition Penguin will publish in November.”
WillPostForFood 8y ago
Like Trump... So you know it is not a intellectually honest critique when you start off with some fact light guilt by association argument. Trump breathes air, you breath air, you bad like trump.
- krapp 8y ago
  >So you know it is not a intellectually honest critique when you start off with some fact light guilt by association argument. >Trump breathes air, you breath air, you bad like trump. I don't think you have much standing to accuse other people of intellectual dishonesty here. Your comment makes it seem like you just stopped reading after you saw Trump's name and got triggered.
  - astine 8y ago
    I read it through to completion. The article spends a lot of time associating Haidt and Lukianoff with Milo Yiannopoulos, Jordan Peterson, and various members of the Alt-Right: "If there is a new right-liberal dispensation, the two-step from shame to rage about shame may be what brings it closest to the Trumpists. Hints of elective affinities between elite liberalism and the “alt-right” have been evident for a while now. The famous essay that Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos wrote in 2016, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right”, cites Haidt approvingly. At one point Lukianoff and Haidt rehearse a narrative about Herbert Marcuse that has been a staple of white nationalist conspiracy theories about “cultural Marxism” for decades. Nassim Taleb, whose book Antifragile Haidt and Lukianoff credit with one of their core beliefs and cite repeatedly as inspiration, is a fixture of the far right “manosphere” that gathers on Reddit/pol and returnofkings.com. The commonality raises questions about the proximity of their enthusiasm for CBT to the vogue for “Stoic” self-help in the Red Pill community, founded on the principle that it is men, rather than women, who are oppressed by society. So, too, does it raise questions about the discipline of psychology – how cognitive and data-driven turns in that field formed Haidt and his colleagues Pinker and Jordan Peterson. Lilla admits to envying the effectiveness of the “right-wing media complex”. It is hard to imagine that Haidt does not feel some such stirrings about Peterson, who is, after all, selling more copies of self-help books marketed as civilisational critique. Lukianoff and Haidt quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago as an epigraph and key inspiration; Peterson, who frequently lectures on the book, wrote the introduction to the 50th-anniversary edition Penguin will publish in November." This is very clearly a guilt by association argument.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
Nobody is 'romanticizing a time before identity' and it's frankly absurd to suggest so. The 20th century is full of identitarian issues such as women's suffrage, desegregation, a holocaust, racial issues galore etc.. I mean, the most traumatic event in American history, a civil war which nearly broke the Republic and in which more died that in any other war was about slavery after all. Also, the attempt to lump the book in 'with Trump' is an indication right off the bat that the critique might be playing ideology. (I suggest Trump is utterly oblivious to even the least nuanced of the issues at hand anyhow) And: "How are college teachers supposed to confidently court controversy when so many of them have zero security in jobs that barely pay above poverty wages?" - this isn't related to the argument at hand. It's an attempt to 'wedge in' another possibly important issue, but it's rhetorical smoke as it's applied.
throw2016 8y ago
There is a middle ground of recognizing serious systemic issues in both gender and race and being concerned by some of the issues around intersectionality, speech and feelings. There is too much indignation, hysteria and manufactured outrage of the thou doth protest too much variety that only create further suspicion of not good faith engagement but dismissal based on privilege. This only entrenches extreme suspicions of ideas from places of privilege as predictable reaction to loss of status. We have one side that are tone deaf with constant appeals to an imagined counter reality that is ahistorical and 'data-centic' that anyone with historical knowledge can immediately dismiss as wishful thinking masquerading as truth, and the other that have identified stubborn pervasive social, mental, physical structures of systemic victimization but seem unable to articulate the way forward outside the identification and demonization. No one gives power, its always taken. The intersectionality architecture of feminism is impressive intellectual work even if you do not agree and the counter to this is very weak, simplistic and basic lacking any kind of intellectual plank, rigour or serious thinking beyond the same kind of sterile 'free markets meritocracy' narrative that is being dismantled in the economic sphere outside these movements, name calling and appeals to tradition. This has sent one group down a dangerous path of a 'glorious past' and complete regression in every facet of human thinking and enlightenment of the Bannon, Urbit variety and other advocating a 'nothing is really wrong status quo' of plain jane Peterson conservative and libertarians. These issues should have been solved generations ago but they still persist and its time to let newer generations and newer thinking give it a go.
coldtea 8y ago
>Like Trump I stopped reading the review there. Instead of reviewing the book at hand, it goes for facile comparisons, to elicit an emotive knee-jerk response -- in the first sentence...
- dcre 8y ago
  It's like an 8000 word review. Ironically it's you who refuses to read.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    A fish rots from the head down -- in this case the article rots from the intro. It put me off it, like a turd on the top of a cake that might otherwise be nice. I don't doubt it might have some nice insights further down (or not, both cases are possible). But I refuse to applaud cheap manipulations like that.

by dcre 8y ago

moosey 8y ago

I have never been thoughtful enough to realize that the exclusions mentioned (women, POC) throughout US history fit the definition of 'identity' or 'identity politics' so well. I'm always impressed when someone comes up with such a rock solid example that points out _specific_ hypocrisies. Normally, using hypocrisy to counter someones argument is a logical fallacy, but the omissions present, and the effects of historical politically enforced inequalities must be taken into account when discussing these issues philosophically, especially when dealing with those who suggest that this is only a contemporary issue. This issue is only contemporary in the fact that we are still burning far too much energy knocking down these doors in the first place, or trying to keep them open, when it comes to women's rights, and the issues present in "The Color of Law". I'm impressed.

stcredzero 8y ago
the omissions present, and the effects of historical politically enforced inequalities must be taken into account I say this as a lifelong Democratic party member and voter. (Until recently.) In 2019, inequality is propagated through differences in access to effective educational environments. It's the Democratic party which opposes school vouchers and funding increased choice in education for disadvantaged neighborhoods. I know that such choice is an important issue for inner city parents. I've been approached by an inner city mother asking how she could get a coding education for her son. As was mentioned in the Watergate scandal, always "follow the money." (Or eyeballs. Or fame. Or votes.) Who benefits from disadvantaged neighborhoods? Who benefits from encouraging large populations to refuse to assimilate into their host society?
- dbt00 8y ago
  > I say this as a lifelong Democratic party member and voter. (Until recently.) In 2019, inequality is propagated through differences in access to effective educational environments. It's the Democratic party which opposes school vouchers and funding increased choice in education for disadvantaged neighborhoods. I know that such choice is an important issue for inner city parents. I've been approached by an inner city mother asking how she could get a coding education for her son. One, this is completely off-topic for this article. Two, and this is important, I find the "I, an anonymous person, used to believe X, so you should believe me when I espouse political beliefs that are antithetical to X" school of debating incredibly tiring. Just make your case, skip the "as a ...." introduction. Third, and this is important -- almost all school voucher programs are designed to take public money and put them into subpar schools with few to no standards. Voucher programs with standards get support, voucher programs that exempt private recipients of funds do not. > Who benefits from encouraging large populations to refuse to assimilate into their host society? Most democrats and public education supporters are for integrated education. Most voucher supporters are not.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    One, this is completely off-topic for this article. Not at all. If you want to look at how disadvantage is propagated, that is exactly what it is in the US. I find the "I, an anonymous person, used to believe X, so you should believe me when I espouse political beliefs that are antithetical to X" school of debating incredibly tiring. Just make your case, skip the "as a ...." introduction. Then just take my advice and start "following the money." If you believe there is systemic discrimination which has lasted decades, there must be a reason for it. Start ferreting out the incentives. Who profits in terms of money and power? https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/14/a-legacy-of-liberalism https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/14/a-legacy-o... Third, and this is important -- almost all school voucher programs are designed to take public money and put them into subpar schools with few to no standards. Voucher programs with standards get support, voucher programs that exempt private recipients of funds do not. Feel free to link some articles about this. Standards could be used as a political tool to repress competitors, or there could be real concern about standards, or there could be a mixture of both. Most voucher supporters are not. Many voucher supporters are the very disadvantaged people we are supposed to be helping!

stcredzero 8y ago

“But does that mean that women and people of colour should think of themselves as ‘colonised populations’ today?” You could approach this question by looking at data on racialised inequality in the US, access to universities, or gendered violence. The groups who succeed are all about integrating themselves into the current order. Sometimes by hook. Sometimes by "crook." Most often by both at once. This is what the Irish did, and the typical Irish peasant in the 1st half of the 19th century was about half as well off as the typical American slave. Chinese immigrant groups often arrived on the shores, poorer than the median poor of the new country, but still raised themselves up after a few generations. In fact, in the 100 years after slavery, this is also what African Americans in the US were doing. There was astonishing progress in areas like literacy. (There were also huge reversals, but many of these came after 1960!) However, there are some historical patterns found in the study of immigrant groups that come with the continued disadvantage of a group. Many of these involve unfair laws. These were eliminated in the US civil rights movement. Another historical pattern involves the cultural isolation of a group while the group's own elites exploit the group's cultural isolation for their own relative wealth and power. Always ask yourself, who benefits? Follow the money. Or eyeballs. Or votes. Who benefits from the poor urban districts? Who benefits from illegal immigration and disadvantaged hispanic neighborhoods? https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/14/a-legacy-of-liberalism https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/14/a-legacy-o... How are college teachers supposed to confidently court controversy when so many of them have zero security in jobs that barely pay above poverty wages? That is true. However, how is it that tenured professors are being hounded out of their jobs for asking questions and for pointing out a particular ethnicity's accomplishments? (I'm talking about the medieval studies professor who wrote the article about awesome things white people did.) What's been pointed out above is also valid, but without the freedom of thought and expression, what exactly is the solid wage and job security protecting?

schimmy_changa 8y ago
This is what the Irish did, and the typical Irish peasant in the 1st half of the 19th century was about half as well off as the typical American slave Citation needed However, there are some historical patterns found in the study of immigrant groups that come with the continued disadvantage of a group. Many of these involve unfair laws. These were eliminated in the US civil rights movement. That is a very ... optimistic and a very inaccurate representation of the state of American law and law enforcement. Please check out: http://newjimcrow.com/about http://newjimcrow.com/about (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow)

mpweiher 8y ago

Here's a reply to this so-called "review", which amounts to little more than name-calling[1]. https://quillette.com/2018/10/14/moral-pollution-in-place-of-reasoned-critique/ https://quillette.com/2018/10/14/moral-pollution-in-place-of... The book actually contains a footnote anticipating exactly this kind of response: "44. In fact, we can make a prediction right now, while writing this book in 2017: Most of the negative reviews and responses to this book will at some point note our race and gender and then directly assert or vaguely hint that we are racists or sexists who are motivated primarily by the desire to preserve our privilege. We will then respond in the spirit of Mark Lilla, the author of a critique of identity politics titled The Once and Future Liberal. Lilla, an avowed liberal who wrote his book to help the Democrats start winning elections, responds to repeated name-calling by saying, essentially, “That is a slur, not an argument. Make an argument and I’ll respond to it.”" The reply goes on: Instead, the rhetorical approach exemplifies precisely the aspects of the moral culture we identify and criticize in the book, and the tactics are ad hominem: guilt by association, and misrepresentation. And so on... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_D...

dcre 8y ago
That's not what the review does at all. That's one or two sentences of it.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  Hmmm “Lukianoff and Haidt share some benefactors and allies with the well-established right that funded Bloom and D’Souza. (Lukianoff works at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit group that receives funding from the Scaife and Olin families.) But, reading The Coddling of the American Mind, I was more struck by their points of proximity to the newer Trumpist right.” “Lukianoff and Haidt quote “Jonathan Rauch, a scholar at the Brookings Institution”” “The rhetorical appeal, here, shares a structure with the appeal that carried the enemy in chief of political correctness to the White House” “This is the incredulity of people who have never feared being stereotyped. It can turn to indignation, fast.” “the two-step from shame to rage about shame may be what brings it closest to the Trumpists” “Nassim Taleb, whose book Antifragile Haidt and Lukianoff credit with one of their core beliefs and cite repeatedly as inspiration, is a fixture of the far right “manosphere” that gathers on Reddit/pol and returnofkings.com.” “The commonality raises questions about the proximity of their enthusiasm for CBT to the vogue for “Stoic” self-help in the Red Pill community,” “Lilla admits to envying the effectiveness of the “right-wing media complex”. It is hard to imagine that Haidt does not feel some such stirrings about Peterson, who is, after all, selling more copies of self-help books ” “Lukianoff and Haidt quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago as an epigraph and key inspiration; Peterson, who frequently lectures on the book, wrote the introduction to the 50th-anniversary edition Penguin will publish in November.”

WillPostForFood 8y ago

Like Trump... So you know it is not a intellectually honest critique when you start off with some fact light guilt by association argument. Trump breathes air, you breath air, you bad like trump.

krapp 8y ago
>So you know it is not a intellectually honest critique when you start off with some fact light guilt by association argument. >Trump breathes air, you breath air, you bad like trump. I don't think you have much standing to accuse other people of intellectual dishonesty here. Your comment makes it seem like you just stopped reading after you saw Trump's name and got triggered.
- astine 8y ago
  I read it through to completion. The article spends a lot of time associating Haidt and Lukianoff with Milo Yiannopoulos, Jordan Peterson, and various members of the Alt-Right: "If there is a new right-liberal dispensation, the two-step from shame to rage about shame may be what brings it closest to the Trumpists. Hints of elective affinities between elite liberalism and the “alt-right” have been evident for a while now. The famous essay that Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos wrote in 2016, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right”, cites Haidt approvingly. At one point Lukianoff and Haidt rehearse a narrative about Herbert Marcuse that has been a staple of white nationalist conspiracy theories about “cultural Marxism” for decades. Nassim Taleb, whose book Antifragile Haidt and Lukianoff credit with one of their core beliefs and cite repeatedly as inspiration, is a fixture of the far right “manosphere” that gathers on Reddit/pol and returnofkings.com. The commonality raises questions about the proximity of their enthusiasm for CBT to the vogue for “Stoic” self-help in the Red Pill community, founded on the principle that it is men, rather than women, who are oppressed by society. So, too, does it raise questions about the discipline of psychology – how cognitive and data-driven turns in that field formed Haidt and his colleagues Pinker and Jordan Peterson. Lilla admits to envying the effectiveness of the “right-wing media complex”. It is hard to imagine that Haidt does not feel some such stirrings about Peterson, who is, after all, selling more copies of self-help books marketed as civilisational critique. Lukianoff and Haidt quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago as an epigraph and key inspiration; Peterson, who frequently lectures on the book, wrote the introduction to the 50th-anniversary edition Penguin will publish in November." This is very clearly a guilt by association argument.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

Nobody is 'romanticizing a time before identity' and it's frankly absurd to suggest so. The 20th century is full of identitarian issues such as women's suffrage, desegregation, a holocaust, racial issues galore etc.. I mean, the most traumatic event in American history, a civil war which nearly broke the Republic and in which more died that in any other war was about slavery after all. Also, the attempt to lump the book in 'with Trump' is an indication right off the bat that the critique might be playing ideology. (I suggest Trump is utterly oblivious to even the least nuanced of the issues at hand anyhow) And: "How are college teachers supposed to confidently court controversy when so many of them have zero security in jobs that barely pay above poverty wages?" - this isn't related to the argument at hand. It's an attempt to 'wedge in' another possibly important issue, but it's rhetorical smoke as it's applied.

throw2016 8y ago

There is a middle ground of recognizing serious systemic issues in both gender and race and being concerned by some of the issues around intersectionality, speech and feelings. There is too much indignation, hysteria and manufactured outrage of the thou doth protest too much variety that only create further suspicion of not good faith engagement but dismissal based on privilege. This only entrenches extreme suspicions of ideas from places of privilege as predictable reaction to loss of status. We have one side that are tone deaf with constant appeals to an imagined counter reality that is ahistorical and 'data-centic' that anyone with historical knowledge can immediately dismiss as wishful thinking masquerading as truth, and the other that have identified stubborn pervasive social, mental, physical structures of systemic victimization but seem unable to articulate the way forward outside the identification and demonization. No one gives power, its always taken. The intersectionality architecture of feminism is impressive intellectual work even if you do not agree and the counter to this is very weak, simplistic and basic lacking any kind of intellectual plank, rigour or serious thinking beyond the same kind of sterile 'free markets meritocracy' narrative that is being dismantled in the economic sphere outside these movements, name calling and appeals to tradition. This has sent one group down a dangerous path of a 'glorious past' and complete regression in every facet of human thinking and enlightenment of the Bannon, Urbit variety and other advocating a 'nothing is really wrong status quo' of plain jane Peterson conservative and libertarians. These issues should have been solved generations ago but they still persist and its time to let newer generations and newer thinking give it a go.

coldtea 8y ago

>Like Trump I stopped reading the review there. Instead of reviewing the book at hand, it goes for facile comparisons, to elicit an emotive knee-jerk response -- in the first sentence...

dcre 8y ago
It's like an 8000 word review. Ironically it's you who refuses to read.
- coldtea 8y ago
  A fish rots from the head down -- in this case the article rots from the intro. It put me off it, like a turd on the top of a cake that might otherwise be nice. I don't doubt it might have some nice insights further down (or not, both cases are possible). But I refuse to applaud cheap manipulations like that.