not dead enough
June 13, 2018 3:48 PM Subscribe
R.I.P., Liberal Contrarianism, Michael Bérubé
I thought
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to suggest that a 50-years-ago version of Lilla would have been uneasy with a decision striking down the illegality of interracial marriage.
was the first pulled punch and then I realized it was a "And Brutus is an honorable man" and was gleeful.
posted by PMdixon at 4:10 PM on June 13, 2018 [4 favorites]
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to suggest that a 50-years-ago version of Lilla would have been uneasy with a decision striking down the illegality of interracial marriage.
was the first pulled punch and then I realized it was a "And Brutus is an honorable man" and was gleeful.
posted by PMdixon at 4:10 PM on June 13, 2018 [4 favorites]
I'm decades older than you, Caduceus, and have been following (and working in) politics for decades, and I also have no idea what the article is trying to say. I think the two imaginary characters were debating how many liberal angels can fit on the head of a pin?
posted by PhineasGage at 4:14 PM on June 13, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by PhineasGage at 4:14 PM on June 13, 2018 [8 favorites]
The essay is saying that Trump is not sui generis, that he is an obvious continuation of trends going back to the 90s, as evidenced by the fact that the rhetoric of center-left concern trolls is substantively unchanged.
posted by PMdixon at 4:17 PM on June 13, 2018 [43 favorites]
posted by PMdixon at 4:17 PM on June 13, 2018 [43 favorites]
Thanks, PMdixon - genuinely helpful - you have a great career ahead as a magazine editor...
posted by PhineasGage at 4:19 PM on June 13, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by PhineasGage at 4:19 PM on June 13, 2018 [3 favorites]
Unable to tell if this means Bill Maher types, tankies, or Glennwaldites.
posted by Artw at 4:21 PM on June 13, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Artw at 4:21 PM on June 13, 2018 [5 favorites]
that is what a year of your father forcing you to read the entire editorial page daily and summarize it to his satisfaction will do for you
posted by PMdixon at 4:22 PM on June 13, 2018 [40 favorites]
posted by PMdixon at 4:22 PM on June 13, 2018 [40 favorites]
The essay is spot on about how Democrats have let local and state party politics languish. Howard Dean's Fifty State Strategy got the Democrats control of the House and tied the Senate in 2006, setting the stage for Obama's win in 2008, along with consolidated control of the House _and_ Senate.
Then, *poof*, that strategy disappeared (which is one of several things about Obama that really irk me, despite being very happy with him overall), we got the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus, and eventually Trump, along with some hardcore gerrymandering that makes it insanely difficult for Democratic candidates to win state and local offices. There is no good reason why there isn't a Democrat on every ballot for every office in every district in every state in this country. They're too busy focusing on who's gonna run in 2020.
posted by SansPoint at 4:25 PM on June 13, 2018 [31 favorites]
Then, *poof*, that strategy disappeared (which is one of several things about Obama that really irk me, despite being very happy with him overall), we got the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus, and eventually Trump, along with some hardcore gerrymandering that makes it insanely difficult for Democratic candidates to win state and local offices. There is no good reason why there isn't a Democrat on every ballot for every office in every district in every state in this country. They're too busy focusing on who's gonna run in 2020.
posted by SansPoint at 4:25 PM on June 13, 2018 [31 favorites]
Unable to tell if this means Bill Maher types, tankies, or Glennwaldites.
I took them as not distinguished from each other in this context - the thing they have in common is that their praxis will consistently produce results in favor of reactionary policy aims despite their decrying of those aims.
posted by PMdixon at 4:30 PM on June 13, 2018 [14 favorites]
I took them as not distinguished from each other in this context - the thing they have in common is that their praxis will consistently produce results in favor of reactionary policy aims despite their decrying of those aims.
posted by PMdixon at 4:30 PM on June 13, 2018 [14 favorites]
I kept thinking as I trudged through this that the author had some interesting ideas but really needed to learn to write better and then when I got to the bottom I read: "MICHAEL BÉRUBÉ is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University".
posted by octothorpe at 4:44 PM on June 13, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 4:44 PM on June 13, 2018 [3 favorites]
I mean either you like his shtick or you're annoyed by it, it's not exactly unobtrusive.
posted by PMdixon at 5:10 PM on June 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by PMdixon at 5:10 PM on June 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
That's unfair, octothorpe. Bérubé is having fun here and maybe the style is too mannered or the references too thick for some readers but he knows what's doing. He's got a scholarly amd general-audience bibliography as long as your arm and as celebrated as, I dunno, whatever part of your body has been positively reviewed by a wide range of major publications, I guess. So the "literary scholars can't write" shtick seems unfair here to me.
But maybe I'm reacting strongly because I've always thought of him as having a rare talent for sophisticated academic analysis combined with political acumen, a good sense of humor, and an engaging writerly voice. I miss his old blog, from back when he was a lively part of the 2000s academic left blogosphere. At the time it contained a mix of scholarly work, political criticism (perhaps most memorably when he tangled with rightwing smearmonger David Horowitz), and poignant personal reflections. These last often centered around his relationship with his son Jamie, whose life with Down Syndrome was the subject of Bérubé's earliest work of popular nonfiction and, I think, the reason why Bérubé got interested in disability studies.
But looking back at his blog just now--I will admit that he could go on a bit. I just happen to enjoy that. (On preview: what PMdixon said!)
posted by col_pogo at 5:21 PM on June 13, 2018 [19 favorites]
But maybe I'm reacting strongly because I've always thought of him as having a rare talent for sophisticated academic analysis combined with political acumen, a good sense of humor, and an engaging writerly voice. I miss his old blog, from back when he was a lively part of the 2000s academic left blogosphere. At the time it contained a mix of scholarly work, political criticism (perhaps most memorably when he tangled with rightwing smearmonger David Horowitz), and poignant personal reflections. These last often centered around his relationship with his son Jamie, whose life with Down Syndrome was the subject of Bérubé's earliest work of popular nonfiction and, I think, the reason why Bérubé got interested in disability studies.
But looking back at his blog just now--I will admit that he could go on a bit. I just happen to enjoy that. (On preview: what PMdixon said!)
posted by col_pogo at 5:21 PM on June 13, 2018 [19 favorites]
So the "literary scholars can't write" shtick seems unfair here to me.
But I was thinking that I didn't like his writing before I got to the bottom to see who he was at which point my reaction was more like, "I guess I'm the idiot since he obviously knows more about writing than I do".
posted by octothorpe at 5:33 PM on June 13, 2018 [5 favorites]
But I was thinking that I didn't like his writing before I got to the bottom to see who he was at which point my reaction was more like, "I guess I'm the idiot since he obviously knows more about writing than I do".
posted by octothorpe at 5:33 PM on June 13, 2018 [5 favorites]
Oops! Well, I appreciate the explanation and apologize for misreading you. At least that misreading gave me an excuse to go back and take another look at his other writing!
(I will also say that I don't think you're an idiot for disliking his writing choices here.)
posted by col_pogo at 5:52 PM on June 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
(I will also say that I don't think you're an idiot for disliking his writing choices here.)
posted by col_pogo at 5:52 PM on June 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
The style is smug as a bug in a rug with a TLS subscription
posted by Sebmojo at 5:56 PM on June 13, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Sebmojo at 5:56 PM on June 13, 2018 [5 favorites]
i think this may be incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't personally go to parties with op-ed writers.
"the media" has a really important job to do, which is why I wish it weren't also made up of a bunch of weird narcissists who all go to the same bars.
posted by vogon_poet at 6:13 PM on June 13, 2018 [3 favorites]
"the media" has a really important job to do, which is why I wish it weren't also made up of a bunch of weird narcissists who all go to the same bars.
posted by vogon_poet at 6:13 PM on June 13, 2018 [3 favorites]
that is what a year of your father forcing you to read the entire editorial page daily and summarize it to his satisfaction will do for you
posted by PMdixon at 7:22 PM on June 13
You're... you're like bizarro Michael Binkley!
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:14 PM on June 13, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by PMdixon at 7:22 PM on June 13
You're... you're like bizarro Michael Binkley!
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:14 PM on June 13, 2018 [6 favorites]
What does sui generis mean?
posted by runcibleshaw at 6:39 PM on June 13, 2018
posted by runcibleshaw at 6:39 PM on June 13, 2018
I'm also finding this a mess, or maybe just a pain. That the liberal contrarian - and worse, the David Brooksian center-right "ideological diversity" hire at liberal publications - is still alive should be pretty obvious. A bunch of them are namechecked in this piece. Some of them can't get away with their same schtick from the 90s, which is good. But the part of this that's actually about that is buried under the part that's just leftward sniping - aimed at the sort of people who would call him a liberal concern troll, incidentally - and maundering about what's the actually right level of identity politics, as if anyone had asked.
posted by atoxyl at 6:52 PM on June 13, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 6:52 PM on June 13, 2018 [4 favorites]
I was going to waste a bunch of words, but in light of atoxyl's comment on preview, I'm just going to be one of those people who calls Mr Bérubé a liberal concern troll. Slightly to the left of the concern trolls he's criticising. Slightly. I didn't mind the format, didn't like the content.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 6:59 PM on June 13, 2018
posted by AnhydrousLove at 6:59 PM on June 13, 2018
> That Bérubé article is ostensibly a requiem for the #SlatePitch centrist-"left," but it actually devotes even more of its time to attacking the far left. The ongoing rage from the center-left against [Berniebros/ FireDogLake/ NakedCapitalism/ Jacobin/ the 2% who vote third-party/ Russia skeptics/ class-based progressivism/ college-age trans purists/ etc (all attacked at various points in the essay)] continues to baffle me, even though I agree with many of the criticisms. A 6000-word essay deriding the demise of the centrist-"left," of which 3000 are devoted to attacking the far left (and 1000 are an extended critique of Mark Lilla of all people)... I mean, the premise is correct -- RIP #SlatePitch -- but the execution is far more infighty than it needs to be.> Bérubé's point doesn't seem to be about where people are on the political spectrum -- which is obviously quite subjective -- than it is about specific behaviors. Mickey Kaus or Richard Cohen attacking Democrats from "within" 15 years ago isn't at all different than Mark Lilla or Glenn Greenwald doing the same now. The issues change, and the author's self-identification on a one-dimensional political spectrum might be different as well, but the "liberal contrarian hot take" factor (as Bérubé describes it) remains. Note that he uses the qualifier "so-called" when he describes these people as "progressives" and "leftists", noting that "[t]his is a pattern unbroken in 50 years of lefter-than-thou-ism and hallucinations of a third major party." He's not accepting their self-identification as leftist, and neither should anyone else, as the term is virtually meaningless without knowing about specific policy preferences, strategic goals, and the soundness of the plans for reaching those goals.
The thing being attacked in the essay is contrarianism, full stop. That many of the modern contrarian hot-takers are categorized by some as leftists seems incidental to his point. Does Katie Roiphe call herself a "leftist?" Does Mark Lilla? I certainly don't think Greenwald does. What sense does it make to judge the quality of the piece by the percentage of its targets who accept a particular political label?
[Apologies for the extensive quoting, but apparently the discussion of this article has moved from Potus45 to here.]
I guess my response to this "defense" of Bérubé is that he himself sees that there is an important difference between the far left (relative to himself) and the center-left (again, relative to his own position). He is quite aware that #SlatePitch is a specific form of "contrarianism" -- one from the center-left, not from the far left. For instance, he writes
As the age of the liberal contrarian reaches maturity in mid-decade, Andrew Sullivan is hawking The Bell Curve at The New Republic, by then known as “even the liberal New Republic.” A few years later, Michael Kelly, having spent his time at TNR fulminating against the liberal hegemony of Heather Has Two Mommies, takes over The Atlantic. Camille Paglia is ubiquitous. Slate emerges as the West Coast, online TNR, and within a few years, the #Slatepitch becomes shorthand for the liberal contrarian hot take.By "liberal contrarian" here he clearly and specifically means attacks from the relative right, not from the relative left. His discussion immediately after this bit of the Atlantic's transition from Sullivan to Coates is specifically about a movement leftward, away from the #SlatePitch relative-right contrarianism of Sullivan, and the interjection of his faux-interlocutor here with a mocking criticism of Coates is not meant as another example of modern #SlatePitch, but rather the rise of a post-#SlatePitch unreasonable left full of naifs like Greenwald, Hamsher, etc.
But liberal contrarianism, as a mainstream media phenomenon, is dead. The Iraq War killed it. Bush the Younger killed it. The rise of the liberal blogosphere killed it.... You think the emergence of the liberal blogosphere was a good thing? ...[No.]... But the reason it took hold among the so-called liberal-left “netroots” is that a lot of those people were total political neophytes.This is followed by another 1000 words attacking the far left (again, with some justification), at which point the narrators say
Damn. Where were we again? Agreeing with my arguments about the long-term continuities in American politics, I believe?And the discussion thereafter returns to Roiphe, Paglia, Sommers, and finally 1500 words on Lilla -- ie, the centrist targets that the essay is by its own account supposed to be about, had it not digressed and returned with the "Where were we again" acknowledgement of that digression as a digression.
ILLE: No. Arguing about the disappearance of liberal contrarians, may they rest in peace.
I suppose we can pretend the ideological spectrum doesn't exist and that "contrarianism" (relative to the Democratic establishment) is basically the same whether it comes from the far left or the center left, but (a) this just isn't true, and (b) Bérubé clearly knows this, flagging his critiques of the far left either as a critique of what came after the demise of liberal contrarianism (as opposed to being a part of it), or as mere digressions from his central argument. But most importantly, (c) it's counter-productive to pretend that this ideological distinction doesn't matter, because while the Democratic party can afford to dispense with all those #SlatePitch centrists, that is not so for the approximately 50% of the party encompassed by all the different far-left entities in my original brackets above that Bérubé attacks. Surely it should be possible to attack the pseudo-liberal right -- which we can well do without -- without needing to devote nearly 50% of the essay to intra-left digressions, such as too-cute-by-half attacks on campus trans activists under the explicit fig leaf of pretending that criticism is Halberstam’s, which by all accounts has absolutely nothing to do with #SlatePitch liberal contrarianism, except insofar as Bérubé is practicing exactly that in this essay.
posted by chortly at 7:04 PM on June 13, 2018 [7 favorites]
> Then, *poof*, that strategy disappeared (which is one of several things about Obama...
Does that lack of strategy rest at the feet of Obama or Ms. Wasserman Schultz?
posted by CheapB at 7:30 PM on June 13, 2018
Does that lack of strategy rest at the feet of Obama or Ms. Wasserman Schultz?
posted by CheapB at 7:30 PM on June 13, 2018
You're... you're like bizarro Michael Binkley!
I am disturbed by the extent to which this rings true.
posted by PMdixon at 7:46 PM on June 13, 2018 [4 favorites]
I am disturbed by the extent to which this rings true.
posted by PMdixon at 7:46 PM on June 13, 2018 [4 favorites]
I read enough to realize it's Vogon poetry.
posted by eustacescrubb at 8:05 PM on June 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by eustacescrubb at 8:05 PM on June 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
I didn't think he meant to imply the far left was the same as the old liberal contrarians either - but I thought that made the amount of this devoted to potshots at the far left kind of perplexing.
(And I stand by the suggestion that center-left folks obsessing over the idea that the far left is going to sabotage the Democratic Party is the concern-trolly)
posted by atoxyl at 8:35 PM on June 13, 2018 [5 favorites]
(And I stand by the suggestion that center-left folks obsessing over the idea that the far left is going to sabotage the Democratic Party is the concern-trolly)
posted by atoxyl at 8:35 PM on June 13, 2018 [5 favorites]
*is concern-trolly - not sure how the "the" snuck in there
posted by atoxyl at 8:43 PM on June 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 8:43 PM on June 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
> I suppose we can pretend the ideological spectrum doesn't exist and that "contrarianism" (relative to the Democratic establishment) is basically the same whether it comes from the far left or the center left
Oh, come on! Show me where I said anything remotely resembling "the ideological spectrum doesn't exist", or that Bérubé doesn't see the distinctions between political tribes. What I said is that political tribal labels are largely defined by how one views oneself, and that no particular group with a given set of issue priorities and tactical preferences owns any unique claim to a given position on that one-dimensional spectrum.
And course Bérubé recognizes the difference between the Kauses and Greenwalds of the world, as does anyone who's paid any attention to online political opinion writing in the last couple of decades. I was saying that my takeaway from the piece was that the centrist wankers of the early '00s and the leftier-than-thou wankers of today are engaging in the same practice of attacking the left while claiming to represent some portion of the left.
You seem to want to focus on the ideologies of the specific targets of his critique, going so far as to say that it troubles you that 50% of it is devoted to attacking modern day critics, some of whom define themselves as leftist, some of whom merely get a lot of attention from others who define themselves as leftists. What percent would have been appropriate, in your view? Should he have omitted targets who could be described as leftists just because it might hurt some feelings?
Your argument about potentially turning off Democratic voters isn't a new one, and it's no more compelling than when I first heard it. When Glenn Greenwald and Yves Smith are wrong, I want their wrongness to be called out. When Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias are wrong, I also want their wrongness to be called out. The idea that doing so to the former group will swing an election (a) assumes they were going to vote for progressive candidates in the first place, and (b) assumes they're fucking toddlers who don't actually care about electing the most progressive candidates if someone's mean to them in a Democracy article.
The piece, as I read it, is how the behavior of fragging the left from a position perceived to be inside the tent is no longer effective, but still exists (hence the "It’s dead now—well, almost" sub-head of the piece.) Worrying about how some self-described leftists might have a sad about it and stay home seems really silly given the magnitude of the actual problems we're facing. Leftist in-fighting can be counterproductive, but it isn't by definition counterproductive just because some people in the same tent might fight about things. I simply do not see why an opinion writer who's describing a behavior of other opinion writers should hold his fire when those other opinion writers are liked by a certain segment of the left that holds certain views. Bad behavior is bad behavior, no matter who's doing it.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:06 PM on June 13, 2018 [10 favorites]
Oh, come on! Show me where I said anything remotely resembling "the ideological spectrum doesn't exist", or that Bérubé doesn't see the distinctions between political tribes. What I said is that political tribal labels are largely defined by how one views oneself, and that no particular group with a given set of issue priorities and tactical preferences owns any unique claim to a given position on that one-dimensional spectrum.
And course Bérubé recognizes the difference between the Kauses and Greenwalds of the world, as does anyone who's paid any attention to online political opinion writing in the last couple of decades. I was saying that my takeaway from the piece was that the centrist wankers of the early '00s and the leftier-than-thou wankers of today are engaging in the same practice of attacking the left while claiming to represent some portion of the left.
You seem to want to focus on the ideologies of the specific targets of his critique, going so far as to say that it troubles you that 50% of it is devoted to attacking modern day critics, some of whom define themselves as leftist, some of whom merely get a lot of attention from others who define themselves as leftists. What percent would have been appropriate, in your view? Should he have omitted targets who could be described as leftists just because it might hurt some feelings?
Your argument about potentially turning off Democratic voters isn't a new one, and it's no more compelling than when I first heard it. When Glenn Greenwald and Yves Smith are wrong, I want their wrongness to be called out. When Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias are wrong, I also want their wrongness to be called out. The idea that doing so to the former group will swing an election (a) assumes they were going to vote for progressive candidates in the first place, and (b) assumes they're fucking toddlers who don't actually care about electing the most progressive candidates if someone's mean to them in a Democracy article.
The piece, as I read it, is how the behavior of fragging the left from a position perceived to be inside the tent is no longer effective, but still exists (hence the "It’s dead now—well, almost" sub-head of the piece.) Worrying about how some self-described leftists might have a sad about it and stay home seems really silly given the magnitude of the actual problems we're facing. Leftist in-fighting can be counterproductive, but it isn't by definition counterproductive just because some people in the same tent might fight about things. I simply do not see why an opinion writer who's describing a behavior of other opinion writers should hold his fire when those other opinion writers are liked by a certain segment of the left that holds certain views. Bad behavior is bad behavior, no matter who's doing it.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:06 PM on June 13, 2018 [10 favorites]
I was saying that my takeaway from the piece was that the centrist wankers of the early '00s and the leftier-than-thou wankers of today are engaging in the same practice of attacking the left while claiming to represent some portion of the left.
...and so is he. I don't think he has any responsibility to stand down from that, but I don't think the reason that the Andrew Sullivans were bad was because they were doing leftist infighting. I think they were bad because they were using real estate in nominally left-leaning publications to air some pretty ugly right-wing views, out of a desire to stir up interest or even just to feel principled in an abstract way. We can stand some infighting - my problem with the in-the-middle-swinging-at-people-on-either-side thing is simply that it's more or less mathematically impossible for it to be less obnoxious than the people it's criticizing.
posted by atoxyl at 9:32 PM on June 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
...and so is he. I don't think he has any responsibility to stand down from that, but I don't think the reason that the Andrew Sullivans were bad was because they were doing leftist infighting. I think they were bad because they were using real estate in nominally left-leaning publications to air some pretty ugly right-wing views, out of a desire to stir up interest or even just to feel principled in an abstract way. We can stand some infighting - my problem with the in-the-middle-swinging-at-people-on-either-side thing is simply that it's more or less mathematically impossible for it to be less obnoxious than the people it's criticizing.
posted by atoxyl at 9:32 PM on June 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
Or in other words, it has - it seems to me, perhaps not everyone agrees - to have an attitude of wanting to be above the fray when it clearly isn't at all. I prefer people to just go ahead and honestly get down in it.
posted by atoxyl at 9:43 PM on June 13, 2018
posted by atoxyl at 9:43 PM on June 13, 2018
Bad behavior is bad behavior, no matter who's doing it.
I guess I feel that bad behavior by the right is worse than bad behavior by the left, even within the left. Anyway, it's fine if your own "takeaway from the piece was that the centrist wankers of the early '00s and the leftier-than-thou wankers of today are engaging in the same practice of attacking the left while claiming to represent some portion of the left." But the original claim I was disputing began by saying "Bérubé's point doesn't seem to be about where people are on the political spectrum -- which is obviously quite subjective -- than it is about specific behaviors." Take what you will from the essay, but Bérubé's own point -- the topic and title of the essay, the thing he returns to after his self-avowed digressions -- is about the demise specifically of the centrist "contrarian liberals" such as Sullivan, Paglia, etc. Perhaps you think that there is an essential similarity between those folks and the far left, but Bérubé at least distinguishes between the two in important ways, and admits that his attacks on the latter are a digression from his main purpose.
I don't think it matters much, but with regard to this bit: 'Oh, come on! Show me where I said anything remotely resembling "the ideological spectrum doesn't exist"', I guess insofar as I was saying this, it was based on quotes such as "Bérubé's point doesn't seem to be about where people are on the political spectrum -- which is obviously quite subjective" and "He's not accepting their self-identification as leftist, and neither should anyone else, as the term is virtually meaningless without knowing about specific policy preferences, strategic goals, and the soundness of the plans for reaching those goals." Claiming that the political spectrum is quite subjective and that "leftist" is "virtually meaningless" runs contrary to most of actual political science, which finds that across a wide array of political questions, most responses fall along a single factor reaching from neo-nazism to hippy-dippy socialist purism. This factor is much more explanatory than, say, the g factor for IQ -- there really does seem to be (in this country in this era) a strong, non-subjective ideological spectrum, and when you use votes to plot Senators on it, Warren and Sanders come out on the far left, and when you use opinion surveys of almost any sort, individuals line up with similar consistency. "Far left" or "lefist" is quite meaningful, and as it is used in daily life, it's not too far off from taking the largest eigenvector of a vote or opinion data matrix. Bérubé seems to think the far left and center-left are different not just in ideology but in tactics, and that while they are both deserving of criticism, his criticisms of the ostensibly-dead contrarian liberal is very different from his criticisms of the naive far-leftists, notwithstanding the apparently similar antipathy he feels for both and his inability to resist taking unrelated potshots at the latter.
Finally, with regard to pragmatism, I'm not worried about feelings or even voting. The far left actually turns out at a greater rate than the center-left, but in any case no sane person thinks an essay by Bérubé is going to affect voter turnout. The point is that, by his own lights, his own essay continually digresses from an attack on a common enemy to an internal attack. Unless you believe that essays don't matter (in which case why argue here), there is probably some benefit in managing to keep an essay explicitly devoted to criticizing the center-left from spending more than half of its time attacking various internal factions unless that is the writer's actual intention. But if you personally want to write your own essay about how the far left and centrists are basically the same in certain fundamental ways, go right ahead.
posted by chortly at 9:49 PM on June 13, 2018 [3 favorites]
I guess I feel that bad behavior by the right is worse than bad behavior by the left, even within the left. Anyway, it's fine if your own "takeaway from the piece was that the centrist wankers of the early '00s and the leftier-than-thou wankers of today are engaging in the same practice of attacking the left while claiming to represent some portion of the left." But the original claim I was disputing began by saying "Bérubé's point doesn't seem to be about where people are on the political spectrum -- which is obviously quite subjective -- than it is about specific behaviors." Take what you will from the essay, but Bérubé's own point -- the topic and title of the essay, the thing he returns to after his self-avowed digressions -- is about the demise specifically of the centrist "contrarian liberals" such as Sullivan, Paglia, etc. Perhaps you think that there is an essential similarity between those folks and the far left, but Bérubé at least distinguishes between the two in important ways, and admits that his attacks on the latter are a digression from his main purpose.
I don't think it matters much, but with regard to this bit: 'Oh, come on! Show me where I said anything remotely resembling "the ideological spectrum doesn't exist"', I guess insofar as I was saying this, it was based on quotes such as "Bérubé's point doesn't seem to be about where people are on the political spectrum -- which is obviously quite subjective" and "He's not accepting their self-identification as leftist, and neither should anyone else, as the term is virtually meaningless without knowing about specific policy preferences, strategic goals, and the soundness of the plans for reaching those goals." Claiming that the political spectrum is quite subjective and that "leftist" is "virtually meaningless" runs contrary to most of actual political science, which finds that across a wide array of political questions, most responses fall along a single factor reaching from neo-nazism to hippy-dippy socialist purism. This factor is much more explanatory than, say, the g factor for IQ -- there really does seem to be (in this country in this era) a strong, non-subjective ideological spectrum, and when you use votes to plot Senators on it, Warren and Sanders come out on the far left, and when you use opinion surveys of almost any sort, individuals line up with similar consistency. "Far left" or "lefist" is quite meaningful, and as it is used in daily life, it's not too far off from taking the largest eigenvector of a vote or opinion data matrix. Bérubé seems to think the far left and center-left are different not just in ideology but in tactics, and that while they are both deserving of criticism, his criticisms of the ostensibly-dead contrarian liberal is very different from his criticisms of the naive far-leftists, notwithstanding the apparently similar antipathy he feels for both and his inability to resist taking unrelated potshots at the latter.
Finally, with regard to pragmatism, I'm not worried about feelings or even voting. The far left actually turns out at a greater rate than the center-left, but in any case no sane person thinks an essay by Bérubé is going to affect voter turnout. The point is that, by his own lights, his own essay continually digresses from an attack on a common enemy to an internal attack. Unless you believe that essays don't matter (in which case why argue here), there is probably some benefit in managing to keep an essay explicitly devoted to criticizing the center-left from spending more than half of its time attacking various internal factions unless that is the writer's actual intention. But if you personally want to write your own essay about how the far left and centrists are basically the same in certain fundamental ways, go right ahead.
posted by chortly at 9:49 PM on June 13, 2018 [3 favorites]
It's for a specific audience, but no this is not just random jargon. It has meaning and purpose. I might not be meaning clear to everyone, but for those who have been deep in liberal blog discourse for a decade+ it makes perfect sense.
posted by Ferreous at 9:50 PM on June 13, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 9:50 PM on June 13, 2018 [5 favorites]
This is exceptionally badly written
posted by moorooka at 10:00 PM on June 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by moorooka at 10:00 PM on June 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
If you are to the left of me, you are either a wooly-headed idealist or purity/concern troll. If you are to the right of me, you are a heartless disingenuous bastard with a hidden agenda. MY WAY, is the one TRUE WAY.
The PARTY MUST NOT BE QUESTIONED.
posted by eagles123 at 10:11 PM on June 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
The PARTY MUST NOT BE QUESTIONED.
posted by eagles123 at 10:11 PM on June 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
If you do want to take a shot at the Left, the last person I saw cite Camille Paglia approvingly was actually the weird-left-Twitter adjacent Anna Khachiyan. But even among edgy lefty Twitter personalities her particular contrarian schtick seems to belong to a party of... not very many?
posted by atoxyl at 10:13 PM on June 13, 2018
posted by atoxyl at 10:13 PM on June 13, 2018
I am surprised he didn't mention the apotheosis of current media contrarianism (except in passing as part of a long list): Matt Yglesias. Although I suppose he's more of a reflexive contrarian than anything else...
posted by PhineasGage at 10:17 PM on June 13, 2018
posted by PhineasGage at 10:17 PM on June 13, 2018
Camille Paglia was a center-rightist who occasionally masqueraded as a liberal -- exactly the definition of the "contrarian liberal" that Bérubé's essay is about. She has of course zero attention now, but in her heyday she was respected by contrarian liberals (ie, centrists) like The New Republic, given a lets-hear-her-out voice at center-left establishments like the Times, and roundly derided and attacked by the far left. Similarly, the strongest criticisms of Sullivan during his heyday were from the far left, not the center left. The same goes for Yglesias for that matter, who of course was one of the originators of #SlatePitch -- but it should also be said, is nevertheless well to the left of (current) Sullivan, let alone Paglia. Ideological nuance matters!
posted by chortly at 10:23 PM on June 13, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by chortly at 10:23 PM on June 13, 2018 [6 favorites]
This might help make the same headline point with fewer inside references and allusions on 'liberal contrarianism' and how big a role it played. It's a Vox piece by Henry Farrell, who coincidentally shares a blog platform with Berube over at crooked timber. The glib version is that 25 years ago the Jordan Petersen commentary on "the respectable left" wouldn't be about whether we're too mean to him. Instead you'd be publishing him because asking how can we really know if women are capable of rational thought is how you'd show you were a Serious Open Minded Liberal.
If you're tempted to respond that's still what people do, I think that lingering doubt is exactly why we got a rambling Dialog On Contrarian Leftists from Berube rather than a coherent argument around a single thesis. He's basically reminiscing about all the debates he took part in, back when we still used the word "blogosphere" and even before that.
But if you personally want to write your own essay about how the far left and centrists are basically the same in certain fundamental ways, go right ahead.
As is implicit in my above statement I think that misses the point. He doesn't like Lilla and he doesn't like Greenwald and he uses the format to rant about both of them. That's why they're there, not because they are different aspects of the same phenomena. Though TBH I glazed over on the Lilla stuff so maybe I missed a bit that would justify that reading.
posted by mark k at 10:39 PM on June 13, 2018 [9 favorites]
If you're tempted to respond that's still what people do, I think that lingering doubt is exactly why we got a rambling Dialog On Contrarian Leftists from Berube rather than a coherent argument around a single thesis. He's basically reminiscing about all the debates he took part in, back when we still used the word "blogosphere" and even before that.
But if you personally want to write your own essay about how the far left and centrists are basically the same in certain fundamental ways, go right ahead.
As is implicit in my above statement I think that misses the point. He doesn't like Lilla and he doesn't like Greenwald and he uses the format to rant about both of them. That's why they're there, not because they are different aspects of the same phenomena. Though TBH I glazed over on the Lilla stuff so maybe I missed a bit that would justify that reading.
posted by mark k at 10:39 PM on June 13, 2018 [9 favorites]
I'm perfectly happy to treat this essay as an incoherent rant against his enemies of today and yore, but I still think that he thinks he's doing something else, since the title ("R.I.P., Liberal Contrarianism"), framing, and structure of the essay keep attempting to focus on centrists even while he rants about leftists and clouds. Farrell is certainly a reasonable person, anyway, and far more discriminating in his criticisms.
posted by chortly at 11:02 PM on June 13, 2018
posted by chortly at 11:02 PM on June 13, 2018
I am surprised he didn't mention the apotheosis of current media contrarianism (except in passing as part of a long list): Matt Yglesias. Although I suppose he's more of a reflexive contrarian than anything else...
He did mention MattY in passing didn't he? His case arguably supports the deadness of the rightward-looking contrarian liberal, as he seems to be showing flashes of sympathy toward the Bernie Wing lately. I suppose it could support the argument that the opportunists are seeing their opportunity on the left now.
(Lest one feel good about Yglesias showing humility, he will never not be the guy who wrote, say, his infamous Bangladesh factory safety column.)
posted by atoxyl at 12:49 AM on June 14, 2018
He did mention MattY in passing didn't he? His case arguably supports the deadness of the rightward-looking contrarian liberal, as he seems to be showing flashes of sympathy toward the Bernie Wing lately. I suppose it could support the argument that the opportunists are seeing their opportunity on the left now.
(Lest one feel good about Yglesias showing humility, he will never not be the guy who wrote, say, his infamous Bangladesh factory safety column.)
posted by atoxyl at 12:49 AM on June 14, 2018
Yglesias has been terrible on occasions in the past. But since Trump he’s been amazing. On fire.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:26 AM on June 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by persona au gratin at 1:26 AM on June 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
deep in liberal blog discourse for a decade+
the survivors would envy the dead
posted by thelonius at 2:01 AM on June 14, 2018 [5 favorites]
the survivors would envy the dead
posted by thelonius at 2:01 AM on June 14, 2018 [5 favorites]
the concern-trolly
If you saw the concern-trolly, carrying 5 bad-faith arguments, hurling toward a group of ten voters, and you could throw a switch diverting it to hit a child who will grow up to be a political candidate, what would you do?
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:30 AM on June 14, 2018 [15 favorites]
If you saw the concern-trolly, carrying 5 bad-faith arguments, hurling toward a group of ten voters, and you could throw a switch diverting it to hit a child who will grow up to be a political candidate, what would you do?
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:30 AM on June 14, 2018 [15 favorites]
Yeah it's a bit stream-of-consciousness but how can you really hate something which contains this bit:
posted by Justinian at 3:46 AM on June 14, 2018 [7 favorites]
One day Donald Trump tweets that the Russia investigation is just a way for Democrats to avoid coming to terms with the fact that Hillary ran a bad campaign (because of course her campaign was worse than Kerry’s and Gore’s and never mind the popular vote), and the next day Greenwald and Jacobin are saying the same exact thing: The whole “Russian interference” thing is a distraction from Hillary’s horrible, no-good, corporate neoliberalism. You have to hand it to them, I suppose—no one, until now, had realized that the best way to resist an authoritarian lunatic was to repeat his utterances word for word . . .'Cause that's gold, Jerry, gold!
posted by Justinian at 3:46 AM on June 14, 2018 [7 favorites]
Also, I mean, every time it drags a little he takes another shot at Glenn Greenwald and how can that be bad?
posted by Justinian at 3:49 AM on June 14, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Justinian at 3:49 AM on June 14, 2018 [5 favorites]
I think they were bad because they were using real estate in nominally left-leaning publications to air some pretty ugly right-wing views, out of a desire to stir up interest or even just to feel principled in an abstract way.
This is a pretty damning description of Glenn Greenwald
posted by PMdixon at 4:58 AM on June 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
This is a pretty damning description of Glenn Greenwald
posted by PMdixon at 4:58 AM on June 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
Liberals being really mad at Glenn Greenwald definitely solidifies the 'adults in the room' image they want to cultivate that's definitely more important than shining a light on the national security state's actions.
posted by Space Coyote at 6:41 AM on June 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Space Coyote at 6:41 AM on June 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
I'd take him more seriously if he didn't spend most of his energy these days spouting anti-anti-Trump noise.
posted by PMdixon at 6:54 AM on June 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by PMdixon at 6:54 AM on June 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
Don't boo. Vote.
posted by conscious matter at 7:28 AM on June 14, 2018
posted by conscious matter at 7:28 AM on June 14, 2018
I'm perfectly happy to treat this essay as an incoherent rant against his enemies of today and yore, but I still think that he thinks he's doing something else, since the title ("R.I.P., Liberal Contrarianism"), framing, and structure of the essay keep attempting to focus on centrists even while he rants about leftists and clouds.
Meandering and even rambling isn't the same as incoherent* and I'd say the rest of your comment is begging the question. Saying he's keeps trying to talk about centrists and then loses focus and wanders off in other directions should leave you more open to the argument that this is not actually what he's trying to do. And the framing and structure?
The framing is rather explicitly "Are we better off now than we were in the culture wars of the '90s?" and the structure runs through comparisons roughly by category and chronology to survey points and counterpoints around the question.
In this context exhibit A for being better is the death of contrarianism and that's how I'd interpret the headline--a point from the piece and not the thesis. (Bari Weiss having NYT space is the rebuttal evidence, which gives the subhead.)
I didn't actually love this and there are angles of criticism, but being apparently Berube's age and having gone through most of the debates (starting with me buying into TNR as a Periodical for Serious Liberals back when I was finishing college) I think it the piece makes a lot of sense as a reminder of those bygone fights and not much the way you're looking at it.
*Okay, incoherent sort of means that etymologically but the more common "incomprehensible" sense doesn't apply here. He's got a bunch of criticisms of different targets which are fine on their own, at least if you're up on all the shorthand references to more detailed debates.
posted by mark k at 7:34 AM on June 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
Meandering and even rambling isn't the same as incoherent* and I'd say the rest of your comment is begging the question. Saying he's keeps trying to talk about centrists and then loses focus and wanders off in other directions should leave you more open to the argument that this is not actually what he's trying to do. And the framing and structure?
The framing is rather explicitly "Are we better off now than we were in the culture wars of the '90s?" and the structure runs through comparisons roughly by category and chronology to survey points and counterpoints around the question.
In this context exhibit A for being better is the death of contrarianism and that's how I'd interpret the headline--a point from the piece and not the thesis. (Bari Weiss having NYT space is the rebuttal evidence, which gives the subhead.)
I didn't actually love this and there are angles of criticism, but being apparently Berube's age and having gone through most of the debates (starting with me buying into TNR as a Periodical for Serious Liberals back when I was finishing college) I think it the piece makes a lot of sense as a reminder of those bygone fights and not much the way you're looking at it.
*Okay, incoherent sort of means that etymologically but the more common "incomprehensible" sense doesn't apply here. He's got a bunch of criticisms of different targets which are fine on their own, at least if you're up on all the shorthand references to more detailed debates.
posted by mark k at 7:34 AM on June 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
Liberals being really mad at Glenn Greenwald definitely solidifies the 'adults in the room' image they want to cultivate that's definitely more important than shining a light on the national security state's actions.
Greenwald complains about the national security state overreaching when it investigates the Trump campaign quietly for corruption, and defends it against criticism when it leaks information about Hillary Clinton. If Clinton had won this would be at least defensible and I'd say your statement is open to debate, but in this environment contempt for Greenwald is well earned.
I mean, The Intercept has done some good stuff on the massive overreach of ICE but Greenwald himself can't be bothered to get off his ass unless it's to say that the DNC is a greater threat to freedom than Trump.
posted by mark k at 7:44 AM on June 14, 2018 [7 favorites]
Greenwald complains about the national security state overreaching when it investigates the Trump campaign quietly for corruption, and defends it against criticism when it leaks information about Hillary Clinton. If Clinton had won this would be at least defensible and I'd say your statement is open to debate, but in this environment contempt for Greenwald is well earned.
I mean, The Intercept has done some good stuff on the massive overreach of ICE but Greenwald himself can't be bothered to get off his ass unless it's to say that the DNC is a greater threat to freedom than Trump.
posted by mark k at 7:44 AM on June 14, 2018 [7 favorites]
Meandering and even rambling isn't the same as incoherent* and I'd say the rest of your comment is begging the question.
Please read the rest of my comments up-thread then. I provide quite a lot of evidence -- title, opening statements, rhetorical structure, explicit references to far-left digressions as digressions, conclusion -- that his essay is intended to be about exactly what it says -- contrarian liberals (ie, centrists from the 90s and 00s). In a sense, of course, he also intends to digress, and is certainly aware of the fact that he is doing it. But the effect of those digressions is exactly what happens in this thread: it encourages readers to lump the far left and centrists together in a way that he himself knows is structurally unsound (ie, they are quite asymmetrical) but is emotionally appealing because the center-left (of which he is one) hates them both, giving the usual (erroneous) sense of symmetry. I would be more hesitant to accuse him of having his cake (claiming to be about contrarian liberals) while eating it too (also attacking the far left even though he believes that is a different phenomenon) if his penultimate paragraph didn't contain a truly disgusting attack on trans activists via some ridiculous conceit that it's not him doing it (which he could never do, he says, as a while cis male, poor fellow) but rather Halberstam. Cutesy swipes under the rhetorical guise of meta self-awareness is the MO for this essay. I mean, just read the last bits -- a bit too long to quote here -- from "People’s Republic of Reed College" (joking-notjoking) on to "Get used to it" (ie, cis white men using trans activists to attack other trans activists), after which he shakes his head a bit and returns to the contrarian liberal (which by no account of his or anyone else's are the trans activists an example of). Yeesh.
posted by chortly at 10:05 AM on June 14, 2018
Please read the rest of my comments up-thread then. I provide quite a lot of evidence -- title, opening statements, rhetorical structure, explicit references to far-left digressions as digressions, conclusion -- that his essay is intended to be about exactly what it says -- contrarian liberals (ie, centrists from the 90s and 00s). In a sense, of course, he also intends to digress, and is certainly aware of the fact that he is doing it. But the effect of those digressions is exactly what happens in this thread: it encourages readers to lump the far left and centrists together in a way that he himself knows is structurally unsound (ie, they are quite asymmetrical) but is emotionally appealing because the center-left (of which he is one) hates them both, giving the usual (erroneous) sense of symmetry. I would be more hesitant to accuse him of having his cake (claiming to be about contrarian liberals) while eating it too (also attacking the far left even though he believes that is a different phenomenon) if his penultimate paragraph didn't contain a truly disgusting attack on trans activists via some ridiculous conceit that it's not him doing it (which he could never do, he says, as a while cis male, poor fellow) but rather Halberstam. Cutesy swipes under the rhetorical guise of meta self-awareness is the MO for this essay. I mean, just read the last bits -- a bit too long to quote here -- from "People’s Republic of Reed College" (joking-notjoking) on to "Get used to it" (ie, cis white men using trans activists to attack other trans activists), after which he shakes his head a bit and returns to the contrarian liberal (which by no account of his or anyone else's are the trans activists an example of). Yeesh.
posted by chortly at 10:05 AM on June 14, 2018
> if his penultimate paragraph didn't contain a truly disgusting attack on trans activists via some ridiculous conceit that it's not him doing it (which he could never do, he says, as a while cis male, poor fellow) but rather Halberstam. Cutesy swipes under the rhetorical guise of meta self-awareness is the MO for this essay.
You keep going back to this point. On what basis do you claim to know what's going on inside Bérubé's head? It's a common rhetorical tactic to mimic the position of your opponents. Sure, this can be abused, leading to an excessive caricaturing of their position, but you really seem to want to project actual antipathy toward trans people on Bérubé himself here, and I'm not seeing any evidence of that.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:38 AM on June 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
You keep going back to this point. On what basis do you claim to know what's going on inside Bérubé's head? It's a common rhetorical tactic to mimic the position of your opponents. Sure, this can be abused, leading to an excessive caricaturing of their position, but you really seem to want to project actual antipathy toward trans people on Bérubé himself here, and I'm not seeing any evidence of that.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:38 AM on June 14, 2018 [3 favorites]
Also if Greenwald and FDL so constitute the far left that an attack on them is an attack on any policy position left of the 1996 DNC platform, well, so much the worse for the far left.
posted by PMdixon at 10:40 AM on June 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by PMdixon at 10:40 AM on June 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
Liberals being really mad at Glenn Greenwald definitely solidifies the 'adults in the room' image they want to cultivate that's definitely more important than shining a light on the national security state's actions.
Greenwald has backed himself into some dumb corners but I'm not sure it makes him right-wing unless you think the things he's wrong about are the most important things , which I'm not sure I do, really - or unless you think intra-left criticism in any direction is harmful to some greater shared cause, which I absolutely do not think. Going after his appearances on right-wing TV is fair enough, though.
(The Intercept as a publication is generally a lot better than Greenwald individually but I'm not sure anybody was really gunning for them in this conversation.)
posted by atoxyl at 11:14 AM on June 14, 2018
Greenwald has backed himself into some dumb corners but I'm not sure it makes him right-wing unless you think the things he's wrong about are the most important things , which I'm not sure I do, really - or unless you think intra-left criticism in any direction is harmful to some greater shared cause, which I absolutely do not think. Going after his appearances on right-wing TV is fair enough, though.
(The Intercept as a publication is generally a lot better than Greenwald individually but I'm not sure anybody was really gunning for them in this conversation.)
posted by atoxyl at 11:14 AM on June 14, 2018
One of the weird things I don't get about that paragraph is that he can't do it because he lacks lived credibility and yet he meta-does it by writing that whole paragraph. And I get there's a Socratic dialogue during going on but did Socrates ever write so untransparently; I feel like I have no idea what the piece is saying unless I read all of it from the beginning. And I don't want to.
posted by polymodus at 11:17 AM on June 14, 2018
posted by polymodus at 11:17 AM on June 14, 2018
Oh, and I meant to respond to this earlier but got sidetracked:
> Claiming that the political spectrum is quite subjective and that "leftist" is "virtually meaningless" runs contrary to most of actual political science, which finds that across a wide array of political questions, most responses fall along a single factor reaching from neo-nazism to hippy-dippy socialist purism. This factor is much more explanatory than, say, the g factor for IQ -- there really does seem to be (in this country in this era) a strong, non-subjective ideological spectrum, and when you use votes to plot Senators on it, Warren and Sanders come out on the far left, and when you use opinion surveys of almost any sort, individuals line up with similar consistency. "Far left" or "lefist" is quite meaningful, and as it is used in daily life, it's not too far off from taking the largest eigenvector of a vote or opinion data matrix.
So, the only reputable measure of this that I'm familiar with and meets your description here is Poole and Rosenthal's DW-NOMINATE, so I think it's worth pointing out that they actually track ideology on two separate dimensions, though most reporting and analysis tends to focus on just the one you seem to be referring to. From their About page:
Now, people often use the "economic" dimension as a shortcut for assessing the overall leftness/rightness of a legislator, but... hey, wait a second, isn't that precisely the issue that has been at the center of so much fighting between the different factions of the left? And doesn't the text Poole and Rosenthal use to describe that 2nd dimension contain a lot of issues that divide many Democrats who agree on basic economic principles?
To be fair, it seems like the 2nd dimension in DW-NOMINATE is more "everything but economics" rather than social justice per se (nobody's mistaking Rand Paul or John McCain for social justice warriors and they're farther "left" on that axis than Senators like Kirsten Gillibrand and Sheldon Whitehouse) but certainly, the fact that Poole and Rosenthal feel the need to isolate the economic dimension in order to create their neat "single factor" to measure ideology, and the fact that you and others seem to be interpreting that as a reasonable facsimilie of how left/right they are... Well, it certainly brings the nature of the disagreement here into sharp relief.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:22 AM on June 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
> Claiming that the political spectrum is quite subjective and that "leftist" is "virtually meaningless" runs contrary to most of actual political science, which finds that across a wide array of political questions, most responses fall along a single factor reaching from neo-nazism to hippy-dippy socialist purism. This factor is much more explanatory than, say, the g factor for IQ -- there really does seem to be (in this country in this era) a strong, non-subjective ideological spectrum, and when you use votes to plot Senators on it, Warren and Sanders come out on the far left, and when you use opinion surveys of almost any sort, individuals line up with similar consistency. "Far left" or "lefist" is quite meaningful, and as it is used in daily life, it's not too far off from taking the largest eigenvector of a vote or opinion data matrix.
So, the only reputable measure of this that I'm familiar with and meets your description here is Poole and Rosenthal's DW-NOMINATE, so I think it's worth pointing out that they actually track ideology on two separate dimensions, though most reporting and analysis tends to focus on just the one you seem to be referring to. From their About page:
In this sense, a spatial map is much like a road map--the closeness of two legislators on the map shows how similar their voting records are. Using this measure of distance, DW-NOMINATE is able to recover the "dimensions" that inform congressional voting behavior.Perhaps you're speaking about a different metric, in which case, I'd invite you to show your work, but if you're speaking of DW-NOMINATE as boiling down to "one factor" on a one-dimensional spectrum, I'm afraid you're mistaken. There are two dimensions, and when you sort by the second dimension, you get a much different ordering.
The primary dimension through most of American history has been "liberal" vs. "conservative" (also referred to as "left" vs. "right"). A second dimension picks up differences within the major political parties over slavery, currency, nativism, civil rights, and lifestyle issues during periods of American history.
Now, people often use the "economic" dimension as a shortcut for assessing the overall leftness/rightness of a legislator, but... hey, wait a second, isn't that precisely the issue that has been at the center of so much fighting between the different factions of the left? And doesn't the text Poole and Rosenthal use to describe that 2nd dimension contain a lot of issues that divide many Democrats who agree on basic economic principles?
To be fair, it seems like the 2nd dimension in DW-NOMINATE is more "everything but economics" rather than social justice per se (nobody's mistaking Rand Paul or John McCain for social justice warriors and they're farther "left" on that axis than Senators like Kirsten Gillibrand and Sheldon Whitehouse) but certainly, the fact that Poole and Rosenthal feel the need to isolate the economic dimension in order to create their neat "single factor" to measure ideology, and the fact that you and others seem to be interpreting that as a reasonable facsimilie of how left/right they are... Well, it certainly brings the nature of the disagreement here into sharp relief.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:22 AM on June 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
What does sui generis mean?
It's a kind of orange dipping sauce.
posted by flabdablet at 11:23 AM on June 14, 2018 [11 favorites]
It's a kind of orange dipping sauce.
posted by flabdablet at 11:23 AM on June 14, 2018 [11 favorites]
The Intercept as a publication burns it's sources on a regular basis when they do not fit the Greenwald agenda and should not be trusted under any cricumstances.
posted by Artw at 11:25 AM on June 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 11:25 AM on June 14, 2018 [4 favorites]
cf Reality Winner
Some intra left criticism is productive. Some is taking personal potshots at someone who will most likely never again run for elected office.
posted by PMdixon at 12:38 PM on June 14, 2018
Some intra left criticism is productive. Some is taking personal potshots at someone who will most likely never again run for elected office.
posted by PMdixon at 12:38 PM on June 14, 2018
Was that intentional? I thought it was the result of a stunning display of incompetence rather than malice?
posted by Justinian at 1:52 PM on June 14, 2018
posted by Justinian at 1:52 PM on June 14, 2018
Never trust a dude who always does exactly what a Russian agent would do, because even if they are not a Russian agent they always do what a Russian agent would do. Whether that’s incompetence or malice is irrelevant.
posted by Artw at 2:02 PM on June 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Artw at 2:02 PM on June 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
kewb: Very apposite.
--
I've said this in another thread, but it needs repeating: centrism is an outcome, not a governing position. It's the result of finding and making compromises. It's where you end up after debate and argument and attempts to find consensus. When you stake your flag in the middle, and expect the world you meet you there, you're just setting up to be dragged one direction or the other.
posted by SansPoint at 4:00 PM on June 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
--
I've said this in another thread, but it needs repeating: centrism is an outcome, not a governing position. It's the result of finding and making compromises. It's where you end up after debate and argument and attempts to find consensus. When you stake your flag in the middle, and expect the world you meet you there, you're just setting up to be dragged one direction or the other.
posted by SansPoint at 4:00 PM on June 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
The Intercept as a publication burns it's sources on a regular basis when they do not fit the Greenwald agenda and should not be trusted under any cricumstances.
On a regular basis?
Was that intentional? I thought it was the result of a stunning display of incompetence rather than malice?
Well, Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito, who were involved in the Reality Winner fiasco, maybe have burned sources more than once. I would not recommend sending your leaks to those guys, at this point. But I'm not sure their history particularly suggests anything Russia. It becomes pretty hard to know what the hell is going on.
posted by atoxyl at 4:34 PM on June 14, 2018
On a regular basis?
Was that intentional? I thought it was the result of a stunning display of incompetence rather than malice?
Well, Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito, who were involved in the Reality Winner fiasco, maybe have burned sources more than once. I would not recommend sending your leaks to those guys, at this point. But I'm not sure their history particularly suggests anything Russia. It becomes pretty hard to know what the hell is going on.
posted by atoxyl at 4:34 PM on June 14, 2018
The concern trolly is what centrists use to make their getaway after they hurl the left under the facism bus.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:55 AM on June 15, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:55 AM on June 15, 2018 [7 favorites]
Glenn Greenwald, hero of the left.
I assumed he just said something crappy on twitter. This was so much worse than I expected. Is he compromised somehow?
posted by Justinian at 12:06 PM on June 15, 2018
I assumed he just said something crappy on twitter. This was so much worse than I expected. Is he compromised somehow?
posted by Justinian at 12:06 PM on June 15, 2018
Hell, no! As that Medium article reminds us, compromise is how you get centrism, Lana! Do you want centrism?
posted by tonycpsu at 12:17 PM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by tonycpsu at 12:17 PM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
Is he compromised somehow?
People on this very site have been pointing out how skewed and "accidentally" pro-Trump his takes end up being for... over a year? Minimum?
posted by a fiendish thingy at 12:43 PM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
People on this very site have been pointing out how skewed and "accidentally" pro-Trump his takes end up being for... over a year? Minimum?
posted by a fiendish thingy at 12:43 PM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
Good collar GI Joe
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:10 PM on June 15, 2018
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:10 PM on June 15, 2018
It was pro-Russian agenda back before that, it just happened to flatter people’s sensibilities here. His biggest ever story was running PR for a spy who defected to Russia, FFS.
posted by Artw at 2:13 PM on June 15, 2018
posted by Artw at 2:13 PM on June 15, 2018
Time for some game theory folks.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:22 PM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:22 PM on June 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
The essay is saying that Trump is not sui generis, that he is an obvious continuation of trends going back to the 90s, as evidenced by the fact that the rhetoric of center-left concern trolls is substantively unchanged.
posted by PMdixon at 16:17 on June 13 [44 favorites +] [!]
What does sui generis mean?
It's a kind of orange dipping sauce.
posted by flabdablet at 11:23 on June 14 [10 favorites +] [!]
It's nothing of the kind, you ignoramus. "Sui" is from the same root as "suidae" (pigs), and "generis" is the ancestor of "general" and "generic". So to say that Trump is not sui generis is to say he's not just a generic swine.
posted by flabdablet's sock puppet at 2:39 PM on June 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by PMdixon at 16:17 on June 13 [44 favorites +] [!]
What does sui generis mean?
It's a kind of orange dipping sauce.
posted by flabdablet at 11:23 on June 14 [10 favorites +] [!]
It's nothing of the kind, you ignoramus. "Sui" is from the same root as "suidae" (pigs), and "generis" is the ancestor of "general" and "generic". So to say that Trump is not sui generis is to say he's not just a generic swine.
posted by flabdablet's sock puppet at 2:39 PM on June 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
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posted by Caduceus at 4:09 PM on June 13, 2018 [7 favorites]