All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Tuck]

Nothing personal, I just think Libertarians nowadays are going to get more push back now than did in the past.

Personally, I was pushing back harder against libertarians maybe 5 or 6 years ago. In the current climate of gibbering pablum passing for most opinion pieces, I've never found myself more interested in reading Conor Friedersdorf. I know I'll at least get his own thoughts, and not some boilerplate nonsense.

[Tuck]

Liberterianism - An ideology so "good" it only took root in comminist/socialist terrified america. That is selfishness in its entirety and somehow expects people to act on their best nstures.

In was invented at the behest of a window salesman who didn't like FDR.



I'm serous about that, by the way.

[Jack Dracula]

Maybe that's why Trump never admits when he's wrong. If people won't accept an apology, just keep telling bigger lies. I've always wondered why the GOP does that, I guess that could be the reason.

Never apologize because it makes you look weak.
If caught in a lie, double-down because those who support you will believe whatever you tell them anyway and the people who hate you will never accept the truth and forgive you no matter what you say.

It's the sort of simplistic thinking employed by people with low emotional intelligence.

[Jack Dracula]

I mean lets be real, we as a people are all kinds of fucked.
You don't have this much hatred and violence against Mexicans and spout rhetoric to make a Nazi blush while just expecting other countries to be fine with it. There was a whole World War over people who ideologically **** the bed like this.

Just be glad it's not a blanket ban.

Not to mention Trumps response "If someone does it to us we do it to them". No, you think about the implications of why our allies are doing that and consider what's gone wrong with our society. This man has the emotional responses of a 5-year-old, which is terrifying considering he has the "nuclear football" nearby at all times.

[wjowski]

I don't understand why you're hostile to freedom? I simply believe personal liberty is sacrosanct which is why, for example, I supported same-sex marriage long before it became fashionable to do so. If you aren't hurting others the government has no right to tell you what you can and can't do or even what you should do.

[The Overlord]

Personally, I was pushing back harder against libertarians maybe 5 or 6 years ago. In the current climate of gibbering pablum passing for most opinion pieces, I've never found myself more interested in reading Conor Friedersdorf. I know I'll at least get his own thoughts, and not some boilerplate nonsense.

I just Libertarians got a pass for a while because despite supporting a very ruthless version of capitalism in hopes of supporting some idealized version of capitalism that does not exist in the real world, because they supported gay marriage back in the 2000s. But we are past that now, many Libertarians have been making deals with the devil with the GOP for decades. Frankly, why should I let their economic arguments go unchallenged just because we happen to share some social views with them? It's great that they support keeping gay marriage legal or making cannabis legal, but I do not agree with their economic views simply because of that and I think a lot of Libertarians were willing to let the social conservatives win on those issues to further their economic agenda in the past. I think the pro-business, small-government agenda they have been pushing hollowed out the middle class and gave us Trumpism. Heck, I think there is a reason why many Libertarians left to join the alt-right, that pipeline exists.

I do not have to choose to be left socially and left economically.

Not to mention Trumps response "If someone does it to us we do it to them". No, you think about the implications or why our allies are doing that and consider what's gone wrong with our society. This man has the emotional responses of a 5-year-old, which is terrifying considering he has the "nuclear football" nearby at all times.

What's he going to do, issue a travel warning to Japan due to violent anime? Issue one for Canada due to unhealthy poutine and hockey being violent?

[Tuck]

I think you're taking a narrow view of libertarians though. You're mainly talking about what seems to me to be two groups. The "liberty as a fig leaf" group and the algorithmic group who can't have a position without consulting the non-aggression principle and performing a quick syllogism in their heads.

But there are people who just have an ideal. but live in reality.

[Jack Dracula]

I just Libertarians got a pass for a while because despite supporting a very ruthless version of capitalism in hopes of supporting some idealized version of capitalism that does not exist in the real world, because they supported gay marriage back in the 2000s. But we are past that now, many Libertarians have been making deals with the devil with the GOP for decades. Frankly, why should I let their economic arguments go unchallenged just because we happen to share some social views with them? It's great that they support keeping gay marriage legal or making cannabis legal, but I do not agree with their economic views simply because of that and I think a lot of Libertarians were willing to let the social conservatives win on those issues to further their economic agenda in the past. I think the pro-business, small-government agenda they have been pushing hollowed out the middle class and gave us Trumpism. Heck, I think there is a reason why many Libertarians left to join the alt-right, that pipeline exists.

I do not have to choose to be left socially and left economically.



What's he going to do, issue a travel warning to Japan due to violent anime? Issue one for Canada due to unhealthy poutine and hockey being violent?

The argument could be made that the GOP actively co-opted the Libertarian message in the early-mid 2000's culminating in 2009 with the formation of the Tea Party. A move which allowed Libertarians who weren't comfortable with the more socially progressive aspects of the group to vote for GOP candidates.
Reminds me of when Hitler proclaimed his Nazi party as "socialist" to pull support away from actual German socialist labor groups.

[The Overlord]

I think you're taking a narrow view of libertarians though. You're mainly talking about what seems to me to be two groups. The "liberty as a fig leaf" group and the algorithmic group who can't have a position without consulting the non-aggression principle and performing a quick syllogism in their heads.

But there are people who just have an ideal. but live in reality.

I suppose I have mainly been dealing with the more hardcore ones in the past, which has just soured me on the ideology as a whole. Frankly I never thought it practical in the real world, but many Libertarians either flirting or completely flipping to the alt right.

If some prominent people are using Libertarianism for bad ends, why shouldn't the ideology be looked at critically? Look at the Koch Brothers, they claim to be Libertarians and gave a bunch money to the GOP, but that is easy for them because they are billionaires and put their bottom line above any harm the GOP has done. They have a selfish reason to be Libertarians and seem to not mind the harm the GOP has done. They are the most effective Libertarians in terms of affecting change and what have they accomplished? That's what I am talking about, the Koch brothers claim to be Libertarians, but help the authoritarian right to serve their business ends. Stuff like that makes me cynical about the whole ideology.

You may think I am not being fair, but I think Libertarianism has contributed to these problems we see.

[Tuck]

A lot of libertarians would dismiss the Kochs as "cosmotarians".

Also, the Koch fortune came from Stalin, so they can really shut the hell right up.

[The Overlord]

The argument could be made that the GOP actively co-opted the Libertarian message in the early-mid 2000's culminating in 2009 with the formation of the Tea Party. A move which allowed Libertarians who weren't comfortable with the more socially progressive aspects of the group to vote for GOP candidates.
Reminds me of when Hitler proclaimed his Nazi party as "socialist" to pull support away from actual German socialist labor groups.

It seems like Libertarian movement has allowed itself to be co-opted by big corporations and reactionaries and the Libertarians who have not sold souls are too small in number to actually matter. I think the movement holds little value if so many of its members were willing to sell their souls and those were not are too small to matter.

And the Kochs ran for the Libertarian Party back in the 80s, the Libertarians allowed this fox into the henhouse long ago.


To go back to the Hitler comparison, the Social Democrats voted against Hitler's enabling act and conservatives voted for it. The Libertarians made deals with reactionaries, seeing them as useful idiots like Von Papen did, but they empowered something they could not control like Von Papen did.

I used to give Libertarians the benefit of the doubt, but frankly, at this point I do not think I should instantly do that anymore, they choose to compromise themselves in 2009/2010 and that helped create the monster of Trumpism, if they cannot take ownership of that, everything else they present comes off as hollow to me.

[Mister Mets]

With Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris both referring to the murder of Michael Brown, it's worth noting that the Justice Department investigation cleared the officer involved. Academic John McWhorter notes the problems of the narrative in an interview with Slate, as so much of it has been debunked.

You can understand this point of view because of everything we’ve learned since Brown’s death. There are two stories of what happened the night that Michael Brown was killed: the story we heard immediately after he was gunned down and then the story we came to know months later, after a federal investigation.

At first, the details of Brown’s death were hazy. Some witnesses say he was running toward Darren Wilson when he was shot. Others said he had his hands up in surrender. It was this image of Michael Brown with his hands in the air that took hold. “Hands up, don’t shoot” was repeated by football players, news anchors, even members of Congress.

After six months of investigation, then–Attorney General Eric Holder announced they found no evidence to support the story that Brown was surrendering to police when he was killed. Witness after witness described Brown reaching for Wilson’s gun and eventually charging toward the officer. One man said he testified so Brown’s family wouldn’t think a police officer got away with murdering their son. Another witness said she would’ve fired sooner.

When you saw the Department of Justice report, did that change how you thought about what you’ve been writing about for a year at that point?

Yes. What happened in Ferguson was quite different from what we were told. No one can doubt now that Brown did not die with his hands up—he had been quite aggressive with Darren Wilson, and Darren Wilson shot him because he was afraid. Now, we can talk about Why did Darren Wilson have to shoot him to kill? That’s a whole conversation, as opposed to shooting him in the leg, but the idea that the “gentle giant” got shot with his hands up is a myth, and we’ve heard this even from the people who were watching.

I have been quite disturbed that a major element in our intelligence and punditocracy pretends that the truth about Ferguson is somehow beside the point. You can assume that there is going to be a movie about Ferguson, and I’m sure they are probably shooting it now, and in the part where Michael Brown was killed you can be sure that they’re going to go in slow motion, they’re going to start with strobe lighting, the camera angles are going to get weird. The director and the writer are going to give interviews where they say that they wanted to make it clear that the truth is unsure, that there are varying perspectives. But no, the truth is quite simple.

There are going to be people who say the way you’re talking is cold.

I’ll preface it by saying that part of the reason the Mike Brown myth sticks is because of a certain narratively compelling nature to what supposedly happened. If you’re trying to raise awareness about the relationship between black men and the cops, what happened to him is almost more educational than things that happened to other black men. It’s a very clean kind of tale. Maybe that makes it better.

One of the reasons you have so little patience for the original story about Michael Brown’s death is that you’d rather we pay attention to the Justice Department’s second investigation into policing in Ferguson.

What I find more interesting about Ferguson is what led to the mood that would make Michael Brown behave the way he did, that led the community to all circle around him at first and frankly promulgate the myth that he was killed in cold blood. The reason that there was this black animus in Ferguson was because of indefensible biased treatment over decades.

That treatment, as exposed in the report, was shocking. It revealed that the city prioritized revenue over public safety. They were floating the city budget by charging residents fines and fees. The police routinely made unconstitutional stops and arrests, and they disproportionately targeted black residents.

In a way, Mike Brown’s death was useful in that it called attention to that. I wrote about that and got more hate mail. The idea being: How dare I stir up hatred about Ferguson, again! But if we’re going to get to the heart of this issue of the cops and black men, we have to know about what had been going on in Ferguson, including the less dramatic, but more important fact, of all of these traffic stops, and fines, and nights in jail, and months and months in prison, based on this open discrimination and running a town based on a collection of all these fees from people who have enough problems already.

If you had your way, this would be the issue. But years later, you just keep hearing the same thing.

I was listening to two black men, who were transit workers. This was in 2016, after the Department of Justice report had come out. One of them was saying, “If anybody wants to say there is no more racism, well, Mike Brown. That’s it right there.” And the other one said, “Yep.” They were representative. They knew the first version of the story, and for them, there’s that legend in the community at this point. And I certainly was not going to be the one to say, “Well, actually, if you read the report … ” because that wouldn’t have helped, and they wouldn’t have wanted to hear that. It’s taken on a totemic status, and I don’t think that’s an optimal state of affairs.

What are the consequences? Why do you worry about it?

What bothers me about it is that it being untrue leaves black people who are concerned with where we are on race open to a charge of lying. There are so many cases where the facts are quite clear. And then there is a case that people will bring all the time, that there will be movies and plays about, which is based on a lie. And the lie is easy to find today with the internet.

The most prominent case of a cop murdering a black man is one where we happen not to have been told the truth. Where you can always say, “Actually, that didn’t happen.” It’s not healthy because it’s going to stand in the way of constructive debate. It’ll leave many people wondering whether we were lied to about a lot of the other cases.

If it were up to me, we would focus on the other cases. I don’t want to say “useful,” but I think Eric Garner is a much more useful case in that it’s quite clear what happened. It’s quite clear what happened with Tamir Rice. It’s quite clear what happened with Sam DuBose, with John Crawford, with all of the people we see year after year.

For the iconic case to be a lie is highly inconvenient. It makes black activism look sloppy. It makes black activism look manipulative, and I’d rather it not be that way.

[SquirrelMan]

Seal of disapproval?

[wjowski]

Seal of disapproval?

I guess the term's not as common as I thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

With Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris both referring to the murder of Michael Brown, it's worth noting that the Justice Department investigation cleared the officer involved. Academic John McWhorter notes the problems of the narrative in an interview with Slate, as so much of it has been debunked.

Yeah, the Michael Brown shooting really isn't the hill I'd pick if I were Democrats. It became clear pretty immediately that the first things we heard about that particular incident just were flatout untrue and the shooting while tragic was probably justified by what is probably an agreed upon standard (don't try to take the cops gun and charge at him). It's got a lot of traction because it was one of the first really big cases after Trayvon Martin, but yeah, pretty much all the evidence sided with the cop and nearly everything we were told (from the cop targeting him for no reason to having his hands up and surrendering) were contradicted by witnesses.