4 ms·

I find reading more history (preferably: dead person-ago history) to be a healthy tonic. When my more liberal friends were ringing in the end of days at Trump'

by ethbr0 5y ago

I find reading more history (preferably: dead person-ago history) to be a healthy tonic. When my more liberal friends were ringing in the end of days at Trump's election, my take was "Do you know how many terrible Presidents the United States has had? And how openly corrupt politics was for the first century of our country? And yet, we're still here." This too shall pass, indeed.

jumpkick 5y ago
I agree but the danger of this is being too dismissive of actual threats. I don't know how to draw that line.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Fair! Imho, there's two classes of actual threats. (1) A sudden, well-prepared realignment of the status quo, enforced afterwards on an ongoing basis. (2) The slow realignment of expectations (aka boiling the frog slowly). It seems like people often see (2), when in reality few groups are farsighted and patient enough to successfully carry that off. In reality what they're seeing is the normal sausage-making of a democracy groping towards a compromise over a point of disagreement, which has always happened. As for (1), it's the scarier but less common class. Aka the January attacks on the Capitol, if they'd been better orchestrated and had a post-attack plan. To me, weighing the severity of both is a question of "If this is successful, what will change?" As I told my conservative friends when they harp on an issue du jour: if one school district in New York state is mandating critical race theory education, what will that actually change about our country? In a democracy, people are doing ignorant / crazy / inept things somewhere constantly. But there's an important distinction to be made between "somewhere" and "sufficiently large or important places."
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    I don't know why you think (2) relies on groups being farsighted and patient. The frog boiling that happens today is almost always a result of chaotic incentivization. Politics is very different today than maybe 20 years ago. No conspiracy needed for that. Yet these unintentional or perhaps even well-intentioned changes to the status quo can be worth observing and reasoning about. A single district mandating critical race theory education won't by itself change a lot, but it's part of a broader shift in the zeitgeist's heresies. Does there need to be a shadowy cabal of progressives saying "yes, just as planned" for this to be true and noteworthy? The things you can't say today are different from the things you couldn't say 20 years ago. You don't need to breathlessly follow the news to know this, but you would be a fool to ignore it entirely. Regardless of whether you think these heresies are morally/politically good, every citizen needs to keep up to date on the latest heresies lest they run afoul of those heresies themselves. Noting that slow shifts in the status quo are rare is rather unhelpful. Of course they're rare. But being familiar with the forest will help you find the right tree. The idea that the truth is a needle in the haystack is just as easily a prescription for consuming more news, not less. That's not to say that you should. Perhaps your life is such that you've decided you don't need any of this or you don't need to find the true danger in every corner. Even dedicated experts find it hard to find true danger before it arrives knocking at the door. The value of finding true danger before it arrives is also debatable. Vast knowledge and the effort needed to acquire it is not an unalloyed good, it's a cost/benefit trade-off like everything else in life.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      As to the slow shifts, I said they were the opposite of rare, and indeed constantly happening as consensus shifts and is rebrokered. Which was a response to the comment I was replying to, regarding distinguishing actual danger from everything else. Danger, to me, means subversion of democracy and/or individual freedoms. Which means either a minority wilfully shifting the zeitgeist out of proportion with their strength of support or taking away people's freedom to participate in democracy. It does not include everyone deciding to gradually change their ideals. If the country as a whole is becoming more racist (to create an example), in terms of population percentage, then that's a structural social issue that needs to be addressed as such. Awareness of current news isn't going to enable one to address or change that.
      - themacguffinman 5y ago
        Awareness of current news allows you to see that a shift is happening at all.
        ethbr0 5y ago
        Does it? It feels like current news would be a poor method for tracking multi-year cultural changes.
        themacguffinman 5y ago
        Yes I think so. Current news gives you a sense of what mainstream culture considers important this year, then you compare it with what you observed in previous years. It's common for there to be a common cultural trend or debate that is hammered non-stop in mainstream media, you won't have to breathlessly follow news (ie. you just don't have to quit the news entirely, casual check-ins are fine) because it'll be breathlessly reported. That's what you watch for and you watch the conversation change from year to year. More importantly, news gives you a mainstream perspective beyond typically dry work conversation or your highly selective filter bubble of personal relationships. What's acceptable to say amongst friends is not necessarily the same as what's acceptable in the mainstream. You don't want to be the CEO who lost his job in the span of a couple of days because he didn't realize that anti-abortion stances are no longer publicly acceptable in the creative mainstream [1]. Poor guy probably had friends and family who didn't have any problems with his views. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/09/gaming-ceo-ousted-after-tweeting-hes-proud-to-support-texas-abortion-ban/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/09/gaming-ceo-ousted-aft...
DSMan195276 5y ago
I'll be honest, that's kind of an odd take to me considering that the "first century of our country" was followed by a pretty bloody civil war. Yes the United States is still here, but I'm not sure I would be so casual about all the terrible stuff that has happened in our history as though it's no big deal if it happens again.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I'm not saying it was great or not important, only that it wasn't existentially concluding. And the difference between "a bad person" becoming President and "half of the country withdrawing from Congress and formally seceding" is several orders of magnitude.
  - DSMan195276 5y ago
    If your only criteria for concern is "existentially concluding" then I'd say you need to recalibrate your barometer. The biggest problem with this approach is that you'll likely only recognize such an event after it is already impossible to stop. We ended up getting very close to throwing out the past election results, wouldn't that be such an event? Or do you think it doesn't qualify because we managed to stopped it this time? While I somewhat understand your reasoning behind not being concerned, the danger is that there is no guarentee the US will continue to exist forever, and history is full of failed democracies. If you're unwilling to have any concern over the stability of our democracy because it has got this far, then by the time you notice it has failed it will be too late to do anything to fix it. And in the meantime, bad Presidents have and will continue to do terrible things to people, pretending like it's no big deal is not good. The fact that the US still exists is little consolation to those who were harmed by poor presidential decisions.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      > We ended up getting very close to throwing out the past election results We disagree on this. From what I've read, there was amateurish pontificating on throwing out election results, mostly by sub-Presidential aides or advisors. And most critically, rejected by almost everyone in a position of authority to legally do so. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the most serious legal action taken to deny the results was the Arizona private recount?
jollybean 5y ago
I think reading history gives us a much better understanding of the mindset of a person trying to overthrow an election. We're lucky but naive to have grown up in a few generations wherein this sort of thing seems totally foreign, uncivilised. But the 'transition of power' is by far the most destabilising and tricky point in history. Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Macedonians, Persians, Romans, Chinese etc. etc.. And that's just antiquity. Over and over again, it's the 'power struggle at the top' that drives most of the big events. If everyone were to get into the headspace of those events, we'd understand how alluring and corrupting power is and we'd be much more cynical about power grabs. Any student of history would see the attempts to overthrow the election plainly for what it was. And FYI that is not a political statement. I don't care for domestic or foreign policy agendas, that's just what it is.

by ethbr0 5y ago

jumpkick 5y ago

I agree but the danger of this is being too dismissive of actual threats. I don't know how to draw that line.

ethbr0 5y ago
Fair! Imho, there's two classes of actual threats. (1) A sudden, well-prepared realignment of the status quo, enforced afterwards on an ongoing basis. (2) The slow realignment of expectations (aka boiling the frog slowly). It seems like people often see (2), when in reality few groups are farsighted and patient enough to successfully carry that off. In reality what they're seeing is the normal sausage-making of a democracy groping towards a compromise over a point of disagreement, which has always happened. As for (1), it's the scarier but less common class. Aka the January attacks on the Capitol, if they'd been better orchestrated and had a post-attack plan. To me, weighing the severity of both is a question of "If this is successful, what will change?" As I told my conservative friends when they harp on an issue du jour: if one school district in New York state is mandating critical race theory education, what will that actually change about our country? In a democracy, people are doing ignorant / crazy / inept things somewhere constantly. But there's an important distinction to be made between "somewhere" and "sufficiently large or important places."
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  I don't know why you think (2) relies on groups being farsighted and patient. The frog boiling that happens today is almost always a result of chaotic incentivization. Politics is very different today than maybe 20 years ago. No conspiracy needed for that. Yet these unintentional or perhaps even well-intentioned changes to the status quo can be worth observing and reasoning about. A single district mandating critical race theory education won't by itself change a lot, but it's part of a broader shift in the zeitgeist's heresies. Does there need to be a shadowy cabal of progressives saying "yes, just as planned" for this to be true and noteworthy? The things you can't say today are different from the things you couldn't say 20 years ago. You don't need to breathlessly follow the news to know this, but you would be a fool to ignore it entirely. Regardless of whether you think these heresies are morally/politically good, every citizen needs to keep up to date on the latest heresies lest they run afoul of those heresies themselves. Noting that slow shifts in the status quo are rare is rather unhelpful. Of course they're rare. But being familiar with the forest will help you find the right tree. The idea that the truth is a needle in the haystack is just as easily a prescription for consuming more news, not less. That's not to say that you should. Perhaps your life is such that you've decided you don't need any of this or you don't need to find the true danger in every corner. Even dedicated experts find it hard to find true danger before it arrives knocking at the door. The value of finding true danger before it arrives is also debatable. Vast knowledge and the effort needed to acquire it is not an unalloyed good, it's a cost/benefit trade-off like everything else in life.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    As to the slow shifts, I said they were the opposite of rare, and indeed constantly happening as consensus shifts and is rebrokered. Which was a response to the comment I was replying to, regarding distinguishing actual danger from everything else. Danger, to me, means subversion of democracy and/or individual freedoms. Which means either a minority wilfully shifting the zeitgeist out of proportion with their strength of support or taking away people's freedom to participate in democracy. It does not include everyone deciding to gradually change their ideals. If the country as a whole is becoming more racist (to create an example), in terms of population percentage, then that's a structural social issue that needs to be addressed as such. Awareness of current news isn't going to enable one to address or change that.
    - themacguffinman 5y ago
      Awareness of current news allows you to see that a shift is happening at all.
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        Does it? It feels like current news would be a poor method for tracking multi-year cultural changes.
        themacguffinman 5y ago
        Yes I think so. Current news gives you a sense of what mainstream culture considers important this year, then you compare it with what you observed in previous years. It's common for there to be a common cultural trend or debate that is hammered non-stop in mainstream media, you won't have to breathlessly follow news (ie. you just don't have to quit the news entirely, casual check-ins are fine) because it'll be breathlessly reported. That's what you watch for and you watch the conversation change from year to year. More importantly, news gives you a mainstream perspective beyond typically dry work conversation or your highly selective filter bubble of personal relationships. What's acceptable to say amongst friends is not necessarily the same as what's acceptable in the mainstream. You don't want to be the CEO who lost his job in the span of a couple of days because he didn't realize that anti-abortion stances are no longer publicly acceptable in the creative mainstream [1]. Poor guy probably had friends and family who didn't have any problems with his views. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/09/gaming-ceo-ousted-after-tweeting-hes-proud-to-support-texas-abortion-ban/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/09/gaming-ceo-ousted-aft...

DSMan195276 5y ago

I'll be honest, that's kind of an odd take to me considering that the "first century of our country" was followed by a pretty bloody civil war. Yes the United States is still here, but I'm not sure I would be so casual about all the terrible stuff that has happened in our history as though it's no big deal if it happens again.

ethbr0 5y ago
I'm not saying it was great or not important, only that it wasn't existentially concluding. And the difference between "a bad person" becoming President and "half of the country withdrawing from Congress and formally seceding" is several orders of magnitude.
- DSMan195276 5y ago
  If your only criteria for concern is "existentially concluding" then I'd say you need to recalibrate your barometer. The biggest problem with this approach is that you'll likely only recognize such an event after it is already impossible to stop. We ended up getting very close to throwing out the past election results, wouldn't that be such an event? Or do you think it doesn't qualify because we managed to stopped it this time? While I somewhat understand your reasoning behind not being concerned, the danger is that there is no guarentee the US will continue to exist forever, and history is full of failed democracies. If you're unwilling to have any concern over the stability of our democracy because it has got this far, then by the time you notice it has failed it will be too late to do anything to fix it. And in the meantime, bad Presidents have and will continue to do terrible things to people, pretending like it's no big deal is not good. The fact that the US still exists is little consolation to those who were harmed by poor presidential decisions.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    > We ended up getting very close to throwing out the past election results We disagree on this. From what I've read, there was amateurish pontificating on throwing out election results, mostly by sub-Presidential aides or advisors. And most critically, rejected by almost everyone in a position of authority to legally do so. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the most serious legal action taken to deny the results was the Arizona private recount?

jollybean 5y ago

I think reading history gives us a much better understanding of the mindset of a person trying to overthrow an election. We're lucky but naive to have grown up in a few generations wherein this sort of thing seems totally foreign, uncivilised. But the 'transition of power' is by far the most destabilising and tricky point in history. Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Macedonians, Persians, Romans, Chinese etc. etc.. And that's just antiquity. Over and over again, it's the 'power struggle at the top' that drives most of the big events. If everyone were to get into the headspace of those events, we'd understand how alluring and corrupting power is and we'd be much more cynical about power grabs. Any student of history would see the attempts to overthrow the election plainly for what it was. And FYI that is not a political statement. I don't care for domestic or foreign policy agendas, that's just what it is.