Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

I've said far worse about economists. Far, far worse. And you know it.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Christiane Amanpour was my first pick. But I figured I'd be flagged for picking a journalist of potentially suspect gravitas, as her recent work has veered more into punditry.

And Ty would say I chose a woman to immunize myself from criticism.

These last two posts undo a lot of what both of you had said before. Stop showing your slips. If I can accidentally trip you into wallowing in identity politics, I've proven my point that you're both emotionally invested and biased.

I'm not condescending. I'm simply picking areas of study more serious than others. If it isn't a hard science, it's varying levels of bullshit. Sociology? Law? Economics? Journalism? These are always open to mockery, for good reason. To assert Hannah Jones isn't on par with Brinkley is laddering nerf intellects.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Some day if I should ever meet you I'll tell you a funny story about that imbecile. You know those idiots the people with power throw in traffic because they need checks and don't have a choice? Kinda like that.

His appearance there is a source of immense comedy among most of the R power structure in this state (which hates Trump, despite what the credulous NYTimes' reporters, bless the simple fucks, believe).

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

You are the one who, apropos of nothing, described yourself as "anti-most wokeism (people insisting where race is an issue it is the primary if not only significant issue, people who think 1619 holds water.)" but we are the ones wallowing in identity politics. Got it.

I'm not emotionally invested in anything here. I care so much about the 1619 Project that I haven't bothered to read it.

Will Wilkerson's "On The Defensive Prickliness of Anti-Woke Patriotism" basically has your number.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

That article is perhaps the least apt description of my thinking you could have offered. It's also a long walk in a circle. The point isn't terribly revelatory and it's adequately made in the first three paragraphs.

But I think it's terrifically funny you think I've patriotic leanings. I've only spent hours here arguing with Adder about how the status quo and hierarachies of this country are miserable and unsustainable.

You keep trying to shoehorn me into a conservative box, when the answer to what drives me is right in the sentence you've cited: "anti." You should take me at my word. I'm confessing my essential psyche when I say that if I see an idea/concept/ethos/policy become venerated, and I think it's flawed, I want to dismantle it. It's an antisocial bent, I'll readily admit. But it's not conservative. How do I know that? Because I'm also anti-conservative.

ETA: I hate groups as well. Nothing is a worse than fucking group of people agreeing on something -- giving each other atta boys, collectively embracing an idea. The herd-think that goes along with fashionable ideas is maddening. https://www.reddit.com/user/jaimiesi...of_people_who/ You get a group really high on that endorphin rush of being together and feeling like they can and should effect change and you get the kind of thing we had on January 6.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

I will only put you halfway in the conservative box.

You and I may disagree about what makes someone conservative. To me, the fundamental thing that unifies conservatives is reaction to the mainstream/left. As you keep saying in different ways, you are viscerally irritated by progressives. You understand intellectually that people on the right do many of the same things that you say irritate you about progressives, but they don't bother you. You scorn them, but you don't really care. [eta: For example, you listed yourself as "anti-wokeism" but didn't say anything about anti-racism. I have no doubt that if you were asked, you would say you are anti-racist, but clearly racism doesn't push the same buttons that "wokeism" does for you. Likewise, you were just complaining about how progressives are largely performative, but you don't complain about performative conservatives. That doesn't mean you support them. It means you just don't care about them in the same way.]

The thing that keeps you from being truly conservative is that you have this conviction -- faith, let's call it -- that there is a center and that you are a part of it. This keeps you from feeling the sort of alienation and grievance that are so integral for conservatives. As much as you inflate the importance of the progressives you complain about, you don't think they are the mainstream.

Agree that Wilkerson's piece is longer than it needs to be -- that's what happens when journalists go on Substack and no longer have editors or need to worry about driving traffic.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

The left yes, not the mainstream. The mainstream of the country is centrist. I don't think conservatives dislike centrists.

I'm viscerally irritated by people stating things that are factually dubious, or frivolous, and then using narrative technique to fraudulently assert they are facts, or science.

Because no one takes them seriously. I'm also situational. People here embrace left silliness, but not right silliness.

If I'm listening to right wing friends, it's a different conversation. I can just say, "That's untrue... Total bullshit." If they persist in saying, say, that the election was rigged, I can just laugh.

I'm anti-racist in the sense that I am against racism. I am not anti-racist as Kendri has defined that adjective.

Fish in a barrel. Most of them are absurd. But when they aren't absurd -- when they're clever and dangerous in use of narrative to overcome fact such as in the run-up to the Iraq War, the record here speaks for how much I care about them. I doubt I've ever written as bitterly as I did in regard to the Bush Administration's campaign of lies.

No. I'm all over the place. Left on this, right on that. I go issue by issue.

They aren't. Progressives are the fringe. A growing fringe, but still fringe.

That's what happens when the media becomes a self-censoring circular firing squad of scared editors and corporate lackeys cowering from Twitter mobs.

I'm still amazed Twitter has so much power. These corporate types are so clueless. They could easily break the power of Twitter by simply ignoring it. It's not even really a mob. It's a small cabal of malcontents and professional whiners. Who cares what Twitter thinks about anything?

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

You have responded individually to specific sentences but in doing it that way you have completely lost the thread of my argument and are not responding to it at all. My point was that in one fundamental respect, you are like conservatives; in another, you are not. If you care to respond to what I was saying, please try again.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

I responded to that when I noted that my criticisms are not limited to progressives. It only seems like they are limited to progressives because there are progressives here to whom I am responding.

If there were conservatives here arguing conservative points I’d find myself disagreeing with them on a number of issues as well.

Your point is that I am only irritated by one side. That is incorrect. But I find if I register annoyance with the right on this board, the only response I will get is pile-ons agreeing with me. Nothing is duller than an atta boy.

You are generally correct, that like most sane people, I cannot call myself a progressive or conservative. I’m a mix. But I prefer to ignore all such generalizing descriptions. I previously described my politics issue by issue because I believe I am, and a lot of other people are, issue by issue relativists.

ETA: It might be the blunt nature of wokeism that causes me to denigrate it. It demands fealty to a broader but inscrutable ethos. Kind of like, actually exactly like, Trumpism.

A person can like certain of Trump’s policies while having no personal affinity for the man, or for certain other policies of his that one does not like. But to be a true Trumpist, you have to be on board with almost everything for which he stands, and almost all if not all of what he does. Wokeism similarly has purity tests and a demand that its adherents ignore its flaws and avoid criticism of it. Both are broad emotional movements sweeping together numerous positions and policy prescriptions some of which are valid and some of which are batshit crazy.

GGG can argue here that 1619 has flaws but also strengths and starts a worthwhile conversation and offers a history often overlooked. That’s entirely sane. But would a truly woke person invite that criticism? I think they’d bristle at it, try to avoid it. Like Trumpers, they seek to preclude that which pokes a hole in their narrative. It’s a binary thinking that Kendri and Trump have emphasized — you’re either with us or against us. No equivocating.

That’s probably what causes me to recoil at both camps.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

I know having these straw men is comforting to you, but I'm about as woke as they come, I embrace wokeness and think it is a good thing. Yet I'm the example you use of someone who doesn't fit your bias.

One of the things I love about the left is that it is more self-critical than the rest of you. I think, actually, this conversation is a fine example of that.

But enjoy fighting the straw people.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

I only read the first few paragraphs of Wilkerson's essay, since that is what we're doing here, but he did indeed get Sebby's number.

The odd thing is that the best argument against the revered American exceptionalism is today's Republican party. There is little exceptional about it and it is not so much specifically American as generically nationalistic in a way so many right wing nationalists around the world are.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Yes, it's called "equality." Crazy talk.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

If you were just a little more woke, you'd decline to apply a label from AAVE to yourself. ;)

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Yes, I've been nothing but a champion of the notion of American exceptionalism. Patriot and institutionalist define me in total.

Mencken might've been a greater proponent of the concept of American exceptionalism than I am. I've probably set a record for use of the term "Idiocracy."