Excellent piece today...superb. The only disagreement is in the "I can't believe" part.
I totally believe because my foundational understanding of Democrats in general and the far Left in particular is they don't know how to do a fucking thing. They don't understand housing, so they develop and promote idiotic policies to overcome the problems their earlier policies caused in the first place. They don't understand human societies or interaction, enacted policies in direct opposition to long understood human interactional dynamics, and then yell at anyone pointing out their stupidity. They don't understand energy policy and enact impossibly stupid regulations that satisfy people able to afford EV's and net zero building codes but that hit working class and poor people dead center in the pocketbook.
Even now, the top folks in the DNC are still insisting the problem was not the message, but in how the message was presented. It's like they've never heard how one doesn't solve problems by using the same thinking that created them.
I hear what you're saying; there's a reason that when The Simpsons depicted a Democratic gathering in 1994, the banners hanging in the rafters said "We can't govern!" and "We hate life and ourselves!" Though I would say that SOME Democrats don't get it and don't know how to do anything and some do. There's a factional fight occurring on the left right now.
It's a bit more than that. I would say that being a party of lawyers, buearacrats, PR people, and other email job people is a serious problem. The fact that engineers, surgeons, contractors, farmers, small business people, skilled labor etc. both won't join the Dems and aren't really welcome is a huge problem.
This problem used to be mitigated when organized labor was much more powerful in the Democratic coalition, but quite honestly, having a party of lead by people who fundamentally don't know how to deal with physical reality is just going to lead to continued policy and political disasters.
I think that's an excellent observation, and a major component of their failure. I run into those "email job people" all the time. Never built anything, but are cocksure they know how to build.
For some reason I have the talent of being able to talk to both the email job people and the people who actually get work done. It's what keeps me employed in construction finance. I spend most of my time saving the email job people from making self-inflicted idiotic mistakes.
> “In surgery, anesthesiology and urology, for example, around two-thirds of doctors who have registered a political affiliation are Republicans. In infectious disease medicine, psychiatry and pediatrics, more than two-thirds are Democrats.”
The chart in the article says that doctors overall, as well as some specialties like Internal Medicine and Oncology, skew Democrat.
> “There is no way to know exactly why certain medical specialties attract Democrats or Republicans. But researchers who have studied the politics of physicians offered a few theories.”
> “One explanation could be money. Doctors tend to earn very high salaries compared with average Americans, but the highest-paid doctors earn many times as much as those in the lower-paying specialties. The fields with higher average salaries tended to contain more doctors who were Republican, while the comparatively lower-paying fields were more popular among Democrats. That matches with national data, which show that, for people with a given level of education, richer ones are more likely to lean Republican (possibly because of a concern over the liberal policy goal of taxing the wealthiest at a higher rate).”
> “The sorting may also reflect the changing demographics of medicine. As more women have become doctors in recent years, they have tended to cluster in certain specialties more than others. The data showed that female physicians were more likely to be Democrats than their male peers, mirroring another trend in the larger American population. So as women enter fields like pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology and psychiatry, they may be making those fields more liberal.”
> “Over all, the partisanship of doctors looks very different from a generation ago, when most physicians identified as Republicans. The influx of women may help explain that change, too. The researchers Adam Bonica, Howard Rosenthal and David Rothman compared political donations by doctors in 1991 with those in 2011 and 2012. The study found that doctors had become substantially more likely to give to Democrats.”
Every twenty years or so Democrats decide that racial gaps in "metric XYZ" are a BIG PROBLEM that HAS TO BE FIXED (and The Bell Curve explanation for why is like LITERALLY HITLER).
They then go a do a bunch of the same dumb shit they did twenty years ago (school busing in the 70s was pretty fucking retarded for instance, Kamala even brought it up in 2019).
Then after 5-10 years of this shit being a train wreck they back off and memory hole the entire thing but don't really admit any of the fundamental problems with their view. They just adopt whatever the polling says will sell and have enough memory of putting their hand on the stove and it being HOT that they do "triangulation" for a generation.
Then a new generation of leftists that didn't get their hand burned on the stove come up and we get another 5-10 years of searing flesh again.
"Some" isn't a big enough number. I'd allow "a couple", maybe "a dozen" (being facetious). I also hear what you're saying, but the momentum toward incompetence is strong. I'm not convinced there's a plurality that knows anything useful.
There are already male prison guards. Male guards are constantly assaulting prisoners .The problem is the assaults, not the trans women. (And FWIW, I think sex offenders should be housed in separate prisons entirely. They can’t be trusted no matter what gender they use.)
Transwomen are men. Just like any men they're bigger than women, stronger than women, and mostly like sex with women. Half the ones in prison are there for a sex offence.
Replacing male prison guards with female ones would be a great idea. But guess what! We could do that AND take the men who are convicted felons out of the female prison population and put them back with the other men.
This is the kind of out-of-touch mental gyration that drove average voters away from the left.
You’re excusing putting male sex offenders, nearly all of whom conveniently discovered that they were “trans” once arrested for their crimes, into prisons by saying that “well, women are already being assaulted by prison guards, so… in essence we haven’t made the problem any worse.”
There are news reports of female inmates being raped and impregnated by “trans” inmates. I think these individual women might beg to differ with your point of view.
In particular: "MOJ stats show 76 of the 129 male-born prisoners identifying as transgender (not counting any with GRCs) have at least 1 conviction of sexual offence. This includes 36 convictions for rape and 10 for attempted rape" (p3)
Well said! While I absolutely abhor Trump and everything he stands for and while the right is absolutely worse, the far left is authoritarian in a way that I hate too and they are my team. And we MUST take a stand when our own team is doing stupid things. Thank you for this.
No apology necessary. I suspect about 60% of the country is a little grumpy this morning but there’s a large portion of them who have no right to complain now because they should have known to do something about it. Besides, whether it was a criticism or not I still agreed with it. I thank people for correcting me usually. It lets me be correct the next time.
It's important not to absolve the Democratic leadership. "Social justice" politics wasn't forced on them by the far left; they willingly embraced it as a club to wield against populist liberals who were more interested in "class justice.
The problem wasn't cowardice, it was that their first priority was the intraparty fight against economic populism.
I don't want to totally absolve them, but I do think they get too much blame on this stuff. The Dem leadership absolutely embraced the social justice movement and the far Left, particularly in the first days of Trump.
But as they saw little electoral returns for the move, the Democrats and particularly their leadership pivoted away from it. Biden didn't govern as some crazy Leftist and he seemed to endorse the post-racial vision of America. But, here's the thing, they kept getting tagged for the most inane things the Left said, even if there's no real significant Leftist anywhere near the leadership of the Democratic Party. The whole Latinx thing is a perfect example. Yes, its dumb, but the Democrats weren't doing it... they were getting harmed by the blowback against the Left, who incidentally, opposed the Dems on other grounds.
That's because Biden was largely quite good at governance. What he sucked at was politics and messaging. Which, you know, is bad for a politician (but probably good for a president).
If sharp criticism disappears completely, mild criticism will become harsh. If mild criticism is not allowed, silence will be considered ill-intended. If silence is no longer allowed, not praising hard enough is a crime. If only one voice is allowed to exist, then the only voice that exists is a lie.
Some of the comments about racial equity above miss the mark on one point addressed in the post: are you actually speaking for the people you purport to speak for? I think it's been proven that the answer is no.
Poll after poll has shown that the majority of all races and ethnicities favour a post-racial world. This makes sense; when you have people who have historically been judged by their immutable characteristics, you can see how they'd be loath to return to those days, even if it is purportedly for their benefit. At its worst, this ideology infantilizes people, treating them like they lack agency and need the help of the Educated Whites to save them from oppression.
The fact is that most of these equity ideals stem from post-secondary education, which is overwhelmingly richer and whiter than the general population. The discourse over privilege is privileged (mostly) white people yapping to each other at the exclusion of those without privilege.
I think these people are well-intentioned at heart, but ironically, their privilege blinds them to a degree. In a lot of cases, the only people of colour they have interacted with are people just like them: educated, upwardly mobile, and with an activist streak. IMO, this skews their views of what these groups actually believe in and what they actually want.
Virtually every demographic- save for educated white people- broke for Trump in higher numbers than 2016 and 2020. When you make your entire ideology about identity and the groups you purport to speak for reject you, that's a sure enough sign that you aren't really speaking for those you think you're protecting.
As a college-educated white person who knows a number of non-college-educated black people, I basically agree with you. Any reparations need to focus on economic inequality, a good portion of which is related to racial oppression. That said, I doubt there are many black people who would say their life has not been more difficult due to their race, and I think programs and organizations that support them on that basis are worthy ones.
I agree the left is overly censorious, but Donald Trump is much more so. It's good to learn from one's mistakes but it's not good to commit the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
He’s worse because we’ve never talked about it. Every time we tried something came up. “Oh. You can’t talk about it cus #metoo, you can’t talk about it cus #blm, you can’t talk about it cus Trump got elected (the first time), we can’t talk about it because the pandemic…. There was always an excuse to not talk about it. It’s like an abusive relationship where your concerns just keep getting ignored because one side is always “busy” until one day you’ve had enough and you say “no. We are talking about this now. I don’t care if it’s your dad’s funeral. Right now. You keep putting it off!”
Of course Donald is worse. He's somewhere deep beneath the lowest sump of disgusting.
I'm usually up on my fallacy recognition, but I had to look that one up. I think it's a wrong application. The sooner I realize I'm screwing up, the sooner I can make a course correction.
There's no crying allowed in baseball, nor feeling sorry for one's self in politics. It's not like this needs some deep contemplation of where the Dems went wrong. If someone can't figure this one out very quickly, there's even deeper problems to overcome.
You're right, which is why I'd like liberals to stand up for liberal ideals once again. Because if we do so, it'll be far more genuine than Trump pretending to care about those things when he clearly doesn't.
How was Trump more censorious? Did he try and create a Ministry of Truth like the left did? Did he use NGO governmental cut-outs to force social media companies to bury stories?
He's literally suing people for saying things that he didn't like. He's literally threatened to prosecute people for saying things he doesn't like. He literally wanted to remove media outlets that he didn't like from press conferences.
The reason y’all lost is Kamala was an untalented, spineless corporate fake politician tied to an administration that was deeply unpopular and who she refused to distance herself from. The reason y’all lost is she ran a shitty neoliberal campaign at a time of populist rage and resentment. It appealed to people making $200,000 a year and no one else. The reason y’all lost is that the Democratic Party stands for nothing and has abandoned the working class and everyone knows it. The reason y’all lost is that the Democrats suck at politics. I’m as critical of the liberal professional-managerial class “left” as anyone, but watching liberals blame them when Kamala Harris did avoided the culture war issues described in this essay is maddening. She ran the platonic ideal of a campaign attempting to ignore and transcend the woke shit. But she lost bc her message on the economy wasn’t strong enough, she very clearly wanted to appeal to corporate America, and when asked if she would do anything different than Biden on The View, she said no.
It's hard to imagine a less able politician in this particular election than Harris. The "Democrats" did the most undemocratic thing imaginable and pushed her in our face and demanded fealty. Fuck that. The Dems blew this. Blew it bad in every possible way, and to point it out is to receive their same lame abuse for not getting in line with them.
Given that we in part have them to thank for Trump even being inaugurated yesterday in the first place, I'd say it's a fine day to point out their shortcomings that led us to this point.
My brother, did you not see whom Agent Orange nominated for cabinet positions? Let’s see, which of them best exemplifies meritocracy: Hegseth, RFK Jr, Kash Patel, Gabbard?
I mean, if you redefine meritocracy to mean “makes librulz cry and is willing to kiss Donny’s backside,” then sure, I guess.
I think you missed his point. Yes, he did see all that, which makes it all the more infuriating that these ass clowns get to stand up there and claim GOOD ideas to which they have no actual commitment or interest.
Regardless of whether Trump's argument is correct, he is still making the argument that his nominees should get the position due to merit. For example, he says (possibly incorrectly) that Gabbard should be director of national intelligence because she would be good at the job. He does not argue that she should have the position in order to have the first woman of color in the role or to bring religious diversity to the cabinet. In contrast, democrats tend to value diversity as an end in itself:
Read Mark Andreesen's interview with Ross Douthat in the NYT. It walks you through exactly what happened in Corporate America with young leftist activists and then talks about what senior Biden staffers were telling tech companies.
They honestly believe that the government permitting social media was a catastrophic mistake politically.
They also intend for AI to be 100% controlled by the government via a couple of private entities.
Their bottom line is that Big Tech went for Trump mainly because he didn't want to kill them.
Andreesen’s interview was illuminating, but I found it telling that during the discussion about AI regulations, Andreesen didn’t bring up safety or job concerns as a source of backlash at all. He argued that it was just about woke stuff, despite that AI skepticism is fairly high among all Americans (https://news.gallup.com/poll/648953/americans-express-real-concerns-artificial-intelligence.aspx). It took Douthat questioning Andreesen’s characterization for those other issues to come up.
At times, I think criticism of progressives along “woke vs antiwoke” lines is allowed to overtake any acknowledgement of what progressives say about other issues.
Not a fan of Trump’s personality but his executive orders on our open borders, the insanity of gender identity which deny the reality of human sexuality, and the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others are absolutely the correct approach to those festering problems.
I'm looking for a sober review of all the day one executive orders that Trump did, and how many are normal things you expect when control changes, and how many are insane.
Ending birthright citizenship via executive order, I think, goes in the "insane" bucket.
The problem with the left is that they insist on dealing conscientiously with complex social issues. They understand that "color blindness" is a way to avoid acknowledging the effects of slavery and Jim Crow that continue to disadvantage black people to this day. They refuse to distill the issues of transgender people to the legitimate conundrum of how to allow trans women to compete in sports. People want easy answers: "judge people by the content of their character," or "there are only two genders." 99% of people would prefer not to use their mental energy pondering complicated problems. Those of us who care about these things are left to quietly insist on the complexity of reality while not demanding too much of the rest of the population.
Respectfully, my experience of the left is that it in fact eschews the complexity of these issues in exchange for a very simplistic top-down "you're with us or against us" attitude. There is no discussion about these complex issues allowed; you either toe the line or you're (insert ism of the day here). Whether intended or not, this post smacks of "we lefties must bear the cross of being the learned and moral ones," which is precisely why everyone is sick of the left to begin with.
Perhaps I shouldn't have claimed to speak for "The Left." I'm simply advocating for a more nuanced view in the face of the now fashionable "anti-woke" perspective.
I see your point, but I don't know that I'd call it "fashionable," particularly compared to how fashionable "Woke" (for lack of a better term) was in 2017-2021. It's not like major corporations are churning out "anti-woke" products or anything. I think there is natural backlash from people who bit their tongues for several years in response to what was arguably an overcorrection from previous wrongs. Most (read: non-MAGA) people just kinda stayed quiet and flew under the radar during that period until the dam inevitably burst.
Come on - please tell me you're kidding. Yes, many things are complex, but violating basic free speech principles and arguing that we should focus MORE on what divides us are simply bad solutions, regardless of how complex a problem is.
I guess I missed the part where I said I was against free speech! As far as the things that divide us, it seems unhelpful to ignore the fact that some people have been luckier in their experiences and inheritances than others. Obviously one has to look at moral hazard and the overall good when contemplating how to try to level the playing field, but I do believe that one of the goals of democracy is to strive for equal opportunities for all.
What does it say about your "conscientious" approach that more and more of the ostensible beneficiaries of it hate you? What does it mean when all of the demands for "social justice" and "inclusive language" come from well credentialed people in universities and a well-remunerated DEI industry?
I don't have any first-hand experience with the DEI industry, but I've heard it became quite the grift in many cases. Still, hard to understand why someone would hate me for trying to treat them with respect and acknowledgment of their individuality. As I recall, in 2020 lots of black people actually did appreciate the support of white allies. Why would that have changed?
I get that people don't want to be judged by one facet of their identity! But pretending that historical events had no impact when they most obviously did does no one any favors.
Because a bunch of white radical "allies" decided to push a mix of radical insanity that most black people didn't want (defund the police) and a bunch of overwrought symbolic bullshit that changed nothing. Also, it's very revealing that you don't get how off-putting it is to make a "special effort" to treat some people people with kid gloves. No one wants your special care.
There’s some truth to this. As a liberal, some common culturally left takes on identity are wrong, and lead to unethical or misguided politics. But there are there are other times when bringing up culturally left takes on identity is just *politically* wrong (or politically incorrect?) because of the backlash we can expect from the median voter.
Behind the colorblind posturing, you’ll find a lot of “color” in the Republican party!
Which party has the politicians who’ve insisted on defending the Confederacy well into the 21st century? The Republican party.
Which party has the people calling nonwhites and women in positions of power “DEI” without actually having evidence? The Republican party.
Which presidential candidate was flying around in his private jet with an allied, self-avowed white nationalist only months before the election? The Republican party candidate.
Which party has the people preaching about “The Great Replacement” and race science? The Republican party.
Which party has the people who decry the patronization of non-Democratic blacks, but also tell black Democrats that they’re “on the plantation” and they should be “freethinkers” (AKA “agree with them”)? The Republican party.
Not sure that’s true. Antitrust was also a big part of the new blue. Biden anti trust warrior lost case after case in anti trust lawsuits. Like for instance: stopping Activision from buying one video game because it would give them a “monopoly” on first person shooters. That a judge pretty much laughed out of court. The same FTC also investigated a company for buying “subway” thus creating a near catastrophic sandwich “monopoly”
He may have meant anti racist. But anti trust also fits the shoe. Not since don Quixote has a politician fought so many non-dragons as Biden.
Hi Jeff, can you please set a price in AUD for Australian subscribers the way BarPod does? The Australian dollar is in the shitter (thanks Trump!) and much as I love you I can't see my way to paying $16AUD+ a month for your excellent John Oliver before he got shit content.
The cost of subscription is $10USD. Right now that's a little more than $16AUD. The AUD is weak against the USD at the moment and possibly going to get worse. So a price in AUD is consistent for Australian subscribers whereas a USD price is not. Geddit?
Can we also give an honourable mention to always attacking/blaming capitalism as a stupid thing on the left along with all the woke stuff? This kind of goes with your ‘blocking things’ post…but the dominant economic system in the world which creates abundance and ensures better growth, innovation, productivity, property rights, the creation of generational wealth, class mobility, and reduction of poverty is probably worth defending. I don’t love big business or monopolies or anything like that, but there’s a lot of brain-dead, pseudo-intellectual online ‘socialism’ out there that needs to get shut down. Free market with redistribution and common-sense regulation is a good liberal principle, and we should own it…without rebranding it as socialism for no reason.
Speaking as a shitty little Limey faggot (TM), I'm glad to see that the response of 95% of non-MAGA American commentators to the rise of a far-right, billionaire-felching, corrupt, already unconstitutional oligarchy coming to power in the US is to join the MAGAverse in beating up what remains of the opposition.
Keep it up!! If there's one thing we need RIGHT NOW, it's to focus on The Enemy- Democrats, all five of them. Bastards.Thank fuck the neo-fascists are here at last to show us how vile 'we' are. It takes courage and vision to know what needs to be done at moments like this- and what needs to be done is disappear up Trump's all-conquering arse.
The left is NOT attacking free speech!!! This statement is offensive and I’m reporting you to Substack!!!!!
I think (and hope) this is a joke.
One can never be sure on the Internet. But yes, it’s a joke.
Excellent piece today...superb. The only disagreement is in the "I can't believe" part.
I totally believe because my foundational understanding of Democrats in general and the far Left in particular is they don't know how to do a fucking thing. They don't understand housing, so they develop and promote idiotic policies to overcome the problems their earlier policies caused in the first place. They don't understand human societies or interaction, enacted policies in direct opposition to long understood human interactional dynamics, and then yell at anyone pointing out their stupidity. They don't understand energy policy and enact impossibly stupid regulations that satisfy people able to afford EV's and net zero building codes but that hit working class and poor people dead center in the pocketbook.
Even now, the top folks in the DNC are still insisting the problem was not the message, but in how the message was presented. It's like they've never heard how one doesn't solve problems by using the same thinking that created them.
So, no surprise. I totally believe it.
I hear what you're saying; there's a reason that when The Simpsons depicted a Democratic gathering in 1994, the banners hanging in the rafters said "We can't govern!" and "We hate life and ourselves!" Though I would say that SOME Democrats don't get it and don't know how to do anything and some do. There's a factional fight occurring on the left right now.
It's a bit more than that. I would say that being a party of lawyers, buearacrats, PR people, and other email job people is a serious problem. The fact that engineers, surgeons, contractors, farmers, small business people, skilled labor etc. both won't join the Dems and aren't really welcome is a huge problem.
This problem used to be mitigated when organized labor was much more powerful in the Democratic coalition, but quite honestly, having a party of lead by people who fundamentally don't know how to deal with physical reality is just going to lead to continued policy and political disasters.
I think that's an excellent observation, and a major component of their failure. I run into those "email job people" all the time. Never built anything, but are cocksure they know how to build.
For some reason I have the talent of being able to talk to both the email job people and the people who actually get work done. It's what keeps me employed in construction finance. I spend most of my time saving the email job people from making self-inflicted idiotic mistakes.
What is the evidence that engineers and doctors are distinctly not joining the Dems?
Sorry, for Doctors, I meant Surgeons specifically. Look it up, I didn't make it up.
I think I found it, or at least, an article about it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/upshot/your-surgeon-is-probably-a-republican-your-psychiatrist-probably-a-democrat.html
> “In surgery, anesthesiology and urology, for example, around two-thirds of doctors who have registered a political affiliation are Republicans. In infectious disease medicine, psychiatry and pediatrics, more than two-thirds are Democrats.”
The chart in the article says that doctors overall, as well as some specialties like Internal Medicine and Oncology, skew Democrat.
> “There is no way to know exactly why certain medical specialties attract Democrats or Republicans. But researchers who have studied the politics of physicians offered a few theories.”
> “One explanation could be money. Doctors tend to earn very high salaries compared with average Americans, but the highest-paid doctors earn many times as much as those in the lower-paying specialties. The fields with higher average salaries tended to contain more doctors who were Republican, while the comparatively lower-paying fields were more popular among Democrats. That matches with national data, which show that, for people with a given level of education, richer ones are more likely to lean Republican (possibly because of a concern over the liberal policy goal of taxing the wealthiest at a higher rate).”
> “The sorting may also reflect the changing demographics of medicine. As more women have become doctors in recent years, they have tended to cluster in certain specialties more than others. The data showed that female physicians were more likely to be Democrats than their male peers, mirroring another trend in the larger American population. So as women enter fields like pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology and psychiatry, they may be making those fields more liberal.”
> “Over all, the partisanship of doctors looks very different from a generation ago, when most physicians identified as Republicans. The influx of women may help explain that change, too. The researchers Adam Bonica, Howard Rosenthal and David Rothman compared political donations by doctors in 1991 with those in 2011 and 2012. The study found that doctors had become substantially more likely to give to Democrats.”
Every twenty years or so Democrats decide that racial gaps in "metric XYZ" are a BIG PROBLEM that HAS TO BE FIXED (and The Bell Curve explanation for why is like LITERALLY HITLER).
They then go a do a bunch of the same dumb shit they did twenty years ago (school busing in the 70s was pretty fucking retarded for instance, Kamala even brought it up in 2019).
Then after 5-10 years of this shit being a train wreck they back off and memory hole the entire thing but don't really admit any of the fundamental problems with their view. They just adopt whatever the polling says will sell and have enough memory of putting their hand on the stove and it being HOT that they do "triangulation" for a generation.
Then a new generation of leftists that didn't get their hand burned on the stove come up and we get another 5-10 years of searing flesh again.
"Some" isn't a big enough number. I'd allow "a couple", maybe "a dozen" (being facetious). I also hear what you're saying, but the momentum toward incompetence is strong. I'm not convinced there's a plurality that knows anything useful.
Remember (and I say this as a lifelong Democrat) that you only have two choices: incompetence or downright evil. It’s a shitty choice.
I'm a proud member of the party of stupid.
So, what policies are ‘ direct opposition to long understood human interactional dynamics?’ Please provide a specific example?
Please think it through and you'll figure it out.
The Civil Rights Act.
Bipartisan, and 61 years ago. Try something from this century. You're being intentionally obtuse.
Think harder.
I’m just following your wording. You didn’t specify a time. Do you support Civil Rights? Those laws certainly changed local practices and society.
No. I believe all DNC supporters should be rusticated to learn from the peasants.
How about putting male sex offenders into women’s prisons?
There are already male prison guards. Male guards are constantly assaulting prisoners .The problem is the assaults, not the trans women. (And FWIW, I think sex offenders should be housed in separate prisons entirely. They can’t be trusted no matter what gender they use.)
Transwomen are men. Just like any men they're bigger than women, stronger than women, and mostly like sex with women. Half the ones in prison are there for a sex offence.
Replacing male prison guards with female ones would be a great idea. But guess what! We could do that AND take the men who are convicted felons out of the female prison population and put them back with the other men.
This is the kind of out-of-touch mental gyration that drove average voters away from the left.
You’re excusing putting male sex offenders, nearly all of whom conveniently discovered that they were “trans” once arrested for their crimes, into prisons by saying that “well, women are already being assaulted by prison guards, so… in essence we haven’t made the problem any worse.”
There are news reports of female inmates being raped and impregnated by “trans” inmates. I think these individual women might beg to differ with your point of view.
I want to stop assaults and I don’t see any evidence that trans women are responsible for those attacks
Men who call themselves "transwomen" do the same amount or more sex offending than other sorts of men.
Cite: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/
In particular: "MOJ stats show 76 of the 129 male-born prisoners identifying as transgender (not counting any with GRCs) have at least 1 conviction of sexual offence. This includes 36 convictions for rape and 10 for attempted rape" (p3)
So much for #BelieveWomen
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/11/transgender-prisoner-who-sexually-assaulted-inmates-jailed-for-life
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/man-posing-as-transgender-woman-raped-female-prisoner-at-rikers-lawsuit-says/5067904/?amp=1
https://news.wttw.com/2020/02/19/lawsuit-female-prisoner-says-she-was-raped-transgender-inmate
All of it Karen, ALL of it.
Well said! While I absolutely abhor Trump and everything he stands for and while the right is absolutely worse, the far left is authoritarian in a way that I hate too and they are my team. And we MUST take a stand when our own team is doing stupid things. Thank you for this.
Honestly when your best argument is “the other team is worse,” you’ve lost my support.
I honestly can’t tell if this is a criticism of what I said or agreement. I keep going back and forth. But I think I agree regardless so…. 🤷♂️
Ha sorry this was absolutely not directed at you! Forgive me for being a little grumpy this morning.
No apology necessary. I suspect about 60% of the country is a little grumpy this morning but there’s a large portion of them who have no right to complain now because they should have known to do something about it. Besides, whether it was a criticism or not I still agreed with it. I thank people for correcting me usually. It lets me be correct the next time.
Damn right.
It's important not to absolve the Democratic leadership. "Social justice" politics wasn't forced on them by the far left; they willingly embraced it as a club to wield against populist liberals who were more interested in "class justice.
The problem wasn't cowardice, it was that their first priority was the intraparty fight against economic populism.
I don't want to totally absolve them, but I do think they get too much blame on this stuff. The Dem leadership absolutely embraced the social justice movement and the far Left, particularly in the first days of Trump.
But as they saw little electoral returns for the move, the Democrats and particularly their leadership pivoted away from it. Biden didn't govern as some crazy Leftist and he seemed to endorse the post-racial vision of America. But, here's the thing, they kept getting tagged for the most inane things the Left said, even if there's no real significant Leftist anywhere near the leadership of the Democratic Party. The whole Latinx thing is a perfect example. Yes, its dumb, but the Democrats weren't doing it... they were getting harmed by the blowback against the Left, who incidentally, opposed the Dems on other grounds.
That's because Biden was largely quite good at governance. What he sucked at was politics and messaging. Which, you know, is bad for a politician (but probably good for a president).
If sharp criticism disappears completely, mild criticism will become harsh. If mild criticism is not allowed, silence will be considered ill-intended. If silence is no longer allowed, not praising hard enough is a crime. If only one voice is allowed to exist, then the only voice that exists is a lie.
如果尖銳的批評完全消失，溫和的批評將會變得刺耳。 如果溫和的批評也不被允許，沉默將被認為居心叵測。 如果沉默也不再允許，讚揚不夠賣力將是一種罪行。 如果只允許一種聲音存在，那麼，唯一存在的那個聲音就是謊言
Some of the comments about racial equity above miss the mark on one point addressed in the post: are you actually speaking for the people you purport to speak for? I think it's been proven that the answer is no.
Poll after poll has shown that the majority of all races and ethnicities favour a post-racial world. This makes sense; when you have people who have historically been judged by their immutable characteristics, you can see how they'd be loath to return to those days, even if it is purportedly for their benefit. At its worst, this ideology infantilizes people, treating them like they lack agency and need the help of the Educated Whites to save them from oppression.
The fact is that most of these equity ideals stem from post-secondary education, which is overwhelmingly richer and whiter than the general population. The discourse over privilege is privileged (mostly) white people yapping to each other at the exclusion of those without privilege.
I think these people are well-intentioned at heart, but ironically, their privilege blinds them to a degree. In a lot of cases, the only people of colour they have interacted with are people just like them: educated, upwardly mobile, and with an activist streak. IMO, this skews their views of what these groups actually believe in and what they actually want.
Virtually every demographic- save for educated white people- broke for Trump in higher numbers than 2016 and 2020. When you make your entire ideology about identity and the groups you purport to speak for reject you, that's a sure enough sign that you aren't really speaking for those you think you're protecting.
As a college-educated white person who knows a number of non-college-educated black people, I basically agree with you. Any reparations need to focus on economic inequality, a good portion of which is related to racial oppression. That said, I doubt there are many black people who would say their life has not been more difficult due to their race, and I think programs and organizations that support them on that basis are worthy ones.
Today is maybe not the day to bitch about the left.
Today is exactly the day to bitch about the left for exactly this reason.
Exactly, word for word, what I was about to reply. Two great minds and all.
What reason is that?
The reason why we lost. The sooner one accepts one's mistakes and changes course, the sooner things improve.
I agree the left is overly censorious, but Donald Trump is much more so. It's good to learn from one's mistakes but it's not good to commit the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
He’s worse because we’ve never talked about it. Every time we tried something came up. “Oh. You can’t talk about it cus #metoo, you can’t talk about it cus #blm, you can’t talk about it cus Trump got elected (the first time), we can’t talk about it because the pandemic…. There was always an excuse to not talk about it. It’s like an abusive relationship where your concerns just keep getting ignored because one side is always “busy” until one day you’ve had enough and you say “no. We are talking about this now. I don’t care if it’s your dad’s funeral. Right now. You keep putting it off!”
Of course Donald is worse. He's somewhere deep beneath the lowest sump of disgusting.
I'm usually up on my fallacy recognition, but I had to look that one up. I think it's a wrong application. The sooner I realize I'm screwing up, the sooner I can make a course correction.
There's no crying allowed in baseball, nor feeling sorry for one's self in politics. It's not like this needs some deep contemplation of where the Dems went wrong. If someone can't figure this one out very quickly, there's even deeper problems to overcome.
You're right, which is why I'd like liberals to stand up for liberal ideals once again. Because if we do so, it'll be far more genuine than Trump pretending to care about those things when he clearly doesn't.
How was Trump more censorious? Did he try and create a Ministry of Truth like the left did? Did he use NGO governmental cut-outs to force social media companies to bury stories?
He's literally suing people for saying things that he didn't like. He's literally threatened to prosecute people for saying things he doesn't like. He literally wanted to remove media outlets that he didn't like from press conferences.
The reason y’all lost is Kamala was an untalented, spineless corporate fake politician tied to an administration that was deeply unpopular and who she refused to distance herself from. The reason y’all lost is she ran a shitty neoliberal campaign at a time of populist rage and resentment. It appealed to people making $200,000 a year and no one else. The reason y’all lost is that the Democratic Party stands for nothing and has abandoned the working class and everyone knows it. The reason y’all lost is that the Democrats suck at politics. I’m as critical of the liberal professional-managerial class “left” as anyone, but watching liberals blame them when Kamala Harris did avoided the culture war issues described in this essay is maddening. She ran the platonic ideal of a campaign attempting to ignore and transcend the woke shit. But she lost bc her message on the economy wasn’t strong enough, she very clearly wanted to appeal to corporate America, and when asked if she would do anything different than Biden on The View, she said no.
It's hard to imagine a less able politician in this particular election than Harris. The "Democrats" did the most undemocratic thing imaginable and pushed her in our face and demanded fealty. Fuck that. The Dems blew this. Blew it bad in every possible way, and to point it out is to receive their same lame abuse for not getting in line with them.
Given that we in part have them to thank for Trump even being inaugurated yesterday in the first place, I'd say it's a fine day to point out their shortcomings that led us to this point.
DURING PRIDE?
I understand the sentiment, but it's never too early to recognize one's self is utterly wrong.
Yeah, it's too bad about abandoning Meritocracy as a key value. It sure would come in handy as an argument against cronyism and nepotism.
“Meritocracy became a right-wing issue.”
AYFKM?
My brother, did you not see whom Agent Orange nominated for cabinet positions? Let’s see, which of them best exemplifies meritocracy: Hegseth, RFK Jr, Kash Patel, Gabbard?
I mean, if you redefine meritocracy to mean “makes librulz cry and is willing to kiss Donny’s backside,” then sure, I guess.
I think you missed his point. Yes, he did see all that, which makes it all the more infuriating that these ass clowns get to stand up there and claim GOOD ideas to which they have no actual commitment or interest.
Regardless of whether Trump's argument is correct, he is still making the argument that his nominees should get the position due to merit. For example, he says (possibly incorrectly) that Gabbard should be director of national intelligence because she would be good at the job. He does not argue that she should have the position in order to have the first woman of color in the role or to bring religious diversity to the cabinet. In contrast, democrats tend to value diversity as an end in itself:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-administration-touts-diverse-white-house-staff-history-rcna92024
Some of Biden’s cabinet picks were equally bad and in some cases worse.
Read Mark Andreesen's interview with Ross Douthat in the NYT. It walks you through exactly what happened in Corporate America with young leftist activists and then talks about what senior Biden staffers were telling tech companies.
They honestly believe that the government permitting social media was a catastrophic mistake politically.
They also intend for AI to be 100% controlled by the government via a couple of private entities.
Their bottom line is that Big Tech went for Trump mainly because he didn't want to kill them.
Andreesen’s interview was illuminating, but I found it telling that during the discussion about AI regulations, Andreesen didn’t bring up safety or job concerns as a source of backlash at all. He argued that it was just about woke stuff, despite that AI skepticism is fairly high among all Americans (https://news.gallup.com/poll/648953/americans-express-real-concerns-artificial-intelligence.aspx). It took Douthat questioning Andreesen’s characterization for those other issues to come up.
At times, I think criticism of progressives along “woke vs antiwoke” lines is allowed to overtake any acknowledgement of what progressives say about other issues.
Not a fan of Trump’s personality but his executive orders on our open borders, the insanity of gender identity which deny the reality of human sexuality, and the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others are absolutely the correct approach to those festering problems.
I'm looking for a sober review of all the day one executive orders that Trump did, and how many are normal things you expect when control changes, and how many are insane.
Ending birthright citizenship via executive order, I think, goes in the "insane" bucket.
Hanania posted such an article at https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-trumps-day ; I don't have the expertise to say how "sober" it is.
The problem with the left is that they insist on dealing conscientiously with complex social issues. They understand that "color blindness" is a way to avoid acknowledging the effects of slavery and Jim Crow that continue to disadvantage black people to this day. They refuse to distill the issues of transgender people to the legitimate conundrum of how to allow trans women to compete in sports. People want easy answers: "judge people by the content of their character," or "there are only two genders." 99% of people would prefer not to use their mental energy pondering complicated problems. Those of us who care about these things are left to quietly insist on the complexity of reality while not demanding too much of the rest of the population.
Respectfully, my experience of the left is that it in fact eschews the complexity of these issues in exchange for a very simplistic top-down "you're with us or against us" attitude. There is no discussion about these complex issues allowed; you either toe the line or you're (insert ism of the day here). Whether intended or not, this post smacks of "we lefties must bear the cross of being the learned and moral ones," which is precisely why everyone is sick of the left to begin with.
Also, who doesn't think they're learned and moral? Do people actually take pride in being ignorant and immoral? I mean, I guess some do.
Perhaps I shouldn't have claimed to speak for "The Left." I'm simply advocating for a more nuanced view in the face of the now fashionable "anti-woke" perspective.
I see your point, but I don't know that I'd call it "fashionable," particularly compared to how fashionable "Woke" (for lack of a better term) was in 2017-2021. It's not like major corporations are churning out "anti-woke" products or anything. I think there is natural backlash from people who bit their tongues for several years in response to what was arguably an overcorrection from previous wrongs. Most (read: non-MAGA) people just kinda stayed quiet and flew under the radar during that period until the dam inevitably burst.
Come on - please tell me you're kidding. Yes, many things are complex, but violating basic free speech principles and arguing that we should focus MORE on what divides us are simply bad solutions, regardless of how complex a problem is.
I guess I missed the part where I said I was against free speech! As far as the things that divide us, it seems unhelpful to ignore the fact that some people have been luckier in their experiences and inheritances than others. Obviously one has to look at moral hazard and the overall good when contemplating how to try to level the playing field, but I do believe that one of the goals of democracy is to strive for equal opportunities for all.
What does it say about your "conscientious" approach that more and more of the ostensible beneficiaries of it hate you? What does it mean when all of the demands for "social justice" and "inclusive language" come from well credentialed people in universities and a well-remunerated DEI industry?
I don't have any first-hand experience with the DEI industry, but I've heard it became quite the grift in many cases. Still, hard to understand why someone would hate me for trying to treat them with respect and acknowledgment of their individuality. As I recall, in 2020 lots of black people actually did appreciate the support of white allies. Why would that have changed?
I get that people don't want to be judged by one facet of their identity! But pretending that historical events had no impact when they most obviously did does no one any favors.
"Why would that have changed?"
Because a bunch of white radical "allies" decided to push a mix of radical insanity that most black people didn't want (defund the police) and a bunch of overwrought symbolic bullshit that changed nothing. Also, it's very revealing that you don't get how off-putting it is to make a "special effort" to treat some people people with kid gloves. No one wants your special care.
“The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
There’s some truth to this. As a liberal, some common culturally left takes on identity are wrong, and lead to unethical or misguided politics. But there are there are other times when bringing up culturally left takes on identity is just *politically* wrong (or politically incorrect?) because of the backlash we can expect from the median voter.
Behind the colorblind posturing, you’ll find a lot of “color” in the Republican party!
Which party has the politicians who’ve insisted on defending the Confederacy well into the 21st century? The Republican party.
Which party has the people calling nonwhites and women in positions of power “DEI” without actually having evidence? The Republican party.
Which presidential candidate was flying around in his private jet with an allied, self-avowed white nationalist only months before the election? The Republican party candidate.
Which party has the people preaching about “The Great Replacement” and race science? The Republican party.
Which party has the people who decry the patronization of non-Democratic blacks, but also tell black Democrats that they’re “on the plantation” and they should be “freethinkers” (AKA “agree with them”)? The Republican party.
This is the stuff that people are now conveniently forgetting. Perhaps it will return to the fore at some point in the next 4 years
i think he accidentally used “antitrust” in one spot when he meant to say “antiracist”.
i mean this literally. it’s just a proofreading note. i am not trying to make some inscrutable point about free speech/censorship.
Yes, that was meant to be "antiracist", and I can blame autocorrect for that one. It's fixed!
Not sure that’s true. Antitrust was also a big part of the new blue. Biden anti trust warrior lost case after case in anti trust lawsuits. Like for instance: stopping Activision from buying one video game because it would give them a “monopoly” on first person shooters. That a judge pretty much laughed out of court. The same FTC also investigated a company for buying “subway” thus creating a near catastrophic sandwich “monopoly”
He may have meant anti racist. But anti trust also fits the shoe. Not since don Quixote has a politician fought so many non-dragons as Biden.
Hi Jeff, can you please set a price in AUD for Australian subscribers the way BarPod does? The Australian dollar is in the shitter (thanks Trump!) and much as I love you I can't see my way to paying $16AUD+ a month for your excellent John Oliver before he got shit content.
I had no idea this is an issue and will see if I can solve it. Fair warning: This sounds like something I'm going to struggle to figure out.
"John Oliver Before He Was Shit Content" is a fantastic phrase...
It's definitely worth $16AUD+, however the hell much that is.
The cost of subscription is $10USD. Right now that's a little more than $16AUD. The AUD is weak against the USD at the moment and possibly going to get worse. So a price in AUD is consistent for Australian subscribers whereas a USD price is not. Geddit?
Can we also give an honourable mention to always attacking/blaming capitalism as a stupid thing on the left along with all the woke stuff? This kind of goes with your ‘blocking things’ post…but the dominant economic system in the world which creates abundance and ensures better growth, innovation, productivity, property rights, the creation of generational wealth, class mobility, and reduction of poverty is probably worth defending. I don’t love big business or monopolies or anything like that, but there’s a lot of brain-dead, pseudo-intellectual online ‘socialism’ out there that needs to get shut down. Free market with redistribution and common-sense regulation is a good liberal principle, and we should own it…without rebranding it as socialism for no reason.
Speaking as a shitty little Limey faggot (TM), I'm glad to see that the response of 95% of non-MAGA American commentators to the rise of a far-right, billionaire-felching, corrupt, already unconstitutional oligarchy coming to power in the US is to join the MAGAverse in beating up what remains of the opposition.
Keep it up!! If there's one thing we need RIGHT NOW, it's to focus on The Enemy- Democrats, all five of them. Bastards.Thank fuck the neo-fascists are here at last to show us how vile 'we' are. It takes courage and vision to know what needs to be done at moments like this- and what needs to be done is disappear up Trump's all-conquering arse.