Glenn Loury and others on Deracialization; Matt Yglesias on Progressives and Preservation; Matt Goodwin on left divides; Martin Gurri on right incoherence
The 1970 book "The Omni-Americans", by Albert Murray, is still underrated. Murray was a black intellectual, whose thoughts ranged inside, outside and around the racial orthodoxies of his time. He wrote quite a bit and sometimes veered off into the zany. But "The Omni-Americans" is his most solid work. In it, he argues that slaves were effectively stripped of African culture by the second generation, and that whatever African-American culture emerged after that was 100 percent American, untainted the nostalgia for European culture that persisted in American whites. So if you wanted to study a pure reference sample of America, you should look to American blacks first. He points to the enduring disproportionate influence of black culture on American entertainment, sports, and clothing fads.
Mainstream conservatives can't state what they actually want because it's taboo.
So they come up with convoluted explanation to try to backdoor their way into what they actually want. And observers who either don't understand this or profit from not understanding it point and go "that's weird and incoherent".
I've also come to realize that the only hope for productive conservative politics is at the state level. Red State America really is just run better, and continues to rack of new accomplishments (come to a red state near you, universal school vouchers). But at the national level they lack the necessary majority and scope of purpose. Most of what the federal government does is non-discretionary spending. When they take power nationally pretty much all they accomplish is to keep the federal government off the red states backs.
Let me give one example. I think its illustrative.
What is the conservative response to school shootings?
Well, I think the real answer is "its statistically insignificant and we just have to accept it might happen now and again because the 2nd amendment is important and there isn't much you can do about this shit anyway."
Not to say one might not listen to a few common sense reforms here and there, but that's 99% of the story.
Do conservative SAY THIS? No. Ted Cruz, TrueCon, goes on about how school doors are locked or some nonsense.
This basic framework could apply to practically everything. The conservative response is pretty much always "that's reality, accept it." But losers and the weak and people with no skin in the game and the vast unwashed incapable of statistical analysis can't accept it. So like the left they are forced to use simplifying memes to grasp at reality.
There are a couple important conservative things to do about school shootings. One is to _stop effing publicizing them to heaven_ because of the well known copycat effect. The media has been completely unable to restrain itself on this for the last few decades, but it is possible, as is shown by the nearly complete lack (unless I am badly mistaken) of publicizing of teenage suicides, another problem exhibiting copycat effects. Another thing, although it is not a specific for the school shooting problem, is to stop expecting boys to behave and learn like girls. If boys are less frustrated and bored on average, there will be (by the property of normal distribution) disproportionately fewer outliers of the kind who seek meaning in shooting up their schoolmates.
No govt racial classification is what France does. It has its advantages - very little racial affirmative action in France - but it does not solve the core issues of racial conflict and disparities, because these are rooted in human nature and biology, not in anything particular govts do.
I love Gurri’s three principles. It’s straight out of John Locke. The country would be better off if more of us were familiar with Locke.
Gurri’s third principle, “Obligation”, may be the sticking point, since we no longer have a “shared morality,” and different moralities may be the fundamental point of division between political and social groups today.
I live in a small exurb town, hardly white liberal central, and everyone knows who the "leftist" mayoral candidate is and who the "rightist" mayoral candidate is. The leftist candidate is the NIMBY one and the rightist candidate is the YIMBY one. It's been that way everywhere I've lived. The only time I've seen right wing people be NIMBY is over things like section 8 housing, but most white liberals are NIMBY over that too.
In the last mayoral election they even spray painted "DEVELOPER" on the campaign sign for the right wing candidate, like it was a slur that the developers might want them to win the campaign. I guess it worked, the left wing guy won. He's promptly opposed a new off ramp to the highway and the construction of a really cool community center in a cornfield just outside of town.
I happen to live near that strip Mall and Matt is only somewhat off-base. [Arlo is BS crazy, I'm afraid. :)] The mall was not mainly about parking; it's worse. It's about a tiny hyperlocal group not to accept any diminishment of their perceived quality of life that would benefit others. They either do on see or care not a whit for the benefits to the city's coffers, the developer or the people who might live and work in a redeveloped Sams. But it's worse than that. It that land use decisions do not get made according to cost benefit principles. [But in fairness its not clear any developer actually WANTS to redevelop Sams.]
I have often advocated that white people start checking the other boxes on any forms asking for ethnic group. Of course, it would quickly become a federal crime to do so, but that would also make the broader point.
The 1970 book "The Omni-Americans", by Albert Murray, is still underrated. Murray was a black intellectual, whose thoughts ranged inside, outside and around the racial orthodoxies of his time. He wrote quite a bit and sometimes veered off into the zany. But "The Omni-Americans" is his most solid work. In it, he argues that slaves were effectively stripped of African culture by the second generation, and that whatever African-American culture emerged after that was 100 percent American, untainted the nostalgia for European culture that persisted in American whites. So if you wanted to study a pure reference sample of America, you should look to American blacks first. He points to the enduring disproportionate influence of black culture on American entertainment, sports, and clothing fads.
Mainstream conservatives can't state what they actually want because it's taboo.
So they come up with convoluted explanation to try to backdoor their way into what they actually want. And observers who either don't understand this or profit from not understanding it point and go "that's weird and incoherent".
I've also come to realize that the only hope for productive conservative politics is at the state level. Red State America really is just run better, and continues to rack of new accomplishments (come to a red state near you, universal school vouchers). But at the national level they lack the necessary majority and scope of purpose. Most of what the federal government does is non-discretionary spending. When they take power nationally pretty much all they accomplish is to keep the federal government off the red states backs.
I'm curious. Honestly. What are the things that mainstream conservatives actually want?
Let me give one example. I think its illustrative.
What is the conservative response to school shootings?
Well, I think the real answer is "its statistically insignificant and we just have to accept it might happen now and again because the 2nd amendment is important and there isn't much you can do about this shit anyway."
Not to say one might not listen to a few common sense reforms here and there, but that's 99% of the story.
Do conservative SAY THIS? No. Ted Cruz, TrueCon, goes on about how school doors are locked or some nonsense.
This basic framework could apply to practically everything. The conservative response is pretty much always "that's reality, accept it." But losers and the weak and people with no skin in the game and the vast unwashed incapable of statistical analysis can't accept it. So like the left they are forced to use simplifying memes to grasp at reality.
There are a couple important conservative things to do about school shootings. One is to _stop effing publicizing them to heaven_ because of the well known copycat effect. The media has been completely unable to restrain itself on this for the last few decades, but it is possible, as is shown by the nearly complete lack (unless I am badly mistaken) of publicizing of teenage suicides, another problem exhibiting copycat effects. Another thing, although it is not a specific for the school shooting problem, is to stop expecting boys to behave and learn like girls. If boys are less frustrated and bored on average, there will be (by the property of normal distribution) disproportionately fewer outliers of the kind who seek meaning in shooting up their schoolmates.
No govt racial classification is what France does. It has its advantages - very little racial affirmative action in France - but it does not solve the core issues of racial conflict and disparities, because these are rooted in human nature and biology, not in anything particular govts do.
I love Gurri’s three principles. It’s straight out of John Locke. The country would be better off if more of us were familiar with Locke.
Gurri’s third principle, “Obligation”, may be the sticking point, since we no longer have a “shared morality,” and different moralities may be the fundamental point of division between political and social groups today.
I live in a small exurb town, hardly white liberal central, and everyone knows who the "leftist" mayoral candidate is and who the "rightist" mayoral candidate is. The leftist candidate is the NIMBY one and the rightist candidate is the YIMBY one. It's been that way everywhere I've lived. The only time I've seen right wing people be NIMBY is over things like section 8 housing, but most white liberals are NIMBY over that too.
In the last mayoral election they even spray painted "DEVELOPER" on the campaign sign for the right wing candidate, like it was a slur that the developers might want them to win the campaign. I guess it worked, the left wing guy won. He's promptly opposed a new off ramp to the highway and the construction of a really cool community center in a cornfield just outside of town.
I happen to live near that strip Mall and Matt is only somewhat off-base. [Arlo is BS crazy, I'm afraid. :)] The mall was not mainly about parking; it's worse. It's about a tiny hyperlocal group not to accept any diminishment of their perceived quality of life that would benefit others. They either do on see or care not a whit for the benefits to the city's coffers, the developer or the people who might live and work in a redeveloped Sams. But it's worse than that. It that land use decisions do not get made according to cost benefit principles. [But in fairness its not clear any developer actually WANTS to redevelop Sams.]
I have often advocated that white people start checking the other boxes on any forms asking for ethnic group. Of course, it would quickly become a federal crime to do so, but that would also make the broader point.