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> I figured out as soon as I saw the link title that the author's examples for "luxury beliefs" would just so happen to be associated with a feminist and anti-r

> I figured out as soon as I saw the link title that the author's examples for "luxury beliefs" would just so happen to be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook. Isn't the author's point that the examples correlate very highly with affluence? The fact that it may/may not be correlated to something else might be relevant, but I'm not seeing the relevance.

steveBK123 3y ago
The response proves his point too in a way, and something I've observed in my NYC left rich cohort. Deflecting all criticism by knee jerk reaction of calling the questioner a racist. Disagreement over the magnitude of a problem, its relation to other problems, or the terms used for a problem makes you racist and therefore bad. Now we don't need to consider your opinion and can move on.
- zarathustreal 3y ago
  >Now we don't need to consider your opinion and can move on. You can ignore anyone arguing from opinion, that's a given. "NYC left rich cohort" sounds like an absolute nightmare to try to figure out the truth with, given that they seem to think the character of a speaker has any bearing on the validity of their spoken words. Best not to engage with people like that, it's a waste of time.
- lom888 3y ago
  Exactly, the deflections of 'racism' and 'sexism' are thought-terminating cliches bandied about in an act of pure class war. No need to listen to Trumpies talk about immigration and how it effects their community if they're all racists; that makes them the other and we can just pretend they don't exist.
  - catlover76 3y ago
    I have genuinely never heard or read a Trump supporter discuss any practical effect of immigration, illegal or otherwise, on their actual communities. It's all very theoretical, based on hyperbolic and often false "news" items, and involves a heavy dose of borderline glee in being emotionally callous and selfish. At beast, I have seen people misread statistics to support their position, but, again, that's not really "how it effects their community".
    - lom888 3y ago
      Okay, here's something written by Trump supporter and Cal State Fresno prof. Victor Davis Hanson discussing the effect of immigration on a community where he has lived since 1970: https://www.hoover.org/research/diversity-illegal-immigration https://www.hoover.org/research/diversity-illegal-immigratio...
      - catlover76 3y ago
        That is a valuable perspective and all, and I don't discredit it (or concern for curbing illegal immigration as a top policy priority in general), but I'm not sure it's that persuasive for the point you are trying to make. Let me put it this way: pointing to one cogent article by a non-representative Trump supporter (you won't find many of them in academia, and the college-educated skew liberal/Dem) doesn't really make me change my mind about writing most of them off as racists based on my personal experience and what most of them say (which is not as cogent and reasonable as this guy's article).
        suoduandao3 3y ago
        Couldn't your personal experience be a function of what Trump supporters make it through your filter bubble? We tend to see mostly the stupidest exemplars of our political opponents.
- indigo945 3y ago
  I did not call the author a racist, and to be quite honest, I fail to understand how one can reach that conclusion outside of a willful attempt to misrepresent my criticism.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    No, you deflected by immediately discounting the author as being predictably, in your estimation, anti- feminist / anti- anti-racist. Is this so different? It's saying the thing without saying it.
    - indigo945 3y ago
      My problem with the argument is not that it's anti-feminist, it is that it's a broad-swath argument that could be levied against any number of beliefs, and the author deliberately chose to wield it only and exclusively against feminist and anti-racist positions. I made that quite clear in my original comment by suggesting several conservative "luxury beliefs" that I believe the author would have to criticize on the same grounds, but failed to do so. This is not "deflection", it's showing that the article employs double standards and is thus intellectually dishonest. The "predictable" part, in my estimation, is that this kind of argument would be used by a right-wing author. To be saying the thing by saying it, conservative cultural critics, when measuring liberal discourse, are incapable of coming up with a bar that they themselves don't trip over.
      - suoduandao3 3y ago
        Do you have a theory why left-wing authors don't discuss luxury beliefs?
        indigo945 3y ago
        I think they do. It's just, it's so blatantly obvious that "single-payer healthcare is too expensive" and "there's no problem with police violence toward black people in particular" are "luxury beliefs" (in the sense that you can only afford to hold them if you're not directly affected by them) that there's no need to spell it out. (This point is sometimes spelled out when it comes to discussions on race and gender -- that's what "privilege" means. That "privilege" isn't brought up as much when it comes to economic/class issues speaks to the state of class warfare in the US.)
indigo945 3y ago
Yes, the examples correlate with affluence, which is a necessary condition for them to be included in this article; but it is obviously not a sufficient condition, as all "luxury beliefs" from elsewhere on the political spectrum are excluded. My point is that this is a bad faith argument. The author pretends to care about "luxury" beliefs, but in truth, all he cares about is finding a cheap shot against feminist positions. He intends to delegitimize these positions by painting them as an upper-class fringe ("luxury") concern. Once this angle of attack is found, the author never stops to see that the same attack could be levied against any number of political positions that he himself might agree with, because he was never interested in a real debate to begin with: he only wants to smear and ridicule. The point is not that the examples are also "correlated" with something else, it's that they're carefully cherry-picked and made a target for an attack that would work against conservative positions, carefully excluded by the author, just as nicely as it does against liberal positions here.
- junofan 3y ago
  I dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff, and as soon as they do, it’ll become unfashionable, and we’ll move on to the next thing.
  - elmomle 3y ago
    I think once the idea of heteronormativity had percolated through all of society as a well understood concept, it would no longer be as pressing a concern. These concepts tend to be in vogue specifically because they are salient. It is intellectually dangerous to read a piece like this "apolitically", precisely because a biased political agenda is wearing the garb of a much more universal observation. If the writer had mixed "luxury beliefs" from all over the political spectrum, then there would be a clear focus on what the title purports to concern. Instead, there is a second agenda that is being silently conflated without being acknowledged.
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    > dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff The fiercest culture warriors I know are working-class folk. They do in fact, give a shit about this stuff, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum. I blame the increased polarization. The irony is that people who claim to be against culture wars - like the author - are they themselves actively engaging in a culture war while feigning neutrality. The truth is that they are simply against one perspective, which betrays either a lack of self-awareness, or bad faith.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
This article might be the single most vapid thing I've read all day, and I just read a Bari Weiss article for context. Author leans in quite heavily to his own bonafides... somehow able to rise from foster homes to the military to graduate from Yale. Neato. And then he gets REALLY basic shit wrong. "Working class" does not mean "lower middle class white folks." Go ask 10 "working class" black folks whether this country is racist. Then ask them whether it occurs at all levels of the country. They don't even need to know what the term "systemic racism" is to be able to describe it to you. "Defund the police" had a pretty fucking specific meaning. It meant removing all the military surplus gear from police organizations in an attempt to reduce the amount of machismo and brutality from LEOs. Nobody should ever feel safe around a person who barely graduated from high school and yet has the authority to brutalize you and legally steal your shit. Go ask people if they think body cams on cops are important. Is it now a "luxury belief" for women to be afraid that they live in a state that might attempt to jail them for the crime of having a failed pregnancy, or is that an actual valid concern? Don't want to do that? Okay, then let's look at the number of OBGYNs who are choosing to leave states with oppressive anti-female laws because THEY don't want to be prosecuted for the crime of providing healthcare, and follow that up by examining the cities in places like Texas that want to prosecute women for using state highways to LEAVE the state in order to receive proper reproductive healthcare. Luxury beliefs my ass. It's only a luxury in his mind because these things don't impact him.
- sangnoir 3y ago
  Painting your ideological opponents as "elite" and "out of touch" is a political trick as old as time, it encourages the listener not to engage the subject purportedly supported by the elite, but instead dismiss it out of hand as something no regular man should even bother themselves with. Bonus points for making them elites in academia who apparently do not know how the "real word" works.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago

steveBK123 3y ago

The response proves his point too in a way, and something I've observed in my NYC left rich cohort. Deflecting all criticism by knee jerk reaction of calling the questioner a racist. Disagreement over the magnitude of a problem, its relation to other problems, or the terms used for a problem makes you racist and therefore bad. Now we don't need to consider your opinion and can move on.

zarathustreal 3y ago
>Now we don't need to consider your opinion and can move on. You can ignore anyone arguing from opinion, that's a given. "NYC left rich cohort" sounds like an absolute nightmare to try to figure out the truth with, given that they seem to think the character of a speaker has any bearing on the validity of their spoken words. Best not to engage with people like that, it's a waste of time.
lom888 3y ago
Exactly, the deflections of 'racism' and 'sexism' are thought-terminating cliches bandied about in an act of pure class war. No need to listen to Trumpies talk about immigration and how it effects their community if they're all racists; that makes them the other and we can just pretend they don't exist.
- catlover76 3y ago
  I have genuinely never heard or read a Trump supporter discuss any practical effect of immigration, illegal or otherwise, on their actual communities. It's all very theoretical, based on hyperbolic and often false "news" items, and involves a heavy dose of borderline glee in being emotionally callous and selfish. At beast, I have seen people misread statistics to support their position, but, again, that's not really "how it effects their community".
  - lom888 3y ago
    Okay, here's something written by Trump supporter and Cal State Fresno prof. Victor Davis Hanson discussing the effect of immigration on a community where he has lived since 1970: https://www.hoover.org/research/diversity-illegal-immigration https://www.hoover.org/research/diversity-illegal-immigratio...
    - catlover76 3y ago
      That is a valuable perspective and all, and I don't discredit it (or concern for curbing illegal immigration as a top policy priority in general), but I'm not sure it's that persuasive for the point you are trying to make. Let me put it this way: pointing to one cogent article by a non-representative Trump supporter (you won't find many of them in academia, and the college-educated skew liberal/Dem) doesn't really make me change my mind about writing most of them off as racists based on my personal experience and what most of them say (which is not as cogent and reasonable as this guy's article).
      - suoduandao3 3y ago
        Couldn't your personal experience be a function of what Trump supporters make it through your filter bubble? We tend to see mostly the stupidest exemplars of our political opponents.
indigo945 3y ago
I did not call the author a racist, and to be quite honest, I fail to understand how one can reach that conclusion outside of a willful attempt to misrepresent my criticism.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  No, you deflected by immediately discounting the author as being predictably, in your estimation, anti- feminist / anti- anti-racist. Is this so different? It's saying the thing without saying it.
  - indigo945 3y ago
    My problem with the argument is not that it's anti-feminist, it is that it's a broad-swath argument that could be levied against any number of beliefs, and the author deliberately chose to wield it only and exclusively against feminist and anti-racist positions. I made that quite clear in my original comment by suggesting several conservative "luxury beliefs" that I believe the author would have to criticize on the same grounds, but failed to do so. This is not "deflection", it's showing that the article employs double standards and is thus intellectually dishonest. The "predictable" part, in my estimation, is that this kind of argument would be used by a right-wing author. To be saying the thing by saying it, conservative cultural critics, when measuring liberal discourse, are incapable of coming up with a bar that they themselves don't trip over.
    - suoduandao3 3y ago
      Do you have a theory why left-wing authors don't discuss luxury beliefs?
      - indigo945 3y ago
        I think they do. It's just, it's so blatantly obvious that "single-payer healthcare is too expensive" and "there's no problem with police violence toward black people in particular" are "luxury beliefs" (in the sense that you can only afford to hold them if you're not directly affected by them) that there's no need to spell it out. (This point is sometimes spelled out when it comes to discussions on race and gender -- that's what "privilege" means. That "privilege" isn't brought up as much when it comes to economic/class issues speaks to the state of class warfare in the US.)

indigo945 3y ago

Yes, the examples correlate with affluence, which is a necessary condition for them to be included in this article; but it is obviously not a sufficient condition, as all "luxury beliefs" from elsewhere on the political spectrum are excluded. My point is that this is a bad faith argument. The author pretends to care about "luxury" beliefs, but in truth, all he cares about is finding a cheap shot against feminist positions. He intends to delegitimize these positions by painting them as an upper-class fringe ("luxury") concern. Once this angle of attack is found, the author never stops to see that the same attack could be levied against any number of political positions that he himself might agree with, because he was never interested in a real debate to begin with: he only wants to smear and ridicule. The point is not that the examples are also "correlated" with something else, it's that they're carefully cherry-picked and made a target for an attack that would work against conservative positions, carefully excluded by the author, just as nicely as it does against liberal positions here.

junofan 3y ago
I dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff, and as soon as they do, it’ll become unfashionable, and we’ll move on to the next thing.
- elmomle 3y ago
  I think once the idea of heteronormativity had percolated through all of society as a well understood concept, it would no longer be as pressing a concern. These concepts tend to be in vogue specifically because they are salient. It is intellectually dangerous to read a piece like this "apolitically", precisely because a biased political agenda is wearing the garb of a much more universal observation. If the writer had mixed "luxury beliefs" from all over the political spectrum, then there would be a clear focus on what the title purports to concern. Instead, there is a second agenda that is being silently conflated without being acknowledged.
- sangnoir 3y ago
  > dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff The fiercest culture warriors I know are working-class folk. They do in fact, give a shit about this stuff, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum. I blame the increased polarization. The irony is that people who claim to be against culture wars - like the author - are they themselves actively engaging in a culture war while feigning neutrality. The truth is that they are simply against one perspective, which betrays either a lack of self-awareness, or bad faith.

MisterBastahrd 3y ago

This article might be the single most vapid thing I've read all day, and I just read a Bari Weiss article for context. Author leans in quite heavily to his own bonafides... somehow able to rise from foster homes to the military to graduate from Yale. Neato. And then he gets REALLY basic shit wrong. "Working class" does not mean "lower middle class white folks." Go ask 10 "working class" black folks whether this country is racist. Then ask them whether it occurs at all levels of the country. They don't even need to know what the term "systemic racism" is to be able to describe it to you. "Defund the police" had a pretty fucking specific meaning. It meant removing all the military surplus gear from police organizations in an attempt to reduce the amount of machismo and brutality from LEOs. Nobody should ever feel safe around a person who barely graduated from high school and yet has the authority to brutalize you and legally steal your shit. Go ask people if they think body cams on cops are important. Is it now a "luxury belief" for women to be afraid that they live in a state that might attempt to jail them for the crime of having a failed pregnancy, or is that an actual valid concern? Don't want to do that? Okay, then let's look at the number of OBGYNs who are choosing to leave states with oppressive anti-female laws because THEY don't want to be prosecuted for the crime of providing healthcare, and follow that up by examining the cities in places like Texas that want to prosecute women for using state highways to LEAVE the state in order to receive proper reproductive healthcare. Luxury beliefs my ass. It's only a luxury in his mind because these things don't impact him.

sangnoir 3y ago
Painting your ideological opponents as "elite" and "out of touch" is a political trick as old as time, it encourages the listener not to engage the subject purportedly supported by the elite, but instead dismiss it out of hand as something no regular man should even bother themselves with. Bonus points for making them elites in academia who apparently do not know how the "real word" works.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ChainOfFools 3y ago