5 ms·

A minor difference being that one is a bunch of bluehairs Twitterati and social science professors using a goofy word and the other is a systematic purge of sci

A minor difference being that one is a bunch of bluehairs Twitterati and social science professors using a goofy word and the other is a systematic purge of scientific literature and government data... Minor difference though!

PaulHoule 2y ago
Actually I'd argue that left-wing language engineering contributed to right-wing lunatics getting in control. This poll says 56% of Hispanics in the US are uncomfortable with 'LatinX' https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ipoll/study/31120958/questions#b3a5e106-753b-4c22-b10f-4f02c096dc11 https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ipoll/study/31120958/questio... These are a swingy group that could go either way. This podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/will-tariffs-end-trumps-honeymoon/id1077418457?i=1000688664252 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/will-tariffs-end-trump... describes polls that make it clear that Americans think that Republicans care about the issues that matter to them and that Democrats don't. "Woke" talk contributes a lot to the latter. The good news for them though is that now that they see Republicans in power talking crazy like this, Democrats will look more normal to people. But if people on the left muzzled their own fanatics years ago we'd have woken up in a different America.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  No disagreement there, it certainly helped lose the election. That still doesn’t mean the two positions are equal but opposite. For example, when Biden was elected there wasn’t a Cmd + F across the federal government for “Latino”.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    A serious treatment of that requires considering what the Democratic party actually is. Wintrobe's book [1] has an analysis of a tinpot dictator who wants to steal everything a country has but has to spend some resources on buying people off and some on repression so that he can get away with it. Bill Clinton made a similar maneuver around 'triangulation' that amounts to trying to share as little of the spoils to mass supporters as possible so that he can really give as much as the spoils as he can to donors. In the case of Bill Clinton he got the full court press from [2] so he could say he was under so much pressure from the right that he didn't have to do anything for the left. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, made a clear show of disdain for the activist faction of the party but they were supposed to vote for her because, hey, she's a woman. She also hoped to win by default against Trump. Harris didn't show the activist fringe much love, but she didn't show disdain for it either. She was also hoping to win by default, which didn't happen. Because she didn't define herself, she was defined by Fox News. She would have had to have broken visibly with the activist fringe, however, which seems like it could have been a risky move although the dirty secret is that the activist fringe may not actually vote and if it does vote it is concentrated in places where their vote doesn't count. For now, Trumps's salvos in the culture war are 'cheap talk' that pleases certain people but doesn't consume resources that are coveted by donors. I suspect it will be unpopular too, since people are going to blame you for things once you get in power. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Political-Economy-Dictatorship-Wintrobe/dp/0521794498 https://www.amazon.com/Political-Economy-Dictatorship-Wintro... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      I’m not sure what all this is about. You have one party’s “extremism” which takes the form of bluehaired Twitterati saying stupid shit and, I guess, not getting sufficiently disowned by actual political leaders? On the other hand you have an ongoing ACTUAL ideological purge of our government’s personnel, records, budget, and data, complete with watchwords (like “women”) and loyalty tests.
      - PaulHoule 2y ago
        Sure. I spoke to my uncle about this when he was convalescing in a nursing home. We live in New York, neither of our votes counted. I voted for Harris, he voted for Trump. He did not see it as a black or white thing, he saw it as a comparison. He didn't see Harris as giving any reason why he should vote for her other than, maybe, she is a woman. The message that you shouldn't vote for Trump didn't resonate. Personally I saw Jan 6 as worse than Sept 11 but actually most people don't. Probably the best explanation I see for this is talked about in this podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/will-tariffs-end-trumps-honeymoon/id1077418457?i=1000688664252 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/will-tariffs-end-trump... where Americans were asked "What issues matter to you?" and "What issues matter to X party?" and found that the lists mostly lined up when X=Republican but that people didn't see Democrats talking about the issues that mattered to them. This is connected to my argument above because the reason why Democrats fall into that trap is the same thing that has ruined center-left parties everywhere in the world: that they make a lot of cheap talk to impress their base while reserving the spoils for their donors. The good news is that people will be pretty sick of the Republicans in 2 years and if the Democrats were a normal party they would take over the house of representatives pretty definitively then. They've got an amazing way to pull defeat out of the jaws of victory though.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        You're still talking about the election. I am not. I am talking about actual political actions being taken.

PaulHoule 2y ago

Actually I'd argue that left-wing language engineering contributed to right-wing lunatics getting in control. This poll says 56% of Hispanics in the US are uncomfortable with 'LatinX' https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ipoll/study/31120958/questions#b3a5e106-753b-4c22-b10f-4f02c096dc11 https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/ipoll/study/31120958/questio... These are a swingy group that could go either way. This podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/will-tariffs-end-trumps-honeymoon/id1077418457?i=1000688664252 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/will-tariffs-end-trump... describes polls that make it clear that Americans think that Republicans care about the issues that matter to them and that Democrats don't. "Woke" talk contributes a lot to the latter. The good news for them though is that now that they see Republicans in power talking crazy like this, Democrats will look more normal to people. But if people on the left muzzled their own fanatics years ago we'd have woken up in a different America.

llamaimperative 2y ago
No disagreement there, it certainly helped lose the election. That still doesn’t mean the two positions are equal but opposite. For example, when Biden was elected there wasn’t a Cmd + F across the federal government for “Latino”.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  A serious treatment of that requires considering what the Democratic party actually is. Wintrobe's book [1] has an analysis of a tinpot dictator who wants to steal everything a country has but has to spend some resources on buying people off and some on repression so that he can get away with it. Bill Clinton made a similar maneuver around 'triangulation' that amounts to trying to share as little of the spoils to mass supporters as possible so that he can really give as much as the spoils as he can to donors. In the case of Bill Clinton he got the full court press from [2] so he could say he was under so much pressure from the right that he didn't have to do anything for the left. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, made a clear show of disdain for the activist faction of the party but they were supposed to vote for her because, hey, she's a woman. She also hoped to win by default against Trump. Harris didn't show the activist fringe much love, but she didn't show disdain for it either. She was also hoping to win by default, which didn't happen. Because she didn't define herself, she was defined by Fox News. She would have had to have broken visibly with the activist fringe, however, which seems like it could have been a risky move although the dirty secret is that the activist fringe may not actually vote and if it does vote it is concentrated in places where their vote doesn't count. For now, Trumps's salvos in the culture war are 'cheap talk' that pleases certain people but doesn't consume resources that are coveted by donors. I suspect it will be unpopular too, since people are going to blame you for things once you get in power. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Political-Economy-Dictatorship-Wintrobe/dp/0521794498 https://www.amazon.com/Political-Economy-Dictatorship-Wintro... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    I’m not sure what all this is about. You have one party’s “extremism” which takes the form of bluehaired Twitterati saying stupid shit and, I guess, not getting sufficiently disowned by actual political leaders? On the other hand you have an ongoing ACTUAL ideological purge of our government’s personnel, records, budget, and data, complete with watchwords (like “women”) and loyalty tests.
    - PaulHoule 2y ago
      Sure. I spoke to my uncle about this when he was convalescing in a nursing home. We live in New York, neither of our votes counted. I voted for Harris, he voted for Trump. He did not see it as a black or white thing, he saw it as a comparison. He didn't see Harris as giving any reason why he should vote for her other than, maybe, she is a woman. The message that you shouldn't vote for Trump didn't resonate. Personally I saw Jan 6 as worse than Sept 11 but actually most people don't. Probably the best explanation I see for this is talked about in this podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/will-tariffs-end-trumps-honeymoon/id1077418457?i=1000688664252 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/will-tariffs-end-trump... where Americans were asked "What issues matter to you?" and "What issues matter to X party?" and found that the lists mostly lined up when X=Republican but that people didn't see Democrats talking about the issues that mattered to them. This is connected to my argument above because the reason why Democrats fall into that trap is the same thing that has ruined center-left parties everywhere in the world: that they make a lot of cheap talk to impress their base while reserving the spoils for their donors. The good news is that people will be pretty sick of the Republicans in 2 years and if the Democrats were a normal party they would take over the house of representatives pretty definitively then. They've got an amazing way to pull defeat out of the jaws of victory though.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        You're still talking about the election. I am not. I am talking about actual political actions being taken.