Jonathan Chait has a long piece in New York about the right's latest "master theory" of political war: namely that ever since the '60s the left has engaged in a cultural "long march" that has steadily taken over practically every influential American institution—entertainment, universities, big business, etc.—and the only hope for conservatives is to wage a scorched-earth counter-revolution from within the government. Why government? Because it's the only institution they still have a chance of controlling. They just have to win elections to do it.
Now, some of this has an obvious element of truth, but other parts are faintly ridiculous. Big corporations might spout crowd-pleasing slogans now and then, but they're still a Republican stronghold. Just check out the Chamber of Commerce or the Business Roundtable if you're unsure of this. The military remains steadfastly conservative regardless of their pragmatic stance toward gay and trans recruits. The Supreme Court is dominated by conservatives. Churches that involve themselves in the culture wars are strongly conservative.
So the liberal domination of institutions is a little less complete than the "long march" theorists would have you believe. But the real weakness of their argument is simpler: public opinion is what really matters. Institutions are always downstream of public opinion, changing only after the public demands it. And the plain fact is that conservative social attitudes are overwhelmingly unpopular. Just to run through some of the most obvious examples:
- Opposition to abortion remains limited: solid majorities say abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances and that women should be allowed to have abortions "for any reason." Bans on abortion have never been popular and are even less so now. They poll in the mid-teens following the Dobbs decision.
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- Only about a third of the country still wants to ban gay marriage.
- Immigration remains polarized, but there's little support for abolishing policies like DACA. Even a majority of Republicans oppose getting rid of it.
- Less than a third of Americans want to keep marijuana illegal.
- Virtually no one opposes sex education in schools, and less than a third support the conservative insistence that sex ed classes should exclusively teach the benefits of abstaining from sexual activity.
- At the time they were taking place, only a third of Americans opposed the George Floyd protests. To this day, only a minority think the police treat white and Black people equally.
- Transgender issues are still new and fraught, but a core belief in protecting trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing, and general public acceptance generates only tiny opposition.
- Only a third of the country believes that churches should be involved in politics. Less than a quarter think churches should endorse candidates. Only small minorities think the government should favor Christianity. And only about a quarter think the religious freedom of Christians is threatened.
- Only about 15% of Americans think gun laws should be loosened. About a third oppose background checks, high-capacity magazines, and bans on assault weapons. That said, this is one of the very few issues where conservative views, broadly speaking, retain fairly high support.
Taken as a whole, we can say that public opinion remains split on guns and immigration, but in virtually every other area conservative social attitudes are strongly unpopular. Hell, even on the semi-cultural question of raising taxes on the rich, only a quarter of Americans share conservative opposition to the idea.
There are obviously still polarized opinions on the newer and more extreme borders of cultural issues—things like wokeness, puberty blockers for minors, and trans women in sports. There always are until enough time has passed for public opinion to settle down. Generally speaking, though, conservatives have simply lost the country on cultural issues. That's their problem, not the fact that institutions have followed along.
"Only about 15% of Americans think gun laws should be loosened. About a third oppose background checks, high-capacity magazines, and bans on assault weapons. That said, this is one of the very few issues where conservative views, broadly speaking, retain fairly high support."
Sorry but the last sentence makes no sense.
If support for conservative views on guns range from 15% to about 33%, how is that a "fairly high support", and how can you say "that public opinion remains split on guns"?
Ownership has broad support.
Just ownership in general? I mean, yeah, there aren't very many people that think no one should be able to own a gun at all. But when you get into realistic restrictions (e.g. large capacity magazines) then support quickly starts to go down.
Most Americans think large capacity should be limited.
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"The military remains steadfastly conservative regardless of their pragmatic stance toward gay and trans recruits." From a serious conservative viewpoint, that statement is self-contradictory. A "pragmatic stance toward gay and trans recruits" is just NOT conservative; that pragmatic stance clearly represents "the victory of wokeism".
Just because they don't believe every moronic conservative bugaboo doesn't make them "woke".
From the viewpoint of a "real conservative" failing to believe every moronic conservative bugaboo definitely does make them "woke".
I guess that's "real conservative's" problem.
Think about the use of the word “pragmatic” in this context.
The view among conservatives that "woke" liberals dominate institutions allows them to AVOID examining public opinion too closely. That in turn allows conservatives to justify their "scorched earth" campaign, which includes encouraging legislating from the bench. Conservatives live in their media bubble and ignore public opinion, so they won't act pragmatically about it. Conservative politicians in swing states, OTOH, do have to be pragmatic, and because of shifts in public opinion and demographics, there will be more of these folks. That should keep the fire-breathing right-wingers from burning down the house.
And the plain fact is that conservative social attitudes are overwhelmingly unpopular.
Yabbut see that's just cuz the sheeple are brainwashed by Woke Schools and Woke Hollywood and Woke Democrats telling people they should be Woke!
The only solution is to force people to think properly. Conservative Values™ WILL be popular again if they know what's good for them!
The "third" you keep referring to are the fascist magats who, unfortunately, vote. When they aren't participating in an insurrection. And they control more than a third of state governments, which also gives them over-representation in the senate.
"Conservatives are not fantasizing when they perceive that their beliefs are being anathematized by elites and elite institutions."
And this is the problem with how that third thinks. Conservatives are supposed to value small government and Christianity. Yet their battle against wokeism is the battle to force their beliefs on other people. That's both big government, and the opposite of "do unto others".
Pingback: Jonathan Chait overstates the lead Republicans have in the US culture wars – Later On
This post is telling only half of the story of our times. We are not just dealing with a right wing that has lost the country on many issues, we’re also dealing with a left wing that has lost the country on many issues.
From Kevin: “Generally speaking, though, conservatives have simply lost the country on cultural issues. That's their problem, not the fact that institutions have followed along.”
This statement is both true and half true. The exact same sentiment can be said about Leftists, but Kevin leaves that part out.
And I get it. I’m sympathetic. Everyone wants to support their own team. My own disappointment with the modern Leftist has involved a very slow process of acceptance, and it was mainly just when I recently went to grad school that I had no choice but to admit that I was indeed surrounded by Leftist extremism. It’s a real phenomenon that concerned liberals need to address, not whitewash.
Consider a recent article by John Halpin at the Liberal Patriot:
“Continuing our examination of the first wave of polling in the new TLP/YouGov 2024 presidential tracking project, we find sobering data for both Democrats and Republicans in terms of their respective political brands. Simple story: most American voters believe both parties have become too ideologically extreme in terms of economic and cultural issues...
“Democrats receive slightly worse marks than Republicans in both areas. For example, 56 percent of voters think Democrats have moved too far left on economic issues compared to 51 percent of voters who think Republicans have moved too far right. Likewise, 58 percent of voters think Democrats have moved too far left on cultural and social issues compared to 54 percent who think Republicans have moved too far right on these issues.”
I don’t find these results even slightly surprising. If you do find them surprising, then frankly I don’t think you’ve been paying full attention to what’s going on.
And this is where Kevin begins to fall short: “There are obviously still polarized opinions on the newer and more extreme borders of cultural issues—things like wokeness, puberty blockers for minors, and trans women in sports. There always are until enough time has passed for public opinion to settle down.”
After providing a detailed analysis of Republican extremism, Kevin then glosses over any such potential problem on the Left.
But Wokeness should not be ignored, it should be repudiated. The fact that Fox News criticizes it should not mislead Liberals to the conclusion that it cannot therefore be a serious problem. To take one example among many: our universities should not be demanding ideological conformity in the form of DEI statements. And it should be Liberals standing up to that kind of nonsense and promoting free speech and viewpoint diversity, not conservatives.
On the topic of the violent gender ideologues who have infiltrated the movement for trans rights, all I can say is that the Left may never outlive the shame of its capitulation.
When JK Rowling asserts a belief in biological sex and receives death threats as a result, Liberals should be the ones speaking out on her behalf, not conservatives. Similarly when the gender ideologues promote the practice of punching a “TERF,” or when they chase Riley Gains off a campus because she exercises her free speech rights to speak out against biological men (trans women) in sports, we should be the ones condemning their extremism, not conservatives.
Our side has more than its own fair share of problems, and if we don’t address them then we’re going to pay a price.
"56 percent of voters think Democrats have moved too far left on economic issues"
This is because the vast majority of all media believes and reinforces in the standard economic model that has enriched the 1% over the past 45 years.
This sort of thing happens all of the time these days. Whether it’s in person or online: I advise a Liberal/Leftist not to block out or excuse the problems on our own side, and they respond by blocking out or excusing the problems on our own side. That first step of acknowledging a problem (before we can deal with it) is indeed quite the hurdle, and even devastating poll results will simply get swept under the rug.
"I advise . . ."
You? Who are you?
I found your advice to pointless centrist bothsiderism. Sorry you feel disrespected. Please point out which Democratic economic policies are too "left". Raising taxes on the wealthy? Supporting health care for all?
It's striking, the fragility of the left these days. I don't know what happened.
"Wokeness" can be ignored by "the left" because it's almost entirely a figment of right-wing imaginations.
Wake up. This is two year old advice but it still holds up:
“[T]he truth is that the Democratic Party has been pulled far enough left that even lots of non-crazy people find us just plain scary—something that Fox News takes vigorous advantage of. From an electoral point of view, the story here is consistent: Democrats have stoked the culture wars by getting more extreme on social issues and Republicans have used this to successfully cleave away a segment of both the non-college white vote and, more recently, the non-college nonwhite vote.”
The author? None other than Kevin Drum.
That sentiment as also been expressed (more than once, I believe) by President Obama.
Excellent point. Here is Obama back in 2015:
“We do a disservice to the cause of justice by intimating that bias and discrimination are immutable, that racial division is inherent to America. If you think nothing’s changed in the past 50 years, ask somebody who lived through the Selma or Chicago or Los Angeles of the 1950s. Ask the female CEO who once might have been assigned to the secretarial pool if nothing’s changed. Ask your gay friend if it’s easier to be out and proud in America now than it was thirty years ago. To deny this progress, this hard-won progress -– our progress –- would be to rob us of our own agency, our own capacity, our responsibility to do what we can to make America better.”
With these words on the record, I’m not certain if Obama could still run for political office as a Democrat. Of course he doesn’t need to do so, he’s an ex-President. But if he gave it a theoretical attempt, he’d probably never get through the primaries against a Leftist.
And yet Joe Biden managed to get through the primaries.
"I’m sympathetic.", "We are not just dealing with a right wing"
Sorry, conservative. You're not fooling anyone with this "I'm a liberal too, I'm just super disappointed in Leftists" lie. Once you spout
"biological men (trans women)"
You show that you are indeed a run of the mill conservative transphobe. You can't even have the decency to refer to people as they would prefer. You are so self-centered that you think your views (whether trans people are really women or men) supersedes their own views. We get it. Historically oppressed people asserting that they should be treated fairly is threatening to you and you're scared so you lash out. Again, this is run of the mill conservative behavior. To paraphrase you, the first step is to acknowledge that you have this problem.
And regarding wokeness...
"Democrats have stoked the culture wars by getting more extreme on social issues... The author? None other than Kevin Drum."
Sorry, I don't know why you think Kevin is some kind of final arbiter on "wokeness". He's wrong here and that's OK. Most of us aren't here to worship at the altar of Kevin Drum. We find him to be thoughtful and interesting and, sometimes, simply wrong. Again, that's ok.
Your attempt to "gotcha" other commentators with quotes from Kevin like we should all be bowing to his authority again shows your conservativeness. Conservatives tend to hold authority (police, military, conservative politicians) in high regard and defer to what their leaders say. This thinking is also what makes conservatives think elites are out to get them. They know that they bow to conservative "elites" so, with their typical lack of self-awareness, they assume everyone else bows to their own "elites" as well.
"'biological men (trans women)'
You show that you are indeed a run of the mill conservative transphobe. You can't even have the decency to refer to people as they would prefer."
I can't tell if your comment is serious or not. If it is, you are basically proving his point. What in the world is wrong with "biological men (trans women)"? How else would you describe them?
The last two comments just kind of proved Leo1008's points. Well stated Leo1008!
Kevin, do we need the transphobia?
Where is the transphobia? Seriously.
Crissa can't bear anyone stating something outside her religious beliefs. TWAW is a catechism, a thought terminating cliche' as is "no debate."
We need healthy debate on this issue.
Do trans people refer to themselves as "biological males" or "biological females"? The answer is no. No they don't.
The only people who use those terms are people who are trying to make a point a trans women aren't real women, they are "biological males".
You can try to pretend otherwise with your "gosh, I simply don't understand what is wrong with that" but we all see you. We see you making those comments with the specific purpose of denying trans people their lived identity.
That is the problem. And it's a you (conservative) problem.
I have no idea how trans people refer to themselves. There was nothing wrong with the comment. If you really think saying “biological men” is transphobia you might as well give up now. You are exactly the kind of people Obama was referring to. The commenter was clarifying if the subject was a man dressed as a woman or a woman dressed as a man. There’s nothing wrong with adding clarity by saying “biological men”.
LOL. Just LOL.
Someone shows up with a cogent argument and the fecal flinging gibbons show up to do their thing.
Albert Hirschman had it right ... people need to have a voice or they develop no loyalty and exit. Shouting down people who don't share your views just ensures that they won't be there to help you. You don't have to compromise with enemies (and modern Republicans), but if you share 80% of the same goals maybe you should, you know, set aside the 20% you disagree on and accomplish something.
There's no cogent argument to someone defending genocide.
Trans and intersex people represent at most, 2% of people.
Why should they be targeted for genocide?
WTH are you talking about with this genocide talk?
Yeah I'm wondering that too.
Hard as the fight over gay marriage was I don't recall anyone ever crying "genocide" at the opposition.
Ah Crissa, you never disappoint to unintentionally demonstrate the point. Here we are trying to argue over self-regulating extreme positions and you somehow get all the way to genocide b/c "transwomen (biological men)"? There's no logical path to get there and the only reason you do it is to try and shut down others and not accept that maybe they actually have shared interests and would like to find middle ground.
And what ... if it were 10% of the population then it would be ok? Or is 15%?
And Intersex isn't Trans. One actually has diagnoses and differentials, the other doesn't. They shouldn't be lumped together.
38% of students at Brown identify as LGBTQ+
But it's not social contagion, it's just people finally feeling free to be themselves.
There is no genocide. Sit down.
There was no cogent argument. A conservative wrote a comment where they tried to pretend that they were "liberal" so they would be taken seriously, they denied trans people the simple courtesy of being respectful of their views and feelings (calling trans women "biological men"), and then tried to make an argument that "wokeness" is bad and harmful to liberals when the only people who talk about "woke" or "wokeness" in 2023 are conservatives who are scared that historically oppressed people (PoC, LGBTQ+, women) are asking to be treated fairly and with the same respect as everyone else.
These threads are filled with conservatives saying "golly, you're so mean to disagree with me", "gosh, why can't we all just get along", and the completely nonsensical "the fact that you disagree with that conservative comment proves that it's true". That's your right but the rest of us can see the game you are playing.
Again, in what world is saying “biological men” being disrespectful? It’s exactly this kind of woke lunacy that gets your party in trouble and what Obama has spoken out about.
The game we're NOT playing is your Trans Litmus Test. Labelling everyone who disagrees with you as a knuckle-dragging conservative just reveals the fragility of your position and keeps you from "the simple courtesy of being respectful of their views and feelings"
And yes, you are proving the point about the problems of ideological extremism.
And everybody knows who they are. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: I _really_ wish Kevin would implement an ignore filter. These gits have nothing but dishonesty to offer and I've had a bellyful of 'em.
This is the result of living in a bubble. It doesn't help your arguments. My news/social media experience is now a crazy mix of left and right, and this is good for my brain. I can try to find the truth now that I am out of my all-liberal bubble.
It's less comfortable, for sure, but I think it's the way forward. You can't just clap your hands over your ears and yell forever.
Trying to make eyecontact by deliberately pissing yourself? You're pathetic.
Now you're just scrambling words together randomly. Have a cup of tea, do some 4-7-8 breathing and try again.
As a republican, I hope every democratic candidate uses that in their campaign.
No, "wokeness" is the movement to end White Christian Supremacy, and it is very real. It has slowly been succeeding against the determined opposition supported by Republicans. Fear of loss of group supremacy is a very serious matter - it causes people to go to war and have pogroms and lynchings.
National politicians still can't openly say that they advocate White Christian Supremacy, so the say they are "fighting wokeness". Unfortunately the media largely refuse to acknowledge what opposition to wokeness really means - they have always played down the role of racism in American politics.
So when President Obama said democrats need to get away from the wokeness (paraphrasing) because it's driving voters away, was he advocating "White Christian Supremacy"?
So being able to afford coaches to get your kid a high standardized test score isn't an unfair advantage ... but transwomen playing high-school girl's sports is a totally frikkin' unfair advantage? You really flew off the handle on that one.
Correct
Thanks for admitting up front and yet again that you're my moral inferior.
Likewise
Chuckle. Those were you words, not mine. I don't think you really apprecieate how disliked you are by the locals.
Transwomen on female sports teams is an unfair advantage, yes.
We have female sport for a reason, and it's not to boost the egos of mediocre males. Organized sport is slowly coming around to this fact.
Whooosh!
Weird you son't mention actual positions or policies, and just brand approval.
Why wouldn't you support punching a member of a genocidal group when they're espousing their genocide?
Yeah, brand approval is disconnected from policies. I wonder who that benefits and who makes sure it happens and who is not pushing back against it?
In my post I complain about violent extremists, and you reply with violent extremism:
“Why wouldn't you support punching a member of a genocidal group”
I have to wonder if this was a joke. There’s no way that you could be unaware that your statement proves my point.
What point? That you're a pompous and obnoxious grad student who has real problem with disagreement and can't bear not having the last word? Point made. Over and over and over again.
No, he's just a garden variety troll, subtype, I'm a libera/democrat/etc. ... but this is going too far. I don't think it realizes just how much of a tell it's persitent use of the term 'dems' for 'democrats' is.
Weird, you think that genocide has to be dealt with politely?
I don't support violent language, but we're talking about genocide. You seem to have forgotten that part.
Is the genocide verbal? Is it spiritual? I mean seriously, what are you on about?
Not being allowed to compete against women is not genocide. Being kept out of women's spaces is not genocide.
Genocide is a particular thing, it involves many deaths and is usually state sponsored. This ain't that.
I partially agree with you, but I think the issues you mention are a relatively minor part of Democratic positions.
Yes, parents shouldn't be pushed to transition their dysphoric children, and from what I've read, transitioning children is almost always a mistake. It affects a relatively small number of people, or there'd be more pushback against it, and already there's a lot of pushback from ordinary liberals (though not their politicians). Just look at the comments in the NYT whenever they run an article about this, and virtually every popular comment starts "I'm a liberal who voted for Biden, but [it's crazy to transition children / have biological men compete in women's sports]."
And yes, a lot of these DEI initiatives are a joke. I've been at two separate multi-trillion dollar companies where whites are either a minority or will be within a year or two, and where the CEO is actually a person of color (a truly stupidly broad term) and still have to listen to lectures about white supremacy. But in none of these did the rank and file really buy into this, and most people used the time to just meet other people in the company. My guess is that this self-flagellation has peaked.
But these are minor compared to what Republicans, and SCOTUS conservatives, want to do. They've effectively let states ban abortion even when a woman's health is at risk. Thomalito at least would allow birth control to be banned, based on its unavailability in 1868, and that type of reasoning at least is supported by all 6 conservatives on the court. Probably gay marriage is safe, but I wouldn't put a lot of money on it. Hell, most Republican politicians refuse to condemn the 1/6 insurrection, FFS.
As for economic policies -- I'm just not seeing any problem. If Biden managed to raise taxes a bit, that would hardy be a problem -- tax rates are remarkably low on the wealthy. Boosting investment in some new green technologies or building chip factories outside of China's invasion radius is almost certainly a good idea.
The big cultural items from the 60s-70s are popular and aren't going away. Gay rights aren't going away. Women's rights aren't going away (Dobbs is the exception, but every time abortion comes up for a vote, the liberal position wins). Racist behavior in the work place is illegal and socially frowned upon outside of Musk's factories. Republicans have tried to make voting harder, but it isn't clear that it has helped them at all, beyond scaring their own voters to skip early voting, which probably costs them votes.
I'd really like to see some Democratic politicians point out how much progress has been made -- that's a more popular approach than whining about every microagression. There's a reason why Obama got reelected handily. But most liberal positions are popular positions.
When you describe a Liberal Democratic party with popular positions such as support for gay rights, support for women's rights, and an emphasis on the social progress that we have made, it sounds to me like you are describing the party of Barack Obama. And yes, that's a party that I very much could, and very much did, support.
But, I'm sorry, that's not the Democratic party of today. Instead of supporting gay rights, the radical gender ideologues have arguably adopted homophobic policies that no longer even recognize same-sex attraction or rights. How can you support same-sex marriage when you deny the existence of biological sex?
Instead of supporting women's rights, the Left today does a pretty good job of denying the existence of women. Instead of honoring the hard-earned rights and spaces they have carved out for themselves, we condemn them as irredeemably evil if they continue to argue against the inclusion of biological men (trans women) in women's sports.
Instead of promoting a vision of slow but steady social progress (as Obama did), we denounce the country in terms not all that far removed from what was once considered the extreme rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright (the pastor that Obama eventually had to renounce in order to save his 2008 campaign).
And instead of promoting equality of opportunity, Democrats are now firmly the party of "anti-racist" equity. It cannot be overstated how unpopular this position is. Keep in mind that race-based affirmative action was unpopular across pretty much every demographic group. And the Supreme Court decision getting rid of race-based affirmative action, a move denounced by more or less ever Democrat elite politician or institution, has in fact been popular with the public.
Sorry, but any recognition of our current reality has to face the fact that the far Left is deeply tarnishing the Dem brand, as the polling results from Liberal Patriot (referenced in my original post above) indicate.
It's good to read someone making sense. I'm politically homeless at this point. Of course I can't agree with Republicans on 95% of what they're into, but what is happening to kids in school, to girls and women on sports teams, to women in prisons, is just wrong.
We have an ACLU lawyer advocating book burning and we have major gay rights organizations being homophobic. (Telling women who don't do dick that they need to learn about ladydick is lesbophobic. Telling men who don't do vagina that it's now called a "bonus hole" and they should give it a try is homophobic. I'm not making this up.)
I personally fear that Joe Biden might be the Dem's last remaining life raft. His age is ironically thought to be his greatest weakness when it might in fact (under the right circumstances and depending on who his opponent turns out to be) turn out to be quite an advantage. He clearly belongs to a long-ago generation, and that creates at least the impression that he's detached from the modern, and highly unpopular, social policies of the Dems. But once he's gone, who knows what becomes of the Dems at that point. Kamala Harris has been out there on the record promoting equity over equality for years, and if she ever becomes the nominee for president I would expect a tragic blood bath for the Democrats.
And yet, Joe Biden was proclaiming that he was going to sign the Equality Act (I know, it sounds great, but it was going to enshrine basically self-ID in law) in his first 100 days. He's deep into trans, which is baffling but observable.
You need to read like, actual sources?
https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/gender-affirming-care-young-people-march-2022.pdf
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows/
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/mental-health-hormone-treatment-transgender-people.html
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/political-minds/202201/the-evidence-trans-youth-gender-affirming-medical-care
You're words will be given the consideration they deserve. Now FOAD, troll.
Your immature little game of constantly calling people trolls and telling them to FOAD is getting tiresome and embarrassing (for you, I mean). Maybe you should just take a break from this site.
You're a troll, troll. What else are you going to say? And yes, I'm still your moral superior, as you reaffirmed above. Do you really think anyone thinks otherwise at this late date? Really?
Again, tiresome.
If you don't like it, you're perfectly welcome to go away. Far far away.
Leo bemoans the fact Kevin forgets to pull a Both Sides-ism on this topic, but poor fake lefty Leo then spends countless words without bothering to identify the left wing positions that the public largely disagrees with. Even fake lefty Leo cant pull a Both Sides on this one.
Instead we get Leo ranting at imaginary Lefties:
- Poor Leo had a bad experience in college.
- No matter the topic of the thread, Leo just wants to lecture the left on wokeness, DEI, the author of Harry Potter, or whatever other boilerplate, copy/paste topic he got from FoxNews copy.
Despite being told inumberable times by many different people that we know he's a troll, Leo just can't quite accept the fact that he's a known troll. "I mean, I _am_ a troll, but where do they get off saying it as if it were a fact. Gotta be some sorta lib tactic."
Or you might, you know, consider that he has a point.
Here are the left wing positions the public disagrees with:
males in female sports
males in female prison
males in female changing rooms/locker rooms
puberty blockade of children with gender issues
"gender affirming" surgeries on children
teaching small children that sex isn't real
teachers doing social transition of children while keeping this from parents
People want trans people to be able to live their lives in peace, of course. But that's not what's happening.
You are correct, of course. But Scentofviolets is troll that just prefers to make personal attacks.
Tell me more about your transphobia. Because after umpty-odd posts saying the same thing I'm still not sure where you stand.
To clarify, you feel that putting transwomen in women's prisons is the only correct action?
What if they are a sex offender?
What if they didn't discover their inner woman until after they were convicted?
Do you have any caveats, or is it just "trans women are women" full stop?
Very good points. At what point did Jo Rowling become the evil witch of Scotland? When are we going to say that child killers should not be able to be placed in female prisons? Look up Jason Michael Hann, he's about to get breast implants courtesy of California taxpayers. He went from death row to the female estate.
"it was mainly just when I recently went to grad school that I had no choice but to admit that I was indeed surrounded by Leftist extremism."
Brother, I went to grad school in the early 1990s and I had the exact same experience! In the real world I'm a pretty liberal guy but in grad school I was always the one punch holes in ultra leftwing arguments. But get over yourself. Grad schools are gonna be full of annoying ultra liberals. These people are loud but they have almost no power.
Also I have to say I don't understand why people are so hung up on these trans issues on either the left or the right. I am not saying that trans people don't matter by any means, but in the grand scheme of things these trans arguments seem like about the least important issue our country is facing right now.
That's because you're not a parent whose child was socially transitioned at school without your knowledge and who now wants to have her breasts removed (which happens in California at age 12-13).
Or, you don't know any women in prison where the administration's solution to males getting stuck in with women is to distribute condoms. Seriously, I'm not making this up.
Yes, I think this is a scandal and if you consume typical left leaning media you know nothing about it. There's such a gap between the two worlds, it's mind-blowing.
Only the radical feminists seem to stand in the gap (check out reduxx.info for stories you won't find elsewhere). I remember being surprised in 2018 that WOLF was doing some event with a right wing group, but now I understand. It's their only option. The freeze-out from the left is complete. It's not going to end well.
Are you the parent of such a child? Do you know a woman in such a prison? On the other side you could talk about parents of children who fear their children being denied proper care, etc. My point is that literally no one is directly impacted by these issues. It's that the number of people directly impacted is really tiny given the amount of the political conversation this subject uses up.
Do I need to be the parent of such a child to care about kids being deceived and sold a bill of goods?
They are sterilizing children. This seems, I don't know, important. You may disagree.
I have heard the stories of the women in prison, and I am human and I empathize. Sorry if that's not your thing.
I think you've missed the point of Chait's article. Extreme conservatives are unwilling to accept the evidence that they've lost the argument on most issues. That's why they've created the myth that liberals have used underhanded tactics to "indoctrinate" and "groom" unwitting citizens. It's a kind of stabbed-in-the-back myth about the culture wars.
Traditionally, institutions followed public opinion, but isn't that the real reason why conservatism is embracing an authoritarian ethos?
Have we not seen decades of conservative attempts to weaken voter protections and favoring certain classes of voters, just so that they can seize power, hold onto it, and act unilaterally to create oppressive conditions for those whose acceptance would have otherwise been the social norm?
Just saying, Roe was supposed to be settled law. If conservatives seize power, they can act unilaterally, public opinion notwithstanding.
The set of "Conservatives" and the set of "People who are not comfortable in a liberal democracy" highly overlap.
We've seen what happens when these guys get control of a country, and it's not good for anyone except the sociopath at the top.
It’s funny, you know. Religious fanatics do more than their fair share of “grooming”.
It is possible that the country is becoming more liberal because liberal values are just better for most people.
Jonathan Chait pretends to be impartial in his analysis, but he's not arguing in good faith.
Just popping into the discussion to deplore the continuing use of "CONSERVATIVE' to refer to the bubble-dwelling, misogynistic, white supremacist section of the political world.
I'm pushing for REACTIONARY. What say you all?
I certainly agree that the word "conservative" should not be used to refer to these people.
Breaking the constiutional order, which is what they want, is not exactly "reactionary" either. It is pretty radical.
That's fine but when the majority of conservatives support the "bubble-dwelling, misogynistic, white supremacist section of the political world" (Trump, DeSantis, Gaetz, Boebert, MTG, etc) then it's hard to say that they are really any different.
The majority of conservatives may not say or explicitly support extremist views but when they vote for those who do it amounts to the same thing.
Speaking for myself, I use "conservative" in order to highlight the hypocrisy of the people who claim to be Ayn Rand small government conservatives.
"Institutions are always downstream of public opinion, changing only after the public demands it. "
Disagree with "always". Back in the 1960's IIRC public opinion was behind the majority of Congress on civil rights for some years. ("majority" is deliberate--it took LBJ to get a majority sufficient to overcome filibusters). MLK said something about institutions couldn't change minds, but could change behavior.
I don't think the "public" demanded Brown vs Education... There's a dance that occurs between institutional leaders and their publics. Sometimes it's Robespierre, racing after the crowd to lead it; sometimes it's the public changing their mind in response to leadership (as in gay marriage).
Republicans have been winning with culture wars for over fifty years. They won with a totally incompetent, criminal Presidential candidate in 2016, came close in 2020 and actually won the House in 2022 with a slate of clown candidates. There is good support for actual Democratic economic positions, such as higher taxes on rich people, continuation of Social Security and Medicare, etc. If Democrats really have the advantage on both cultural and economic issues, why aren't they winning by landslides? The country has certainly been moving left culturally, but this has incited continual reaction.
Polls are probably misleading in portraying the extent of support on the right for some "leftist" culture war positions. In particular few people will admit to being racist, even on polls - you only get at this with fairly indirect questions. Anyway when it comes down to actual voting, lower-income whites are still taking the side of White Christian Supremacy, whatever they may say about sub-issues. This has been the main factor determining partisanship for lower-income whites for a long time and the partisanship is still intensifying.
Maybe if demographics or other factors cause Republicans to lose badly they will adopt another strategy and quit stoking partisanship on racial and religious grounds, but that hasn't happened yet.
I've probably been working in the tech world too long, but if this is a country controlled by white Christian supremacists, well, they're doing a pretty shitty job: they seem to have let an awful lot of non-Christians and non-whites succeed in this country.
Yeah, well, alot of non-supremacists also exist and fight those forces at the ballot box.
Just depends on how you measure success/failure doesnt it?
What is the right number of succeeding non-whites? How did you decide this was the right amount and that there shouldnt be more?
All the ones that were able to succeed.
Ron DeSantis spent two years trying to prove he has a bigger dick than Tinkerbelle and failed.
This post is a great example of what, for a while, I struggled to find a name for, and for now I think I will call it "Liberal Mathematical Error, " or LME.
The reasons libs fall into a LME is that we see the world as a constant quest for sound policies and one factor in whether a policy is sound or not is the percentage of the population which supports the policy. Its not the only factor, but its certainly one.
The reason its an error is that when a Repub is running for any office, all the Repub cares about is winning. The Repub's of today (not always) do not run on policies designed to appeal to the highest percentage of possible voters, then run on the issues which gets them to 40% of more votes.
That is 10% gun rights, 10% anti-minority rights, 10% anti immigration, and 10% anti tax/"don't tell me what to do/anti abortion." There is your 40%. Is nice to throw in another 5% or so, and right now that 5% is a straw man about what liberals would do if you are not elected.
Republicans pay no analytical attention to this, much of what is on Fox is made up, and if its not made up it doesn't matter how few actual liberal Democrats are in favor of the not-made-up thing. I mean, Joe F-ing Biden, who is hardly a septugenarian woke-meister, is the leader of the Dems, I rest my case.
So for Chiat to point out the percentages of overall support for some position as something the R's don't already know is classic, classic LME.
The real point is this, what do you think the odds are of the number of voters who believe life begins at conception dropping below 10%?
If you answer, its never dropping below, you are correct. It follows that you can write articles pointing out that up to 90% support abortion rights until you are blue in the face.
Its LME to not ask the real question, "are the Repubs giving a home to the other 10%"
Come on, we all know the answer. We just can't believe it.
Just like the Repubs are giving a home to the 10% who will have any gun restrictions enforced by prying their guns from their cold, dead hands.
And so on.
Nailed it!
Huge gape between those who answer polls and those who vote in accordance with the answers they gave the pollsters.
Pro choice women voted for Bush II (Roberts, Alito) and Trump (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett). Just one example.
Like everything, you can latch onto the conventional narrative, or you can choose to understand.
Yes, Americans support the issues Kevin described. And yet Trump was voted President (and is still remarkably popular). Why?
Very simple.
America, since the late 50s has done more than any society on earth to try to improve itself. The only thing comparable is Britain's ending slavery and then spending years stopping the trade. And what has been the result of this ~70 years of self-improvement? Zero acknowledgement that it happened, zero gratitude, and an endless litany of complaints that America is the worst society in human history and that every little thing, no matter what the issue, is motivated not by personality conflicts, or mistakes, or genuine disagreements, but by some sort of -ism.
The consequence of this is exactly what any normal human who understands normal human emotions would predict. If I get exactly the same (hostile, non-empathic, furious) response no matter what I do, then fsck you, I'll do whatever is most convenient for me. That's the basic stance today of 50% of Americans, and that, more than anything else, is why Trump was popular.
Not his policies per se, but the fact that he is pretty much the only politician who is willing to say "America just is not as evil as you claim; and if you insist on this nonsense I don't feel I owe you an apology for anything".
I fully expect this analysis to be hated and piled on, just as it is whenever I raise the point. Much more fun to claim (yet again) that all Republicans are racist misogynistic haters (in other words to ignore the very facts that are being presented here) than to understand what's actually going on. And enjoy, yet again, complaining about "I just don't get it. We keep telling people, over and over, how much they suck, and yet they still won't vote for us. Now the Asians and Latino's are deserting us. It's an utter mystery."
Weird, you seem to be amplifying the lie that the deplorables told.
Why would you do that?
"And yet Trump was voted President (and is still remarkably popular). Why?"
Kevin had a post asking this question a few days ago. And it's a potentially great question because, ideally, it should promote at least some cognitive dissonance on the Left, some sense that maybe we're missing something, that just maybe we're not perfect. Instead, if you look at far Left sites like the DailyKos, you'll find the whole matter swept under the rug with reductive and outrageous assertions that the 70 million people who voted for Trump are simply evil racists. Case Closed. No further thought on the matter, or, god forbid, self-reflection, required.
"America, since the late 50s has done more than any society on earth to try to improve itself."
I don't know to what extent this claim can be empirically validated, but I agree there's an element of truth to it. And that's one of the great ironies of our times. We are, as far as I can tell, an almost unparalleled experiment: a huge democratic republic with a wildly diverse assortment of races, ethnicities, languages, religions, and ideologies (political or otherwise). Somehow, all of those differences have to be worked out democratically, and that's a colossally difficult undertaking.
Our commitment to to so much diversity in such a large democratic society, so far as I know, has no parallel elsewhere in the world. There are plenty of other "democracies," such as 21st century India, which simply could not care less about promoting diversity. They appear more than happy to expunge Muslims from their country. Or there's Netanyahu's Israel, which appears to be making an attempt to restrict rather than embrace civic debate or dissent. And of course there are plenty of autocracies which may or may not embrace various types of racial or ethnic diversity, but they only do so at the whim of the autocrat.
America may simply be running in a race without any other serious competitors. But the amazing thing is that the Left seems to have little but contempt for our efforts. We idolize diversity like no other large democracy in, perhaps, all of history, but the Left goes on castigating us for not embracing enough diversity.
And, yes, I can see how many people might ultimately come to feel bullied enough to appreciate someone like Trump. I personally don't want a would-be autocrat back in office. But we do ourselves a disservice by failing to grapple with his ongoing support.
Well said. The willful blindness is astounding.
"Anyone who values truth should stop worshiping reason." - Jonathan Haidt
Haidt is absolutely correct. The fundamentalist belief on the Left, which has been adopted by the Right, is that if someone's reasoning is sound, then their conclusion is sound.
It makes precisely as much sense as believing in Santa Clause or believing that the earth is flat because it completely ignores the self-evident fact that reasoning is a process, and perspective is an input to that process.
If I start from the perspective that Republicans are the good guys and Democrats are the bad guys, and my reasoning is absolutely perfect, and someone else with perfect reasoning has the opposite perspective, do you think we'll come to the same conclusion? It's like arguing about which route to take after forgetting to agree on the destination.
If there is a flaw in this logic please let me know because I've tried and I simply can't see it.
"If there is a flaw in this logic . . ."
What logic?
It's easy to see that there's no logic in my comment. All you have to do is ignore my comment. If that was your intent, then you have succeeded.
In my defense, here is the logic:
A process has an input and an output. If you assume that a good process results in a good output, and then you ignore the input, and the output is bad, then you will be assuming that the output is good.
That simple but inconvenient logic is the truth that not enough people want to face. If you are angry about what the Right is doing, that is what they are doing, and the only reason they get away with it because so many on the Left are doing it as well.
"The fundamentalist belief on the Left, which has been adopted by the Right, is that if someone's reasoning is sound, then their conclusion is sound."
Never heard of modes ponens, have you? No wonder I don't follow your moronic [1] commentary.
[1] That's descriptive, not insulting, and don't you dare to try to say otherwise.
If the effect of perspective and reason is a conclusion, and if the effect of perspective on the conclusion is ignored, and if the perspective is wrong, then the conclusion that the conclusion is not wrong is wrong.
I had not heard of modes pones before, but it makes sense.
Saying something is description and not insulting does not necessarily mean that it is descriptive and not insulting.
Maybe I'm wrong but all I got from you is enough information to make me think that I wrote something you really didn't want to read. Why? I can only guess.
The DNC should spend all its time hammering home this list to voters. Somehow the lazy-minded "bothsiderism" arguments need to fall.
Tomorrow is cat blogging, right? Maybe a double dose?