Kepler
Si certus es dubita
Re: Campaign 2016 Part XI: the Two Party Problem
Yes, that was what I took from the article.
Everyone is "smug" in that everyone constructs a worldview where they just accidentally turn out to have the most of whatever their particular currency of righteousness (intellect, learning, godliness, salt of the earth common sense, yadda yadda) is. But basically smugness smells worse when it comes from an advantaged group -- rich hipsters' smugness makes people want to bash their faces in, so does the smugness of rich Republicans going a week on food stamps and saying "see, that wasn't so hard..", or the smugness of rich countries telling poor countries "No! Fossil fuels are bad!!!"
We as liberals understand the issue with all those examples, but we're blind to it when we come to our own brand, which has become a highly lucrative portion of the general economy and culture.
Still, it wouldn't be so bad if we weren't trying to do stuff like, you know, win elections and get policies enacted. We are continually frustrated by rural whites voting for massive military budgets, but we never stop to think that the economy we have served up to them gives them exactly one major employer who offers a decent future: the military. Our response to having the advantage of access to comparative economic data which shows that higher marginal tax rates reduce poverty is to spend 1% of our time trying to pass that message along in an effective way to people who don't have the advantage of being able to spend all day researching on the internet, and 99% of our time responding to or thinking up witty memes that makes fun of them for cutting their own throats. And it's a case of, "did I say that out loud?" Used to be you could slag people all you wanted in private (god knows what rich Republicans say about their poor brethren behind closed doors), but now everything is viewable by everyone. The ideal is not to be a tool, but if one must be a tool, at least be circumspect.
That article really cut me hard. I see myself as exactly who he is talking about. It doesn't mean we're worse than the other side -- the Grievance Right earns a comfortable Beltway living ginning up dumb memes that make fun of "New York values" or extoll "Marine Corps Todd" or any amount of equivalent idiocy -- but again, we can only control what we do, and the more they do that the better because they in turn alienate anyone not in their club. In this environment, empathy is the new market inefficiency.
There must be ways to be effective and constructive. It doesn't, as the author points out, mean being less aggressive. In fact it means being moreso in some ways, since mockery is just a safe way of exchanging passwords with like-thinking people without doing any of the hard work of talking to somebody who disagrees with you and who you want to engage seriously with. If you're being insulting they're going to rightfully tell you to f-ck off. But by being respectful while being firm and coherent in your explanations of your reasoning, you make yourself vulnerable -- they'll challenge you too, after all. Plus, it is uncomfortable to trace truths you may have settled on long ago all the way back to first principles, on the fly, to participate in arguments that don't follow a logician's rules but spring from your interlocutor's personal experience. And so often the arguments seem to be confusing and mutually awkward, because if you both shared exactly the same premises and valuations and rhetorical rules you would likely not be of opposing view points.
We see people being lazy on the other side all the time, just mindlessly copy-pasting righty memes from Red State or Hot Air and then disingenuously claiming them as "troubling" or "interesting" or any of the other nonsense words of loaded rhetoric and propaganda. We attack that and we know it's dumb. Why, then, do it ourselves? Be it feels really good.
But it doesn't work, so there's got to be a better way.
Yes, that was what I took from the article.
Everyone is "smug" in that everyone constructs a worldview where they just accidentally turn out to have the most of whatever their particular currency of righteousness (intellect, learning, godliness, salt of the earth common sense, yadda yadda) is. But basically smugness smells worse when it comes from an advantaged group -- rich hipsters' smugness makes people want to bash their faces in, so does the smugness of rich Republicans going a week on food stamps and saying "see, that wasn't so hard..", or the smugness of rich countries telling poor countries "No! Fossil fuels are bad!!!"
We as liberals understand the issue with all those examples, but we're blind to it when we come to our own brand, which has become a highly lucrative portion of the general economy and culture.
Still, it wouldn't be so bad if we weren't trying to do stuff like, you know, win elections and get policies enacted. We are continually frustrated by rural whites voting for massive military budgets, but we never stop to think that the economy we have served up to them gives them exactly one major employer who offers a decent future: the military. Our response to having the advantage of access to comparative economic data which shows that higher marginal tax rates reduce poverty is to spend 1% of our time trying to pass that message along in an effective way to people who don't have the advantage of being able to spend all day researching on the internet, and 99% of our time responding to or thinking up witty memes that makes fun of them for cutting their own throats. And it's a case of, "did I say that out loud?" Used to be you could slag people all you wanted in private (god knows what rich Republicans say about their poor brethren behind closed doors), but now everything is viewable by everyone. The ideal is not to be a tool, but if one must be a tool, at least be circumspect.
That article really cut me hard. I see myself as exactly who he is talking about. It doesn't mean we're worse than the other side -- the Grievance Right earns a comfortable Beltway living ginning up dumb memes that make fun of "New York values" or extoll "Marine Corps Todd" or any amount of equivalent idiocy -- but again, we can only control what we do, and the more they do that the better because they in turn alienate anyone not in their club. In this environment, empathy is the new market inefficiency.
There must be ways to be effective and constructive. It doesn't, as the author points out, mean being less aggressive. In fact it means being moreso in some ways, since mockery is just a safe way of exchanging passwords with like-thinking people without doing any of the hard work of talking to somebody who disagrees with you and who you want to engage seriously with. If you're being insulting they're going to rightfully tell you to f-ck off. But by being respectful while being firm and coherent in your explanations of your reasoning, you make yourself vulnerable -- they'll challenge you too, after all. Plus, it is uncomfortable to trace truths you may have settled on long ago all the way back to first principles, on the fly, to participate in arguments that don't follow a logician's rules but spring from your interlocutor's personal experience. And so often the arguments seem to be confusing and mutually awkward, because if you both shared exactly the same premises and valuations and rhetorical rules you would likely not be of opposing view points.
We see people being lazy on the other side all the time, just mindlessly copy-pasting righty memes from Red State or Hot Air and then disingenuously claiming them as "troubling" or "interesting" or any of the other nonsense words of loaded rhetoric and propaganda. We attack that and we know it's dumb. Why, then, do it ourselves? Be it feels really good.
But it doesn't work, so there's got to be a better way.
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