Objectively intelligent.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

Go read the book again. You did not understand it.

ETA: Also, How To Be Antiracist so maybe you can finally grasp the racism isn't an aspect of human character but a class of things - ideas, policies and acts - that literally everyone engages in or supports at times.

You miss the point. DiAngelo is not a screwball. You are a screwball. I read her. I enjoyed her and found her enlightening. You, and a whole lot of my silliest white friends (many without a terrific canon of books read or subjects studied behind them) are the people who are being tuned out. You take what she says and run it to absurdist ends. It's like a new orthodox religion for white progressives who need hobbies.

No sensible thinker would engage a person such as you, who simply screams "Bigot!" at everything he sees. They'd deem you frivolous. And yet you do it, over and over and over.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

I don't even have to click on that to know what it is, but the answer is, no they will not use lube before they put the infected cock up my ass while coughing Covid down upon me. In fact they will remind me, that when I asked about referring a fucking round up case, or two, or nine, they told me they didn't take those.

My place works like Trump. If you want to do business, you got to pay a cut. Want to use a car service? You got to use the guy who kicks back. Want them to take a case, you got to give up a piece. Except Poor Old Honest Icky who handles the cases for the best recovery for the clients.

By the way there's no way Trump didn't know about bounties on servicemen. He probably negotiated his kickback from Putin before the election.

I don't know how you do it. When I was in that world, because I had a commercial lit background, they had me defend cases over disputes with other counsel (referral fees, splits, etc.). The shit cats in that sector will do to one another is fucking unreal. "Pay me?" is met with "Make me." "But we have an agreement!" is met with "Fucking prove it."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Right. I know how incensed you get about boring things.

If you were talking to someone incensed about it, it wasn't me. I continue to think that it's more interesting to talk about the challenges of editing the NYT. Pretty much everyone thinks the Cotton op-ed was bad, and an argument about what was worse about it is pretty dull.

So you cited the reaction of black reporters to Cotton's story why then? They were bored too?

IIRC, you suggest that there was nothing unusual about the Cotton flap, and I said it was unusual for the NYT to generate so much internal criticism that became public.

You answered that question yourself (your words):

"We all agree that there are some ideas that are beyond the pale, that there's a line to be drawn. There's nothing objective about those lines.

But I don't think he's saying Cotton's ideas shouldn't be debated. I think he's saying that we need more honesty about what Cotton's ideas are."

Cotton was pretty clear about what his ideas were.

But not honest. The lies about antifa, for example.

If your argument is that Cotton is a propagandist but an important one, and the NYT's readership should get exposed to his propaganda, that's a strong argument for giving him more coverage in the news section, in articles that chronicle his propaganda.

In either case, it was clearly an approximation of your argument that certain things are beyond the pale.

Do you understand the difference between "are" and "should be"? My point was, the NYT has *always* treated certain things as beyond the pale. I'm just telling you that they have always drawn a line. You're getting all hot and bothered by the idea that they do not invite some ideas on to their little op-ed page, but that is what they have always done.

This has it backwards. The OpEd page is not journalism. It is exactly the place where people should consider Cotton's opinion and decide whether it's wise or not.

Why do you think journalism is *not* about informing people about Cotton's opinions and helping them decide whether it's wise or not? Isn't that exactly why we have journalists?

I don't think this was a situation similar to your prep school friend hypothetical.

It was actually very similar, in that Cotton went to Harvard and is a friend of Bill Kristol, which opens lots of doors for him, and he got the piece in the NYT because he was contacted by someone who had been at the Weekly Standard.

Cotton's was a view that is in fact supported by a lot of people. Could it have been better drafted? Yes. But I think the most significant thing to come out of it was the debate about how much of the country actually supports using troops to control protests. There was a lot of argument about whether 58% was accurate. Whatever the number is, it is significant. That's a window into the "silent majority" in the country.

Suppose a significant part of the country supports police brutality but doesn't want to call it police brutality -- let's say they talk about "law and order," and make up stuff about antifa and looters, and ignore legit grievances, and tell lurid stories about blacks committing crimes against whites, and so on. Let's just pretend that 33% of the country feels that way. You're the editor of the NYT. You think to yourself, 'wow, a big part of the country supports this 'law & order' stuff -- I should make sure that their views are understood by my effete, latte-sipping, Volvo-driving readership.' Do you run op-eds calling for law and order and let the writers make up stuff about antifa and looters and ignore legitimate grievances? Or do you run something else instead?

Or suppose that the country is gripped by a pandemic, and health officials say that it would save lives and slow the cost and spread of the disease for everyone to wear masks. But 33% of the country has decided that masks infringe their personal freedoms, because Trump. Do you run op-eds calling for people to burn their masks to save our liberties?

Or suppose that we have a climate crisis, and the solid consensus of experts is that the climate is changing. 33% of the country does not want to hear it, and would rather hear advertisements for pick-up trucks. Do you run op-eds that cherry-pick evidence to downplay the climate crisis and tell people that they should drive trucks if they want to?

I personally think the NYT op-ed page should aspire to something more than you seem to. If I were its editor, I would not run a piece if I thought it were not dealing with hard questions in an intellectually serious way. There are plenty of people who want to do that -- it wouldn't be hard to find them. Where the NYT went wrong, IMO, is not because of the substance of Cotton's views. It's because they went to him and asked to write a piece because he went to Harvard, he's a Senator, he's an up-and-coming conservative who is talked about as a 2024 candidate, he knows Bill Kristoll, or some combination of those things, and then did not hold his piece to any intellectual standards, or -- in the case of Bennet -- even read it. The post hoc rationalization that Cotton speaks for a lot of people is beside the point. A lot of people like Twinkies. The New York Times doesn't run Twinkie commercials on its op-ed pages.

You know my beliefs:

1. Fiscally, moderate;
2. Socially liberal

Free speech? Absolutist
Pro-choice
Favoring negative rights as opposed to positive ones? Yup.
Health care? In favor of a single payer system
UBI? In favor of it out of necessity
Pro-immigration
Regulation? In favor of smart, minimal forms, and elimination of most of the useless forms we have.
Gay marriage? Pro
Size of govt? Obscenely oversized
Defense? Cut the budget in half
Foreign policy? Moderate
Justice reform? Vehemently pro
Taxes? Spent well, I'm fine with an increase; spent inefficiently as they are, no.



If I were inside the Times, I would run pieces focusing on how the masses are being divided and conquered. I'd offend my advertisers and allow more voices advising the poor of all races and backgrounds to unite. To not buy into the marketing that divides them, and instead get together and topple the people with the money by using their combined votes. I'd focus on class. I'd focus on nepotism in the system. I'd allow voices that explained the propaganda. I'd allow voices who'd tell them we are a kleptocracy of a sort, but not because of Trump. Because we've allowed corporations to take over the government. I'd allow voices who'd explain that there is little difference between the parties, which all serve the same special interests.

People would believe in almost no institutions if I had that page.

That's delightful. What if you were hired to run the op-ed page, and told not to favor your own views?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I think the book is for white people because black people already know everything in it.

The way that the national dialogue often assumes that there are two races, white and black, comes off as a little out of touch in a place like San Jose, where there are Hispanics and people of Asian descents and Native Americans and so on.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

By the way there's no way Trump didn't know about bounties on servicemen.

I'm sure it was in his briefings, which he doesn't read. Unless one of the talking heads on Fox told him, he didn't know.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

The way that the national dialogue often assumes that there are two races, white and black, comes off as a little out of touch in a place like San Jose, where there are Hispanics and people of Asian descents and Native Americans and so on.

The book, as I recollect, is not about racism generally, but specific to how white people deal with the issue relative to black people. I think she even states as much. I'm sure there are books to write about Hispanic/black.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I haven't read White Fragility, so I can only assume he is being unfair about what it says, but it feels like a long exercise is intentionally missing the point. I'm not sure that calling him racist helps much -- it creates more heat than light.

The idea that someone wouldn’t read the underlying book for the article they are sharing is a strange phenomenon, for sure. But whatever. I’m not commenting on Taibbi, who I think lost his mind years ago.

But what I’d like to know (and this seems on point given the book’s thesis) is why are white people so very acutely knee-jerk resistant to any implication that what you have said is racist? I’m not sure this phenomenon exists with any other topic. You can hold racist ideas (small and large, conscious or implicit). There are degrees of racism. A lot of it is based on ignorance. Why is it that if someone says, “Dude, that’s racist,” all dialogue shuts down and we need to then manage your feelings for the next fifteen minutes until you are able to function as a thinking human being again?

“It creates more heat than light.” Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit. Jesus.

TM

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You can call Taibbi a lot of things, but calling the guy who wrote I Can't Breathe and has been doing interviews on police brutality of minorities for years is not the wisest charge.

I know it's your thing to scream "misogynist" or "racist" immediately at almost everything you see, like a dog chasing and barking at a spinning tire. But try a little harder, and consider the damage you're doing.

These terms are so frequently overused by people like you that they're beginning to lose all force. People are assuming the woke are so vehement, so orthodox, and so impossible to satisfy, that there's no way - even if you agree with them - for them not to call you a bigot of one sort or another. I used to recoil when it was suggested here that I was a bigot or sexist. Now? Everything's racist. Everything's sexist. Everything's anti-trans. Okay. Well, keep yelling on Twitter and calling people whatever you like. This supporter of trans rights, gay marriage, justice reform, and believer in the concept of systemic racism, and millions like me, is tuning out the loudest and screwiest voices. And I honestly don't feel bad about tuning them out, because most of them are crazy middle class white people.

The dumbest voices in these debates are almost always white. Frequently affluent, clueless whites. They chide you on systemic racism, and then you remind them part of fixing it is changing the neoliberal economic system we use to keep minorities marginalized and allow most of the $$$ to flow to capital that's held disproportionately by old white people and they become disillusioned. They apparently hadn't thought very deeply. They just wanted to "say stuff" and feel virtuous.

I point everyone to Chappelle's 8:46. That usually shuts them up. ...Except for those freaks who'll complain that he's a bigot too. Which one can only respond to with an epic eye roll, snicker, and "Fuck it... I give up! You're nuts."

See?

Jesus fucking Christ.

TM

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

The idea that someone wouldn’t read the underlying book for the article they are sharing is a strange phenomenon, for sure. But whatever. I’m not commenting on Taibbi, who I think lost his mind years ago.

But what I’d like to know (and this seems on point given the book’s thesis) is why are white people so very acutely knee-jerk resistant to any implication that what you have said is racist? I’m not sure this phenomenon exists with any other topic. You can hold racist ideas (small and large, conscious or implicit). There are degrees of racism. A lot of it is based on ignorance. Why is it that if someone says, “Dude, that’s racist,” all dialogue shuts down and we need to then manage your feelings for the next fifteen minutes until you are able to function as a thinking human being again?

“It creates more heat than light.” Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit. Jesus.

TM

I'm not resistant in the slightest to the idea that Taibbi is racist. I just don't think a post that says, essentially, oh, that's so racist, without additional explanation, is adding much to the conversation. Taibbi's review of that book seems completely of a piece with the other thing of his that Sebby posted recently about the media, in that it's a bunch of drive-by cheap points rather than an effort to respond to what smart people are saying and thinking. It's no surprise that he's posting that stuff on his own site instead of getting it published, because it's self-indulgent.

I thought it would be understood by everyone that I was not sharing Taibbi because I agree with him, but maybe I needed to say that.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Not everything is racist. Some things don't have anything, anything at all, to do with race.

And not everything that has to do with race is racist. Matt Taibbi taking shots at DiAngelo? Not automatically racist. In terms of either impact or intent, his article does not warrant someone saying, "He's racist!" and not having that suggestion tested.

Nor does anyone's defense of him automatically mean they are demonstrating white fragility. They aren't. They're demonstrating exhaustion. Exhaustion with dimwits like Adder who are abusing DiAngelo's concept.

If everything is racist and anyone who argues something may not in fact be racist exhibiting fragility (one wonders how this applies to Black people who'd defend Taibbi, but that's another conversation*), then everything in the world - literally everything - can be and arguably must be seen through a lens of race.

That is objectively an absurd statement. It's also delusional, and seriously fucking boring. If I go to an art gallery and see a work depicting people of a certain race, then race is present, and racism would by extension be present. It is related to the work. If I walk a few rooms away and look at water lilies, or melting clocks, racism is not present. The work in no way has anything to do with race.

I'm not fragile about being called anything. Sexist, racist, phobic in one regard or another. I don't care. Opinions are free. People can think what they like of me.

But I do dislike dumb. And asserting that race is a primary element of everything around us is dumb. People like Adder calling everything racist immediately, without considering the subject in detail is dumb. And defending them by saying anyone challenging them for being dumb is actually exhibiting fragility is both dumb in itself and cynical. It's placing the argument beyond reproach. And that's transparent. That telecasts weakness of an argument. That which cannot withstand scrutiny and insists on delegitimizing scrutiny of itself is usually lacking in one regard or another.

DiAngelo made a good argument. But she also took people like Adder to task. Defending Adder's behavior I'd say puts one at odds with DiAngelo.

_______
* Which Adder would duck by saying, "Blacks and can racists, and suggesting otherwise make you racist," refusing to address the real issue.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I'm not resistant in the slightest to the idea that Taibbi is racist. I just don't think a post that says, essentially, oh, that's so racist, without additional explanation, is adding much to the conversation. Taibbi's review of that book seems completely of a piece with the other thing of his that Sebby posted recently about the media, in that it's a bunch of drive-by cheap points rather than an effort to respond to what smart people are saying and thinking. It's no surprise that he's posting that stuff on his own site instead of getting it published, because it's self-indulgent.

I thought it would be understood by everyone that I was not sharing Taibbi because I agree with him, but maybe I needed to say that.

Adder is pretty much the Tom Cotton of this place when he does that sort of thing.

"Look! Antifa!"

"Look! Racist!"

But I still think it's better to dismantle their flawed reasoning than have them not say what they said. Cotton is and should be thought dishonest and lazy. Adder should be thought not dishonest but definitely lazy and pitiable.

He knows he can pull out the "That's bigoted!" card each time and then when someone says, accurately, "please," he can turn around and say, "You're fragile." It's a cudgel. A can't lose way for a lazy person to assert superiority on each argument. And I am not talking out of school in the least to suggest he's addicted to virtue-signaling of the worst kind. He courts "atta boys" like the most desperately cloying SO would passive aggressively cajole an "I love you."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Not everything is racist. Some things don't have anything, anything at all, to do with race.

And not everything that has to do with race is racist. Matt Taibbi taking shots at DiAngelo? Not automatically racist. In terms of either impact or intent, his article does not warrant someone saying, "He's racist!" and not having that suggestion tested.

Nor does anyone's defense of him automatically mean they are demonstrating white fragility. They aren't. They're demonstrating exhaustion. Exhaustion with dimwits like Adder who are abusing DiAngelo's concept.

If everything is racist and anyone who argues something may not in fact be racist exhibiting fragility (one wonders how this applies to Black people who'd defend Taibbi, but that's another conversation*), then everything in the world - literally everything - can be and arguably must be seen through a lens of race.

That is objectively an absurd statement. It's also delusional, and seriously fucking boring. If I go to an art gallery and see a work depicting people of a certain race, then race is present, and racism would by extension be present. It is related to the work. If I walk a few rooms away and look at water lilies, or melting clocks, racism is not present. The work in no way has anything to do with race.

I'm not fragile about being called anything. Sexist, racist, phobic in one regard or another. I don't care. Opinions are free. People can think what they like of me.

But I do dislike dumb. And asserting that race is a primary element of everything around us is dumb. People like Adder calling everything racist immediately, without considering the subject in detail is dumb. And defending them by saying anyone challenging them for being dumb is actually exhibiting fragility is both dumb in itself and cynical. It's placing the argument beyond reproach. And that's transparent. That telecasts weakness of an argument. That which cannot withstand scrutiny and insists on delegitimizing scrutiny of itself is usually lacking in one regard or another.

DiAngelo made a good argument. But she also took people like Adder to task. Defending Adder's behavior I'd say puts one at odds with DiAngelo.

_______
* Which Adder would duck by saying, "Blacks and can racists, and suggesting otherwise make you racist," refusing to address the real issue.

Question for you, as I try to understand what you are saying here. As you know, other people here, including Adder, use the word "racist" differently that you do. Since Adder is the one who called Taibbi's post racist, you are taking into account what he means by that word, and are using it in the same way, yes?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

But I still think it's better to dismantle their flawed reasoning than have them not say what they said. Cotton is and should be thought dishonest and lazy."

That's fine, if you enjoy that sort of thing. I think a more interesting question was, why was the NYT so intent on publishing his crap? There are plenty of dishonest, lazy writers out there, many of them getting published. Then there are those like Taibbi who get their ideas out there on their sites. Almost all of them don't get space on the NYT op-ed page, and when they don't, you don't get up in arms defending their right to push their ideas, unedited, on that particular real estate.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Question for you, as I try to understand what you are saying here. As you know, other people here, including Adder, use the word "racist" differently that you do. Since Adder is the one who called Taibbi's post racist, you are taking into account what he means by that word, and are using it in the same way, yes?

Note my comment that I was speaking to racism regardless of “impact or intent.” Meaning, I am including all forms, “systemic.” I am using the broadest definition that can be credibly and logically defended.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

That's fine, if you enjoy that sort of thing. I think a more interesting question was, why was the NYT so intent on publishing his crap? There are plenty of dishonest, lazy writers out there, many of them getting published. Then there are those like Taibbi who get their ideas out there on their sites. Almost all of them don't get space on the NYT op-ed page, and when they don't, you don't get up in arms defending their right to push their ideas, unedited, on that particular real estate.

Because I think it’s quite useful to let people who say dumb things as Cotton did have those things criticized in a mainstream medium.

Cotton would just get atta boys on Brietbart or Fox. Here, he was savaged by those who thought his views dumb and repugnant.

I think less siloing is needed. Sunlight eradicates a lot of our tribalism.

ETA: I do not think Taibbi pushes dumb ideas. I think his personal website is one where he exercises his pen and plays with concepts. His RS articles are much tighter and often pull in bits of his earlier personal website work. Others have done something similar, using web material as a rough draft or to test popularity of a subject with the audience.