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The smug style in American liberalism

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  • #16
    GVChamp,

    that's an interesting addendum. i especially like this part:

    because a great deal of the phenomenon described in this essay is a product of what I’ll call meritocratic liberalism. (I’m going to avoid the neo-word because it’s always so controversial for some reason.)
    that's how you know you've reached the quote unquote real left, when the writer starts slinging around the dread word neoliberalism...;-)

    BTW, this is not a new conversation for Democrats-- part of the old liberal resistance against the Clintonian Third Way was that it was a stalking-horse for elitism on the left. for that matter, a lot of the same themes were used against JFK's technocratic New Frontier.
    There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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    • #17
      I will admit I did not read the article....the warning on its length turned me off.

      But I do resent the way we have decided that everything and every view in politics has to have a label. On each issue I have a view. So at what point to I become a liberal? A conservative? A centrist?

      Too many labels and too much money in politics today.

      Our politicians are locked into a continual cycle of raising money for the next election and no one has time to govern.

      A pox on all their houses.
      “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
      Mark Twain

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      • #18
        Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
        I will admit I did not read the article....the warning on its length turned me off.

        But I do resent the way we have decided that everything and every view in politics has to have a label. On each issue I have a view. So at what point to I become a liberal? A conservative? A centrist?

        Too many labels and too much money in politics today.

        Our politicians are locked into a continual cycle of raising money for the next election and no one has time to govern.

        A pox on all their houses.
        It happily talked of 'liberals' views of 'conservatives' as being stupid drunken hicks and how smug that was, without ever actually stating the stupidity was false.
        Simply put, "We on the left are sometimes a bit too fabulous and we need to remember to not talk down to them too much". Très Vox.
        Last edited by Parihaka; 24 Apr 16,, 21:36.
        In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

        Leibniz

        Comment


        • #19
          It happily talked of 'liberals' views of 'conservatives' as being stupid drunken hicks and how smug that was, without ever actually stating the stupidity was false.
          eh...

          If there is a single person who exemplifies the dumbass hick in the smug imagination, it is former President George W. Bush. He's got the accent. He can't talk right. He seems stupefied by simple concepts, and his politics are all gee-whiz Texas ignorance. He is the ur-hick. He is the enemy.

          He got all the way to White House, and he's still being taken for a ride by the scheming rightwing oligarchs around him — just like those poor rubes in Kansas. If only George knew Dick Cheney wasn't acting in his own best interests!

          It is worth considering that Bush is the son of a president, a patrician born in Connecticut and educated at Andover and Harvard and Yale.

          It is worth considering that he does not come from a family known for producing poor minds.

          It is worth considering that beginning with his 1994 gubernatorial debate against Ann Richards, and at every juncture thereafter, opponents have been defeated after days of media outlets openly speculating whether George was up to the mental challenge of a one-on-one debate.

          "Throughout his short political career," ABC's Katy Textor wrote on the eve of the 2000 debates against Al Gore, "Bush has benefited from low expectations of his debating abilities. The fact that he skipped no less than three GOP primary debates, and the fact that he was reluctant to agree to the Commission on Presidential Debates proposal, has done little to contradict the impression of a candidate uncomfortable with this unavoidable fact of campaign life."

          "Done little to contradict."

          On November 6, 2000, during his final pre-election stump speech, Bush explained his history of political triumph thusly: "They misunderesimated me."

          What an idiot. American liberals made fun of him for that one for years.

          It is worth considering that he didn't misspeak.


          He did, however, deliberately cultivate the confusion. He understood the smug style. He wagered that many liberals, eager to see their opponents as intellectually deficient, would buy into the act and thereby miss the more pernicious fact of his moral deficits.

          He wagered correctly. Smug liberals said George was too stupid to get elected, too stupid to get reelected, too stupid to pass laws or appoint judges or weather a political fight. Liberals misunderestimated George W. Bush all eight years of his presidency.

          George W. Bush is not a dumbass hick. In eight years, all the sick Daily Show burns in the world did not appreciably undermine his agenda.
          ====

          Nothing is more confounding to the smug style than the fact that the average Republican is better educated and has a higher IQ than the average Democrat. That for every overpowered study finding superior liberal open-mindedness and intellect and knowledge, there is one to suggest that Republicans have the better of these qualities.

          Most damning, perhaps, to the fancy liberal self-conception: Republicans score higher in susceptibility to persuasion. They are willing to change their minds more often.

          The Republican coalition tends toward the center: educated enough, smart enough, informed enough.
          There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by astralis View Post
            eh...

            If there is a single person who exemplifies the dumbass hick in the smug imagination, it is former President George W. Bush. He's got the accent. He can't talk right. He seems stupefied by simple concepts, and his politics are all gee-whiz Texas ignorance. He is the ur-hick. He is the enemy.

            He got all the way to White House, and he's still being taken for a ride by the scheming rightwing oligarchs around him — just like those poor rubes in Kansas. If only George knew Dick Cheney wasn't acting in his own best interests!

            It is worth considering that Bush is the son of a president, a patrician born in Connecticut and educated at Andover and Harvard and Yale.

            It is worth considering that he does not come from a family known for producing poor minds.

            It is worth considering that beginning with his 1994 gubernatorial debate against Ann Richards, and at every juncture thereafter, opponents have been defeated after days of media outlets openly speculating whether George was up to the mental challenge of a one-on-one debate.

            "Throughout his short political career," ABC's Katy Textor wrote on the eve of the 2000 debates against Al Gore, "Bush has benefited from low expectations of his debating abilities. The fact that he skipped no less than three GOP primary debates, and the fact that he was reluctant to agree to the Commission on Presidential Debates proposal, has done little to contradict the impression of a candidate uncomfortable with this unavoidable fact of campaign life."

            "Done little to contradict."

            On November 6, 2000, during his final pre-election stump speech, Bush explained his history of political triumph thusly: "They misunderesimated me."

            What an idiot. American liberals made fun of him for that one for years.

            It is worth considering that he didn't misspeak.


            He did, however, deliberately cultivate the confusion. He understood the smug style. He wagered that many liberals, eager to see their opponents as intellectually deficient, would buy into the act and thereby miss the more pernicious fact of his moral deficits.

            He wagered correctly. Smug liberals said George was too stupid to get elected, too stupid to get reelected, too stupid to pass laws or appoint judges or weather a political fight. Liberals misunderestimated George W. Bush all eight years of his presidency.

            George W. Bush is not a dumbass hick. In eight years, all the sick Daily Show burns in the world did not appreciably undermine his agenda.

            Nothing is more confounding to the smug style than the fact that the average Republican is better educated and has a higher IQ than the average Democrat. That for every overpowered study finding superior liberal open-mindedness and intellect and knowledge, there is one to suggest that Republicans have the better of these qualities.

            Most damning, perhaps, to the fancy liberal self-conception: Republicans score higher in susceptibility to persuasion. They are willing to change their minds more often.

            The Republican coalition tends toward the center: educated enough, smart enough, informed enough.
            ====
            Yessss, and were I a first year varsity student I'd be impressed by these two lines within a thesis, indeed I would. However, I'm not, and the following lines from the second quote outlines his considered view

            The Democratic coalition in the 21st century is bifurcated: It has the postgraduates, but it has the disenfranchised urban poor as well, a group better defined by race and immigration status than by class. There are more Americans without high school diplomas than in possession of doctoral degrees. The math proceeds from there.
            "we actually are smarter, it's just our minority supporters are dumber".

            Smugness, well yes that is a problem, but believing your own press is a far greater one. If he wishes to examine a contemporary conservative/liberal conflict the following videos illustrate current liberal problems far more than having underestimated Bush or how to deal with Kim Davis.


            If you wish the full debate it's here, it doesn't get any better for the liberal team.

            Or perhaps an American-centric version.


            As you know I'm a fan of the US getting a healthy dose of socialism over the next few years, and the best delivery method for that is liberalism, but there's a problem. Liberalism doesn't have a smugness problem, it doesn't have a "how do we connect with the dumb people" problem either. Its real problem is that it doesn't rate intellectually. It's behind the eight-ball, and falling behind more every day. That is a problem for all of us.
            Last edited by Parihaka; 25 Apr 16,, 10:24.
            In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

            Leibniz

            Comment


            • #21
              Originally posted by astralis View Post
              GVChamp,

              that's an interesting addendum. i especially like this part:

              that's how you know you've reached the quote unquote real left, when the writer starts slinging around the dread word neoliberalism...;-)

              BTW, this is not a new conversation for Democrats-- part of the old liberal resistance against the Clintonian Third Way was that it was a stalking-horse for elitism on the left. for that matter, a lot of the same themes were used against JFK's technocratic New Frontier.
              Yeah, the actual Leftist blogger agrees with the Vox writer, with the same ultimate point. The yuppie-section of the Democrats has taken over the Party and is driving out lower class whites with its smug narcissism. What the Left blogger notes, at least, is that the Democrats are incapable of embracing real leftism because of this Yuppie/minority base. And they'll never really help the average American either.

              But what do you expect? The New Deal coalition is dead. The 60s and 70s killed it.

              I think I like the leftist blogger more, too. He seems capable of admitting he MIGHT be wrong. Vox writer? Smug yuppies tend to live in closed information bubbles. Nate Silver's take:
              https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/st...60913770283008
              Not saying I live in a bubble but I do live in a 14.8-square mile congressional district won by John Kasich, just FYI.
              Last edited by GVChamp; 25 Apr 16,, 17:15.
              "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

              Comment


              • #22
                GVChamp,

                What the Left blogger notes, at least, is that the Democrats are incapable of embracing real leftism because of this Yuppie/minority base. And they'll never really help the average American either.
                yup, this the primary disagreement between the center-left and the leftist.

                But what do you expect? The New Deal coalition is dead. The 60s and 70s killed it.
                more specifically, civil rights-- the Southern Democrats had already been in a state of rebellion since the 50s. the 60s made it complete, while Nixon actively sought after that vote. Goldwater had tiptoed around it as George Romney made it clear that getting that vote should be beneath Republicans and a betrayal of Republican values.

                Smug yuppies tend to live in closed information bubbles.
                and to be fair, the huge majority of Americans, conservative and liberal, live in closed information bubbles.

                the context of the article is a center-left guy doing the self-reflective thing, diagnosing an ill with his particular faction.

                doesn't mean that the ills don't exist elsewhere. tamping down on my own smugness...;-)...I think it's fair to say that closed information bubbles and self-deception run rather deeper on the other side, but that is beside the point here. smugness is how liberals react when the bubble threatens to be pierced, while conspiracy theory and paranoia is how conservatives respond.

                we'll see large doses of both over the next few months.
                Last edited by astralis; 28 Apr 16,, 13:49.
                There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

                Comment


                • #23
                  I think the context of this article is the broader Trump phenomenon. It's tangential, but still in the "This is why working class whites hate us" category.

                  Everyone lives in a bubble, but the Tolstoy rule applies: Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

                  Upper-class liberal rhetoric alienates the majority of white voters. They make up this electoral deficiency with minority voters, who are alienated by Conservative rhetoric. Upper-class liberals think the Conservative rhetoric is more dangerous, but really, it's the Upper-Class Bobos who have a lifestyle and rhetoric entirely at odds with most Americans and have the greater potential to create some silly modernist Utopia that won't work.
                  "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

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