David Brooks read Ta-Nehisi Coates new book, Between the World and Me
I think you distort American history. This country, like each person in it, is a mixture of glory and shame. There’s a Lincoln for every Jefferson Davis and a Harlem Children’s Zone for every K.K.K. — and usually vastly more than one. Violence is embedded in America, but it is not close to the totality of America.
In your anger at the tone of innocence some people adopt to describe the American dream, you reject the dream itself as flimflam. But a dream sullied is not a lie. The American dream of equal opportunity, social mobility and ever more perfect democracy cherishes the future more than the past. It abandons old wrongs and transcends old sins for the sake of a better tomorrow.
This dream is a secular faith that has unified people across every known divide. It has unleashed ennobling energies and mobilized heroic social reform movements. By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future.
Maybe you will find my reactions irksome. Maybe the right white response is just silence for a change. In any case, you’ve filled my ears unforgettably.
Keep in mind that he actually read the book, and a few paragaphs before he argues that he was distorting American history, he wrote this:
There is a pervasive physicality to your memoir — the elemental vulnerability of living in a black body in America. Outside African-American nightclubs, you write, “black people controlled nothing, least of all the fate of their bodies, which could be commandeered by the police; which could be erased by the guns, which were so profligate; which could be raped, beaten, jailed.”
That’s right. Brooks has had it explained to him that blacks in America have a legitimate fear of being raped, beaten, and jailed, and his first reaction is to make excuses: what about the American dream, he whines. Americans are supposed to forget about the past and dream about tomorrow, he whimpers. How can he argue that Coates distorts history when his position is that we should abandon history, forget about the legacy of slavery, just pretend we’re all starting at the same place in a race to the future?
This “American dream” is a lie. It’s propaganda spawned in the Gilded Age, when plutocrats wanted warm bodies to throw into the bonfires of foreign wars. It’s a lie that was whipped into a fervent froth in the 1950s, when we were told to consume, to feed the capitalist beast, or the Communists would eat us. The apotheosis of the American dream were the suburban communities that metastasized at that time…communities built from white flight, communities that were often sundown towns, communities that would rise up in outrage at the idea of desegregation. It is a lie that the already comfortable tell themselves, and try to pawn off on the rest of us. Apparently, our reality is too excessive for a sinecured apologist for the American right.
We have always known this, even if Brooks’ education was deeply deficient. Perhaps Brooks can reject Coates for being too deeply black, not part of what Brooks considers true America, but America knows itself, even if it’s wealthy have succombed to a total loss of long-term memory. Read the great American authors of the past century or so. These Famous White Men had no illusions about the American Dream: Twain. Steinbeck. Lewis. Sinclair.
A privileged acolyte of William F. Buckley who writes for the New York Times (and apparently, will never ever lose his job no matter who out of touch he gets), is the only kind of person who can babble about the American dream and still get published. That’s the only dream that gets to survive: the dreams of the wealthy, born on third base, and expecting to get a home run because they’ve made sure the other team is starved and sick and unable to get any help. And don’t you worry, there’s a policeman poised to arrest the catcher if he dares to interfere with Mr Brooks’ glorious victory.
One more point I have to make, because it’s representative of how conservatives have managed to hang on to their cushy incomes without getting lined up against the wall: “Maybe the right white response is just silence for a change.” Notice the instinctive call for white solidarity? Let’s all of us white people stand together against these black people who simply don’t appreciate our white values and our shining white dreams!
I am the son of a mechanic and laborer, the grandchild of farmers and seasonal farm workers. I will not stand in solidarity with a pampered right wing champion of Republican privilege; I will not be seduced by the promise of having an underclass I can kick and blame for the struggles of poor white people and the middle class. The enemy is you, Mr Brooks, and all your chums at the country club, and on Wall Street, and on K street.
I do think Brooks deserves an award for his efforts, though. I propose a monument: a giant ear, made of tin, and painted an arsenical white. That’s all. Just an ear. It definitely doesn’t have to be connected to a brain.
You’re tarnishing our lovely dream with excessive realism? I’m so glad I read Coates and don’t read Brooks any more.
Seems to me that holding on to the ‘American Dream’ as an article of secular faith is much of the problem, much of the cause for it vanishing (however much it’s ever been real). If people insist on having faith that it’s really real, then there’s no need to ensure the possibility exists for others. Pretty straight line from faith that the ‘Dream’ is real to believing if people can’t get ahead it must be their own fault and not systemic issues.
Mr. Brooks has also ignored very recent history. Along with empirical evidence. The idea of economic mobility that characterized the mid-20th century (for white people, not so much for everyone else) has pretty much turned into a fantasy. This reminds me of the old joke in which the stand-up comic claims to be the best lumberjack in the world — he chopped down the Sahara Forest! A heckler points out that the Sahara is a desert. The comic replies: “Now it’s a desert.”
Social mobility and equity of opportunity used to be a reality (for some) but after decades of right-wing administrations (including Clinton’s) they are a dream. Once the government started to assist non-white people a large part of the U.S. population went nuts then starting with the election of Ronald Reagan has proceeded to burn the house down with everybody in it, including them. Connect the dots much, Mr. Brooks?
I’d call that whitesplainin’.
Let me see if I got that right:
The only way you can have a bright future is by simply pretending that bad things don’t happen?
Funny enough, where I come from the approach to a better future is to look at the present and fix the things that are wrong. This doesn’t imply “better” or “wrong” for everybody, of course. Currently we’re fixing the horrible wrongs of social safety so the oligarchy can have a better future…
Hell, Brooks would well to read Langston Hughes on “what happens to a dream deferred.” (I promise, David, it’s short.)
There are two types of people in the world: Brooks and everyone else.
But would you expect to see Ta-Nehisi Coates standing at the salad bar at Applebee’s?
I think not.
Brooks 1, nattering nabobs 0.
Mike the mad biologist has some pointed comments here http://mikethemadbiologist.com/2015/07/18/listening-while-ashkenazi
found in an old book
“none so blind as those who will not see”
uncle frogy
Here’s the (Scottish) Chambers Dictionary definition of the American Dream:
Really it’s quite similar to the promise of a heavenly afterlife as long as you accept your lot in this life.
As a writer, David Brooks is no Ta-Nehisi Coates. He should stick to his day job.
Oh wait…
Brooks needs to read David Oshinsky’s Worse Than Slavery. Right now. Hey it’s written by a white guy, so maybe he’ll take it seriously.
As best I can tell from just the quoted bit and my own guesswork, the whole time the author seems to be equivocating between:
1) Is there or is there not currently equal opportunity, social mobility and ever more perfect democracy?
2) Should we or should we not try to change the country to have more equal opportunity, social mobility and ever more perfect democracy?
Because the answer to #1 is “not nearly enough” and the answer to #2 is “yes, duh”. Yet the author seems to illogically think that giving the answer I did for #1 means that the answer to #2 must be “no let’s just do nothing and give up hope”. Unless the author really is responding to a noob that said something like that? I doubt it.
The only thing I like about David Brooks is when PZ tears into him. I’ve been watching twitter lay into him, which is satisfying, but I need these long form insults anytime I’m exposed to a Brooks.
Sure, perhaps “a dream sullied” is not necessarily “a lie”. Whatever that means. But:
Let’s see how you finish this sentence. Surely since you are talking about “a dream sullied is not a lie” you will go on to say how it is true (not a lie) that we have equal opportunity, social mobility, and ever more perfect democracy? Or not:
Um, well, maybe…but what is the logical flow of these sentences?
And then right after that is this weirdness:
eh? The dream…does what?
to pile on the Brooks:
I get it, Pot is too easy to dream, do it the hard way, by will power alone. lazy potheads… dreaming is hard work…
The most important lesson of history is that we do not learn from history, and don’t want to.
Shorter David Brooks: That one white guy can get paid a huge salary to write drivel for the New York Times proves that the American dream works. Solipsism illustrated.
Since nobody else has quoted the obvious yet:
“It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
— George Carlin
David Brooks reviews Thai restaurant:
http://avidly.lareviewofbooks.org/2015/07/17/david-brooks-writes-a-yelp-review-of-the-new-thai-restaurant/
I may have replaced a word somewhere, but it doesn’t seem to alter the meaning much.
Y’know, if I didn’t have the ability to post a link, I’d say that Brooks’ latest wanking was invented by a satirist to mock David Brooks.
Gentlebeasts, the Grey Lady has published a Poe.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=American+dream&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CAmerican%20dream%3B%2Cc0
Nobody starts talking about it until… 1928.
Long-time reader, comment every week or two I guess…….but this essay was flat-out excellent. You’ve written more interesting pieces about more important topics than fucking David Brooks being a fucking asshole. In fact you do it all the time. But this piece was terrifically written and argued — it was like sex in the library stacks, fucking close to literature. Clap clap.
Every time that I have read a David Brooks newspaper column I have come away thinking that his head is completely full of marshmallows. Nothing is too flatulent for him.
To borrow another line from our esteemed host, The American Dream™ is
for an alarmingly high value of “only a few”. Bon appetit, Mssr Brooks!
I feel I don’t need to read anything David Brooks writes. I can find out all I need to know about how and what he thinks, and also be thoroughly entertained, by reading any PZ takedown of his drivel.
I feel I don’t need to read anything David Brooks writes. I can find out all I need to know about how and what he thinks, and also be thoroughly entertained, by reading any PZ takedown of his drivel.
Loved it!
Dbl-post! Sorry!
Well, y’all really need to consult the Master Brooks Skewer, Driftglass. He’s been honing his skills on that pointless dweeb for more than a decade.
While Brooks is woefully wrong in his critique, what is woefully absent from Coates’ thesis and anyones’ arguments about white privileges are the groups who are co-benefactors of our status quo.
I am East Indian and I belong to the second most affluent minority in the USA. David Brooks belongs to the first. It is no secret that a few minorities are more successful than others. Indians, Jews and Asians as a whole do benefit from our white capitalist patriarchy or at least are well adept at patriarchal bargaining. Despite our dark skin, Indians really do not acknowledge such structural racism but rather insulate themselves in suburbia. The parallels between Charleston, SC and Oak Creek, WI are too frighteningly. But the Sikh temple massacre is but a footnote in the hearts and minds of Indians who bicker over whose child is the most gifted or who has more wealth. Anything below an Asian F or no aspiration to getting into medical school is all that gets an Indian family riled up. I’m sure many fellow desis will disagree with me but having been embedded among them since birth, the truth hurts.
“The American dream of equal opportunity, social mobility and ever more perfect democracy cherishes the future more than the past. It abandons old wrongs and transcends old sins for the sake of a better tomorrow.”
Isn’t what Brooks is describing as the “American Dream” the complete opposite of Conservatism? Both in theory, and as is practiced in the US today?
Conservatism, almost by definition, cherishes the past far more than the future. It retains old wrongs and sins, precisely because of how valuable it considers the status quo.
In addition, conservatism as practiced in the US today almost certainly does not consider equal opportunity or social mobility valuable ends. Heck, even a more “perfect democracy” is easily abandoned and sacrificed in favor of “capitalism” and “free markets” and the power of money to dictate everything.
You left out one of the most important writers of all on the subject of the American Dream: Hunter S. Thompson got it pretty damn right.
I meant co-beneficiaries and not co-benefactors. Oops!
So, essentially, Brooks is saying ‘keep your dirty reality out of my pure libertarian fantasy’. This man redefines privileged, condescending cluelessness. It is almost impressive in a perverse kind of way.
Brooks’ vaunted American dream has been a noose around the necks of the vulnerable and a gun in the hand of the powerful ever since the misbegotten concept was first spawned. It requires nigh unbelievable ignorance or gross dishonesty to claim otherwise – I wonder which is the case with Brooks? Given his calculated rejection of history itself in a desperate attempt to prop up his tottering excuse for a point, I suspect the latter.
What a turd. Brooks argues that Coates distorts history, and then spews the happy horseshit version of American history they taught me in social studies classes when I was 10 years old, which is to say “America has had some small missteps along the way, but we’re trying hard to be better, goshdarnit, God Bless America!”
Amazing the way the David Brooks’ of the world seem to honestly believe they’ve hauled themselves up by their bootstraps and argue that others can do the same, while supporting (or worse advocating for) policies that forcibly remove the boots from other people.
I’m losing patience with these jackwagons, who willfully ignore the realities of the world around them and wallow around in a bath of their own nauseating privilege.
This thread is fascinating…
Wow. Amazing that this “lie” has managed to survive for all these decades. Amazing that people still flock to the US – legally and illegally – in search of freedom and opportunity.
Perhaps what Brooks doesn’t care for is unearned guilt, a concept I don’t much care for either. My ancestors came to the US from Europe just before the first World War. They never, to my knowledge, held slaves. They were farmers and were drawn to war only when the US was attacked. They came searching for a better life – and found it, for them and their descendants.
But even if they had held slaves, or participated in killings of native Americans, I’d not feel guilty – I would not have earned it. Just as I don’t feel guilty for the accident of my birth circumstances, I cannot feel guilt about the accident of my ancestors actions.
Consider also the differences in language between Brooks and PZ – the conservative looks forward while the alleged progressive looks back. Why? Why must “the American Dream”, a concept which undoubtedly means something different to everyone who chases it, be sullied? Why must it not exist? Is it because it is not a collectivist dream, but an individualistic one?
Wow this is some tortured logic. The vast majority of the people who still flock to this country are not wealthy. Some come here with just the clothes on their back. But all are searching for opportunity. They don’t care what base they start out on, they just want to get up to bat – something they probably weren’t able to do in their home country.
Ironically it is progressive politics which result in the kind of skewed playing field you describe here. The richest counties in the United States aren’t the result of unfettered capitalism, they’re the result of rent-seeking and cronyism:http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2012/04/24/americas-richest-counties/
Only when the government works with business do we get a situation where “there’s a policeman poised to arrest the catcher.”
When there is equal opportunity, when there is less regulation, when there is competition – when there is a free market – that policeman loses the power to arrest the catcher, that head start to third base gets knocked back to second, and the person standing at the plate is a little faster and more agile.
Why have all the riots and marches and general unrest in the country in the last few years come from unambigously democratic enclaves? From St. Louis to Baltimore to Chicago to Detriot, all of these cities have been choked by progressive policies for the last half century. It is here where the deck is stacked against minorities. It is here where the government’s boot is on the back of their necks. This is the reality you’d like to ignore.
The enemy is not the “chums at the country club, and on Wall Street, and on K street,” although the latter is closer to the truth. The enemy are the legislators and regulators who dole out favors to the politically connected. The thing that Wall Street fears is not government regulation – it is competition. Think about the reason Hillary Clinton is well funded by this sector, or why Elizabeth Warren won’t pledge to close the Ex-Im bank. Freedom allows insufficient opportunity for graft.
Finally…
I will stand in solidarity with anyone who advocates for freedom. I will not be seduced by the clarion call of collectivists and authoritarians who presume to know what’s “best.” I will stand with anyone who decides that each human life is of equal value, regardless of race, gender, creed, sexual orientation, or wealth, or a myriad other things. This, to my mind, is the American Dream. This is the reason America is exceptional. Brooks is right that dream is sullied – as a country America doesn’t have a clean past. But we don’t owe the past our guilt, we owe the past our promise not to repeat their mistakes.
/me fetches popcorn
One more thing…
This is PZ of a few days ago:
This is PZ now criticizing Brooks’ advice to listen to the black community:
Interesting, that.
Ah, Tom “I built it myself” Weiss is here to lecture us on ethics, history and economics again.
That’s like me being a professor of physics
Yes you would have. And your idiotology doesn’t treat all people the same way. You oppose affirmative action and equal results. You want unequal results, with you on top. Loser speak by a ignorant asshole.
Settle down, class. Tom Weiss the white libertarian is here to tell us about the history and present experiences of non-white people in America.
Bless his little privileged misanthropic heart.
And a pony. Everybody will get a pony.
You know what’s really fascinating? Tom Weiss flouncing from one thread and now coming to take a shit in this one. I wonder if it is because they just wanted to derail a brand new conversation? Hoping that people in this thread won’t remember previous ones and thus they have a new false veneer of credibility, and some plausible deniability if anyone dares to be overly sick of their bullshit? Or maybe they just didn’t want to bother continuing their defense of the rape apologia he dumped in the other thread? Who knows.
(The thread in question: https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2015/07/11/it-could-be-worse/)
Tom Weiss @ 38
Who’s demanding anyone to feel guilty? Although, you could try having a bit more empathy.
Personally, I await with great interest the introduction of Polo Baseball.
As a long-ago lurker, came back to check if anyone was writing about TNC’s book since it is very explicitly also a work of black atheism and was curious to see if there was a discussion about that aspect of Between the World and Me. I don’t see that discussion, though would appreciate it if anyone could point out to me where it might be occurring.
That said, “communities built from white flight, communities that were often sundown towns, communities that would rise up in outrage at the idea of desegregation.” That is a very important point, imo. I’m a slow learner. But one of the things BTWAM made me realize is that America is Omelas. Our success, especially the middle-class success we so often take pride in, is very much built on plunder–be it the plunder of slavery, the plunder of segregation, or the plunder of imprisonment. He doesn’t go into as much detail about this as he has in other work, e.g. “The Case for Reparations,” but somehow it struck home for me much more forcibly this time.
And, of course, he could be wrong. Perhaps he overstates its centrality (though probably not from the perspective of most blacks). But as Tom Weiss has ably, if inadvertently, shown, he’s far closer to the truth than most.
BeyondUnderstanding @ 46
“Who’s demanding anyone to feel guilty? Although, you could try having a bit more empathy.”
Yes, maybe even a little historical perspective or even the hint of a fucking clue?
You don’t have to feel guilty that your parents farmed and raised their children on blood-soaked lands, taken by genocide and perfidy, but neither should you act like it just fell out of the sky (nor that they built it all by themselves).
Tom Weiss:
The lasting qualities of an idea are not proof that the idea is an accurate reflection of reality. If that were a case, the god of the bible would be real.
Who is asking you or any white person to feel guilty?
The American Dream has never existed for vast swathes of the population. For all of this country’s existence, that dream has been off-limits to racial & ethnic minorities, women, and LGBT people.
Women are still not treated as human beings with all the rights commensurate with that status, bc policies continue to be crafted that diminish women’s rights. These policies build upon already existing policies that limit women’s human rights.
NDN’s and African-Americans continue to be disenfranchised by society through racial disparities in the criminal justice system, the labor market, and the housing market (to name but a few).
LGBT people have never been treated to this American Dream either. The June 26 ruling by SCOTUS didn’t magically eradicate homophobia, transphobia, or biphobia. And it didn’t change the fact that in 29 states in the US, LGBT are not protected under anti-discrimination laws (but you being a libertarian, you don’t care about protecting oppressed groups of people).
There is literally no point in USAmerican history where this American Dream was attainable for anyone but the most privileged of people.
But a boostrapping fella such as yourself doesn’t give a shit about the plight of people who don’t share in your privilege. This indifference and apathy are one of the many reasons I despise libertarian rhetoric.
from the OP:
Filled with piss and bile.
I’m not a fan “progressive” rhetoric, but for different reasons. You’ve ably demonstrated one of those reasons – the lack of specificity. Take this for example: “bc policies continue to be crafted that diminish women’s rights”. What policies? Where? Who’s crafting them? What rights are being diminished? And if this is true where the hell is the ACLU and the lawyers who should be bringing this before a judge?
Here’s more generalities: “NDN’s and African-Americans continue to be disenfranchised by society through racial disparities in the criminal justice system, the labor market, and the housing market (to name but a few).” Is this referring to the theory of disparate impact? You certainly can’t be referring to any regulation or policy which disenfranchises anyone. To the contrary, there are plenty of regulations/policies creating an unequal playing field in their favor.
This is a wonderful time to point out a peculiar lack of empathy amongst progressives. Tony, you think you’re being helpful and nice and progressive by advocating for policies which give a priviledged status to certain minortity groups (but not all minority groups) who appear to be having trouble. You’re not the only one, I see snide “bootstrap” references here quite a bit when I comment. But the way you think and advocate about these issues is part of the problem. You’re part of the problem.
Take a look at this: http://www.doe.org/what_we_do.cfm
The first thing this group does is take people off government programs. All of them. Then they put them to work. This is a private company, founded by (evil!) business people. This is a quote from the founder – “What they personally achieve is something no welfare check is ever going to give them: personal dignity.” In addition, progressives like yourself who advocate for extremely high minimum wage laws, work against efforts like this to provide shelter, food and dignity for the poorest of the poor. You also work against the best interests of the very poor by subsidizing them. If the war on poverty, which we’ve been waging for 50 years (!!), has taught us anything it is that subsidies don’t work. People work.
Back to your comment – this time with specifics!
Nothing – nothing! – will magically eradicate any of the irrational fears you mention. Nor will anything eradicate the irrational fear of freedom many of you seem to suffer from. But I want to focus on the last bit – “being a libertarian, you don’t care about protecting oppressed groups of people.” This is a lie, I’m just not sure if it is said with ignorance or malice.
Libertarians care deeply about protecting people from government oppression, and they also firmly believe that everyone is equal and has equal protection under the law – and that absolutely includes all the groups you mention and also includes religious groups. Libertarians also do not approve of any group of people – be they religious or atheist authoritarians – coercing the rest of us to comply with their beliefs.
Your premises have been wrong to this point so I’m not surprised this is where you’ve ended up. If this is true – how is it possible that the USA went from almost destroying ourselves with a civil war (meant to open up the dream to African Americans) in the 1860s to winning two world wars in a mere 80 years, emerging as the most prosperous and productive economy in the world and keeping that designation for the next 60 years?
If your assertion is true how is it that people – like my ancestors – flocked to the US with next to nothing and ended up creating a better life for themselves and their children? How is it that people still, to this day, flock to the US in search of the same thing?
The priviledge industry is a farce. It is a term which is as non-specific as much of the rest of your argument. Who’s got more priviledge today? Asians? Whites? Hollywood stars? Politicians? Was Bill Cosby trading on his priviledge when he drugged and raped dozens of women? How is it possible for him to have priviledge, as a black man? What about the President? Should we be assigning numbers to this priviledge or lack of it – let’s see, you get five points for being black, five for being a woman, but deduct two for having graduated college, and deduct another 5 for having a job which pays you $65 grand a year…
We have a society defined by standards, not priviledge. Want to do drugs where they are illegal? You’ll have to pay the consequences if caught. Want to have rampant unprotected sex? You’ll pay the consequences if you get pregnant or get an STD. Don’t want to study or gradutate from high school? Good luck finding any meaningful type of work in the future. Working in a menial, dead end job? It’s up to you to decide if that’s how you want to spend the rest of your life.
I give more of a shit about “the plight of people” than you do, Tony. You don’t believe that all people are born equally. If I’m reading your comments right you believe equal opportunity is not enough, because some people aren’t doing the things you’d like to see them do. You do indeed believe some people are inferior, and deserve extra help as a result, the special kind of help only progressives can provide. Oh you won’t say this out loud, and you probably can’t wrap your head around how this could be true becuase you feel so deeply for them. But the instant you move beyond enforcing equal opportunity and start enforcing equal outcomes you’ve tacitly endorsed the racism, sexism, or -phobia you profess to hate, you’ve tacitly agreed with the people who say “they’re just not good enough.” You’ve become part of the problem.
So you can go on despising rhetoric like mine if you like, I don’t despise you. I just think you’re woefully misinformed.
antepro
This is a vicious lie. I think you’re trying to smear me because you find it hard to refute my logic. A person agreeing, of their own free will, to be compensated in return for sexual favors is not and never will be rape.
That’s not the scenario you gave. You posited a scenario where a boss basically said “Give me a blowjob, or get fired. Your choice.” In no sane world could that possibly be labeled a real or reasonable choice. What’s the difference between that and “Give me a blowjob, or I’ll hit you”? The choice is between doing a thing you do not want to do, or suffering in some way, and that’s no choice at all. That’s coercion, plain and simple, and you’d look far better if you just admitted that and apologized for your thoughtless rape apologia. It’s not a smear if you actually fucking said it, which we know you fucking did.
Thank you for your distortion of all moral logic and idea of true consent. Your fuckwitted opinion makes you and your iditiotolgy morally bankrupt and criminal.
You can claim all the morality you want, but criminal actions aren’t moral. And you approve of criminal actions with coercion, and call it moral. It isn’t, and never will be.
Take abortion. State legislatures. The Rethugs. Women’s right to chose and right to bodily autonomy. Anybody with a working mind would know that. But then, you are one ignorant asshole who has their head up their ass about the real effects of your policies and beliefs.
Tom Weiss, #52
You are a fucking obtuse asshole, Tom.
Tom Weiss, #53
No, that right there is a lie ^
It wasn’t free will. It was “sexual favor or else you’re fired”. That is rape. It’s right there in text for all to see, you dishonest rape apologist.
Are we seriously de-railing this thread with dishonest and dispicable charges from another thread?
I did not posit the scenario, Gilieli did. I corrected the scenario to make it clear that the woman was already fired when the boss offered her a job – compensation (in part) for sexual favors.
And based on your comments, you must discriminate against sex workers and think that all sex work is rape. If that’s the case then I can’t help you. In my mind, two consenting adults deciding of their own free will to trade sex for money does not constitute rape.
Tom Weiss, #58
No, shit for brains rape apologist. The employer said you can keep the job if you give him a blowjob. That’s coercion. That’s not sex work because sex work is a person OFFERING sex like any other service. It’s not someone in a different line of work being told they’re fired unless they have sex.
You don’t even understand what constitutes sex work. A libertarian asshole supporting rape. You assholes and your primitive immoral ideology are full of contradictions and double standards. You’re the most wrong person I’ve ever encountered online. You’ve been dead wrong about every single issue you’ve tried to discuss here.
No, the thread has been derailed because you continually deny saying something we all know you said. And it’s spelled “despicable”.
I wholeheartedly agree, but once again: that is not the scenario that was given. It’s almost like the goal posts are on wheels!
You have a really shaky definition of “free will”. If I follow a man into an alley and say to him: “You have a wallet. It contains $100. You can give me $30, keep the rest, and go on your way; or you can keep all of it but I break your jaw. Your choice!” and he gives me $30, did he do so of his own free will?
No problem with legitimate sex work, without coercion. Your scenario has coercion, making you one to back rape. You are a misogynist bigot. And don’t understand power systems. But then, given your ignorance, and arrogance that you aren’t ignorant, it is is no surprise. You are your own worst enemy.
Yeah, Weiss is still acting as if the scenario I posted only counted as rape under some weird straw-feminist definition when in fact it fits the definition of rape by law in most western countries.
What did I say? Provide the quotation, in context.
This is coercion. Threatening physical force is coercion. Not giving someone a job is never coercion, no matter how you try to re-define it.
All of you – Saad, Nerd, Thumper – you’re trying to smear me as a misogynist, pro-rape asshole but it won’t work because normal people can read, reason, and come to their own conclusions. I say it’s free will if, in someone else’s hypothetical, they posit a scenario where a man propositions a woman for sex as part of a job offer without a threat of coercion. You say he’s coercing her even though he makes no physical threat.
This being a purely hypothetical argument, I’m happy to let people read and make up their own minds. Look up the wikipedia definition of rape and see if it conforms with my position on the hypothetical. The boss does not use physical force, does not use coercion or abuse of authority because she, having been already fired, does not work for him. He has nothing with which to coerce her and no authority to abuse.
You, however, want to condemn me a “pro-rape” and therefore silence my other arguments. And don’t say that’s not what you’re doing because you’re derailing this thread – in which very few people have dealt with my actual arguments – with silly and destructive name calling.
I’d prefer if you dealt with my political ideas and didn’t descend to thuggery, but unlike you I won’t try and impose upon you my standards of value.
No, you smear yourself with your own word.
If is isn’t Crystal Clear Consent, it is RAPE. You support rape by not condemning a coercive act. Your own words.
I had a feeling that you’d pull something like this after the fact. Why you people can’t be honest with yourself or me I’ll not understand. This is from my second response to you:
You’re now saying what I said in my second response: that it is, by definition right now, illegal. My initial response to your hypothetical assumed that it wasn’t illegal. But I’ve fallen into a purely partisan trap – never answer a hypothetical posited by your enemies.
Tom Weiss, #63
Hahaha.
Sexist pro-rape Libertarian.
Please Tom, stay the hell away from anyone I know. Hell, please stay away from any other human being. You are a creepy asshole who doesn’t understand consent, and doesn’t understand people can have power over other people. Either that, or you don’t want to understand it.
No no Saad, you don’t understand it. It is not threatening to fire someone, because technically she was already fired beforehand! See! Totes a different situation!
Tom Weiss
It’s not my fault that you’re completly ignorant on the existing laws concerning rape. I can only second zenlike: Stay away from people before you rape somebody because inyo ur twisted logic it’s all fine and dandy.
Of course, should a prospective employer during an interview for a non sex work job demand that I give him a blowjob and then I’d get the job, that would be illegal, too. I could go to the police AND demand compensation from the company. I’m wondering, would it be OK if instead I said “look, I taped this interview. Unless you give me the job with a 30% raise and an annual bonus, this tape is going tot he police, the media and you wife”?
The most baffling thing about this is that Tom Weiss posts under his own name, linked to his Google+ account, where he even states to which high school he went. Any HR department of a company he wants to work for in the future can stumble upon these comments. Sexual harassment is a real issue for companies (well, a larger issue for female employees, but we are talking about impacts on the companies’ bottom line). Suffice to say, any HR department worth their salt will block applications of him for at least managerial positions based upon these comments which talk about acts which are illegal under any sexual harassment statute in the US of A (if not in any other western country).
Wait. So Tom Weiss is saying demanding a blowjob for employment or continued employment is not illegal? Not just “it shouldn’t illegal” or “it wouldn’t be illegal in my libertarian utopia”, but “it currently is not illegal”? By god. There is no end to the amorality and stupidity.
zenlike
Not baffling at all. Many rapists and misogynists* simply don’t realise that they actually are these things. Weiss is so detached from reality that he thinks there’s nothingd etestable about his position. Remember how the guys in Steubenville were totally taken aback that they were accused ofr ape and how their own happy videos were used against them?
*Before Tom Weiss cries: Yep, you’re a misogynist. I don’t know if you’re a rapist, but I do know that you deny that many things that clearly fall under the legal definition of rape are indeed rape.
I just remembered a while back Tom Weiss got upset because I used the phrase “rich white dude” or something like that. He found that offensive. That’s when things got offensive for him.
Actually, I found it:
I’m smiling right now.
Tom Weiss,
Yes, this is true, people. I can confirm it. You can all stop “smearing” poor Tom.
People can indeed read what Tom Weiss is writing, reason, and reach the unavoidable conclusion that he is a rape apologist, completely out of touch with the real world and with an unbelievably twisted definition of sex work. Yes, Tom. On their own.
Scratch my 72, I misread Tom’s point.
Libertarians are supposed to be anti-coercion. Now we see libertarian Tom Weiss saying “blow job or no job” isn’t coercion. I don’t think libertarian Tom Weiss has an understanding of either libertarian ideology or the English language.