Something Something Soup Something – It’s a browser-based game about classifying things as soup or not soup. A fun philosophical exercise for the whole family! It shows that when people are asked to define soup, they use a slightly different definition from the one they use to classify soup. Also, soup is a metaphor for video games.
Everything You Need to Know about Gun Rights (also see part 2 and part 3 tba) – Crip Dyke explains the history of the 2nd amendment, and how it wasn’t intended to guarantee individuals’ rights to guns. This is all news to me, I don’t know anything about constitutional history.
Hillary Clinton almost ran for president on a universal basic income – In her memoir, Clinton says they seriously considered campaigning for universal basic income, but decided not to when they failed to come up with a realistic policy proposal. I have mixed feelings about this. Should she have included it in her campaign anyway? And why didn’t Bernie campaign on UBI, since apparently, a lack of realistic policy doesn’t otherwise stop him?
Don’t fall for the antifa trap (video) – It’s Vox talking about how disproportionate attention is placed on violent protestors. I’ve talked about violence in protests before, but I want to be 100% clear that this is a very small part of Berkeley protests. Only a small number of protestors are in the black bloc, and only a small number of black bloc protestors have been violent, and only in some of the protests. I’m not happy with the violent protestors, and some people around here disagree, but in the end we’re disagreeing over a tiny subset of protestors.
MythCon IV: What Organizers & Outreach Directors Need to Know – (Yeah, it’s Richard Carrier, I’m sick of the guy, moving on.) There was some drama regarding MythCon IV that I haven’t exactly been following, because I have zero chance of ever attending such conferences, and it’s basically celebrity drama that all of us little people get sucked into even though we have no power over it.
Anyway, the story is that they invited Sargon of Akkad, known awful person, and the audience cheered him for mocking rape victims. But according to Carrier, the people who were cheering Sargon were mostly people who came just for him. And the other anti-feminists at the conference, Armoured Skeptic and Shoe0nHead, are very distinct from Sargon. Carrier claims they represent “the majority middle of atheism today”, liberals burned and mistreated by feminism.
I don’t know or care about these particular youtubers, but in general it seems plausible. There’s a weird doublethink where we acknowledge that many liberals are awful anti-feminists but fail to acknowledge that many awful anti-feminists are liberals. I don’t think it’s especially helpful to group all anti-feminists together with the alt-right. If all they have to do is demonstrate that they are liberal, or that they’re one step above Sargon, we’re setting the bar way way too low. I don’t think that’s what Carrier is arguing but that’s the point I took from it.
For another take, see Matt Dillahunty explain why he will not attend MythCon (video) in the future.
Keep in mind that Clinton considered the UBI “unrealistic” because it would have wealth and income redistributive effects, i.e. a UBI would have resulted in higher taxes on and thus a lower net income for the top income quintile. Surprisingly, redistribtion is redistributive.
Both a UBI and a Job Guarantee are feasible in descriptive economic terms; they are realistic or unrealistic only in political terms.
There’s a weird doublethink where we acknowledge that many liberals are awful anti-feminists but fail to acknowledge that many awful anti-feminists are liberals.
I’m not sure what you mean by “liberals” here. Since I don’t self-identify as a liberal, and I think left/right categories are too simplistic to do much political work, I’m not sure if it’s important. Antifeminists are antifeminist; racists are racist, authoritarians are authoritarian, classists are classist, etc. People mix and match.
I’ve never heard of Job Guarantee…
The relevant point here is that “liberal” is non-overlapping (or mostly non-overlapping) with “alt-right”. So assuming antifeminists are alt-right is inaccurate. The question is whether the inaccuracy is tolerable as a form of hyperbole, or if it’s counterproductive.
I’ve never heard of Job Guarantee…
Are you interested?
The relevant point here is that “liberal” is non-overlapping (or mostly non-overlapping) with “alt-right”.
All right, but perhaps overbroad: feminism notwithstanding, there are a lot of people that I would intuitively label as neither liberal nor “alt-right”.
The alt-right seems to me to be relatively tiny, just super-loud; thus, almost everyone is “liberal” by this definition, which doesn’t seem intuitively appealing.
I tried to read Carrier’s article to get to what he sees as “liberal”, but he’s too long-winded to get through, and aside from his writing on ancient history (which I’m not qualified to judge), every time I’ve mustered the patience to get to his point, I’ve found usually stupidly wrong, and occasionally just trivial.
(Full disclosure: Carrier and I go waaaaay back, and he and I have had some difficult experiences.)
So assuming antifeminists are alt-right is inaccurate.
I’m not sure I agree with “so”. Perhaps all anti-feminists really are alt-right, but some are just less obviously obnoxious than alt-right attention trolls like SofA.
I think I don’t have time to learn about Job Guarantee right this moment.
IIRC Carrier felt that the purpose of MythCon was for people to have dialogue across the feminism/anti-feminism divide. He thought such dialogue was possible with Shoe0nHead and Armoured Skeptic, but not possible with Sargon of Akkad. He also accused feminists/SJWs of being unable to distinguish between them, characterizing all three as alt-right or Nazis.
Ignoring the rest of Carrier’s argument, there’s one part that I think is likely true: Shoe0nHead and Armoured Skeptic are not alt-right, and are more aligned with the US left. Are you trying to argue that they are not liberal, or that they are alt-right? I’m not really sure what you’re trying to argue. The existence of people who are not on the left-right spectrum does not seem relevant.
IIRC Carrier felt that the purpose of MythCon was for people to have dialogue across the feminism/anti-feminism divide.
On the one hand, I see the abstract merits of trying to have this dialog. On the other hand, I’d rather grade undergraduate econometrics homework rather than try to even read about this dialog, much less actually engage in it. In my dotage, my tolerance for bullshit is decreasing at at a decreasing rate.
Are you trying to argue that they are not liberal, or that they are alt-right?
I would say that those are two different arguments: one can be not alt-right and not liberal. If they are anti-feminists, I would have to see some argument that they were liberal.
Again, I think what we label as “liberal” is important.
In one sense of “liberal”, it’s impossible to be liberal — or at least a good liberal — and anti-feminist. This definition of liberal trades on social justice being a subset of liberalism.
In another sense of “liberal”, in the sense that the mainstream Democratic party, for instance, is liberal, it’s completely possible to be an anti-feminist liberal, but fuck those liberals.
@Larry,
I prefer that these political labels be defined in a way that doesn’t preclude badness. I mean, it makes criticism a lot easier when I can say “fuck those liberals” instead of “they’re not really liberals”. If I argued “they’re not really liberals” that puts me in a poor position when all they have to do is point to a video where they endorsed Bernie Sanders.
Granted, if you take the view that liberal means good liberal, then it makes sense to say that some liberals are anti-feminist (ie they’re not liberals after all) while simultaneously holding that no anti-feminists are liberal.
I prefer that these political labels be defined in a way that doesn’t preclude badness.
But politics are inherently normative. I’m not a conservative because conservatives want things I think are bad. (Same reason I’m not a liberal.) I am definitely not of the opinion that politics is just about how to get the things we all want.
If I argued “they’re not really liberals” that puts me in a poor position when all they have to do is point to a video where they endorsed Bernie Sanders.
But I don’t think endorsing Sanders necessarily makes one a “liberal”. Even absent insincerity (which is a big thing in voting theory), people endorse candidates for a lot of reasons. For example, no small few people voted for both Obama and Trump, so I would argue that voting for (or endorsing) Obama does not prove that one is not at least somewhat racist.
Granted, if you take the view that liberal means good liberal, then it makes sense to say that some liberals are anti-feminist (ie they’re not liberals after all)…
I would be slightly more subtle here. A person can identify with an ideology, but not support all the propositions inherent in that ideology. Some person might be a genuine liberal by identification, but objectively a “bad” liberal by not supporting some of the elements of that ideology. (Although I’m using binary language, I really mean a multidimensional spectrum.)
There is, of course, a definitional and standing problem. What is liberalism? Who gets to decide what liberalism is? Since I myself do not self-identify as a liberal, I personally don’t have standing to define liberalism; the best I can do is try to understand liberalism on the basis of what self-identified liberals say and do.
Going back to the original point. First, “Not all anti-feminists are alt-right,” seems uncontroversial, given that a lot of people are anti-feminist, and even counting the wannabes and hangers-on, I would be surprised if the alt-right comprised more than a hundred thousand people. The more controversial point, “Some liberals are anti-feminist,” seems interesting only if there’s some ideological contradiction between liberalism and anti-feminism in a way that there isn’t an ideological contradiction inherent in “Some Californians are anti-feminist.” I understand anti-feminism, but I’m trying to get at what in liberalism contradicts anti-feminism.