Writes Richard Dillman, commenting on this post yesterday.
I'm making a new post about this because it's so provocative, and it rings true to me — not just about the specific article he's talking about but about public discourse generally.
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"This article was written by a semi-rational leftist using traditional rhetoric to persuade his perceived comrades."
"He has grossly misjudged his intended audience. The modern, hard left will conveniently ignore him and probably classify him as a conservative fellow-traveler."
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Of course he will be attacked. The Left tolerates NO dissent. It’s like the early days of Lenin’s Russia.
The Left doesn’t just disagree with Conservatives, we must be punished, censored, destroyed and ostracized. We just don’t have different views, but our views our abhorrent.
To see how vile the Left has become watch, “The Brainwashing of My Dad.” Just like in the USSR, the Party thinks that anyone who doesn’t conform to the party line is truly mentally ill.
He is so correct. Teh left has moved so far to the left a vast majority of Americans cannot relate except to the horror of what they want to do.
The left has become the arena of the wealthy and privileged. They see a way to control all of the others though it and live the life they deserve, A hereditary aristocracy.
After reading Ruy's article, my impression was not that the political stances were the actual deadly sins, but how the underlying goals were presented. More on this later.
"What’s the Matter With the Democrats?" -- Sailer
I always thought Teixeira was a lunatic. If he's a 'semi-rational' lefty then the left has voyaged even further into the moronosphere than I had assumed. Not encouraging. Is there anything short of an asteroid collision that will shake these people into reality?
Yes, the left has shown repeatedly that it doesn't learn, that it isn't interested in learning. It just convulses around one ideology, with its occasional variants in different decades. But isn't a big part of the problem that Ruy Texeira was wrong in his major work? He doesn't start from a blank slate anymore. One has to consider the source.
Well sure. Just look at Joe Manchin, who is suddenly a racist Republican-in-Democrat-clothing, oozing his West Virginia rube privilege.
"The modern, hard left will conveniently ignore him and probably classify him as a conservative fellow-traveler."
Submitted for your approval: Bill Maher.
Thought-provoking piece by Texeria. One thing he missed was the growing authoritarian tendencies in the left. It's not just that identity politics leads, quote: ...many working-class voters to believe that, unless they subscribe to this emerging worldview and are willing to speak its language, they will be condemned as reactionary, intolerant, and racist by those who purport to represent their interests. unquote. It's that the left seems perfectly willing to strip the working class of their jobs, education opportunities, reputations unless they submit to these ideologies as well as other mandates from those in power.
That’s my reaction to Rui’s article but I doubt my comment here phrased it so succinctly.
The far left is a cult.
If you understand that, everything else falls into place.
Speaking of crazy people...
"A young Kenyan man identified as Joel Namasaka has lost his sanity after a new girlfriend he met in the market turned into a goat while they were having sex at Mayuge village, Navakholo constituency."
Richard Dillman is correct. Ruy Teixeira will be regarded as a center-right thinker for these heretic positions. But Ruy is trying to understand the landscape he thought he understood years ago when his book, "The Emerging Democratic Majority" came out in 2002. At that time he looked at the increase in people of color, particularly an increase in Hispanics in the US, plus more young people combining to change the political demographics in the US for years to come. The problem, of course, is that a collectivist sees a group of people as a block of one, instead of a group of individuals. And individuals are hard to predict.
So just yesterday came a poll showing that only 33% of Hispanics like Joe Biden. Trump saw the largest number of Black and Hispanic Americans ever to vote Republican. People have needs. And socialism is not one of them- especially for those who just left it to come here seeking freedom.
Ruy is right on what he sees as a Democratic Party unable to respond to the actual movement of the street. They are huddled inside of ivory towers or media centers and don't very much like to actually see what's going on in the south side of Chicago. (for that matter, neither does the Democratic Mayor of that City). But Ruy's cries will fall on deaf ears. The one thing you can be sure of when talking to the True Believing Left is that their hands are clamped firmly on their ears, their eyes are covered with blinders, and they're bleating out noises to block out what you might be trying to convey to them. Most don't even try to convey anything to them any longer. Ruy tried.
Here's the 'short' version of my deep dive into Ruy Teixeira's “The Five Deadly Sins of the Left.”
- Identity Politics: “multiple, intersecting levels of oppression...” Teixeira's problem is not with the concept so much as with how it's presented by the radical leftists to the culture at large. He admits that Biden hasn't associated himself with it (though Biden manages to deride its detractors). Teixeira seems to miss the fact that the leftist leadership doesn't even believe in identity politics – it's just a 'divide and conquer' tactic intended to steamroll opposition to the ultimate goal, socialism.
- Retro-Socialism: “a complete remaking of the market system to heal the problems of contemporary capitalism.” He says”...it is not a selling point for voters that your policies are a step along the road to socialism.” Once again, it's not the leftist tenet that's wrong – and I submit that 'retro-socialsm' is just Das Kapital with a happy face sticker on the cover – but the way it's presented. It's not retro-socialism; it's just plain old socialism.
- Catastrophism: he uses climate change alarmism as an example: “...the left's dominant strand of thinking sees climate change as a trend tha twill roast the planet and wipe out human civilization unless drastic action is taken very, very soon.” Come on, Ruy, call it what it is: fearmongering.
- Growthophobia: “...the general underestimation of the importance of more and faster econominc growth.” He says there's a need for faster economic growth and even says that “...the left presumably stands for the fastest possible rise in living standards.” Nonsense. Socialism requires a massive surrender of individual rights for the benefit of the collective. And the collective is not 'the people' as it is so often portrayed by the left, but the overweening state apparatus that micromanages peoples lives so as to inhibit initiative, discourage success (“at some point you've made too much money”), and enforce equal misery for all. Except, of course, for the favored few leaders and their apparatchiks who enforce the rules. And even they are submitted to intense scrutiny should they fail to support the narrative du jour.
- Technopessimism: Says Ruy - “[M]any on the left tend to regard technological change with dread rather than hope. They see technology as a force facilitating inequality rather than growth, destroying jobs rather than leading to skilled-job creation, turning consumers into corporate pawns rather than information-savvy citizens, and destroying the planet in the process.” My take: the leftists don't really fear technological change as much as they wish to control its use – as witness China's use of tech to manage the spread of information (or disinformation) and to gather statistics on its users. 'Technopessimism' isn't a neo-Luddite approach, but rather, a foil to consumerism. Big Brother will provide only the technology it deems appropriate for you – in furtherance of its own goals.
- The future of the Left: Teixeira admits that the Brahmin Left has doubled down on its attitudes. “...the five deadly sins are virtues, since this is what the enlightened among them believe.” But for reasons I've mentioned already, they really don't believe all the stuff they are bullying people with. It's all just a means to an end. And I don't think they care if they decline in popularity, so long as they accomplish what they're really about.
False straw man premise. The hard left isn't the intended target. It's the silent majority of the compassionate personally conservative left leaning middle of the road normal people.
This post raises the question, who is to be more deplored: a conservative or a sane liberal. I think the answer from the left is clear. Destroy them both.
It's a cult.
I don't really understand this. Of course, his Leftwing "Comrades" will ignore him. They left isn't like the Center-right. They want to change society. They want to weild power. They don't want to just sit around and talk about Edmund Burke or Thomas Paine.
This guy is telling his buddes "don't be so extreme" "think of the optics". But that way LOSES in the long run. The Left wins by having their "extremists" constantly pushing the other leftists to go further and push the envelope.
Since there is no REAL opposition to the Left, eventually the "reasonable left" adopts the "extreme Left" position and society follows. Its all just a matter of time. Basically, all this guy was saying was: "We need to win more slowly". And if a few "Heritics" get cast out, so be it. The Left wins by being a disclipined army.
It is a good article and I ageed with it, but the first thing I thought was about how the left would discredit, maybe even cancel, the author.
WHY ARE THOSE FIVE SET OFF BY SEMICOLONS AND NOT COMMAS IN HIS ARTICLE?!?!?!?
All modern leftists are Fabian and post-syphilitic Ruskinites.
Their education was so pathetic they will have to look up these terms.
"This article was written by a semi-rational leftist using traditional rhetoric to persuade his perceived comrades."
What's rational, semi or otherwise, about laboring under obvious illusions?
"He has grossly misjudged his intended audience. The modern, hard left will conveniently ignore him and probably classify him as a conservative fellow-traveler."
Umm, yeah. But did he really judge his audience to be persuadable?
"it rings true to me — not just about the specific article he's talking about but about public discourse generally."
How so? Do non-leftists "use traditional rhetoric to persuade perceived comrades" in the same way? Do groups other than the "modern, hard left" respond to deviants the same way? No snark--real questions: I'm not really seeing it.
--- it rings true to me ... about public discourse generally.
I am not certain how you are applying the above, with "generally." Perhaps your view is that it applies to both sides of the American red-blue political divide. If so, I wouldn't agree. Here is my reaction and experience.
One side of my relatives ranges from liberal Democrats to above-it-all leftists. The most leftist has on occasion left the room rather than hear a viewpoint she doesn't share. And I suspect she feels that doing so reflects well on her!
So it is hard to have political or cultural discourse, period. But even when it sometimes happens (fortunately), I feel like I have to re-invent the wheel any time we consider cultural issues. If leftists could learn from human history, they would not be leftists. We had the whole 20th century as a laboratory experiment with leftist economics. It failed and failed spectacularly, hideously. There isn't anything more to say on that one, as far as I can see. As a former Democrat, I did have to learn from experience and observation. I did have to change some of my assumptions. This big historical fact is one of those lessons that most of us have lived through; that Socialism fails. One reason is because it does not align with human nature, which Is more selfish than leftists want to think, and works better when based upon individual initiative.
This sounds like old hat, because by now it is. So what discourse is possible with people, like Bernie fans, or even many NYTimes readers, who refuse to admit that lesson? Just one example, but it is a big one. And if most of their viewpoints on specific issues stem from a set of assumptions related to the same outlook -- an outlook that hates the system of capitalism that got us here, that believes eliminating some of our freedoms could improve our society -- well, what kind of persuasion could work on them? Not history; so, logic? No. Rhetoric? Yes, briefly, they are often suckers for rhetoric. But it won't stick.
The political and cultural left can't accept free inquiry and analysis because it torpedoes their views. No form of persuasion except miserable personal experience has any real chance of succeeding with them.
But who wants the country to go bankrupt to prove a point? I don't want the Bill of Rights repealed to prove a point. But this society's remarkable degree of prosperity, with all the material, medical and scientific improvements that brings, also permits the freedom to believe in silly propositions. Their proponents are drawn to them emotionally, for one cause or another, and the ideas become articles of faith. And why not? There seems to be no cost to pay for them. But history shows there usually is, if a society reaches the point where it adopts any.
Trying to convey any of that in our public or semi-private discourse can get wearying. But we "right-wingers" keep trying, Ms. Althouse!
Teixeira merely describes new ways to market the product (left-wing policy). He doesn't question the utility of the product, nor any basic premises for the necessity of the product. He might as well be trying to boost the sales of a novel toilet paper.
The current political climate is not conducive to reason. While each side is now engaged in blood sport and dreams of throwing the other side on the ash heap of history, the left has proven its willingness to use the power of the state (which they marginally control at the moment) to make that happen. Asking the side who believes (quite wrongly) it is on the brink of total victory to stand down is a fool's errand.
professors joke about gaining glory in footnotes [citation index]
blog commenters gain glory in tags
Liberal and Left are two separate things now. Donald Trump is liberal compared to where the left is now.
Repent, the end is nigh! They listened to Jonah in Nineveh but not to Ruy on the left. Generally speaking, no prophet is without honor except in his own town and among his own neighbors and relatives.
The normal people I know who are on the left simply deny what is happening. If I show them an article about drag queen story hour or kids being separated into oppressed and oppressor groups, they claim that it's uncommon, just one crazy teacher. Portland is a lovely city where people are a little eccentric in response to an article about protest apparel in the Washington Post. That's just one crazy prosecutor in Chicago/St Louis/San Francisco. They refuse to see a pattern of intentional degradation of the middle class culture of the West in a quest to establish a world where we will all own nothing and be happy.
Teixeira comes out and offers the idea that the public just isn't buying what the left is selling. He's right. I think he's wrong that they can tweak the recipe to get the public to buy it. That's not to say that the public won't vote for Democrats -- they clearly will -- but most people don't want to have their society transformed by politicians or ideologues or bureaucrats, so Democrat wins come about because voters don't much like Republicans either, not because they are enraptured by socialist visions or left-wing ideas about the class struggle or white supremacy.
I don't think retrosocialism is really a problem or much of anything outside of explicitly left-wing circles. It's post-socialist ideas and forms of bureaucratic control that most progressives/liberals are pushing now. Also, degrowth or growthophobia is a result of catastrophism, not part of an effort to address inequality. I suspect Ruy recognizes that, but has to pay homage to egalitarianism and court the growthophobes by giving them higher motives and more left-wing credibility than they actually have.
Teixeira's problem is a common one. People in politics push for certain changes to the status quo, but they are in the framework of the status quo. When the window of what is politically possible shifts, one finds that one's colleagues have moved on to fight battles that they can't or shouldn't win. You still want to fight the battle you thought you were fighting, but nobody's interested in it. That fight has become irrelevant to your comrades, but you feel like it's still the battle your side needs to fight and the fights your comrades want to be in in are unnecessary, ill-conceived, and ultimately harmful to your side.
This is similar to what happened on the right to libertarian conservatives and neo-cons, but I can't help thinking that Teixeira is more of a credit to his side than the neocons are to what was once theirs.
I think the author attempts to use the classical Aristotelian rational appeal ( logos) but erroneously imagines the psychology
and mentality of his ideal readers. He misjudges his implied or “mock” readers, assuming that they value rational argument as much as he does. Classical rhetoricians, especially Aristotle, advised speakers and writers to carefully analyze their intended audiences because failure to do so would lead to rhetorical failure. This a case of a “traditional” liberal profoundly misunderstanding the mentality of the modern hard left. Ann, thanks for highlighting my comment.
I'm making a new post about this because it's so provocative, and it rings true to me — not just about the specific article he's talking about but about public discourse generally.
So what are you going to do with this knowledge? Or will you note that the Left is incapable for rational debate, and then continue on with your life as if that does not matter?
MadTownGuy said...
Here's the 'short' version of my deep dive into Ruy Teixeira's “The Five Deadly Sins of the Left.”
- Identity Politics: .... He admits that Biden hasn't associated himself with it
Ruy is a pro-Democrat polemicist. He does not "admit" that Biden "is not bad", he makes the fraudulent claim because he's about trying to help the Democrats win.
If you couldn't figure that out from what he wrote, it's clear that none of the rest of your "analysis" is worth reading
Howard said...
False straw man premise. The hard left isn't the intended target. It's the silent majority of the compassionate personally conservative left leaning middle of the road normal people.
And what are these mythical people supposed to do with what Ruy is writing?
Any actually existing person like what you describe already knows the truths in what Ruy is writing. The audience for his article is those hard core lefties who live in the Twitter bubble and believe that everyone else in America is just as Left as they are.
And they're not going to learn anything from it. Because if they were capable of learning, they wouldn't be hard Left
"A young Kenyan man identified as Joel Namasaka has lost his sanity after a new girlfriend he met in the market turned into a goat while they were having sex at Mayuge village, Navakholo constituency."
While it is a bit OT, don't you just hate it when that happens?
"He has grossly misjudged his intended audience. The modern, hard left will conveniently ignore him and probably classify him as a conservative fellow-traveler."
Something about this statement reminds me of a comment made by someone who was at the State Street Kristallnacht in Madison, following behind the people who were bashing windows. "This is not who we are." But in truth, it is who they are, even the supposedly moderate ones. Fellow-travelers, all.
I find this to be the case also. The leftists I know simply do not make the connection between the leftist pols they vote for, and the horrible policies those same pols implement. They just don't.
---The leftists I know simply do not make the connection between the leftist pols they vote for, and the horrible policies those same pols implement.
One of the definitions of stupidity -- the inability to foresee the likely consequences of an action. You are right, they "simply do no make the connection... " It is hard to hold intelligent discourse with the stupid. And much harder to induce them to change.
And then look at the Althouse post on Madison's 140-mph joyriding car thief. How could the community have foreseen the consequences they experienced for judicial leniency on this criminal? Trouble is, a few have to experience those consequences; the rest can go on blithely ignoring the lesson.
What do these two situations have in common? Liberal politics.
Teixeira and Judis described in their book the impact demographic changes would have by mid-century. Progressives started acting as if it had already happened. And, they ignored the fact that, even as a "minority majority," white folks are still a large voting block and lots of them are working class. Latinos I know hate being lumped into a larger group described as "people of color" and African Americans are offended that their struggle should be compared in any way to the LGBTQ experience. In a sane world, the GOP could exploit these issues.
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