Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

I'm sure your "conservative" intellectual friends would read this story and laugh about the secular religious aspects of those who disagree that he was just doing his job. They're probably rooting for him without thinking they're the slightest bit racist.

Also, anyone who thinks people are fighting for a bigger piece of the economic pie is ignoring the fact that people are trying to hang on to a percentage of the piece that's been shrinking for decades.

Finally, haven't you gotten enough mileage out of the word, "trope." It's really enough already, isn't it?

TM

looking at the laundry list of Sebby worries, it's pretty clear he's just a suburban white boy embracing his identity politics.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

looking at the laundry list of Sebby worries, it's pretty clear he's just a suburban white boy embracing his identity politics.

My worries? I didn't list my worries.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Question.

I go to court to argue a motion this am. It was settled last night. Settling lawyer (at MY firm) didn’t tell me.

Alpha move or something else?

Em is abusing substances and focused on holding it together?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Second, the views on the right and the left regarding racism are so divergent that to hear both sides, one of which is here, is fascinating. I have exposure to a number of conservatives, a number of whom are intellectuals (including Beltway sorts, and the types you'd find a National Review gathering). (Don't say there are no conservative intellectuals. That's an idiot trope and we all know it.) The views of racism you hear about in those circles are 180 degrees different than those you'd hear here. If I said things you say here there, I'd be laughed at. I avoid saying many things I hear from those sorts here because people here would laugh at those sentiments.

It's amazing to hear how far apart people can be.

On the other side of this debate are a bunch of arguments that fasten together in various ways:

-Wokeness is just victim fetishization
-Metoo, Wokeness, Democratic Socialism's emergence are signs of a declining society, with analogues in every previously collapsed society
-Metoo, Wokeness, Environmentalism are new secular religions (I agree with this to some extent, in regard to certain people - a sentiment best articulated by Alain de Botton elsewhere)
-This is all just a play for a bigger piece of the economic pie via redistribution
-Social media is connecting disenchanted people

Pinballing between these camps can render one schizophrenic. I have a natural skeptics' inclination to everything, so I find myself arguing a lot. I tend to fall more into this camp, but when I think something sounds a bit extreme, or when I think there's more of a "religious" or "movement" type of belief in a sentiment than factual proof, I can't help trying to pick apart the proponent's argument.

It's interesting to me that none of the responses you describe from conservatives involve engaging with what people like us here are saying. All of them (except "Social media is connecting disenchanted people," which is true) avoid any engagement by assuming that some kind of false consciousness is involved and attributing other people's views to some other cause: a desire for money, "secular religion," a declining society, "victim fetishization." In other words, there's a fundamental disrespect for what other people are saying.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

It's interesting to me that none of the responses you describe from conservatives involve engaging with what people like us here are saying. All of them (except "Social media is connecting disenchanted people," which is true) avoid any engagement by assuming that some kind of false consciousness is involved and attributing other people's views to some other cause: a desire for money, "secular religion," a declining society, "victim fetishization." In other words, there's a fundamental disrespect for what other people are saying.

Psychologically, status quo bias is incredibly powerful. How many tired ideas and supposed axioms persist simply because they're old and they support the narratives of powerful institutions? (This is 70% of what's wrong with economics.)

Also, the right thinks it's unheard. It doesn't think it can be engaged or will be engaged because it thinks the media is against it, so it's cocooning. The right is very fixated on old forms of media. It embraces social media as an end run around mainstream media which it believes will not give it a fair shake. (It is not entirely wrong in all aspects of that indictment, btw.)

I personally think the right can be brought to recognize institutional racism. I think many on the right already see it. Where things degrade and engagement is frustrated is when racism gets mixed in with other items. The conversation with people on the right is hard to follow because somehow racism will lead to discussion of AOC, then Socialism, then it morphs into "everybody's complaining" which leads to buzzwords on the right like "victim fetishization." The left has many different groups with many different grievances all amplified at once. Racism gets lost in a hurricane of other complaints. And opportunists on the right seize on this and try to marginalize institutional racism, put it on a footing with trans advocacy or environmentalism, so they can downplay its significance.

Too many on the left seek to eat the elephant in one bite. Unlike the gay marriage issue, which was surgical, relentless, and highly organized, all the current grievances get wrapped up together. Makes a mess of the conversation. I think reframing all of the left's grievances by saying, "We must tackle institutional racism before all else" would be wise. The right can't and won't engage a million disparate complaints. It will seek to draw the left as eternally unhappy and impossible to satisfy. But it can't carve around a discussion of institutional racism. Even the Kochs are admitting that's a problem that needs to be addressed. (Granted, they're doing it out of self interest, but why look a gift horse in the mouth?)

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Em is abusing substances and focused on holding it together?

First rule of that club is assiduous attention to calendar. You get a lot of points there for thinking that can be easily done by even the most substance-addled brain.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You just don't count.

Yeah this is part of it.

There is legimately don’t count and trying to create the impression that I don’t count. First is a mistake, second is alpha move.

How to tell if it’s one versus the other? Em has a pretty good attention to detail.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Question.

I go to court to argue a motion this am. It was settled last night. Settling lawyer (at MY firm) didn’t tell me.

Alpha move or something else?

Once had to go to a deposition in the Hague having settled the night before so as not to tip off the joint defense group. Timing prevented me from sampling the local product is much less bad than having to argue a pointless motion.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Adder

Once had to go to a deposition in the Hague having settled the night before so as not to tip off the joint defense group. Timing prevented me from sampling the local product is much less bad than having to argue a pointless motion.

Translation: “Icky shut the fuck up about taking the 5 train an extra stop”.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Translation: “Icky shut the fuck up about taking the 5 train an extra stop”.

Not at all. I wasn't taking the deposition and was only there to observe anyway, and I got a weekend in Amsterdam out of the deal.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

Once had to go to a deposition in the Hague having settled the night before so as not to tip off the joint defense group. Timing prevented me from sampling the local product is much less bad than having to argue a pointless motion.

I'm going there for a few days in a few weeks. Never been, but I can't imagine their local product can top the higher end stuff we can now acquire domestically.

Strains with high CBD are truly amazing. You sleep like you do during a colonoscopy. I felt like I'd been to a spa.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Psychologically, status quo bias is incredibly powerful. How many tired ideas and supposed axioms persist simply because they're old and they support the narratives of powerful institutions? (This is 70% of what's wrong with economics.)

Much of what's wrong with economics is that economists have poor incentives to mark their beliefs to market, so they don't. Beliefs are rewarded for their usefulness, which is not necessarily correlated with accuracy.

Also, the right thinks it's unheard.

I just said to you that the right isn't listening. Saying it thinks it's unheard is not really responsive.

It doesn't think it can be engaged or will be engaged because it thinks the media is against it, so it's cocooning. The right is very fixated on old forms of media. It embraces social media as an end run around mainstream media which it believes will not give it a fair shake. (It is not entirely wrong in all aspects of that indictment, btw.)

Not really sure what this has to do with anything we were just discussing. You went from what the right says about racism to how the right feels aggrieved, which is evergreen and true but also, so what?

I personally think the right can be brought to recognize institutional racism. I think many on the right already see it. Where things degrade and engagement is frustrated is when racism gets mixed in with other items. The conversation with people on the right is hard to follow because somehow racism will lead to discussion of AOC, then Socialism, then it morphs into "everybody's complaining" which leads to buzzwords on the right like "victim fetishization." The left has many different groups with many different grievances all amplified at once. Racism gets lost in a hurricane of other complaints. And opportunists on the right seize on this and try to marginalize institutional racism, put it on a footing with trans advocacy or environmentalism, so they can downplay its significance.

In other words, they can understand racism but choose not to. That sounds familiar.

Too many on the left seek to eat the elephant in one bite.

I'm not sure what this means, but you so profoundly lost me with this sentence that I refused to read the paragraph that followed on general principle.

eta: Did you bring up what the right says about racism because you think there's something others might learn from it? Initially I thought that was your point, but in this point you seemed to backtrack away from suggesting there is anything interesting to be learned from the wingers other than that they feel aggrieved at being richer and more politically powerful than the rest of the country, and use that to justify selfishness. Ecclesiastes 1:9.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm going there for a few days in a few weeks. Never been, but I can't imagine their local product can top the higher end stuff we can now acquire domestically.

This was nearly a decade ago, so they likely had an advantage at the time. Also doubt that the long track record has been rendered obsolete, but I wouldn't know.

Also, I have no expertise in what can be acquired here.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm going there for a few days in a few weeks. Never been, but I can't imagine their local product can top the higher end stuff we can now acquire domestically.

Strains with high CBD are truly amazing. You sleep like you do during a colonoscopy. I felt like I'd been to a spa.

Last time I was there (pre-smart phones!) I smoked too much hash, got lost/separated from friends, and thought everyone I saw looked exactly like someone I knew. I still don't know how I found my way back to my hotel.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

Last time I was there (pre-smart phones!) I smoked too much hash, got lost/separated from friends, and thought everyone I saw looked exactly like someone I knew. I still don't know how I found my way back to my hotel.

You called your mom, and luckily Penske was there and talked you back? Or that’s what he says.