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
Hadn't gotten around to actually listening to the Tucker WWII episode but this is just a staggeringly insane take on Barbarossa
For guy who runs a history podcast, Darryl Cooper seems staggeringly unaware of the "Holocaust by bullets" that took place during this exact period
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*
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"
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.
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.
One impression I get, reading today’s reactionary thinkers, is that their politics are driven by aesthetics. When they fail against “blue-hair people,” it’s not just a stand-in archetype for political enemies. They actually think the youth aesthetic is ugly, degrading, and evil.
I know I’m just updating Benjamin here, you don’t need to tell me in the comments
In illiberal thought, there's a sense you're entitled to society literally looking the way you want. If people physically present in ways you find unpleasant, the state can and should work to change that.
I'm a liberal, in part, because I find this not only wrong but repulsive.
Orbán's speech has, so far, mostly consisted of ripping into Democrats in pure partisan terms. "They hate me and slander my country, the same way they hate and slander you," he tells the CPAC crowd.
Orbán: “A Christian politician cannot be racist.”
Orbán, two weeks ago:
Orbán: “The horrors of Nazism and Communism happened because some Western states in Continental Europe abandoned our Christian values. And today’s progressives are planning to do the same: they want to give up on Christian values and create a new world, a post-Western World.”