An interesting conversation with Coleman Hughes, Wesley Yang, and Ross Douthat, moderated by Reihan Salam. Note: after I wrote the annotations, a friend found a transcript. But below you will find a lot of my own thoughts as well as my attempt to describe points that I thought were importnat.
At minute 2, Yang explains “successor ideology,” the term he uses for what I call the religion that persecutes heretics. He calls it a bourgeois moral revolution, that takes the view that traditional liberal values impede the achievement of social justice. It brings together many academic radical movements.
At minute 9, Douthat raises the issue of whether the end point of this ideology is fascism or reform. He says that the primary goal is to set new moral norms. “The moral is more important than the policy.” At minute 11, he suggests understanding this as post-Protestantism, thriving in institutions and among demographic groups that would have been mainline Protestantism. He says this not as a critique–calling it a religion to dismiss it–but as an observation that it meets some religious needs.
At minute 13, Hughes describes the framework he grew up with as a synthesis of liberalism and Christianity in which “your race does not matter.” He says that this is rejected by the new movement, and that race is now extremely salient, so that every black person now lives in solidarity with slaves and every white person bears the guilt of slavery. He says that “we got it right” with the older synthesis, but the new approach is dangerous in a multi-ethnic society.
At minute 17, Yang says that black college graduates are more likely to report encountering racism than lower-class blacks. He says that in a way it makes sense, because higher-status blacks encounter more whites and are more likely to in fact be made to feel like outsiders. At minute 19, he says that early affirmative action cohorts had a particularly hard time feeling that they fit in. See also my essay The shock of women and minorities on campus.
At minute 22, Yang says that in the aftermath of the Civil Rights legislation, there was a “transubstantiation” of racism into some invisible power that permeates our society.
At minute 26, Douthat raises the qeustion of why this movement erupted in the last several years. He gives as one cause the “exhaustion of meritocracy.” Meaning that people got tired of the treadmill of trying to get high SAT scores, get into the best colleges. People who did not like this treadmill now find that an anti-meritocracy movement has appeal. At minute 29, he thinks that people experience a sense of justified guilt and original sin and a sense of psychological relief when they “find” this religion.
Hughes reinforces Douthat, pointing to a “hole” shaped like original sin in the human psyche, and that the successor ideology helps to fill that hole. Also, religions take the view that material success is less important than higher values, and the successor ideology rides on that.
At minute 32, Douthat says that as a white student you are in immediate contact with the blacks that you supposedly have oppressed, so you have the opportunity to “live your values” as Salam puts it.
At minute 35, Yang points out that the Baby Boomers were the most homogenous and least foreign-born cohort in American history. The Millenials were nearly the most foreign-born and least white. Also, there is an enormous wealth gap between the Baby Boomers who “own almost everything” and the Millenials who own less than others at their age. “If you are a person of color who resents your boss, it is probably a white man.” At minute 38, he says that as a white you are relieved of being an individual villain to some extent because the whole society is racist. But at the same time, the accusation of racism against an individual is severe against the individual.
Douthat says that “structural racism” is that you can have racism without racists. But at the same time micro-aggressions make it sound personal.
At minute 41 Douthat wonders whether the left will become committed to radical redistribution of wealth based on the theory of systematic racism. He says that this is unlikely.
At minute 42, Hughes says that a better economy would not stifle the new ideology. He reiterates that higher-educated blacks are more likely to have this ideology. He says that at his middle-class home “there is not a hint of Woke” but at Columbia it is pervasive. He would “bet all of my money against” the view that fixing the economy would pacify the ideology.
At minute 45, Hughes tells a story of attending as a high school student in 2012 a “people of color conference.” They chose mostly kids of color, queer, or gay. It was an “intersectionality indoctrination camp.” He described it as a “moving, spiritual experience,” with students bonding over microaggressions and fears of coming out as gay. Along with this were theories of internalized oppression. He said that he found some of it compelling and it took him awhile to “deprogram himself.”
This story resonated with me, because I have encountered psychologically manipulative situations myself. In college, there was the National Caucus of Labor Committees, nominally a group of Marxist revolutionaries but actually a cult surrounding Lyndon LaRouche. You could see that joining this cult served a psychological need for people to have certainty and even to do away with a sense of humor. Matt Taibbi and others have noted that the Woke movement also seems to take away a sense of humor.
A few years later, I attended an introductory sales pitch for Amway. Again, there was this cult-like indoctrination in which the goal was to get you to change your life to commit wholeheartedly to a pyramid sales scheme. You could see that people who fell under the spell started to view their friends and family not as individual human beings but as either belonging or not belonging to Amway. It was like a religion in that sense.
When I was at Freddie Mac, they brought in a training firm for a session called “teambuilding” and a successor program called “visionary leadership” which also involved a lot of psychological manipulation. I remember at the end of one of the sessions Bob Van Order pointed out that I seemed to have been drawn in, and he hoped that I recovered (I believe that I did recover).
There is a pattern to these quasi-religious cults. They work on you to value what they value and find meaning where they find it. They try to convince you that your life will be on a higher plane if you sign onto their system. And it can easily work, particularly if you are separated from your usual routine and social setting.
At minute 50, Yang discusses the new feminism. Simply being in the oppressor class (male) brings automatic guilt in sexual encounters, with objective reality not mattering. Once you are accused of misconduct, the victim’s subjective experience is proof of guilt. “It’s the gender binary itself that has to be abolished.” Yang says that there is activist energy to bringing into institutions other than colleges the ability for accusations to establish guilt, without due process. He also predicts that there will be more and more explicit numerical racial quotas, even though this illegal, because quotas respond to elite opinion.
At minute 55, Hughes explains why he sees cancel culture as a problem. “There is a huge gulf between you criticizing me and you inciting a Twitter mob to get me out of my job.” He says it is analogous to lynching, in that it sets a public example to instill fear in others. Also, he says that although some people who have been canceled have been able to land on their feet, not everyone can do that.
At minute 58, Douthat brings up Donald Trump. Douthat argues that Trump has created “a lot more space for a leftwing ideology to run.” His view, which he admits gets him into arguments with other conservatives, is that Trump makes it harder for the Republicans to effectively keep leftwing moderates away from the radicals. At minute 62, Douthat says that Trump will remain a unifying force for the left even after the election. Trump will not go quietly, and the left will continue to mobilize against Trumpism. But he says that “the key question is what happens to the zones outside of DC politics.” He says that if crime goes up and the education system falters, the successor ideology may fall off.
At minute 64, Yang points out that the Chinese tradition has had the fate of young people depend on high-stakes tests for centuries, and immigrants from these traditions have consequently done well in test-based admissions situations. Now that other groups are threatened by this, suddenly there is a movement to get rid of tests for supposedly better racial balancing.
At minute 68, Yang says that Trump’s anti-immigrant views have alienated Asians, which are the largest immigrant group from recent years. Otherwise Asians might have been alienated by the left’s anti-test and affirmative action policies.
At minute 1:11, Hughes says that a new cold war against China will weaken the successor ideology. It would make America seem “relatively benign,” whereas the successor ideology holds that “America is the worst.” On a second question, he says that a student with old-fashioned liberal views needs to research professors to make certain that you take a course from someone who won’t terrify you if you don’t share the professor’s views.
At the very end, Reihan asks a killer question: where do we think that the successor ideology (what I refer to is as the religion that persecutes heretics) will be in 10 years? The consensus of the three panelists is that it will continue to accelerate for the next 10 years, and then lose its momentum at that point. Douthat says that it is “potent enough to dominate the next decade” but ultimately its internal contradictions will lead to its demise. Yang worries that an opposition that is even more dangerous might emerge. Hughes says that a Trump re-election could strengthen it, but otherwise he agrees with Douthat’s scenario.
I doubt the ten-years-of-increase scenario. I think that time has sped up. Look at how quickly the successor ideology erupted out of campuses this year. Whatever happens over the next ten years, I would bet against a gradual process.
Given what Yang said earlier, my generation may be the least receptive to the successor ideology/religion, and as we exit the stage that movement may achieve complete cultural dominance. If so, in my opinion it would be catastrophic. It would mean a victory of a strictly-enforced ideology over science and economic growth and the pursuit of excellence. Imagine something along the lines of an Atlas Shrugged outcome, but with the villains coming out on top. I speculate that in such a scenario, America will turn against Jews with as much vehemence as Hitler’s Germany. I don’t predict gas chambers, but I predict that Jews (and many others) will be better off leaving than staying in Woke America.
Another scenario, which I first mentioned years ago, is that America will vomit out of its system what is a very foreign body–an intolerant religious movement that seeks power. Perhaps the institutional breeding grounds for the religious movement will collapse quickly. I’m thinking in particular of higher education and public K-12 schools, where dysfunction has been exposed by the virus. I’m thinking of the deep blue cities, from which people seem to be fleeing.
Another scenario is civil war in 2020, particularly if the election does not yield a clear immediate winner. And in a civil war scenario I see the religious movement as having enough lust for violence to provoke a backlash without enough skill at using violence to prevail.
Arnold, thanks for your annotation and many ideas. We can continue discussing ideologies forever. We will see attempts to renew and repackage old ideas and present them as a new moral revolution. But we cannot ignore that the activists advancing today the new moral revolution are interested in grabbing power by any means –and that is why we should call them the new barbarians. Ideas and ideology are an excuse to grab power, as much power as necessary to get rid of all opposition and control the masses. A few days ago, your reference to Robin Hanson reminded us that we have norms against overt dominance and submission: these are the norms the new barbarians want to abolish.
The new barbarians were trained in college and universities and now they are taking control of professional organizations. I just read this
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-hypocritical-oath-054
(sorry gated) about the American Medical Association. It’s not only in the U.S. that the take-over is happening –here in Chile, it has been much worst since the “social outbreak” similar to the post-Floyd outbreak took place last October, before the pandemic.
You are right to argue in your last paragraph about the civil war scenario. I will not repeat what I said in a comment to a previous post.
Check out youtube-subs. If the video has captioning, you can past the link there, and it will auto-generate the transcript.
Left wing cancel culture is a real and growing problem but it is talked about on this blog as if there hasn’t long been an entrenched right wing cancel culture that is also reaching new heights daily.
For most of American history anyone who was known to be atheist, gay, or Marxist could expect to be canceled immediately from most public facing jobs, public or private. And not just in the era of McCarthyism when even the slightest innuendo would do. Firing such people has not just been regarded as permissible on the political right. It has been regarded as admirable and the ability to make such firings as an important right to be protected.
But we have never had a President who sought to cancel people and businesses as relentlessly and enthusiastically and successfully as Trump. Any Republican politician or bureaucrat who opposes him on any issue is subject to cancellation even if they are far more genuinely conservative than him. Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Jeff Sessions, Mark Sanford and a parade of Inspector Generals and advisors come to mind.
Corporate CEO’s live in fear that Trump will chop significant value from their market caps with a tweet over the slightest disagreement. Just a few among the many Trump has called on to be either fired or boycotted are: Harley Davidson, Geico, Fox News, Nike, National Review, HBO, Karl Rove, Macy’s, the NFL, Megan Kelly, Goodyear, Glenfiddich Scotch. I could go on with a much longer list but you get the idea and there will be further additions to the list soon no doubt.
Can we stop pretending that cancel culture is just a left wing problem?
“Can we stop pretending that cancel culture is just a left wing problem?”
Sure, it’s also a huge Chinese problem.
If you want to talk about companies actually quaking in their boots, that’s a close tie for the number one spot. Both of those are finishing a marathon before the right’s cancel culture has done a single lap.
There is a whole meme on Twitter with some of the most outspoken NBA team owners (e.g., Cuban), or Hollywood personalities going completely hysterical about some petty triviality, and then someone replies, “Ok, yes, what a terrible situation that person felt insulted once as a child on a playground, but, also, since you feel free to speak on topics of international concern and trash other countries like Russia, can you now say even *one* single word in about those poor people in Hong Kong or the Uighurs? Actual millions of refugees. Actual concentration camps and forced sterilizations. Maybe not even criticism, but just some expression of sympathy for their plight?”
The silence is deafening.
Now *that* is actual cancel culture.
Do you think Mark Cuban feels even 0.0000001% of that level of silencing intimidation when it comes to saying things which offend people on the American right? Of course he doesn’t, and unlike you, he is correct in that assessment, because that is the actually correct ratio of influence and importance.
That’s why you have all these videos with top leftist intellectuals complaining at length about right’s terrible cancel culture intimidating them and making them too terrified to kneel at the national anthem or say black lives matter. Oh wait, no, no one on the left cares at all. And Colin Kaepernick is making more money now with his many contracts for being a professional grievance celebrity while *not* playing sports than he could have made being a professional athlete. We all remember those blacklisted commies getting giant, glorifying billboards in the middle of major urban areas, right?
Now, you are in good company because several prominent libertarian bloggers tried to make this silly argument a while back with regard to “national solidarity symbology” in terms of the patriotic displays, the anthem, respect for the flag, the military and the founding fathers, and they mostly stopped when it just became too obvious as soon as the left crossed that Rubicon with no resistance and no one was suffering any negative personal consequences from trashing all of that. It is about three orders of magnitude safer to one’s career prospects to publicly burn an American flag or a Bible than to do so with a Koran.
Now, my impression is that no one is pretending 100%, but a 99.9% left wing problem makes any “you too” focus on the right wing both false equivalency. It is valid to criticize someone for inconsistency when they are straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel. Straining out a gut-busting camel while not bothering with a mere harmless gnat is making a reasonable judgment call.
Another way to look at it is to ask whether your argument is that “two wrongs make a right”, “the other side does it too, but is hypocritical because it thinks their cancel culture is legitimate instead of abusive”, or in the alternative, that we should all be condemning and using the law to stop everybody from calling for cancellation and from terminating people?
The way you know that the right’s cancel culture is completely negligible in comparison to the problem of the left’s cancel culture is to ask who would be ok with that hypothetical ban on cancellation. For example, I would. If the cultures were equally problematic, you would see equal numbers of people on both sides that were pro or con.
But as opposed to the “tu quoque” fantasy world, in our actual reality, most of the right would embrace such a ban enthusiastically to protect themselves, while most of the left would oppose it with gusto, and only laments the provisional need for their cancel culture until they can make their form of social excommunication the actual law of the land.
>—“Sure, it’s also a huge Chinese problem.”
I agree it’s a huge Chinese problem. Other countries have their own versions as well. The topic of the blog post and my comment was the American version of the problem.
>—“That’s why you have all these videos with top leftist intellectuals complaining at length about right’s terrible cancel culture intimidating them and making them too terrified to kneel at the national anthem or say black lives matter. Oh wait, no, no one on the left cares at all.”
Intellectuals operating within their own intellectual spheres of influence have always been much more insulated from the various cancel cultures of their opponents. It’s often a badge of honor to offend the right opponents. It’s a different matter with businesses marketing to consumers. They care much more about profit, not ideology, and are usually just trying to figure out how to offend the fewest people.
>—” It is about three orders of magnitude safer to one’s career prospects to publicly burn an American flag or a Bible than to do so with a Koran.”
So then why don’t you name for us a few of these many people who have seen their careers as public figures thrive after burning American flags and Bibles? I think I missed that.
>—“Now, my impression is that no one is pretending 100%, but a 99.9% left wing problem makes any “you too” focus on the right wing both false equivalency.”
I find both versions repellent as I made perfectly clear in the very first sentence of the comment you replied to.
It’s revealing that you did not discuss any of the many examples I cited of what you take to be the “completely negligible” .001% of the problem.
Congratulations, you have discovered that capitalism is a major force in politics. Hopefully you will discover math soon.
Mark Cuban owns a professional sports franchise in Dallas. You know, in Texas. Do you want to revise your estimate? Do you think he is an idiot? You can claim the Trumpy portion of the political environment is irrelevant all you want, but that doesn’t make it true.
The Presidency does not correlate with 0.0000001% all by himself. A full third of the electorate cannot be ignored. We have a structural constitutional lock-in of rural bias. Denying a pluralism of crazy is, well, crazy.
We always have fashions for how the social body pushes back on hierarchy, but hierarchy cannot go away, because there is no alternative, even under communist regimes. Technology has removed the feedback loop friction between the hierarchy and the people. It has made for staggering profits, and it has made for jittery nerves.
The hierarchy will figure it out sooner or later. The only question is whether fearful actors will tip things over while things get sorted out. You really should rethink things. If things do go sideways, I can guarantee it won’t be to your liking.
Trump attacking National Review is an example of “cancel culture?” When an organization does everything it can to destroy your candidacy, it’s reasonable to return fire. That’s ordinary politics.
During his first campaign Trump said that Jonah Goldberg should be “forced to resign” from National Review after criticizing him.
He also said that “Rich Lowry “should not be allowed on TV and the FCC should fine him!”
After his election, National Review toned down its criticism considerably.
Responding to criticism with criticism is ordinary politics. Responding by saying people should be fired and fined is cancel culture of the very purest form.
I guess there is no point in me telling you the obvious Greg- getting fired and fined is different from someone saying you should be fired and fined. The first is cancel culture, the second is not.
Well, culture includes words and actions, both realized and attempted Yancey.
Here’s something even more obvious though: It matters a lot whether the person trying to have you canceled is the most powerful person in the country or just some anonymous idiot on social media or at a mass protest.
When it comes to the New York Times or the Washington Post or just about any college or university, Donald Trump is far from the most powerful person. In fact, his wanting something to happen will probably make it less likely to happen there.
An analogy: the United States has the world’s most powerful military. But the U.S. government has been virtually powerless to turn Iraq or Afghanistan into what it wishes.
Yes Roger, of course being the most powerful person in the country does not make him all powerful or even the most influential in every situation. Did you really think I meant to suggest it did?
I’m sure you’re too aware to mean that, but people reading your comment might get the wrong idea and over-estimate Trump’s power. Look at all the people who thought the U.S. government could succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan because the U.S. was “the most powerful country in the world”, “the lone superpower” which had “the most powerful military in the world”.
>—-“I’m sure you’re too aware to mean that, but people reading your comment might….”
Arguing against the worst ideas of unidentified people not even in the discussion is no way to advance the discussion. I am skeptical that comment readers here need such help.
I’m not at all sure this is true. If there were Twitter mobs out there screaming for people to be fired and companies and universities had the integrity to ignore them, I wouldn’t be nearly as worried about cancel culture. Yeah, Trump says a lot of things, but I don’t really see people being cancelled because of them. It’s usually a badge of honor that Trump said something bad about you.
@Greg G, I think it is very possible to read “the most powerful person in America” and get an exaggerated picture of just what he can do.
It is impossible to take arguments seriously that dismiss Trump, what that means in terms of the electorate, and his impact on the political scene.
This is the danger .The social justice movement is only dangerous because this is the response. Under different terms it would be easy for the body politic to shed it.
Even adding Trump to the mix shouldn’t be a problem, if only we were willing to deal with it. But allowing a bowling ball like him to bash around without any bi-partisan accountability, using SJW as a prop, combined with a shaky election, well… that’s dangerous. And anyone who refuses to pull their head out of the sand is complicit.
Tom DeMeo — You seem to be saying that the social justice movement is nothing but a response to Trump. It’s a response to something, but not Trump. It really got going about 2014 or so, well before Trump was on the radar.
I should have added — in fact some say the causality goes the other way, that the election of Trump was at least in part a reaction against the stifling political correctness of the social justice movement.
MikeW
I do not think that the social justice movement emerged as a response to Trump. I agree with you in that it is closer to the other way around.
What I am arguing is that this reaction is a failure of the current generation in power. Separating into two pathetic unstable groups is the worst thing we can do.
I certainly agree with that.
“For most of American history anyone who was known to be atheist, gay, or Marxist could expect to be canceled immediately from most public facing jobs, public or private.”
Maybe, but not in most of our lifetimes. I’m an atheist in my 50s. I’ve lived in the bible belt my entire life. Sure, I’ve hidden my lack of religion many times and I’ve told white lies here and there, but I’ve done that out of politeness and to avoid uncomfortable situations — never out of fear for my safety and livelihood.
These progressives scare me. Today I’d much rather live in a traditional religious community than a woke progressive one.
I second this.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t be concerned about left wing cancel culture. I made it perfectly clear I think you SHOULD be concerned about it in my very first sentence in this thread. I am saying that it would be easier to take your opposition to it as a serious principles based opposition if you were willing to call it out on BOTH sides. Both extremes scare me.
One reason we see the far left indulging in it so enthusiastically is that they see what an effective tactic it has been for the right. The Republican Party has seen the most effective purge in its history of politicians opposing Trump on any issue even if they were much more genuine conservatives than him. Many lifelong Republicans have been also purged from the bureaucracy for failing to show loyalty to Trump over country. Republican leaning media has dramatically reduced its criticism of Trump since he started calling for firings and boycotts after almost every criticism.
As for the toleration of atheism in this country, we have made progress for sure. It wasn’t that long ago that Bush (41) said in the middle of a successful Presidential campaign that he didn’t regard atheists as patriots or even citizens. Let me know though, when anyone advocating atheism has any real shot at becoming President. I don’t doubt at all that your Bible Belt neighbors tolerate your atheism very well as long as you continue to keep it secret in “uncomfortable situations.” Cancel cultures of all types prefer being able to successfully chill speech to having to actually fire people. Trump didn’t care what Comey really believed. He cared about his ability to control his speech. If Comey had sworn loyalty and been willing to say what he was told to say he would still have his job as head of the FBI rather than being someone Trump now says should be in jail for treason.
It doesn’t seem right to me to compare the “purge” of the Republican party to cancel culture. The former is a power struggle within a political organization and the latter is injecting politics into all sorts of places where it shouldn’t even be. For example, to lose your (nonpolitical) job because of a political comment you made in your private capacity. And maybe 15 years ago at that.
>—“It doesn’t seem right to me to compare the “purge” of the Republican party to cancel culture.”
That is one form of right wing cancel culture, certainly not nearly the only one.
And AGAIN I am NOT defending left wing cancel culture. I am pointing out how much it has in common with right wing cancel culture and how strangely invisible that is to you.
The federal bureaucracy is not supposed to be “a political organization” yet it is being politicized like never before through through canceling anyone who doesn’t fall into line. Inspector Generals are not supposed to be political sycophants of the President, they are supposed to be checks on the President and anyone else found to be committing abuses. The Attorney General is supposed to be the people’s lawyer, not the President’s personal lawyer (“my Roy Cohen”). The Congress and the Courts are meant to be a check on the President’s power, not obedient instruments of it.
And remember when the Republican party used to be against government picking winners and losers in private industry? Those were the days. Today Trump tries to pick winners and losers daily, often chopping large amounts off of corporate market caps with a single impulsive tweet. You think those companies don’t care about that and that it doesn’t influence their hiring and firing and business decisions in ways they would rather not admit?
And remember when Republicans thought that actors in non-governmental roles had a near sacred liberty to hire and fire for almost any reason they chose, whether or not it involved their own political biases? Now that idea is seen in near apocalyptic terms that may or may not lead to Civil War since the other side has discovered it and invoked it.
Well, let me just say that it was never my intention to defend Trump. There’s lots to criticize about him. I think I do disagree with you about how dangerous he is. I don’t know how you could think that Congress and the courts are obedient instruments of Trump’s power. The Republican part of Congress, maybe so, but the Democrats control half of Congress — plus most of the civil service and many if not most of the courts. I was astounded that Obama could initiate DACA by executive order but the courts said that Trump couldn’t end it by executive order. WTF?
I did not say, or mean, that “Congress and the courts are obedient instruments of Trump’s power.” Those are your words.
I do claim he is trying with mixed success to make them that and using his own brand of cancel culture as his main instrument to do it.
He has had remarkable and unprecedented success in capturing the Republican portion of Congress and more mixed success in capturing the judiciary. Let’s remember though that his progress in capturing the judiciary is constantly celebrated within the party as one of his most brilliant achievements and he likes to refer to his appointments as “my judges” and is enraged whenever they don’t do exactly what he wants.
As for how dangerous he is, his Justice Department has advanced the legal theory that he cannot be even investigated for ANY crime while in office because impeachment is the only remedy for that. That would mean an impeachment conviction that occurs in advance of the investigation needed to convict.
No doubt he would be considerably more dangerous if he wasn’t so grotesquely incompetent and didn’t spend most of his time watching to see himself on TV and playing golf.
The Attorney General is supposed to be the people’s lawyer, not the President’s personal lawyer (“my Roy Cohen”). The Congress and the Courts are meant to be a check on the President’s power, not obedient instruments of it.
Historically, the Attorney General has been a political appointment by the president. Historically, he has carried out the president’s wishes. Hell, JFK’s AG was his brother.
When the president’s party controls Congress, it is often an obedient instrument of him. I don’t know of any mainstream historian who said, “Isn’t it awful how Congress passes all these bills that FDR sends it.”
Greg G — Your statement was “The Congress and the Courts are meant to be a check on the President’s power, not obedient instruments of it.” Which implies to me that you think they have become Trump’s obedient instruments. If you only meant that Trump wants them to be that, I will agree. But that seems very unlikely to happen.
Roger,
In my opinion RFK’s selection as AG was one of the worst in history and certainly not a good example of the norms that usually surround such appointments. You probably shouldn’t suggest the biggest outlier you can find is the norm.
As for FDR, he did attempt a purge of the Democratic Party opponents of his court packing plan when the was at the peak of his popularity. It failed miserably.
Mike,
>—“If you only meant that Trump wants them to be that, I will agree. But that seems very unlikely to happen.”
I am saying he is trying to make that happen and feels entitled to that result. I am not predicting the future. I lack the ability to predict the future. We select Presidents based on our understanding of what they are trying to do, not some ability to know the future results of those efforts.
Greg G — I’m not sure RFK as AG was as much of an outlier as you say. Eric Holder actually referred to himself as Obama’s wingman.
@ Greg G, In all my American history and law school courses, I never heard of a “norm” of the Justice Department being apolitical. Quite the opposite. John Mitchell and Ed Meese were not considered outliers in the least. I only began to hear about this supposed norm during Bush II when Bush’s AGs were trying to exert control over the permanent employees (“Political appointees come and go but we are forever.”)
>—-“In all my American history and law school courses, I never heard of a “norm” of the Justice Department being apolitical. Quite the opposite. John Mitchell and Ed Meese were not considered outliers in the least. ”
You should have studied harder. Mitchel went to prison and was disbarred for his crimes. Meese resigned as soon as the independent counsel report on his misconduct was made public.
The Trump administration has advanced the legal theory that a sitting president cannot even be investigated for any crime while in office. And it has supported dropping charges against a Presidential crony after he had already pled guilty. Both of those things are completely unprecedented.
@Greg G, The *appointment* of Mitchell and Meese were not considered outside any norm. They were expected to be political. They were not expected to actually break laws. That was outside the norm (though various illegal wiretaping and surveillance seemed to be accepted as long as nobody found out).
>—“The *appointment* of Mitchell and Meese were not considered outside any norm. They were expected to be political. They were not expected to actually break laws.”
Yes, of course. You are quite right that their appointments were not the problem.
Their behavior in office was the problem. And that behavior was in the service of the political goals of those Presidents. Mitchell was in the middle of the Watergate scandal and Meese had already been badly tarnished by the Iran-Contra Scandal by the end. These might be the two MOST famous AG’s in history for getting caught up in POLITICAL scandals. To cite them as typical of the norm on that is preposterous.
Of course it is expected the President will choose someone politically compatible. But in all previous Presidencies of both parties there was much more of a norm that he was choosing the AG to be the people’s attorney, not the President’s attorney. That’s why those AG’s had to resign when it became clear they had violated that norm.
Trump doesn’t even care about appearances on this anymore if he ever did. All prior Presidents certainly cared about that at least. There is a weird strength he gets from not being able to feel shame. Like some bizarre superpower.
So it’s all Trump’s fault. Great.
Perfect illustration of Yoram Hazoney’s dance of liberalism and Marxism:
the conflict between liberalism and its Marxist critics is one between a dominant class or group wishing to conserve its traditions (liberals), and a revolutionary group (Marxists) combining criticial reasoning with a willingness to jettison all inherited constraints to overthrow these traditions. But while Marxists know very well that their aim is to destroy the intellectual and cultural traditions that are holding liberalism in place, their liberal opponents for the most part refuse to engage in the kind of conservatism that would be needed to defend their traditions and strengthen them. Indeed, liberals frequently disparage tradition, telling their children and students that all they need is to reason freely and “draw your own conclusions.”
https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/
Yang, Hughes, and Douthat are all along for the successor ideology ride. Willing to make money off it with their gentle, unthreatening chiding but offering absolutely nothing to obstruct it and offering no alternative direction. “Close your eyes and think of England “ is the real message here.
Yang, of Korean descent, attacks Trump’s immigration reform agenda. One wonders how well people respond to open borders
in Korea. It must be nice to have a mono-ethnic homeland that one can retreat. When will Korea have its first Afro-Korean President?
Hughes never seems to make much of the Puerto Rican half of his heritage. Why hasn’t Puerto Rico had a Black governor? And is Wanda Vázquez a natural blonde?
Douthat seems pretty comfortable. I can guarantee that you won’t see him lifting a finger in a civil war.
The bottom line is that the USA is too big to be sustainable. Federalism having withered into insignificance, perhaps rather than a civil war, people should begin to consider pulling the plug on the Union and let the states find their own way in a true laboratory of democracy.
At minute 26, Douthat raises the qeustion of why this movement erupted in the last several years.
2020 is 56 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but “the gap” between black and white achievement hasn’t narrowed much at all. Good people are bothered by this. People who lived through the time (white and black) have seen their high hopes dashed. There are only three possible explanations for the continuing wide gap:
1) genetic differences;
2) differences in upbringing, culture, environment;
3) white people’s bad actions, blatantly in the past and now in the form of “white privilege”.
It seems very mean to even think about 1). 2) can often be characterized as “blaming the victim” and that again seems mean.
So 3) it must be. “Wokeness” is not some silly fad. It’s the result of deep-down disappointment, and the feeling that any other explanations are just mean, not the way good, nice people think.
Bingo. Hardly any whites I know feel hatred toward black people, but many feel profound disappointment.
Several Asians I know feel active contempt, but that’s another issue.
For those that still are confused about what “cancel culture” means, I suggest reading Paul Berman’s long explanation in The Tablet. He reviews relevant U.S. historical episodes to separate liberalism from the radical left and concludes with this paragraph
“For what is liberalism, finally? It is not a political party, and not a faction. Liberalism is a temper of mind, a set of ideas, perhaps a sense of tradition. And yet, sometimes liberalism does pull itself together to become a force, if only in the shape of informal little committees that mobilize for the purpose of recognizing that a first principle does exist. This is the principle of independent and creative thought, which ought to be the vocation of writers and scholars and artists, and in some degree ought to be within reach of everyone in a democratic society. It is a principle that can prosper only in the healthy zones of social and political freedom—a principle that, in our own day, is not even remotely at death’s door, as it was in 1939, knock on wood, but is, even so, under a pressure, however modest the pressure may appear to be. And pressure requires resistance.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/liberalism-harpers-letter-dewey
Why don’t competitors to woke colleges crop up?
“Learning. Dorm life. Dinner with a professor, every month. No politics, no varsity sports. Tons of club sports and fitness, fun arts/dance/cookouts. Administrator Refund (which means we give you back $5,000 cash per year for the associate dean jobs we enumerate and then never hire). Each term: 3 in-person classes of 15 students + 2 online Moocs from EdX.”
Or whatever. Probably that’s the wrong pitch.
But why don’t colleges spring up to offer “No wokeness”?
I think there’s a good chance that wokeness is very beneficial, and maybe essential to many college’s operating income.
Conservatives like to bemoan what’s happening on college campuses, but I have never seen anyone offer a clear analysis on what incentives universities actually have to curtail it.
My general feeling is that it’s financially useful to have an overabundance of wokeness, even if it occasionally makes for bad press.
The disciplines that are most likely to traffic in wokeness have less stringent admissions criteria and lower operating costs than the non-woke ones. My feeling is that the ability to participate in woke social rituals is an act of consumption for many of those doing it. Highly woke students might otherwise be less discerning about the value they receive for their tuition dollars, making them more profitable customers.
I can’t find the name of the school, but I was reading an article about a university that was going to shut down permanently in the fall due to Covid, and was shocked when I read their official literature. About 30% of it advertised their educational experience as a chance to engage in civically minded social protest with others. They even mentioned that they’d overlook anything on your police record if it was acquired in the pursuit of social justice.
This was a non-elite, smaller private school, so I’m guessing their finances were already in turbulent waters, and advertising their experience as a 45k/year woke-indoctrinating mental health spa was the only bullet they had in their holster to keep tuition dollars up.
How many universities are in the same position?
On the margin, how many universities bend in this direction in order to ensure their own financial well being?
I’d guess the answer is quite a few.
I think their target market is 1)people who believe that “college” is what they should do next, 2)don’t actually have any significant intellectual or professional interests, 3)are cost insensitive, because they have no idea how crippling their student debts will be, and 4)find the idea of rebelling against the machine extremely appealing, because they don’t understand that the primary purpose of the machine is to provide the necessities for everyone and that is actually very difficult.
Too expensive.
So if I’m convinced that the “successor ideology” is an issue what can a non-intellectual do about it. What organizations should we donate to? Or what political change should we affect?
Supporting politicians willing to defund the universities might be a good first step. Alaska governor Mike Dunleavy took a run at it even before the virus and deserves higher status for it. Many other governors are looking at cutting higher education funding to deal with virus budget shortfalls. They should be encouraged. Every dollar cut from education yields positive social returns.
Let’s limit that to humanities departments, please, with maybe a few others. I’d very much prefer that the future had well-trained doctors and engineers.
Schools of medicine and engineering will get by fine without any public subsidies. Doctors and engineers will earn good incomes with their credentials, and thus promising students will be willing and able to borrow against that expected income, in order to pay the schools to get those credentials.
All the other schools will go out of business. If they were anything like they were 60 years ago, that would be a terrible tragedy. As they are today, good riddance.
Med school admissions are heavily race based and the screening assures a progressive preponderance of med students. Hence hospitalized patients in the USA die much at a higher rate than in most other wealthy countries. And NFAP reports a majority of STEM students in the USA are foreigners. Not sure why the USA should be subsidizing engineering education for foreign interests.
But Senator Mike Lee apparently has something in mind for September so perhaps he will offer a way to strike the right balance.
http://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/The-Importance-of-International-Students.NFAP-Policy-Brief.October-20171.pdf
“At minute 26, Douthat raises the question of why this movement erupted in the last several years. He gives as one cause the “exhaustion of meritocracy.””
Nope. This is Bret Weinstein “opportunity hoarding” redux. We can’t talk about real reasons, so non-progressive intellectuals desperately try to bootstrap a consensus around the latest fake reason, hoping the force of that consensus will establish the social acceptability and credibility of the ‘argument’ that progressives won’t crush immediately because it sounds like it’s also blaming white people, which seems fine to them.
To see how silly this is, ask, if these nasty white people are getting exhausted will all that extra competition, the answer is for them to go all-in for wokeness which … then demands more spots in every prestigious institution for non-white people, raising the level of Malthusian competition for them even higher. For one thing, it just introduces an alternative axis and endless escalation-treadmill for Malthusian signalling, and one that will be just as difficult to win. And there is no way to out-woke all the other applicants with essay and extra-curricular signalling to get so much of an edge that one can overcome the demographic disadvantage one is claiming to demand.
So the explanation makes no sense. Sense is unacceptable heresy. Sense has been cancelled.
This “bogus alternative acceptable narrative treadmill” is similar to the ‘euphemism treadmill’. A term becomes associated with a negative connotation that accurately reflects a negative reality, so a new term is invented which feels fresh for a while, but inevitably becomes associated with the same negative reality, so time for a new euphemism. Right-wing explanations that pass progressive filters – because they are false – last about as long.
To the extent meritocracy is exhausting, it was exhausting in 1990, 2005, and 2020. If you ngram (for book, or storywrangling for twitter) ‘meritocracy’, it has risen steadily for about 30 years. But The Great Awokening took off suddenly with Obama’s second term and was racism, racism, racism, and also a dash of all the other-isms.
It’s plausible that meritocracy has been gradually getting more ‘exhausting’ over the last two generations. It’s not plausible that suddenly in 2012 the Washington post would *quadruple* it’s frequency of use of woke words in just three years because of it.
Meritocracy-exhaustion and opportunity-hoarding have nothing to do with it.
So what is the real reason then, if not the meritocracy exhaustion? I agree with you that it indeed is fake explanation, but I want to hear what you think the problem really is.
I suggest one possibility at August 23, 2020 at 12:15 pm above.
Micro-aggressions are personal, but trivial. The micro-aggressor (usually but not always a white straight cis-male) is made to feel guilty, but the guilt for his little offense packs less punch than SJWs would like. Systemic racism is (or would be, if it existed) a big, important deal, but it reflects on the system, not on a particular individual. The game is to slide silently from one to the other, so that the micro-aggressor can be made to feel guilt for systemic racism.
‘Microaggressions’ and all the rest are all about *deference*. There was already a word in English for this, which is ‘slight’, which is why it both means “an act which treats someone as if they were insignificant”, and also “small, unimportant, petty”. That is, treating someone as if they were nothing special, which is intolerable and infuriating when that is not in accordance, and in proportion, to their *relative* status over you.
This is much easier to understand if one has any familiarity, either directly or via recorded history and literature, with cultures that have strong and explicit systems of social status, rank, and hierarchy, and rigorously reinforce the strict etiquette and protocols of courtesy and submissive respect when interacting with a different rank.
This is completely anthropologically instinctive and natural, whereas the notion of a culture of ‘equal dignity’ is an unnatural uphill battle and must be acculturated and bolstered by strong, healthy institutions. In those cultures, reputation is everything, and those of higher rank are hypersensitive to even a hint of anything less that complete submission and deference. Even fairly trivial slights or indications of sarcasm were swiftly and harshly punished. There was the lash for lower-classed individuals for such displays of disrespect, and if one’s critic was a peer then it was considered appropriate to resort to personal, physical violence.
This isn’t just Hamilton-Burr type gentlemen-tier duels. Consider what happens if you ‘dis’ someone in an urban drug gang situation. Or if you insult a mafia don. In Afghanistan, if you would like to live long, best to keep your mouth shut to everyone about everything. Sometimes someone is out to get you, and unprovoked aggression is considered taboo, so they will ‘bait’ you with escalating humiliations until you either swallow the humiliation and they feel better about themselves, or respond with ‘fighting words’, rising to a level that society considers justification for violent response.
Everyone has a “Social Calculus Module” which is constantly comparing the way they are treated for the way they are *supposed* to be treated, given the cultural cues about the social status differential between themselves and their counter-party. When someone is not being treated with what they calculate to be the appropriate level of cautious, submissive deference, that creates a feeling of status-insecurity and generates intense feelings of genuine outrage and offense.
An example of deference is when one’s counterparty instantly yields in the event of any argument or dispute. If that other person isn’t savvy enough to understand who it is they are talking to (i.e., the fact that the person is above them in status), and simply engages with them on the same terms as if they were social equals, that creates powerful, volcanic emotions of sincere rage and personal offense.
As Hume said, reason is slave to the passions. So there is also a thriving market demand for intellectuals to create bogus rationalizations and justifications for the ‘legitimacy’ of these feelings because yadda yadda yadda. We can’t say ‘slight’ anymore, because that is no longer the narrative of legitimation and sanctification. So instead we needed a new word which fits into the whole scheme of identity-based grievances founded in bigotry. Oppression and aggression fit the bill, but they were already associated with the serious stuff, and the impulse was not to water down and debase these words by lumping in completely trivial personal encounters with things like genocide. So ‘microaggression’ was invented to satisfy the demand.
the notion of a culture of ‘equal dignity’ is an unnatural uphill battle and must be acculturated and bolstered by strong, healthy institutions.
I don’t know that this is true. For most of humanity’s existence, we seem to have lived in relatively small (<150), relatively equal societies. Sure, there were people who got more respect because they could make better spear points or tell better stories or organize a hunting party better but there were no "strong and explicit systems of social status, rank, and hierarchy".
My grandfathers had to deal with macroagressions like Pearl Harbor. Any day the aggressions are micro is a pretty good day.
I like how Salam’s prompt explicitly mentions the Floyd incident and policing and then the speakers and Kling never mention policing again despite it being what the BLM movement is about and it being the catalyst to every major escalation in protest over the past several years.
2 + 2 = 5
“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.”
https://youtu.be/FFhZa6guU40