It's important to criticize ideas you generally agree with, and I don't think I do it enough. So I want to thread three brief points about what I see as problems in left-liberal discourse today. Not insuperable or fatal problems, but problems nonetheless.
The first is anti-rationalism on identity issues. Sometimes, debates over unsettled empirical questions — would defunding police increase crime? why does Trump seem to be gaining votes among Latinos? — are themselves declared illegitimate or out-of-bounds.
The second, relatedly, is intellectual insularity. Socialist and conservative critics often raise genuinely sharp critiques of liberal politics — particularly relating to class, credentialism and history — that don't get the serious consideration they deserve.
And the third is demonization. I stand by my claims that the threat from "cancel culture" has been radically overblown, but its critics are correct that there's a worrying tendency to dismiss people as irredeemable for venial sins —  and to offer few options for forgiveness.
Again: I do not think these problems are devastating for the entire political project. But no movement is perfect, and self-criticism is an important and healthy part of politics.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Zack Beauchamp (zackbeauchamp@bsky.social)

Zack Beauchamp (zackbeauchamp@bsky.social) Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @zackbeauchamp

Jan 20
Spent some time this morning reading US v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 case holding birthright citizenship as a 14th Amendment right. It is *crystal clear* that the reasoning applies to children of undocumented migrants.

Short thread to follow.
The text of the 14th Amendment seems straightforward: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Seems straightforward: children born here are citizens.
The Trump argument is that the 14th Amendment contains a clause "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," which theoretically would allow for exemptions. Indeed, this clause has been applied to children of diplomats.
Read 6 tweets
Nov 20, 2024
Once, just once, I would love people who say these things to be specific about what exactly it would mean to abandon "identity politics"
Anyway, I'm all for people learning from defeat, but I feel like the introspection should focus on the *actual cause* of defeat — inflation and economic policies that contributed to it.
Put more sharply: if the big takeaways of 2024 are about messaging rather than policy failures, then Democrats are deluding themselves
Read 4 tweets
Sep 4, 2024
Hadn't gotten around to actually listening to the Tucker WWII episode but this is just a staggeringly insane take on Barbarossa Image
For guy who runs a history podcast, Darryl Cooper seems staggeringly unaware of the "Holocaust by bullets" that took place during this exact period Image
There were entire Einsatzgruppen units devoted to following the German army's advance and murdering the locals Jews. This wasn't an ad hoc thing, it was *built in to the design of the invasion* Image
Read 4 tweets
Apr 14, 2023
There's a bizarre theory gaining traction that Donald Trump was a dovish president vox.com/23677654/trump…

In just two countries, Iraq and Syria, his drone war killed three times as many civilians as the Gulf War, Kosovo intervention, and Libya wars *combined.*
Trump personally loosened rules of engagement for US airstrikes, even bragging about it publicly. The result? The number of civilian casualties per year in Afghanistan increased by 95 percent over the Bush-Obama average motherjones.com/politics/2020/…
Other things that Trump did:

-attack Syrian government targets, which Obama refused to do

-Sent a naval "armada" in North Korea's direction after threatening it with "fire and fury like the world has never seen"

-Assassinated Iran's top general
Read 4 tweets
Apr 13, 2023
About this "military is too woke" meme on the right: there's actually good evidence that more socially egalitarian militaries are better at winning wars
This book from @jaylyall_red5 looks at a large database covering 250 conventional wars, finding that "the higher an army’s inequality...the greater its rates of desertion, side-switching, casualties, and use of coercion to force soldiers to fight" press.princeton.edu/books/hardcove…
This makes a certain amount of intuitive sense. If people in your military feel oppressed by their government, they are less likely to risk their lives for it. If they feel like social equals, the country's cause is their cause too.
Read 5 tweets
Dec 19, 2022
THREAD: At year's end, 2022 has turned out a lot better than many people expected. I want to talk about two of the deep reasons why — old knowledge, hard won in the 20th century, about the fundamental nature of democracy and authoritarianism vox.com/policy-and-pol…
First, this was a year of policy failures for authoritarian governments. The war in Ukraine is the obvious example, but there were other important examples — like China's zero Covid policy — that blew up in various regime's faces.
There were many reasons specific to each country for these disasters. But there was also an overriding similarity: a failure to properly assess information, and a dogged willingness to stick to failing policies despite clear evidence that things weren't going well.
Read 12 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(