In other union-related news, I saw an item on Bloomberg (paywalled) that the UAW says a majority of workers in Volkswagen's plant in Chattanooga, TN, have signed cards for recognition. If 70% of workers sign, the UAW will pursue recognition.
This comes on the heels of the contracts signed with the Detroit carmakers.
Volkswagen is also one of the few EV makers that still is eligible for the full $7,500 tax credit for the ID.4, which is built in Tennessee.
Signed cards supporting a union. When, 50% sign, the union can asked to be recognized. The company can agree, but usually asked for a secret ballot, so a union election is held. While 50% is the legal requirement, from a practical standpoint, unions know they need 70% to sign cards to have a reasonable chance of winning an election against management opposition.
Nicholas’ meme is clever, but I would caution against simply laughing off the radical dreams as foolish. Just as the printing press profoundly altered the realities of the world, the changes in communication technology over the past decades have once again altered the landscape. Here's how it looks to me:
1. Always: People with strong beliefs must perceive some possibility of victory to work within the system.
2. Thus, the smaller the group, the less favorable that group will be towards majoritarian/"democratic" government.
3. Meanwhile, communications technology has strengthened the power of fringe groups, in that they are more able to communicate, organize, and garner attention out of proportion to their actual numbers.
4. However, current communications technology has also undermined an old strategy of these fringe groups; if their leaders cooperate with less extreme groups to accomplish some goals within the democratic system, they will be turned upon as traitors -- their members are now better able to communicate, organize, etc. and turn on leaders who deviate from the fringe belief in the slightest.
5. Thus, an important safety valve has been removed. Within these fringe groups, now the winning leaders are going to be the ones who say the system ought to be blown up, not the ones who with a clever plan to attach something to a larger bill, persuade the public, etc. Basically, if we have only 5% of the population, and we are not willing to give an inch, then something big has to happen to remove the 95% from the equation.
"Funny how when there’s a giant pile of money involved, management and unions can learn to get along."
Why on earth are you saying that like it's a good thing? At a time we are still fighting off inflation and record government interest payments, the blob of government is teaming up with industry and unions to burn cash on overspending on labor as well as industry! Yay?
I think it is accurate to say we are still fighting off inflation, given that the high interest rates have not eased. Once the Fed starts cutting rates and inflation stays low, then I think we can say we have beaten inflation. Hopefully that will happen in the next few months.
If you want to spend money on productive capacity to reduce inflation (which you generally shouldn't--central planning of an economy is not going to solve inflation), you should be spending it efficiently. Subsidize a factory in Taiwan if you want to, where you'll be closer to the technical expertise and you have cheap labor available.
There is, of course, the justification of industrial policy for spending money on domestic productive capacity. And that's a reasonable argument for reasons Noah has explained very well elsewhere! But paying above-market wages to politically-connected groups is bad. It should be treated as a cost to be minimized or eliminated entirely, not celebrated as effective state capacity.
I'm from Taiwan. In Taiwan, everyone think TSMC Arizona investment is a big mistake. It is a courtesy of Taiwan government to US to magnify the democracy union. However, the delay of plant really bothers TSMC. This might be the cause of early retirement of chairman Mark Liu, because he is responsible for the Arizona project.
Can you elaborate on why it's viewed as a big mistake from the Taiwanese point of view? Or is it just the obvious "you can't build stuff in the U.S. anymore"?
Sadly it is the latter. I think local government support is the key factor. In Taiwan, if TSMC want to build plant in one county, local government will make their best for land and resources (water and electricity), and solve environmental and law issues ASAP. The plant in Kumamoto, Japan also has local goverment's enormous support. The endless delay of Arizona plant really showed how dysfunction US goverment can be.
I understand. We have a problem. Growing up in a smallish, highly industrialized southern city in the 50s and 60s, I remember soot everywhere, smog in the air so thick there were very few clear days and a stench of industrial gas that was probably cutting a lot of people's lives short. This was pretty normal in the U.S. at the time and it has largely been solved thanks in part to laws like the infamous NEPA. But, this has come a a price that is starting to be unsustainable economically.
One thing that I don't quite get is that while the U.S. has gotten much nicer, it still isn't nearly as pristine as Switzerland and yet by all accounts I've found it's much easier to build in Switzerland than in the U.S. But as Churchill is reported to have said "Americans always do the right thing, after they've tried everything else first".
Taylor Swift hasn't been formally a country singer for a good 10 years because IMVHO the songs she was recording would clearly have been pop smashes if only they had not gone to country radio first. "Country-trained songwriter" is, however, fair.
As far as I remember about that WaPo piece the argument was not "Luke Combs has no right to record this song" but "Luke Combs can have an utterly massive hit with this song while Black women can't get played on country radio at all even with belligerently commercial things like Mickey Guyton's "Rose"". That's still true.
Agreed. I paused for a second at the characterization of Taylor Swift as a country singer but granted, I’m a middle-aged nobody and barely knew anything about her until a few weeks ago
.....was "The Blaze" not joking with that Catturd tweet? I assumed it must have been a self-aware joke, and it's much funnier now that I realize it probably wasn't.
The Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs performance is a reminder why I’m glad I’m not on twitter anymore. I can just enjoy a fun performance without having to listen to people pitting performers against each other. As if musicians performing together are in competition and everybody has to choose sides. Twitter made life so much less enjoyable. I can’t wait for the day when Elon kills it off for good 😂
People in general don't have a clear idea about political ideology, not just voters under 30. There's a very long line of research in political science to the effect that nearly everyone is ambivalent and cross-pressured about nearly everything -- people will change opinions, often without really realizing it, based on what's salient lately.
The small minority with carefully considered, more or less internally consistent, stable ideological opinions are just that, a small minority.
If you want to read more:
* This line of work started with Philip Converse, "The nature of belief systems in mass publics," 1964: https://doi.org/10/d5pwvk
* Maybe best expressed by John Zaller, "The nature and origins of mass opinion," 1992: https://doi.org/10/dgwr
* Though also maybe it's more complicated than I've let on: also Zaller, "What Nature and Origins Leaves Out," 2012, https://doi.org/10/ghjcsh
This last point is interesting. Why are House republicans willing to pass a tax bill that could help Biden but Senate Rs are not…while at the same time being unwilling to pass an immigration bill because it will help Biden…but an immigration bill favored by Senate Rs? I assume it’s partly because Trump didn’t bother weighing in on the tax bill ???
"Obviously, this kind of thinking is poison for any democracy."
I understand your point, but I disagree, at least from a practical perspective. As long as we have elections, politicians are going to try to game things so that they win elections. The only way to change this is to change human nature (good luck) or get rid of elections. Political gamesmanship is a necessary evil of democracy. By all means, point out that it's evil. But don't forget that it goes hand-in-hand with democracy.
However, when Trump was in office Democrats did not even think twice about supporting the CARES act and other covid relief measures. The US has the curse of one side of the political divide being willing to tolerate worse outcomes for its people because they are only focused on power.
The CARES act is completely different. Early covid was a true emergency that Trump couldn't just sign a piece of paper to fix, and Trump certainly didn't cause it. The same cannot be said with respect to Biden and securing the border.
If you want a more reasonable comparison, look up the efforts to delay the Operation Warp Speed results until after the election. (This effort got memory holed by Democrats because they don't want to admit the damage this caused and by Republicans because they don't want to admit the vaccines were great.) Many, many people died so that Trump wouldn't get credit for a vaccine before the election. That was bad! And also part of politics.
"securing the border" - you mean the need to have funded resources to handle the large flow of displaced people.. Oh yeah, sorry forgot that the Republicans just screwed over their own requested bipartisan bill....
And if you think Operation Warp Speed was delayed - you are living in a fantasy world. Or maybe you are just "trolling"
Who are the “liberal public health elites”and what did their “push” consist of? When did Democrats in Congress vote to delay or otherwise undermine the vaccine development process?
15 Democrat senators sent a letter to the FDA less than two months before the election. It stated, for example, "The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recent announcement that states should be prepared to distribute a vaccine by November 1 has further raised concerns that the approval process will be rushed." That is just one example of liberals pushing back against Trump trying to move quickly on the vaccine.
And they successfully pushed the announcement from right before the election to right after it! On October 29, 2020, five days before the election, Pfizer changed the protocol of their trial *not to do analysis* after accruing 32 cases, which was the original plan. (https://www.pfizer.com/clinicalprotocol) In fact, Pfizer sat on nasal swabs without testing them, so they wouldn't have 32 cases before they changed the protocol. (https://www.science.org/content/article/fact-check-no-evidence-supports-trump-s-claim-covid-19-vaccine-result-was-suppressed?cookieSet=1) As a result of the change, Pfizer announced results of the vaccine shortly after the election instead of shortly before. Pfizer insisted the reason wasn't to delay results until after the election, but if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
I don't know for sure but yes the implication is that it may have been politically motivated in whole or in part. Especially given the people making the push, who tend to be strong D partisans. It's a story that deserves more reporting and I've done some poking around myself."
Regarding society adjusting to troll behavior on social media with Community Notes-type responses, I have no real opinion as to whether that will work, or whether that mechanism too will quickly become co-opted.
However, I think the troll problem (and the so-called fake news problem) may be diverting attention from what seems to me an extremely important problem we struggle to adjust to now that communications technology is what it is.
The trouble, I think, is that people always seek like-minded communities, push conformity within those communities, and, if necessary, commit atrocities against those who would seriously threaten that arrangement.
First, over many decades, modern communications technology has beamed a practically irresistible set of messages from central sources frustrating many communities. To a large extent, these sources were people with things to sell, whether physical or entertainment. But millions and millions of people, particularly parents and traditional folk and the strictly religious, have muttered or seethed. (And those same sources responded with pop culture mocking them for their resentment.)
But now, the newest communications technology has created the possibility of re-creating a new kind of community where conformity can again be achieved and enforced. Don't like that community either? Well, it's easy to secede from it, too and form your own smaller group. Rinse and repeat in all directions.
We trivialize this problem when we call this a news bubble or consumption of fake news or call our opponents ignorant. It's not really that. Rather, it's that while a person might live in a physical neighborhood that is 60% blue and 40% red, they are living a more important informational neighborhood that is 100% red or blue. Actually no, very likely 100% committed Leftist or 100% Christian Nationalist or whatever (although they undoubtedly reject any such label, because surrounded by like minds, they are to themselves just normal Americans.
And, maybe most concerning to me, they hold only the most ridiculous caricature of what any of their opponents actually think and why. (And extremely little practice or habit at explaining their their own views in any terms other than victimhood or outrage.)
How does a republic function under these circumstances?
Re: TSMC and unions and safety regulators, do they not have unions and safety regulators in Taiwan? If the unions there want different things, or are more cooperative with TSMC generally, why? And if the mandated safety standards there are so much laxer, is there evidence that that translates into systematically worse outcomes for workers' health?
As a historian I see little difference in today's politics than those of the past. In 1836 two Arkansas state legislators got in a knife fight over wolf pelts on the floor of the statehouse & one gutted the other. Pres. Monroe dealt with an irate senator who threatened to shoot him and was so aggressive Madison grabbed the fireplace poker. Politics remained thoroughly corrupt well into the 1930s, with records of FDR bribing numerous states. And so on. Just because you hate Trump---I don't, and see him as the only possible savior of this country---it shouldn't color your political analysis. Certainly not when it involves history.
Let’s not forget the Brooke-Sumner affair where Senator Brooke beat Senator Sumner nearly to death in the very Capitol. He used a cane because a Yankee was no gentleman in his eyes, and unworthy of a formal challenge. That’s some politics there.
Well, I don't think it's a coincidence that all those stories involve Southerners-- nor is it a coincidence that Trump's base is disproportionately drawn from the Confederate diaspora. The fact that the violent, anti-intellectual honor culture spawned from the South has been a blight on this country for centuries now doesn't mean it can't still be a big problem.
Don’t be ugly now. Plenty of good stories like this from the North too. And plenty of Yankee bigotry even today. The mental kinship between Radical Republicans and today’s progressives is hard to ignore.
If there is indeed a mental kinship between Radical Republicans and modern progressives, it's to the progressives' credit. Subsequent political and social history has fully vindicated the Radical Republicans' views, especially their dim view of the Southern white elite, and the US would be far better off today had they gotten their way.
Radical Reconstruction was never going to work as a policy for integrating freed slaves into Southern society, and that is why the North gave up on it. What Thad Stevens and his merry band were really interested in was 1) ensuring that they remained in power when the Southern states came back in the Union, and 2) punishing the rebels. At this they were successful. But the black people of the South, who were trying to peacefully build their lives, became a hockey puck in this test of wills and suffered grievously for it. As did the white Southerners, who also endured terrible government by a different, nastier elite, and poverty for 100 years.
Like all progressive eruptions, cloaked in moral righteousness, Reconstruction was completely dysfunctional for producing useful social change, but excellent as an exercise in Puritan atonement and redemption.
In any case, it seems silly to be waving the bloody shirt in 2024 about things that happened to dead people more than a century ago. We are all fellow citizens now, we need to work out our present-day problems and trashing each other over fantasy history isn't the way to do that.
In fact Reconstruction failed largely because the rebels were never punished to the extent the Radicals wanted. The Radical plan was to expropriate and disenfranchise the former slaveholding class for life-- frankly, the least they deserved-- which might have ensured that the freedmen had the political and economic resources to resist the Redeemers' terrorist insurgency. Instead, the Slave Power kept its plantations and got the vote back quickly, and the insurgency successfully executed the same basic plan as the Taliban in Afghanistan: wait for the occupiers to get tired and withdraw, waltz in triumphantly as soon as they do.
It is true that Northern racism was a big factor here: most non-Radical Northern whites, even those who opposed slavery, did not see the freedmen as full and equal citizens deserving of the same protection of the laws that they enjoyed. You can fairly criticize the Radicals for not seeing how this terrible reality limited their practical options, much as we didn't face the terrible realities of Afghanistan early enough. Nonetheless, on the crucial moral issue of the time, they were right when most others were wrong, and their example reminds us that quite often when righteous Puritan/Quaker reformers smugly claim to be morally superior, it's because they actually are.
It's also fair to ask why it's still worth talking about this in 2024. The longer-term answer is that there's a reason why "all maps of America look the same":
The shorter-term answer is that three years ago, the federal government was nearly violently overthrown by a terrorist mob whose members literally waved the Confederate flag within the Capitol building, a mob mostly composed of the intellectual, cultural, political, and demographic descendants of the Redeemers; and the inciter and cult-object of that mob is now the frontrunner for President, despite being Constitutionally disqualified to serve by a clause originally designed to keep his insurrectionist forebears out of power.
Pious moral condemnation isn't going to work to fix this awful situation, for sure. But trying to paper over, or deny altogether, the cultural divide that resulted from the failure to fully consolidate the Union victory isn't likely to work either: we keep trying that and the divide keeps coming back. And pretending that the two sides have equally valid grievances won't work either, because it's too obviously untrue.
The single worst words in American history turned out, sadly, to be the great Abraham Lincoln own.
"With malice towards none, with Charity for all" were the most abused words by Christian Confederate traitors.
Biggest mistake in American history - not hanging Robert E Lee and Jeff Davis. And every General. Then Nathan Bedford Forrest wouldn't have been around.
Lol. As a Northerner transplanted to the South many years ago, what exactly is the "Confederate diaspora"? Trumps followers are many, and there's not enough descendants of the old South to make up the 45-50% of the nation that says they will vote for him.
For sure, not all Trumpists trace their heritage back to the old South. But enough do that he'd be very far short of that 45-50% without that cultural influence. And part of the thesis of the linked paper is that white migrants from the South engaged in reverse assimilation, making the non-Southern-descended whites around them more racist and violent.
I took a look at the paper. The authors are all economics and development experts. Why they are wandering into American social and cultural history is a good question. Interdisciplinary is good, but I'm not sure why this background makes them more credible in their social and cultural assertions than anyone off the street. That their assertions about their human subjects are presented uncharitably and even malignantly is also a warning sign that we are not dealing with objective scholarship. Of course, it's a free country and we are all entitled to our opinions. But I see enough here to suspect that these authors are all leftists with an urgent psychological and professional need to mix themselves into and strike a blow for "social justice." A good historian would handle this source with care.
...and an incredible insult to the thoughtfulness of the population at large - they are so devoid of their own morality and beliefs (the same people who sent tens of thousands of their own fathers, brothers, and sons to face death to fight that long ago war) that the mere appearance of some southerners amongst them would somehow overtake their entire culture and upbringing.
Taking a look at their funding page tells you who drives this research, which means it deserves a good hard look from non-partisan data analysts. Have you seen the paper that showed what happens when you split up over 70 different research groups with the same data? One paper on hand picked data should be held up to the bright light of other review - most will not pass the smell test, unless you already like that eau du cologne.
Rather than the Southern white diaspora somehow "infecting" other parts of the US with racist and anti-intellectual attitudes, is it not more likely that poor white Southerners of the Great Migration migrated disproportionately to places that were _already_ racist and anti-intellectual, because that is where it was easiest for uneducated white people to find jobs?
The South is full of such stories, especially after the Civil War when anyone could deploy high-tech weapons that became widely available then (e.g. the Colt revolver). Passed words in the Legislature led to mutual annihilation more than once. In Kentucky you even had an armed capitol invasion and shooting war between the parties following a disputed election (very common - the voters didn’t always stay bought). Dragged on for years.
I developed this perspective about conservative philosophy. A number of years back, and increasingly it appears on point. Unfortunately as "old, now discarded" conservative values like personal responsibility, integrity, courage, making one's own way while supporting those who need a hand up, like well funded public education". These are no longer the core of conservatism:
"The Conservative Philosophy is sunsetting, devoid of any enduring or endearing value." - me
Intrinsically, conservative philosophy is resistance to change at time when the climate will drive humanity changes incomprehensiblely
1) the Palestine issue will grow over time as gen z ages. Particularly if the ICJ confirms the interim findings against Israel. The ideology of the “rules based order” will take a bit of a hammering as well.
2) tucker is interviewing a foreign leader. That’s journalism - if anything the paranoia about pro Putin supporters in the US is the conspiracy here. More of less a form of McCarthyism. And no I don’t like Putin.
3) I’m admittedly not online really, outside Substack, but while I’ve seen a lot of people talking about the American right hating Taylor Swift I’ve seen no significant examples of it.
In fact she used to be, as late as last year, a bit suspect with regard to being a bit of a racist herself.
I don’t think your point number two is going to age well. Recall Tucker Carlson said on his show shortly after the invasion that he was “rooting for Russia” in the conflict. And today on Twitter the Russian government said that they had received numerous offers from Western sources to interview Putin but rejected them until a favorable interviewer like Tucker came along.
Conducting an interview is not, without more, journalism. By the admission of Fox News own attorneys in a defamation action, the tenor of Carlson’s show shows the giewer that he is not stating “actual facts”but, rather, engaging in exaggeration using non-literal commentary. Thus, Fox argued, viewers know to come to his show with “an appropriate amount of skepticism.
Carlson’s attempt to justify the Putin interview is that Americans are being denied the truth about Russia and Ukraine. Doing so before the interview shows that he has already decided the “truth” and is merely cobbling together sound bites and opinions to further an economic and political agenda. This is true of most political commentators. They rarely report, let alone break, any news.
I don’t think your point number two is going to age well. Recall Tucker Carlson said on his show shortly after the invasion that he was “rooting for Russia” in the conflict. And today on Twitter the Russian government said that they had received numerous offers from Western sources to interview Putin but rejected them until a favorable interviewer like Tucker came along.
In other union-related news, I saw an item on Bloomberg (paywalled) that the UAW says a majority of workers in Volkswagen's plant in Chattanooga, TN, have signed cards for recognition. If 70% of workers sign, the UAW will pursue recognition.
This comes on the heels of the contracts signed with the Detroit carmakers.
Volkswagen is also one of the few EV makers that still is eligible for the full $7,500 tax credit for the ID.4, which is built in Tennessee.
What does "signed cards for recognition" mean? What cards? What recognition?
Signed cards supporting a union. When, 50% sign, the union can asked to be recognized. The company can agree, but usually asked for a secret ballot, so a union election is held. While 50% is the legal requirement, from a practical standpoint, unions know they need 70% to sign cards to have a reasonable chance of winning an election against management opposition.
Nicholas’ meme is clever, but I would caution against simply laughing off the radical dreams as foolish. Just as the printing press profoundly altered the realities of the world, the changes in communication technology over the past decades have once again altered the landscape. Here's how it looks to me:
1. Always: People with strong beliefs must perceive some possibility of victory to work within the system.
2. Thus, the smaller the group, the less favorable that group will be towards majoritarian/"democratic" government.
3. Meanwhile, communications technology has strengthened the power of fringe groups, in that they are more able to communicate, organize, and garner attention out of proportion to their actual numbers.
4. However, current communications technology has also undermined an old strategy of these fringe groups; if their leaders cooperate with less extreme groups to accomplish some goals within the democratic system, they will be turned upon as traitors -- their members are now better able to communicate, organize, etc. and turn on leaders who deviate from the fringe belief in the slightest.
5. Thus, an important safety valve has been removed. Within these fringe groups, now the winning leaders are going to be the ones who say the system ought to be blown up, not the ones who with a clever plan to attach something to a larger bill, persuade the public, etc. Basically, if we have only 5% of the population, and we are not willing to give an inch, then something big has to happen to remove the 95% from the equation.
"Funny how when there’s a giant pile of money involved, management and unions can learn to get along."
Why on earth are you saying that like it's a good thing? At a time we are still fighting off inflation and record government interest payments, the blob of government is teaming up with industry and unions to burn cash on overspending on labor as well as industry! Yay?
We beat inflation.
I think it is accurate to say we are still fighting off inflation, given that the high interest rates have not eased. Once the Fed starts cutting rates and inflation stays low, then I think we can say we have beaten inflation. Hopefully that will happen in the next few months.
Spending money on productive capacity should reduce inflation, as opposed to spending money on consumption.
If you want to spend money on productive capacity to reduce inflation (which you generally shouldn't--central planning of an economy is not going to solve inflation), you should be spending it efficiently. Subsidize a factory in Taiwan if you want to, where you'll be closer to the technical expertise and you have cheap labor available.
There is, of course, the justification of industrial policy for spending money on domestic productive capacity. And that's a reasonable argument for reasons Noah has explained very well elsewhere! But paying above-market wages to politically-connected groups is bad. It should be treated as a cost to be minimized or eliminated entirely, not celebrated as effective state capacity.
I'm from Taiwan. In Taiwan, everyone think TSMC Arizona investment is a big mistake. It is a courtesy of Taiwan government to US to magnify the democracy union. However, the delay of plant really bothers TSMC. This might be the cause of early retirement of chairman Mark Liu, because he is responsible for the Arizona project.
Can you elaborate on why it's viewed as a big mistake from the Taiwanese point of view? Or is it just the obvious "you can't build stuff in the U.S. anymore"?
Sadly it is the latter. I think local government support is the key factor. In Taiwan, if TSMC want to build plant in one county, local government will make their best for land and resources (water and electricity), and solve environmental and law issues ASAP. The plant in Kumamoto, Japan also has local goverment's enormous support. The endless delay of Arizona plant really showed how dysfunction US goverment can be.
I understand. We have a problem. Growing up in a smallish, highly industrialized southern city in the 50s and 60s, I remember soot everywhere, smog in the air so thick there were very few clear days and a stench of industrial gas that was probably cutting a lot of people's lives short. This was pretty normal in the U.S. at the time and it has largely been solved thanks in part to laws like the infamous NEPA. But, this has come a a price that is starting to be unsustainable economically.
One thing that I don't quite get is that while the U.S. has gotten much nicer, it still isn't nearly as pristine as Switzerland and yet by all accounts I've found it's much easier to build in Switzerland than in the U.S. But as Churchill is reported to have said "Americans always do the right thing, after they've tried everything else first".
Taylor Swift hasn't been formally a country singer for a good 10 years because IMVHO the songs she was recording would clearly have been pop smashes if only they had not gone to country radio first. "Country-trained songwriter" is, however, fair.
As far as I remember about that WaPo piece the argument was not "Luke Combs has no right to record this song" but "Luke Combs can have an utterly massive hit with this song while Black women can't get played on country radio at all even with belligerently commercial things like Mickey Guyton's "Rose"". That's still true.
Agreed. I paused for a second at the characterization of Taylor Swift as a country singer but granted, I’m a middle-aged nobody and barely knew anything about her until a few weeks ago
"If you knew anything about American popular music it would not kill you" is my part-time job by which I even made friends with a bartender once.
.....was "The Blaze" not joking with that Catturd tweet? I assumed it must have been a self-aware joke, and it's much funnier now that I realize it probably wasn't.
The Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs performance is a reminder why I’m glad I’m not on twitter anymore. I can just enjoy a fun performance without having to listen to people pitting performers against each other. As if musicians performing together are in competition and everybody has to choose sides. Twitter made life so much less enjoyable. I can’t wait for the day when Elon kills it off for good 😂
People in general don't have a clear idea about political ideology, not just voters under 30. There's a very long line of research in political science to the effect that nearly everyone is ambivalent and cross-pressured about nearly everything -- people will change opinions, often without really realizing it, based on what's salient lately.
The small minority with carefully considered, more or less internally consistent, stable ideological opinions are just that, a small minority.
If you want to read more:
* This line of work started with Philip Converse, "The nature of belief systems in mass publics," 1964: https://doi.org/10/d5pwvk
* Maybe best expressed by John Zaller, "The nature and origins of mass opinion," 1992: https://doi.org/10/dgwr
* Though also maybe it's more complicated than I've let on: also Zaller, "What Nature and Origins Leaves Out," 2012, https://doi.org/10/ghjcsh
Which makes "tribalism" even more important - more about what their "tribe" thinks than any carefully thought out opinions
This last point is interesting. Why are House republicans willing to pass a tax bill that could help Biden but Senate Rs are not…while at the same time being unwilling to pass an immigration bill because it will help Biden…but an immigration bill favored by Senate Rs? I assume it’s partly because Trump didn’t bother weighing in on the tax bill ???
"Obviously, this kind of thinking is poison for any democracy."
I understand your point, but I disagree, at least from a practical perspective. As long as we have elections, politicians are going to try to game things so that they win elections. The only way to change this is to change human nature (good luck) or get rid of elections. Political gamesmanship is a necessary evil of democracy. By all means, point out that it's evil. But don't forget that it goes hand-in-hand with democracy.
However, when Trump was in office Democrats did not even think twice about supporting the CARES act and other covid relief measures. The US has the curse of one side of the political divide being willing to tolerate worse outcomes for its people because they are only focused on power.
The CARES act is completely different. Early covid was a true emergency that Trump couldn't just sign a piece of paper to fix, and Trump certainly didn't cause it. The same cannot be said with respect to Biden and securing the border.
If you want a more reasonable comparison, look up the efforts to delay the Operation Warp Speed results until after the election. (This effort got memory holed by Democrats because they don't want to admit the damage this caused and by Republicans because they don't want to admit the vaccines were great.) Many, many people died so that Trump wouldn't get credit for a vaccine before the election. That was bad! And also part of politics.
"securing the border" - you mean the need to have funded resources to handle the large flow of displaced people.. Oh yeah, sorry forgot that the Republicans just screwed over their own requested bipartisan bill....
And if you think Operation Warp Speed was delayed - you are living in a fantasy world. Or maybe you are just "trolling"
I guess Nate Silver was just trolling also: https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1562569727901585408
Who are the “liberal public health elites”and what did their “push” consist of? When did Democrats in Congress vote to delay or otherwise undermine the vaccine development process?
15 Democrat senators sent a letter to the FDA less than two months before the election. It stated, for example, "The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recent announcement that states should be prepared to distribute a vaccine by November 1 has further raised concerns that the approval process will be rushed." That is just one example of liberals pushing back against Trump trying to move quickly on the vaccine.
And they successfully pushed the announcement from right before the election to right after it! On October 29, 2020, five days before the election, Pfizer changed the protocol of their trial *not to do analysis* after accruing 32 cases, which was the original plan. (https://www.pfizer.com/clinicalprotocol) In fact, Pfizer sat on nasal swabs without testing them, so they wouldn't have 32 cases before they changed the protocol. (https://www.science.org/content/article/fact-check-no-evidence-supports-trump-s-claim-covid-19-vaccine-result-was-suppressed?cookieSet=1) As a result of the change, Pfizer announced results of the vaccine shortly after the election instead of shortly before. Pfizer insisted the reason wasn't to delay results until after the election, but if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
"Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
·
Aug 24, 2022
I don't know for sure but yes the implication is that it may have been politically motivated in whole or in part. Especially given the people making the push, who tend to be strong D partisans. It's a story that deserves more reporting and I've done some poking around myself."
Ok, it's 2024. Where's Nate's blockbuster exposé?
How many of us back then had TDS to the point that we thought "you magnificent bastards!" when the results _were_ announced after the election?
I certainly thought that.
Regarding society adjusting to troll behavior on social media with Community Notes-type responses, I have no real opinion as to whether that will work, or whether that mechanism too will quickly become co-opted.
However, I think the troll problem (and the so-called fake news problem) may be diverting attention from what seems to me an extremely important problem we struggle to adjust to now that communications technology is what it is.
The trouble, I think, is that people always seek like-minded communities, push conformity within those communities, and, if necessary, commit atrocities against those who would seriously threaten that arrangement.
First, over many decades, modern communications technology has beamed a practically irresistible set of messages from central sources frustrating many communities. To a large extent, these sources were people with things to sell, whether physical or entertainment. But millions and millions of people, particularly parents and traditional folk and the strictly religious, have muttered or seethed. (And those same sources responded with pop culture mocking them for their resentment.)
But now, the newest communications technology has created the possibility of re-creating a new kind of community where conformity can again be achieved and enforced. Don't like that community either? Well, it's easy to secede from it, too and form your own smaller group. Rinse and repeat in all directions.
We trivialize this problem when we call this a news bubble or consumption of fake news or call our opponents ignorant. It's not really that. Rather, it's that while a person might live in a physical neighborhood that is 60% blue and 40% red, they are living a more important informational neighborhood that is 100% red or blue. Actually no, very likely 100% committed Leftist or 100% Christian Nationalist or whatever (although they undoubtedly reject any such label, because surrounded by like minds, they are to themselves just normal Americans.
And, maybe most concerning to me, they hold only the most ridiculous caricature of what any of their opponents actually think and why. (And extremely little practice or habit at explaining their their own views in any terms other than victimhood or outrage.)
How does a republic function under these circumstances?
Re: TSMC and unions and safety regulators, do they not have unions and safety regulators in Taiwan? If the unions there want different things, or are more cooperative with TSMC generally, why? And if the mandated safety standards there are so much laxer, is there evidence that that translates into systematically worse outcomes for workers' health?
As a historian I see little difference in today's politics than those of the past. In 1836 two Arkansas state legislators got in a knife fight over wolf pelts on the floor of the statehouse & one gutted the other. Pres. Monroe dealt with an irate senator who threatened to shoot him and was so aggressive Madison grabbed the fireplace poker. Politics remained thoroughly corrupt well into the 1930s, with records of FDR bribing numerous states. And so on. Just because you hate Trump---I don't, and see him as the only possible savior of this country---it shouldn't color your political analysis. Certainly not when it involves history.
Let’s not forget the Brooke-Sumner affair where Senator Brooke beat Senator Sumner nearly to death in the very Capitol. He used a cane because a Yankee was no gentleman in his eyes, and unworthy of a formal challenge. That’s some politics there.
Well, I don't think it's a coincidence that all those stories involve Southerners-- nor is it a coincidence that Trump's base is disproportionately drawn from the Confederate diaspora. The fact that the violent, anti-intellectual honor culture spawned from the South has been a blight on this country for centuries now doesn't mean it can't still be a big problem.
Don’t be ugly now. Plenty of good stories like this from the North too. And plenty of Yankee bigotry even today. The mental kinship between Radical Republicans and today’s progressives is hard to ignore.
If there is indeed a mental kinship between Radical Republicans and modern progressives, it's to the progressives' credit. Subsequent political and social history has fully vindicated the Radical Republicans' views, especially their dim view of the Southern white elite, and the US would be far better off today had they gotten their way.
Radical Reconstruction was never going to work as a policy for integrating freed slaves into Southern society, and that is why the North gave up on it. What Thad Stevens and his merry band were really interested in was 1) ensuring that they remained in power when the Southern states came back in the Union, and 2) punishing the rebels. At this they were successful. But the black people of the South, who were trying to peacefully build their lives, became a hockey puck in this test of wills and suffered grievously for it. As did the white Southerners, who also endured terrible government by a different, nastier elite, and poverty for 100 years.
Like all progressive eruptions, cloaked in moral righteousness, Reconstruction was completely dysfunctional for producing useful social change, but excellent as an exercise in Puritan atonement and redemption.
In any case, it seems silly to be waving the bloody shirt in 2024 about things that happened to dead people more than a century ago. We are all fellow citizens now, we need to work out our present-day problems and trashing each other over fantasy history isn't the way to do that.
In fact Reconstruction failed largely because the rebels were never punished to the extent the Radicals wanted. The Radical plan was to expropriate and disenfranchise the former slaveholding class for life-- frankly, the least they deserved-- which might have ensured that the freedmen had the political and economic resources to resist the Redeemers' terrorist insurgency. Instead, the Slave Power kept its plantations and got the vote back quickly, and the insurgency successfully executed the same basic plan as the Taliban in Afghanistan: wait for the occupiers to get tired and withdraw, waltz in triumphantly as soon as they do.
It is true that Northern racism was a big factor here: most non-Radical Northern whites, even those who opposed slavery, did not see the freedmen as full and equal citizens deserving of the same protection of the laws that they enjoyed. You can fairly criticize the Radicals for not seeing how this terrible reality limited their practical options, much as we didn't face the terrible realities of Afghanistan early enough. Nonetheless, on the crucial moral issue of the time, they were right when most others were wrong, and their example reminds us that quite often when righteous Puritan/Quaker reformers smugly claim to be morally superior, it's because they actually are.
It's also fair to ask why it's still worth talking about this in 2024. The longer-term answer is that there's a reason why "all maps of America look the same":
https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1431635122562949125?lang=en
The shorter-term answer is that three years ago, the federal government was nearly violently overthrown by a terrorist mob whose members literally waved the Confederate flag within the Capitol building, a mob mostly composed of the intellectual, cultural, political, and demographic descendants of the Redeemers; and the inciter and cult-object of that mob is now the frontrunner for President, despite being Constitutionally disqualified to serve by a clause originally designed to keep his insurrectionist forebears out of power.
Pious moral condemnation isn't going to work to fix this awful situation, for sure. But trying to paper over, or deny altogether, the cultural divide that resulted from the failure to fully consolidate the Union victory isn't likely to work either: we keep trying that and the divide keeps coming back. And pretending that the two sides have equally valid grievances won't work either, because it's too obviously untrue.
The single worst words in American history turned out, sadly, to be the great Abraham Lincoln own.
"With malice towards none, with Charity for all" were the most abused words by Christian Confederate traitors.
Biggest mistake in American history - not hanging Robert E Lee and Jeff Davis. And every General. Then Nathan Bedford Forrest wouldn't have been around.
Lol. As a Northerner transplanted to the South many years ago, what exactly is the "Confederate diaspora"? Trumps followers are many, and there's not enough descendants of the old South to make up the 45-50% of the nation that says they will vote for him.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w31331
For sure, not all Trumpists trace their heritage back to the old South. But enough do that he'd be very far short of that 45-50% without that cultural influence. And part of the thesis of the linked paper is that white migrants from the South engaged in reverse assimilation, making the non-Southern-descended whites around them more racist and violent.
I took a look at the paper. The authors are all economics and development experts. Why they are wandering into American social and cultural history is a good question. Interdisciplinary is good, but I'm not sure why this background makes them more credible in their social and cultural assertions than anyone off the street. That their assertions about their human subjects are presented uncharitably and even malignantly is also a warning sign that we are not dealing with objective scholarship. Of course, it's a free country and we are all entitled to our opinions. But I see enough here to suspect that these authors are all leftists with an urgent psychological and professional need to mix themselves into and strike a blow for "social justice." A good historian would handle this source with care.
Northerners didn't need Southern "cultural influence" to be racist.
...and an incredible insult to the thoughtfulness of the population at large - they are so devoid of their own morality and beliefs (the same people who sent tens of thousands of their own fathers, brothers, and sons to face death to fight that long ago war) that the mere appearance of some southerners amongst them would somehow overtake their entire culture and upbringing.
Taking a look at their funding page tells you who drives this research, which means it deserves a good hard look from non-partisan data analysts. Have you seen the paper that showed what happens when you split up over 70 different research groups with the same data? One paper on hand picked data should be held up to the bright light of other review - most will not pass the smell test, unless you already like that eau du cologne.
Rather than the Southern white diaspora somehow "infecting" other parts of the US with racist and anti-intellectual attitudes, is it not more likely that poor white Southerners of the Great Migration migrated disproportionately to places that were _already_ racist and anti-intellectual, because that is where it was easiest for uneducated white people to find jobs?
The South is full of such stories, especially after the Civil War when anyone could deploy high-tech weapons that became widely available then (e.g. the Colt revolver). Passed words in the Legislature led to mutual annihilation more than once. In Kentucky you even had an armed capitol invasion and shooting war between the parties following a disputed election (very common - the voters didn’t always stay bought). Dragged on for years.
If politics are as they always have been then why do we need a savior?
Cuz we've always needed a savior, from Washington to Jackson to TR to FDR to JFK to Trump. Next?
What do you mean by "next?"?
I developed this perspective about conservative philosophy. A number of years back, and increasingly it appears on point. Unfortunately as "old, now discarded" conservative values like personal responsibility, integrity, courage, making one's own way while supporting those who need a hand up, like well funded public education". These are no longer the core of conservatism:
"The Conservative Philosophy is sunsetting, devoid of any enduring or endearing value." - me
Intrinsically, conservative philosophy is resistance to change at time when the climate will drive humanity changes incomprehensiblely
Come on...Palestine activism is a "fringe concern" of the left but the Taylor Swift/NFL meme is some mainstream component of the right?
One is the _biggest_ concern of 5% of the polled group about the president, has had activists interrupt multiple recent speaking events by Biden (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/31/biden-pro-palestine-protest-israel), and is becoming a movement in a swing state -- how big is obviously difficult to tell for now (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/michigan-activists-launch-campaign-urging-democrats-vote-biden-rcna137460).
The other is basically a meme that a number of outlets have latched onto for clicks and to, rightfully, make fun of.
Come Monday, only one of these will be in the rearview.
1) the Palestine issue will grow over time as gen z ages. Particularly if the ICJ confirms the interim findings against Israel. The ideology of the “rules based order” will take a bit of a hammering as well.
2) tucker is interviewing a foreign leader. That’s journalism - if anything the paranoia about pro Putin supporters in the US is the conspiracy here. More of less a form of McCarthyism. And no I don’t like Putin.
3) I’m admittedly not online really, outside Substack, but while I’ve seen a lot of people talking about the American right hating Taylor Swift I’ve seen no significant examples of it.
In fact she used to be, as late as last year, a bit suspect with regard to being a bit of a racist herself.
https://www.salon.com/2023/06/03/taylor-swift-matty-healy-ice-spice-feminism/
(Although maybe that’s just something true of all whites).
I don’t think your point number two is going to age well. Recall Tucker Carlson said on his show shortly after the invasion that he was “rooting for Russia” in the conflict. And today on Twitter the Russian government said that they had received numerous offers from Western sources to interview Putin but rejected them until a favorable interviewer like Tucker came along.
Conducting an interview is not, without more, journalism. By the admission of Fox News own attorneys in a defamation action, the tenor of Carlson’s show shows the giewer that he is not stating “actual facts”but, rather, engaging in exaggeration using non-literal commentary. Thus, Fox argued, viewers know to come to his show with “an appropriate amount of skepticism.
Carlson’s attempt to justify the Putin interview is that Americans are being denied the truth about Russia and Ukraine. Doing so before the interview shows that he has already decided the “truth” and is merely cobbling together sound bites and opinions to further an economic and political agenda. This is true of most political commentators. They rarely report, let alone break, any news.
I don’t think your point number two is going to age well. Recall Tucker Carlson said on his show shortly after the invasion that he was “rooting for Russia” in the conflict. And today on Twitter the Russian government said that they had received numerous offers from Western sources to interview Putin but rejected them until a favorable interviewer like Tucker came along.