I suspect you won't find a very receptive audience for that argument here.
It's just a preference, a matter of taste. Some people don't like broccoli. I find hard SF extremely boring. Other than that forget I said anything, it's not important.
I'm sort of shocked to see someone on this site express...
I'm shocked to see the dawn of the nuclear age discussed as if it were a geeky gee-whizz science fair exhibit.
Blindsight is Lovecraftian horror updated for the 21st century
Sure, it's just that all the science wonkery prevents him from telling a story. Genre fiction leaves me cold. Mystery, SciFi, horror, romance, these are just ways of not confronting and dealing with people as they are, with the human condition as it is. Genre fiction is really then, reactionary and a kind of hysteria.
Dom
"There is an interesting neurological phenomenon called blindsight."
Also a book by Peter Watts, Pub by Tor.
"Who you do send to meet the alien
when the alien doesn't want to meet?
You send a linguist with multiple personalities carved surgically into her brain. You send
a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultra-
sound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh..."
A little too hard SF for my tastes. Could have used a bit more character development and less science wankery. For the most part I find hard SF and science in general to be very boring. People are interesting, science is not.
Allan Beatty at 199
"What is capitalism?"
Why... The Whore of Babylon astride the Great Beast of the Apocalypse of course. (somewhat largish .mov video)
Or in a word: Excess.
More seriously (just kidding around, sort of) capitalism is just a machine for extracting wealth. It's the sociopaths who run it that are the problem. Or maybe the machine selects those personality types, I don't know. It's a tool that can be used to oppress and control others. It certainly doesn't guarantee freedom, look at China, Russia, all around the world we're all capitalists now. But China is not free, neither is Russia and the US has lost many of it's freedoms and is on the verge of becoming a fascist state.
Another problem with capitalism is it doesn't take into account the true costs of goods, it can't. Does it actually deliver real good to real people? I think we are about to discover it does not. The globe is going to flip to a new climate. One where the conditions favorable for life obtain only at the poles with the rest of the planet uninhabitable. Billions will die, all arctic species will be forced off planet. Is this price worth it? Many think not.
Wesley
You seem to assume that the categories "liberals" and "workers" do not overlap.
There are liberals to be found at every socio-economic point. But by and large they are middle to upper middle class.
It sounds like you're perceiving counterarguments as both over-emotional and illogical and over-rational and too-concrete.
Both, though not in the same comment, usually.
Xopher
This would have been both more polite and more accurate
Yes, that is true. I wonder if it would really have been received any better.
Also, the qualifications make it easier for your readers (us) to believe you're not attacking THEM (us)
But if I am critiquing liberal bloggers it's going to be read as an attack or an insult no matter what I say or do. Someone posted a link to Nathan's article, I read it and said "Yeah, what he said."
Your quote above is a non-apology; it fails to accept the fact that the fault was yours. If you didn't mean to insult the Baby Boomers in this crowd, you should apologize for the way your words sounded (and no, you haven't done that; you've expressed mild regret for the way "some people" took it, which puts the blame on us).
Language is a two way street. No one is "at fault" and I can't control how my words "sound" or are interpreted. I'll try to add more qualifiers and be less conversational. But I don't like it. I like being casual and making jokes. There is a post of mine in moderation that has a joke in it. It isn't directed at anyone here. It also contains a pointed critique of the insular nature of the liberal blogosphere. It's not an attack, it's how you are perceived.
Wesley
If the people with the privilege to worry about surveillance and process rights don't advocate for them, how exactly will the people who currently--in practice, if not in theory--lack those rights ever regain them?
Good point. People think other issues are more important though. Do you know what it's like to work on the line slaughtering hogs? It chews people up. That's ok, there are always more crossing the border every day. People work ungodly hours with no safety, no healthcare, no recourse if management is abusive, no protections from hazardous materials. Because they are undocumented they can be fired at anytime on a whim, and they are. If they are injured on the job they are discarded as so much trash. They are virtually slaves and in some places outright slavery has been discovered in the US. Usually when a building burns and workers die because they are locked inside.
It's just struck me that this is similar to the rhetoric some conservatives used against John Edwards. The underlying assumption is that no one is able to care sincerely about any problem that does not directly concern them.
Then where is the concern? That was the point of Nathan Newman's article, that he could find no such concern. I'm trusting that he did look and it isn't there outside of a few legal blogs. You are misconstruing the point.
I did not even need to reference Newman in order to point to the insular nature of liberal blogs. I could have pointed to the almost complete lack of Palestinian or Iranian or Iraqi voices.
Compare and contrast
Josh Marshall and Matthew Yglesias
Henry Farrell and Dan Drezner
With
As'ad AbuKhalil here and here
Sinan Antoon on Charlie Rose
In the former it is the pose and the friendship that is important. It's social grooming, one almost expects them to pick lice out of each others fur.
Claims to objectivity become the rhetoric of narcissism.
Xopher
you accused us of not caring about anyone but ourselves, and of fearing to say anything that "smacks of socialism."
I agreed with Nathan Newman who argued that liberal bloggers as a class seemed woefully unconcerned with labor issues. I speculated why that might be, which some have found offensive and others have not.
Outside of universal healthcare, liberal bloggers are solid capitalists. America is virulently pro capitalist, anti anything that smacks of social reform. Liberals are a part of the system and to the extant they ignore worker's concerns they perpetuate a system of suppression and exploitation. A system they themselves benefit from. That's how it works and it's hardly a new observation. "We'll cut you in on part of the deal if you help to keep the workers down." The problem is that these days capital is thinking they don't need a middle class any more. Manufacturing labor has shifted to the third world and globalization means they can sell their product anywhere. They don't need you, that's why you are being eliminated.
there is nothing that needs to be said that cannot be said politely
That knife cuts both ways. I perceive myself as aggressively arguing for positions I believe in. I perceive the opposition I've received as being dominated by emotion. That many of the replies are non sequiturs, listed above, only serves to confirm my belief.
There does seem to me to be a real problem with scientism or an over reliance on concrete thought. As if there were no other. So when I used the metaphor "You can't trust a monkey with a phasor" it was taken literally to an almost ridiculous extent. I'm not sure how to deal with that.
I'm sorry you were offended by what I've said but they were not the personal attacks some have taken them to be. Nor have I responded to ad hominems most certainly directed towards me and I have not personally attacked anyone. I've used no obscenities worse than damn or hell. You don't want this to be an echo chamber do you?
Xopher
She's been spoiling for a fight since #91. She's never responded to any of the criticism/feedback she got for that post (see Bruce Cohen 93, P J Evans 94, Lori Coulson 96, Lizzy L 102, me at 104, Lance Weber at 105 (kindly encouraging her to read some of this feedback and take it to heart), and Paula Lieberman at 109),
I saw nothing of note to respond to but if you insist.
Bruce Cohen 93
1. Thank you for that dismissive generalization.
Re: boomers are over represented on the internet or there exists a Digital divide, particularly on liberal blogs. Most of the people I know are using windows 98 or 2000 on their 166mhz e-machine pentiums and connect using Netzero. What are you using? They sure as hell don't go to liberal blogs. Why the hell would a poor inner city black do that?
Re: working class in China
No, they're right here, either out out of work, working lower-paying jobs in a more expensive world, or broken on the wheel of health care.
Thanks for verifying what I said. A working class that is out of work isn't much of one. It's no secret that our manufacturing base has been profoundly eroded due to NAFTA. The vast majority of goods and services that you buy are made in the third world. I stand by my claim.
P J Evans 94
So why am I at work in Los Angeles?
My claim above is not refuted by "I have a job". It is a fallacy to argue from the particular (you have a job) to the universal (the ranks of the working class have been decimated).
Lori Coulson 96
2008 is the first year Baby Boomers have become eligible for Social Security.
My claim that boomers are "near or at retirement age" is not refuted by claiming they are at or near retirement age now. It is in fact a confirmation of what I said. Your other points are incidental to what I was saying. That is, boomers have their work history behind them and this is a reason why labor issues are of little concern to them.
Lizzy L 102
WTF are you talking about?
Again, it's a fallacy to argue from your particular circumstances and generalize them to everyone else. To date, baby boomers also have the highest median household incomes in the United States. Unsourced but I stand by my claim that boomers are doing pretty well economically.
Xopher 104
You just accused us of not caring about anyone but ourselves, and of being elites (a stupid word).
Elite is a perfectly fine word that means "A group or class of persons enjoying superior intellectual or social or economic status." Which applies to boomers generally and very much so to liberal bloggers. I agree with Nathan Newman when he said:
"I'll admit that part of my annoyance at the full court obsession with FISA is that it reflects the broader liberal blog obsessions with goo-goo process issues, as opposed to a populist focus on the core economic and social justice issues that matter in most peoples' lives."
I suggested that the reason this might be so is because members of a particular class tend to worry about issues specific to their concerns. You worry about surveillance and process rights because it is your privilege to worry about them. Something lower classes do not have and have not had for a long time.
Lance Weber at 105
I've seen people on a couple of threads now put significant effort into working with you to separate out some of the unwanted noise from the signals you are trying to send.
I don't think it's noise. I think it's important. I don't know how I change my "posting style" to be more acceptable because to me that would mean not saying what I feel needs to be said. I think things are going fairly well. This really hasn't escalated into a flame war. When I do look at the things I've said I see myself as pretty calm, engaging in a little snark now and then, but not too bad.
Paula Lieberman at 109
I was unemployed or underemployed, with no health coverage other than what I had been paying out of my own pocket
Again, arguing from one's particular circumstances does not refute the fact that, as a class, boomers have the highest median household incomes in the United States.
heresiarch
Every American knows that when the police knock on your door and ask to look around, they've got to show you a warrant. Every American knows that that warrant is their protection from the police busting down their door whenever they choose, for whatever reason they choose.
Every black American knows that this is a lie. All the police need is probable cause and this cause need only have "fair probability" that a crime is being committed. Knock-and-announce
For thoses reasons and many more every black American knows that the Hollywood and TV fed fantasies of whitebread America about how our justice system works is just that, a fantasy. The system has been gamed to disadvantage certain classes of people.
See, not so hard.
Every black American would laugh in your face.
Bruce
Such folks could be the core of a viable Democratic campaign, and it's their - our - alienation that I'm concerned with at the moment.
Forget your alienation, you have two choices. One will complete the GOP revolution and plunge America into a true fascist dictatorship. The other choice will take a step away from the abyss.
Pick one.
Politicians are not there to make you feel good about yourself. They are there to do your bidding, however neither you nor I have the kind of power and influence to buy a politician outright. Some people do, those are the people you are up against.
The problem is that we are a tiny fraction of millions. We are never going to get all the boxes on our dance card filled out. If you order pizza with a bunch of friends who can't stand anchovies, and you love anchovies, Guess what? You aren't going to get the pizza you want. You are going to have to accept "compromise pizza" and swallow your bitterness at not getting everything you want.
Well maybe, you think to yourself, I'll get my own damn pizza. Me and my hippy friends will pool our resources and get one. But you don't have enough money even when you all chip in. But it doesn't matter because the pizza shop won't deliver to your crime ridden neighborhood anyway.
Politics is the art of compromise. "Not getting all you want" is the definition of compromise. We have two choices, one advances us to our goal and the other does not. Why is it so hard to choose?
Bruce at 153
That move to apathy is where attention need to be going, and is where Obama's current campaign strategy is so damaging.
I am not so sure that is the problem. The constant carping by the media is what turns voters off. The cumulative effect of these faux outrages like the "terrorist fist jab" or "baby mamma" is it turns people away. The media knows this, that is the whole point.
I was feeling happy at the prospect of helping with an election effort that would be overall a net gain to the public well-being, as opposed to just trying to slow the rate of descent into hell again.
Newman:
"When I see so little attention to the details of corporations screwing workers among the netroots, where telecom liability in FISA becomes the only detail taken seriously about corporate power, then I do get skeptical about taking criticisms seriously of Obama as "moving right."
So concerns about FISA are a bit overblown. Your privacy rights were eviscerated long ago in the war on drugs. "Bitter" is a privilege.
The Democratic Party ...exists to promote the well-being of America.
No, The Democratic Party exists to promote the Democratic Party. A political party is simply a means to an end. Were you around when the religious right took over the GOP? I was, I remember it well. It didn't happen over night, it took time. They came in and gradually took over the party apparatus. Once in control they made party rule changes that favored them. Once they had political power they did things like redistricting that favored the party in general.
That's how it is done. There are no third parties with any power in America. That route is a path to failure. The way to go then is to motivate enough people who will then work within the party to achieve their goals. Change the rules and party structure so it favors you. If you're lucky enough to get the kind of power the GOP has enjoyed you could then do things like have instant runoff elections or other reforms that tend to favor the progressive element.
This will take about 30 years.
Arkansawyer at 89
"Nathan Newman comes at the FISA controversy from a whole different angle,"
Baby boomers are over represented on the blogs. They are near or at retirement age, have a lot of free time and so are not that interested in labor issues. Why would elites worry about the proles? Worrying about Labor also smacks of socialism, at least in America. We don't have much of a working class left anyway, our working class is in China.
I liked what Lessig said here:
His vote for the FISA compromise is thus not a vote for immunity. It is a vote that reflects the judgment that securing the amendments to FISA was more important than denying immunity to telcos. Whether you agree with that judgment or not, we should at least recognize (hysteria notwithstanding) what kind of judgment it was. The amendments to FISA were good. Getting a regime that requires the executive to obey the law is important. Whether it is more important than telco immunity is a question upon which sensible people might well differ."
I also liked what Feingold said to Rachel Maddow the other day. That after Obama is elected we start correcting things. We have to cross one of two rivers. One is a toxic cesspool, we will die trying to cross it. The other has some turds floating but it won't kill us. Once we cross it we can start cleaning it up.
Terry
your assumption that electronic records are better/more efficient isn't something I can agree with
It doesn't matter because the pressure will always be there to adopt new technologies. So... it just ain't gonna happen. Even if you were able to get the government to go back to punched cards the rest of the world would not. Surveillance and data mining allows the government to be proactive rather than reactive.
Marna
me at 205
Your reply appears to give the impression that there are no conflicts that can arise from within a society that stem from subconscious motives or desires. Is that correct?
You don't like Freud, fine. But the way to understand him is to recontextualize what he said. Wherever he said "penis" one replaces it with "power" and everything he said is true. This was the project that Lacan and other French philosophers undertook.
That is what I was going for when I "handwaved" Freud's Discontents. Just as in the person there are currents just beneath the surface. It's a dynamic system full of competing drives, the will to power, the libido etc. Constantly at war with itself. Too big of a stressor and it could potentially fall apart. I guess I should have referenced Klein's "Shock Doctrine" but I didn't think of it.
Bruce
If you advance confrontationally, expecting every encounter to be a confrontation, you will get what you predict.
I'm well aware of the script that I follow. You see there is this hole in the sidewalk. I didn't see it and I fell in. Took me awhile to climb out and I saw the next hole. But I fell in. And so it goes.
Terry
Same way we did before. Records, paperwork.
You want to go back to filing cabinets, paper forms and manila folders? That's pretty unrealistic not to mention highly inefficient and far more mistake prone.
You don't know what false positive rates are or even what the software they use is capable of. Bush is a fucker but there are people in the government who are decent and just want to catch the bad guys.
You keep saying this bill allows us to watch the watchers
Nope, never said that. I think it would be a good idea, we should do that. I don't know how.
Not the answers didn't satisfy you, they wern't answered: to quote you, "You never answered my questions. Neither have you PJ.
Because they didn't, literally. I asked Marna for a clarification. She refuses to reply. I asked PJ who it was I misunderstood. He refuses to respond.
It's like... you have really concrete thought processes... I see that in a lot of people these days... it worries me.
Avram
Do you have a point here?
Yes, I do. I feel outside of everyone and everything. All the time. Sort of like... Tuck Everlasting. No, it isn't wonderful.
Terry
I think a large part of the problem is, we have been answering your questions, and it's really frustrating that you treat us as though we haven't.
I've read the answers, I just don't think they really addressed the question. Or the question was misunderstood. Or an unimportant detail was blown out of proportion. Or people were too eager to get their diggs in. And since I am the only one defending my position I am quickly over whelmed. To me it feels like people want me to agree in order to agree. I can't do that.
Maybe I just see things differently but I'm bone headed enough not to shut up about it.
Brenda, in my experience, this kind of self-congratulatory proclamation of oneself as a person who just can't help speaking the truth correlates very strongly with being full of shit.
It correlates with trolls who are typically right wing extremists, outsiders. I'm also an outsider but I'm neither left or right or middle. The Right has a point you know. Liberals can be smug elitists. I know it's hard to believe but it's true. No social class can see itself as well as other classes can. Just ask your wife.
Greg
And what I'm left with is that pretty much half of what Balkin says about surveillance states is flat out wrong
Pot meet kettle. You don't get to make flat assertions if I don't so prove it engineer boy. And I expect footnotes.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 77 |
| 2007 | 4 |
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