1. I believe almost any accusation I hear against the NYT, because I HATE them!, and
2. I believe almost any accusation I hear against JD Vance, because he's such a total and complete phony.
I don't really disagree with your other points. I think that Griener was an unfortunate poster girl for any cause, because she did something that was really dumb, and there was a more important issue than all the identity nonsense: she was an American citizen imprisoned by a dictatorship on what amounted to a trumped up charge, whatever the technical violation. That should have been a good enough reason for the Administration to work hard for her release, and that should have been all the explanation they felt necessary to offer to anyone.
Matt Yglesias, with whom I don't always agree but I ALWAYS recommend had a great piece yesterday in Slow Boring whose title says it all, "Ask How to Solve Problems, Not Why They Happened":
I just realized you replied! And yeah, not to pile on I’m bashing the NYT too much, I was often having this thought of “wait, but this guy writes for the times..” whiplashes while listening. I guess - now that it’s the next day and I just woke up to thinking about this again - I think the essence of Brunis thesis felt somewhat …irritating to me? His point about us collectively becoming an increasingly aggrieved body public and that it is in that misguided or misappropriated grievance that we are blinded and start to shout past each other - it pares the universe of what Bruni is loosely defining to be a “gripe,” and tells us all to stop that and be more adult. Like, we all could do to listen, read a book, be better informed about the truth of the world we exist in. Ok, shrug emoji, thanks Dad. That’s fine advice, perhaps, but I struggle to imagine a world in which it lands and shakes that “student who just claimed “white nationalism must be the answer, like a robotic social justice warrior “ into recognition of the folly of their blind allegiance to a side. But it’s much more than that his tone is patronizing and both-sides-issing - those two examples - BGs advocates frustrated and screaming like radical banshees at the Times and the Biden Administration and Brunis own student who burped up a canned reply to one of his lectures in which he really hoped they could be independent thinkers, blah blah blah - the grievance in question, the primary one I could spot wasn’t these particular lefties as much as it was Brunis grievance for having to defend against their claims. They both personally implicated him, he was frustrated that these BG people weren’t more thankful about the coverage of the times to BGs plight and he was frustrated that his student drank the “white supremacy is bad” kool-aid. He has the facts and so he’s happy to prove that these people are incorrect, he does this without any regard to the universe from which such beliefs may have been formed, because he’s already decided that they are purely in it for the luxurious righteousness being aggrieved allows them to bask in. And he tempers this, tries to not be annoying by topping this with broad reassurances that he very much understands that there is historical oppression, that people have been racist, that charlatans will play on the fears people have about race, about sexuality, but it comes off as self serving, at best. Non self reflective Grievance, or misplaced grievance is his theoretical boogey man, truth and restraint his theoretical henchman in crusade against it. He is very clearly, tho very not at the same time, against us all being aggrieved and polarized, because bad grievance is, I’m not sure, unfair? Mean? Stupid? Why does Bruni believe his student was indoctrinated by the woke professorial elites and to stupid to see herself as such? When she said “white privilege was the problem,” was she expressing a grievance? Maybe she was being ironical. Maybe she had actual real life experiential reasons for the answer but was too flustered to clarify her point. And even if it was her Go-to because everything bad is white supremacy - who is aggrieved in this example? The student? Or Bruni by her lack of getting into the topic de jour with a more “open” mindset? Bruni frames it as grievance. And then in the case of what must have been a fairly small segment of a population of people who care about their sports stars and advocated for BGs release who berated the Times, who is aggrieved? I’m sure Bruni could site figures that would show that “nu-uh, we wrote 52 stories about the gay basketball lady and she had weed!” And ok, cool. I imagine him walking up to this hoards of social justice maniacs and telling them all how wrong they are about the honor of the New York Times, how dare they! How could they call it racist, homophobic, and school them on the ways in which they have no basis to feel the way they do about his fine paper, and share his sage advice about letting go of their mindless anger at nonexistent racism and homophobia. It maybe never occurred to them how unfair they are, and if their misappropriated grievance is pointed out as being the actual problem driving their worldview and making it seem like “racism is everywhere, it’s in the coffee, in the paper, they have one lens so watch out!” - im sure they’d appreciate the wisdom of this depiction of their motivations and lack of self awareness and thank him for setting them straight. Its irritating to say “im not doing this, im not equating, im not painting with a broad brush, im simply saying we all need to take the temperature down a few notches” when you’re equating, when you’re grossly assuming that you understand where all people are coming from and portend that it’s laudable and in an effort to unite people, to help them see each others humanity. The aggrieved in Brunis examples are fundamentally one dimensional and inhuman, they are robots, they are dumb or brainwashed. I can’t think of anything anyone could jump into the current universe of political debate and say that is more unhelpful and pointless than wagging a finger and telling the mob to read a book. It’s the koolaid that got drunk on its own supply of supposition and Twitter pundit groupthink and projected it onto the world, it’s sufficiently undefined so as to apply however one feels, and that makes it a useful rhetorical obfuscation to toss around when someone is mad at a group you are in some way affiliated with. As grievance is bad, complaining is counterproductive, inherently lacking in nuance and self reflection. To which I just want to say “ok dad.”
Hmm. Now considering if I should post this… yeah ok YOLO! 🙂
Omg and last point- my father, who has since passed, was drafted into the army and fought in the Vietnam war. He never talked about it, it was a dark time for him and he very much wanted to distance himself from it. One insight he did share with me tho about living in that time and about that war was that, in his view of how America understood the effort, what distinguished Vietnam from all other previous American wars was that we had television, that the brutality and the visceral destruction of the war was suddenly inescapable for most Americans who read the news or tuned into it every night, and it was because of this, because the depiction wasn’t one of valor and heroism defined solely by the military, the political powers, that this awareness brought people into the streets, made people question the political powers that told everyone that this was a war America was just to involve itself in. I took his point a bit further and apply it to the context of what is called “cancel culture run amok” or tds, because in todays information universe there is so much more information to be found, and in arming people with the resources to be heard, many more people who haven’t been heard have a voice, and that will bring people to the streets, not forever, but empowerment works its way into an equilibrium. It’s not so much that we need to wag a finger at people who portray themselves as aggrieved, it’s that we need to realize that like all wars before it, vietnam was brutal. People will have complaints, which is ok, they help us evolve. We don’t need to throw up our hands and tell others that they’re being big babies.
Yes, I replied. I always try to reply to people who really seem to want to have a constructive discussion. Sometimes other things hold me up a little. 😄
There's a lot to unpack here. I get you what mean about Bruni's attitude. I think that what it shows is how much frustration has grown for everyone over the last quarter century, and especially when it became clear that 35-45% of the voters believe outright lies, and can't be reached by facts. And the Left -- at least the democratic Left -- has its own frustrations, that since 2016 it's had to put some of its dearest policy priorities on the back burner in order to maintain a coalition with us Center and Center/Right squishes to preserve democracy and the Constitution. How much longer can a "crisis" go on before people are so fatigued that they just want it to end? If this one were a kid, she'd be in second or third grade already! Everybody has reason to be frustrated, and it's showing. And that's without even talking about the aftermath to the Hamas attack, which has caused more rifts faster in my own family in a few months than MAGA was ever able to do in nine years, and I know that we're not alone in that.
Every person is entitled to respect, but not every idea is: some ideas are stupid and wrong, and some of them are evil, and we should be willing to recognize and make those distinctions. When Bruni got the answer to a question from a student in a college classroom that “white privilege was the problem,” I can't blame him if his first thought had been along the lines of "Everybody who should have been teaching this young woman how to think, from her parents through her pastor to every teacher she ever had has let her down, and now what am I supposed to do with that?" We don't know exactly what he thought, and we don't really know how he reacted to her; we just know his reflection after the fact, as recounted to Tim. Maybe he did better. It wouldn't surprise me. But if he was caught flat-footed, that wouldn't surprise me, either. Most of us are on our last nerve these days, at least sometimes.
Yascha Mounk over at Persuasion (https://www.persuasion.community/) explains the weakness and danger of identity-based thinking better (and more charitably) than I ever could. “White privilege was the problem” only works as an explanation if you truly believe that there has been no progress toward equality, diversity, or expanded liberty for everyone AT ALL since pick-a-date. There ARE people who believe that, but in order to do it, they've had to seal themselves off from facts and history as completely as the MAGA people have in their way. To my way of thinking, they're just as wrong.
In the Greiner case, a lot of people were making fools of themselves screaming that she was being neglected for identity reasons, and after she came home, a lot of other people were making fools of themselves screaming that she got to jump the line in front of other hostages for -- identity reasons! Meanwhile, the government was working quietly to get EVERYBODY home, and I can't believe that anybody's screaming helped much. The Russians got their arms trader back, and got one more propaganda tableau of America in Disarray.
Thanks for bringing your Dad up. I'm probably not much younger than he would be, and I think that his evaluation of the war was basically correct. In fact, I think that he was generous.
I was quite conflicted about that war, because I thought that it was a just war being waged stupidly and unjustly. Your father and his buddies were let down by a government that sent them into a war without a clearly stated war aim, a strategy to win, and a plan to get out. Under those conditions it ended far too late, and should never have begun at all. And judging from Afghanistan (I don't even mention Iraq because THAT outrage should never have happened at all), we still haven't learned the lessons that we should have learned.
First, two unimportant but sensitive points:
1. I believe almost any accusation I hear against the NYT, because I HATE them!, and
2. I believe almost any accusation I hear against JD Vance, because he's such a total and complete phony.
I don't really disagree with your other points. I think that Griener was an unfortunate poster girl for any cause, because she did something that was really dumb, and there was a more important issue than all the identity nonsense: she was an American citizen imprisoned by a dictatorship on what amounted to a trumped up charge, whatever the technical violation. That should have been a good enough reason for the Administration to work hard for her release, and that should have been all the explanation they felt necessary to offer to anyone.
Matt Yglesias, with whom I don't always agree but I ALWAYS recommend had a great piece yesterday in Slow Boring whose title says it all, "Ask How to Solve Problems, Not Why They Happened":
https://www.slowboring.com/p/ask-how-to-solve-problems-not-why
It made a lot of sense to me. Nice chatting with you, too.
And illl def check out the article, Ty!
I just realized you replied! And yeah, not to pile on I’m bashing the NYT too much, I was often having this thought of “wait, but this guy writes for the times..” whiplashes while listening. I guess - now that it’s the next day and I just woke up to thinking about this again - I think the essence of Brunis thesis felt somewhat …irritating to me? His point about us collectively becoming an increasingly aggrieved body public and that it is in that misguided or misappropriated grievance that we are blinded and start to shout past each other - it pares the universe of what Bruni is loosely defining to be a “gripe,” and tells us all to stop that and be more adult. Like, we all could do to listen, read a book, be better informed about the truth of the world we exist in. Ok, shrug emoji, thanks Dad. That’s fine advice, perhaps, but I struggle to imagine a world in which it lands and shakes that “student who just claimed “white nationalism must be the answer, like a robotic social justice warrior “ into recognition of the folly of their blind allegiance to a side. But it’s much more than that his tone is patronizing and both-sides-issing - those two examples - BGs advocates frustrated and screaming like radical banshees at the Times and the Biden Administration and Brunis own student who burped up a canned reply to one of his lectures in which he really hoped they could be independent thinkers, blah blah blah - the grievance in question, the primary one I could spot wasn’t these particular lefties as much as it was Brunis grievance for having to defend against their claims. They both personally implicated him, he was frustrated that these BG people weren’t more thankful about the coverage of the times to BGs plight and he was frustrated that his student drank the “white supremacy is bad” kool-aid. He has the facts and so he’s happy to prove that these people are incorrect, he does this without any regard to the universe from which such beliefs may have been formed, because he’s already decided that they are purely in it for the luxurious righteousness being aggrieved allows them to bask in. And he tempers this, tries to not be annoying by topping this with broad reassurances that he very much understands that there is historical oppression, that people have been racist, that charlatans will play on the fears people have about race, about sexuality, but it comes off as self serving, at best. Non self reflective Grievance, or misplaced grievance is his theoretical boogey man, truth and restraint his theoretical henchman in crusade against it. He is very clearly, tho very not at the same time, against us all being aggrieved and polarized, because bad grievance is, I’m not sure, unfair? Mean? Stupid? Why does Bruni believe his student was indoctrinated by the woke professorial elites and to stupid to see herself as such? When she said “white privilege was the problem,” was she expressing a grievance? Maybe she was being ironical. Maybe she had actual real life experiential reasons for the answer but was too flustered to clarify her point. And even if it was her Go-to because everything bad is white supremacy - who is aggrieved in this example? The student? Or Bruni by her lack of getting into the topic de jour with a more “open” mindset? Bruni frames it as grievance. And then in the case of what must have been a fairly small segment of a population of people who care about their sports stars and advocated for BGs release who berated the Times, who is aggrieved? I’m sure Bruni could site figures that would show that “nu-uh, we wrote 52 stories about the gay basketball lady and she had weed!” And ok, cool. I imagine him walking up to this hoards of social justice maniacs and telling them all how wrong they are about the honor of the New York Times, how dare they! How could they call it racist, homophobic, and school them on the ways in which they have no basis to feel the way they do about his fine paper, and share his sage advice about letting go of their mindless anger at nonexistent racism and homophobia. It maybe never occurred to them how unfair they are, and if their misappropriated grievance is pointed out as being the actual problem driving their worldview and making it seem like “racism is everywhere, it’s in the coffee, in the paper, they have one lens so watch out!” - im sure they’d appreciate the wisdom of this depiction of their motivations and lack of self awareness and thank him for setting them straight. Its irritating to say “im not doing this, im not equating, im not painting with a broad brush, im simply saying we all need to take the temperature down a few notches” when you’re equating, when you’re grossly assuming that you understand where all people are coming from and portend that it’s laudable and in an effort to unite people, to help them see each others humanity. The aggrieved in Brunis examples are fundamentally one dimensional and inhuman, they are robots, they are dumb or brainwashed. I can’t think of anything anyone could jump into the current universe of political debate and say that is more unhelpful and pointless than wagging a finger and telling the mob to read a book. It’s the koolaid that got drunk on its own supply of supposition and Twitter pundit groupthink and projected it onto the world, it’s sufficiently undefined so as to apply however one feels, and that makes it a useful rhetorical obfuscation to toss around when someone is mad at a group you are in some way affiliated with. As grievance is bad, complaining is counterproductive, inherently lacking in nuance and self reflection. To which I just want to say “ok dad.”
Hmm. Now considering if I should post this… yeah ok YOLO! 🙂
Omg and last point- my father, who has since passed, was drafted into the army and fought in the Vietnam war. He never talked about it, it was a dark time for him and he very much wanted to distance himself from it. One insight he did share with me tho about living in that time and about that war was that, in his view of how America understood the effort, what distinguished Vietnam from all other previous American wars was that we had television, that the brutality and the visceral destruction of the war was suddenly inescapable for most Americans who read the news or tuned into it every night, and it was because of this, because the depiction wasn’t one of valor and heroism defined solely by the military, the political powers, that this awareness brought people into the streets, made people question the political powers that told everyone that this was a war America was just to involve itself in. I took his point a bit further and apply it to the context of what is called “cancel culture run amok” or tds, because in todays information universe there is so much more information to be found, and in arming people with the resources to be heard, many more people who haven’t been heard have a voice, and that will bring people to the streets, not forever, but empowerment works its way into an equilibrium. It’s not so much that we need to wag a finger at people who portray themselves as aggrieved, it’s that we need to realize that like all wars before it, vietnam was brutal. People will have complaints, which is ok, they help us evolve. We don’t need to throw up our hands and tell others that they’re being big babies.
Yes, I replied. I always try to reply to people who really seem to want to have a constructive discussion. Sometimes other things hold me up a little. 😄
There's a lot to unpack here. I get you what mean about Bruni's attitude. I think that what it shows is how much frustration has grown for everyone over the last quarter century, and especially when it became clear that 35-45% of the voters believe outright lies, and can't be reached by facts. And the Left -- at least the democratic Left -- has its own frustrations, that since 2016 it's had to put some of its dearest policy priorities on the back burner in order to maintain a coalition with us Center and Center/Right squishes to preserve democracy and the Constitution. How much longer can a "crisis" go on before people are so fatigued that they just want it to end? If this one were a kid, she'd be in second or third grade already! Everybody has reason to be frustrated, and it's showing. And that's without even talking about the aftermath to the Hamas attack, which has caused more rifts faster in my own family in a few months than MAGA was ever able to do in nine years, and I know that we're not alone in that.
Every person is entitled to respect, but not every idea is: some ideas are stupid and wrong, and some of them are evil, and we should be willing to recognize and make those distinctions. When Bruni got the answer to a question from a student in a college classroom that “white privilege was the problem,” I can't blame him if his first thought had been along the lines of "Everybody who should have been teaching this young woman how to think, from her parents through her pastor to every teacher she ever had has let her down, and now what am I supposed to do with that?" We don't know exactly what he thought, and we don't really know how he reacted to her; we just know his reflection after the fact, as recounted to Tim. Maybe he did better. It wouldn't surprise me. But if he was caught flat-footed, that wouldn't surprise me, either. Most of us are on our last nerve these days, at least sometimes.
Yascha Mounk over at Persuasion (https://www.persuasion.community/) explains the weakness and danger of identity-based thinking better (and more charitably) than I ever could. “White privilege was the problem” only works as an explanation if you truly believe that there has been no progress toward equality, diversity, or expanded liberty for everyone AT ALL since pick-a-date. There ARE people who believe that, but in order to do it, they've had to seal themselves off from facts and history as completely as the MAGA people have in their way. To my way of thinking, they're just as wrong.
In the Greiner case, a lot of people were making fools of themselves screaming that she was being neglected for identity reasons, and after she came home, a lot of other people were making fools of themselves screaming that she got to jump the line in front of other hostages for -- identity reasons! Meanwhile, the government was working quietly to get EVERYBODY home, and I can't believe that anybody's screaming helped much. The Russians got their arms trader back, and got one more propaganda tableau of America in Disarray.
Thanks for bringing your Dad up. I'm probably not much younger than he would be, and I think that his evaluation of the war was basically correct. In fact, I think that he was generous.
I was quite conflicted about that war, because I thought that it was a just war being waged stupidly and unjustly. Your father and his buddies were let down by a government that sent them into a war without a clearly stated war aim, a strategy to win, and a plan to get out. Under those conditions it ended far too late, and should never have begun at all. And judging from Afghanistan (I don't even mention Iraq because THAT outrage should never have happened at all), we still haven't learned the lessons that we should have learned.