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 unde…
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.
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.