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5 Jul, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Having said Kevin Drum is wrong yesterday let me say that Matthew Yglesias is right today, making the same point - the half of the point that is right. 1/
Drum is wrong, on several levels, that Dems are 'to blame' for the culture wars. But it's true Biden may point the way in terms of not getting sucked into them. The R strategy is, literally, to lose the culture war and thereby win the political war. That's their shot. 2/
D's need to not get suckered into trying to stop R's by winning the culture war, thereby giving them their one shot. This does not mean giving ground, substantively, on policy. It means picking symbolic battles wisely. 3/
Better: it means efficient division of labor as to who fights symbolic battles. For the R's, not aiming to win majorities, it makes sense that their leader is a culture warrior madman. For the D's, aiming for 50+4, it makes sense if their Prez is non-salient like that. 4/
It seems like this approach necessarily drains energy from progressive causes. But I don't even think that's true. For the D party it makes more sense to muster 'cultural' progressive energy around the margins of the party, rather than at its Big Tent center. 5/
The ideal situation for D's is R's fight 'the squad' while Biden does what he can. For R's, this is non-ideal, very rope-a-dope. They can't get a head shot. And progressives do fine this way. Progressive issues get symbolic attention and policy goes about as well as it might. 6/

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More from @jholbo1

John Holbo Profile picture
7 Jul
Continuing this thread from yesterday, the Eric Kaufman piece from NR discussed here is a Though the Looking Glass thing of wonder and strangeness.
As Kaufman notes, even most Republican female Ivy Leaguers won't date Trumpers. Yet the common denominator of anti-Trump D and anti-Trump R attitudes is posited to be, not something about Trump, but revealed preference for 'progressive authoritarianism'? ImageImageImage
Also, we're leaving religion out of it! But then we aren't trying to avoid a Northern Ireland-type situation, are we? Also, this piece IS a social justice demand, so how coherent is it to demand, for the sake of social justice, that social justice not be a basis for demands? Image
Read 7 tweets
John Holbo Profile picture
6 Jul
Good thread. I don't have a Bloomberg subscription but, as @JeffreyASachs says, the drumbeat is familiar. One weakness of Sachs' push-back is that a 'self-selection' explanation, in many other contexts, is not regarded as exculpatory - possibly the opposite. 1/
But those are cases in which we are talking about, say, an ethnic group that can be identified stably, independently of ideas/attitudes. If what is keeping conservatives out of academia are, broadly, their ideas and attitudes 2/
then it's an open question whether the situation is fine; or, if it should be changed, whether it should be the job of academe to shift to accommodate conservative ideas, or instead conservatism bears the burden of becoming more agreeable with academic ideas and attitudes. 3/
Read 25 tweets
John Holbo Profile picture
4 Jul
Again, Kevin Drum brings the half-truth, I would say. But no time today to work that out. But think how culture shift is not culture war. It's also important to think about how some moderate positions paradoxically become very radical over time.
Consider the following evolution of attitudes.
1) Gays are horrible so we should treat them horribly.
2) Gays are medium bad so we should treat them medium bad.
3) Gays are fine yet we should be allowed to treat them a little bit bad.
There is an obvious sense in which 3) is the most moderate position, hence the one LGBTQ folks should prefer to be in, of the three. But there is also a sense in which it is the most radical, in a 'who holds the whip hand' sense. It pulls back the mask back as 1) & 2) did not.
Read 4 tweets
John Holbo Profile picture
4 Jul
Everyone knows how Michelangelo likes women: like men, with half grapefruits stuck to their chests. But the Cumaean Sibyl is unique in Western art for another 5 centuries. There are relatively few men in Western art depicted with the linebacker breadth of shoulder our Sybil has.
It's true that Mannerism presents some examples. You've got Hendrick Goltzius' Hercules, for example. But he 'solves' the problem of how to design a superhero by just adding bumps. Eh, it's an ethos.
'Hulk Smash!' tiny head atop vast acreage of ramifying trapezius, flying buttressed by quadrants of deltoids, really awaits "Heavy Metal" and only becomes normalized for the Hulk himself by the 90's. Originally the Hulk has wide shoulders but also a large head. Like Goltzius.
Read 6 tweets
John Holbo Profile picture
3 Jul
True, Texas has seceded twice to defend slavery - once from Mexico, once from the US. But not enough attention is paid to how the Alamo's defenders were illegal immigrants and their massacre due to anti-immigrant xenophobia drummed up by conservative nationalist Santa Anna. Image
Santa Anna, in office, was quite Trumpy. So this whole dynamic makes sense. (And the way Mexico kept losing and losing under Santa Anna's leadership.) Image
Dan Patrick, of all people, ought to be open to correction on this point. You would think the fact that Texas has been successfully invaded by illegal immigrants before, over the objections of bloviating, Trumpy right-wingers, would bolster his case. texasobserver.org/dan-patrick-hi… Image
Read 4 tweets
John Holbo Profile picture
2 Jul
What are the oldest narrative fiction works you would class as, generically, horror or weird or just ‘scary stories’? The first nightmare the first time someone fell asleep, yeah. I’m sure it goes all the way back. But preserved tales that aim to entertain by inspiring fear?
‘Entertain’ is not it but you get it: I’m trying to distinguish, say, religion, although obviously that’s problematic.
Ancient China is famous for being full of ghost stories. I should know more about that.
Read 4 tweets

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