Over at New York, Sam Adler-Bell says that he doesn't care about the word "woke." If you don't like it, fine. But if you believe in the principles behind the word, you need to quit using its pseudo-academic language with anyone other than your own circle of true believers:
This idiom — or perhaps communicative register — replaces the obligation of persuading others to adopt our values with the satisfaction of signaling our allegiance and literacy to those who already agree. In some cases, this means we speak in an insular language that alienates those who haven’t stewed in the same activist cultural milieu.
....When college-educated radicals speak for the left, they tend to speak in the language of “wokeness” — precisely as I have defined it — with distorting and destructive effects. This is due, in part, to the peculiar history of 20th-century campus radicalism. The victories of student activists in the 1970s onward — in creating departments and new curricula through which radical thought could be studied and taught — were pyrrhic. Conceived as beachheads in a broader war against capitalist society, radical departments became sepulchers for radical thought: places where wild ideas could be quarantined from the challenge of convincing anyone outside to believe them.
Ironically, this is an argument that conservatives have been making for decades. They say—correctly, I think—that the overwhelming dominance of the left on university campuses weakens progressives because they're never forced to learn how to persuade non-progressives. Conservatives, by contrast, who face a stewing cauldron of students and faculty who all disagree with them, learn fast that they'd better figure out how to make convincing arguments.
Conservatives probably overstate this point, but there's not much question that there's something to it. This is why it drives me nuts whenever some progressive says "It's not my job to teach you ______ ." Of course it is. Not only that, it's your job to teach others constantly, patiently, sociably, and in language they can understand. If you aren't willing to do this, you don't really care about winning support for progressive ideas.
Politics is all about persuasion, and right now progressives are doing a lousy job of it. We need to up our game.
"Conservatives, by contrast, who face a stewing cauldron of students and faculty who all disagree with them, learn fast that they'd better figure out how to make convincing arguments."
What convincing conservative arguments? Is this a Kevin brain fart?
Kevin is a Rockefeller Republiqan with Reaganite sympathies.
He's pretty lucky he quit MJ before they fired him the way Vox fired Ezra and Yglesias at the request of the trans movie reviewer
On the one hand, Emily van der Werf cut her teeth at the avclub. On the other hand, Ezra Klein is another anecdata journo while Yglesias would be at home at NRO if not for his Mexican name.
Can I think all of them should be fired from their jobs & floated put to sea?
What convincing conservative arguments?
Apparently enough convincing arguments to regularly win plenty of elections.
Hell, Trump presided over the worst calamity in many decades and the sharpest one year economic contraction since the early 1930s, and he was within, what, 80,000 votes of a second term?
You and I may not like the fact that plenty of what the right wing spews is convincing to millions of voters. But reality doesn't care.
They don't persuade people with convincing arguments though, they persuade them primarily by promising to preserve straight, white, christian male dominance. And Trump delivered on that promise. Is that an argument or just an appeal to tribalism?
Not that I agree with the MAGA motto, but I think you’re missing the crux of the argument. The core principle is “our country is in decline, and it’s because we got away from [x] cultural values and now are too woke etc etc”
I do think the preoccupation with race hamstrings leftist critiques of this idea, because if white-skinned people are considered a homogeneous group, it’s hard to argue we weren’t doing better (relatively speaking) when the US was homogenous and white. Call it the 1920-1960 era when the US was truly ascendant. The problem with the MAGA line is that 100 years ago the same exclusionary nativist thing was said about Italians, Irish, Pollacks, Eastern Europeans, and Scandinavians, i.e. “Our country was better when it was Anglo-Saxon” and “Papists are ruining our national values”
Hard to those on the left to argue for the role of diversity in our historical success when eras before a certain cutoff are deemed uniformly white and homogenous
Getting off my soapbox now, but this is why the historicity of MAGA might be compelling to some people. Not as simple as “we want white people in charge”, there’s a complex (and ultimately false) historical argument involved, as there are in most nativist movements through history
“the 1920-1960 era when the US was truly ascendant.” Spanning the Great Depression, the peak of organized crime, a World War, rationing, ‘duck and cover’, Sputnik ….
It's ahistorically ahistoric. The ascendancy of the American imperium started with the Christianizing n' Civilizing US army, finally made whole after the internal dissent of the Civil War thirty years before, striking the coup d' grace against the swarthy Spanish Empire, liberating Cuba & claiming Puertp Rico, the Philippines, & Guam. The blanching of the WOPs, Hunkies, Pollack, etc., who came thru Ellis Island before going on to the D to work on Henry Ford's assembly line, had nothing to do with it.
Yes, spanning all that is when we became an industrial powerhouse that de facto ruled half the world and its people, who then starting telling the Europeans when to jump and how high rather than vice versa. Are you really arguing the US became relatively weaker on the world stage in that period? Hard for me to accept
Pick some specific dates if you’d like, I’m just providing a rough estimate for the GA in the MAGA mythos. The desire for a mythical golden era is a powerful political force, just look at the Russians in Ukraine or the Japanese during Meiji and you can see the crazy shit that idea can make people do
Well, it was an era of contradictions. There was a period of argument over “who lost China?”, the Korean ‘conflict’ ended in stalemate, the Iron Curtain divided Europe. The Soviets brutally crushed popular uprisings in East Germany. Poland and Hungary, and the U.S. could do nothing about that - the USSR was still considered a superpower. The past always looks rosier from a distance. Arguably, though, the high point of US power came in the decades following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and preceding the economic growth of China, when there was one acknowledged superpower.
It's all about appealing to raw emotion - whether it's about parent's instinct to keep their children safe even if the supposed danger is bogus or that someone is stealing from you even if the stats say otherwise.
Centrists foolishly believe there are ways to reach people after GOP indoctrination especially if they sell out progressives. But it doesn't work like that and never will.
Instead the left of center should be running on two things - the clear and present danger of the radical right wing in the US and how screwed up GOP fiscal policies are. Just state that folks should be treated decently and with respect, that the working and middle classes should get a better piece of the pie.
But the left of center wants to also run on cisman white centering.
The Sanders Institiute is basically a grass-fed beef & vegan meat substitute update of Lester Maddox's Restaurant.
Sadly true, Chap Petersen, NOVA State Senator has run on this for years but in the next cycle will be challenged from his left (2003). Those folks are dinosaurs who are rapidly dying off or losing elections to either GOP in red districts or to Multi-Cultural Democrats.
The Lester Maddox voter is all in on the GOP has already rejected the Democratic party. What is left is the mansplaining "liberal" - they are best dealt with via a curt, "I was talking, let me continue".
Are we counting out Tribune of the Workingman Lee Carter?
What convincing arguments, though?
Lies, sure, but those aren't, by definition, arguments.
A lot of "conservative" (aka reactionary, revanchist) arguments are based on flat out lies. Total nonsense. Wacko conspiracy theories. I hesitate to call this type of discourse "argument."
Yeah there’s a lot of that. But no more crazies than there ever were I think
You don’t see conservatives moping about lost hope when they realize they won’t win votes from the 10% or so of registered Dems who identify as communist, after all.
Just draw the line at where you need to win then convince more people than that. I highly doubt you need a single QAnon person in order to achieve a considerable majority
Water fluoridation as mind control at least had chemistry somewhat on its side.
Pizza Ping Pong didn't even have a basement.
What the hell is pizza ping pong
The pedo pizza restaurant thing?
Sorry to hear about your amnesia, Mr. Posobiec.
Here, have a slice from the Hut...
You just proved his point.
Your comment is so ironic in that it supports Kevin’s point even though you think you’re challenging.
It's depressing to read someone as intelligent and educated as Kevin clinging to the myth of the rational voter, willing and able to be persuaded by evidence and logic. It ought to be blindingly obvious to everyone by now that the voters who decide American elections do so on the basis of pure irrational emotion.
Drum is not clinging nor evoking any such thing - although it is quite the symptom of your problem that his comment results in this misframing strawman (to avoid grappling with criticism).
In the actual text above "evidence and logic" are not evoked at all. Nor rational voters. That's entirely your importing them (either as deliberate strawman or perhaps more likely an accidental strawman from the blinders you have on such that you think persuasion = evidevence and logic).
Rather persuasion is evoked.
The simple fact that the Republicans have in fact peeled off once solid or at least highly inclined Democratic voting constituencies (and above all high voting propensity) in key Geographies (states or sub-state level) indicates that Persuasion does in fact exist and work. Of course Egg-head academic demarches are not really persuasion - or not a good form (at least if one actually wants to succeed) of persuasion for non-Uni diplomed audiences. Others have evoked a difference between Activist and Organiser (as in trade union labour organiser) thinking and spekaing which also goes to this - a key difference.
And the criticism he evokes is one many others have begun to over the past years relative to the Anglophone Left (similarly for Corbyn & co, equally bumbling destructors).
Alienating and arch In-Game language from self-regarding academic and pseudo-academic circles as a form itself of In-Club identarianism, the very opposite of the Organising approach.
Now personally having multiple graduate degrees, I can see how the langauge comes easily after one goes through that. One does not need to be anti-intellectual to recognise arch-and-self-regarding Eggheadism is a sterile demarche, rhetorical self-pleasuring....
The evidence in the USA is very simply over the past several decades Left action has been infected with Academic - Activist language and thinking, and whatever excuses you make about But Koch!, But FoxNews! pouring money and getting a broadcast time does not work if you do not use that effectively to find successful hooks and appeals to convert and seduce. (the comparative performance of 'progressive' media to replicate Fox highlight that).
They sell bad ideas better than you do, and clearly a major factor is the one Drum highlights, an insular self-regarding, archly look-down-its-nose exclusionary (while touting "inclusion") language.
These operational realities do not excuse rather they condemn ignoring the self-restricting, masturbatory form of discourse the Anglophone Left has widely adopted as evoked by Drum.
The GQP peeled off the sainted workingclass of the Church of Sanderstology, but not with an appeal to conversational language but the ax brandished by Lester Maddox to keep the races apart.
In the actual text above "evidence and logic" are not evoked at all. Nor rational voters...Rather persuasion is evoked.
+1
Persuasion sans evidence, logic, rational voters .... like in a cult?
Semantics. To 'persuade' means 'cause (someone) to do something through reasoning or argument' ... 'to make someone agree to do something by giving them reasons why they should'. Kevin's exhortation that 'it's [our] job to teach others constantly, patiently, sociably, and in language they can understand' implies persuasion based on evidence and logic. Or if it doesn't, he needs to explain what alternative interpretation of persuasion he believes would be effective, and why.
You totally do not understand how politics divvy up in the USA. It's all about irrational emotions and what tribe you believe you belong to. Older generations keep thinking they can get the old band back together again when in reality they need to form a new band with new tribe members. We are not the UK our tribes are different than your tribes.
Wouldn’t be that hard to grab some of the old trade unionists. I have a friend (friend of a friend more like) who is all but Qanon but he said “hell yeah I’d like a union, more money and benefits”. It’s mostly practical concerns driving voting patterns not high-minded stuff
The identity politics can only take you so far
Yes, it will be hard, because that friend of a friend is going to vote, not for the party that wants to make organizing easier, but for the party that has promoted union-busting with considerable success, hamstrung the NLRB, and appointed judges who side with management 100% of the time.
Because he thinks that Democrats don’t really care about working class people, which I kind of get because the union stuff hasn’t been front of mind for Democrats since the Clinton era
It’d take a blind man to miss the fact that non-college educated middle class hasn’t been a key target demographic for any Dem outside of PA or OH the last few decades. I wouldn’t mind being the party of Manchin tbh, it’s a framework that would win at least
Sinema can go fuck herself though
So you missed the public discussion about ‘card check’ that went on before, during an after the 2008 election, because then-candidate, and President, Barack Obama supported it, and sponsored legislation to that end?
Does he want an integrated union hall, though?
I’d have to ask him. He doesn’t talk about race a lot, though he didn’t like the riots much at all. Then again I tune out most of his ranting
Don’t see him much these days anyways, I moved
"This person doesn't exist".
+1
Yep. Nice explanation.
+1
"rhetorical self-pleasuring"
I'm stealing that!
In a game of Toast between political campaign strategists & pollsters, who would last the shortest, & why?
Let's say the game would be with Frank Luntz, Nate Silver, David Shor, Robbie Mook, longtime Mc Cain hand & Trump curious GQPer Mike Murphy, Bob Shrum, & Steve Bannon.
You're right about the non-existence of the rational voter, though Kevin doesn't talk about a rational voter at all.
Kevin says we're not persuasive. And he's right, IMHO, because people vote for stories, for a vision of the future. And the progressive vision of this country's future is one where we view individual voters simply as a combination of their racial, ethnic and gender identities.
And that's a dead end, because really, no one thinks of themselves simply as a member of these groups. To quote Dave Davies, "I'm not like everybody else (and neither are you)."
Stop acting like her emails, Benghazi, & the Clinton Kill List were worldbuilding on the order of the pre-Disney buyout of the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
Then Kevin needs to explain how we are "to teach others constantly, patiently, sociably, and in language they can understand", if not by the use of rational arguments. Because I've no idea what he means.
Always remember: Kevin is also the guy that wants to see FOXnews go dark.
So, maybe he thinks that the FOX audience, after losing their fix, will migrate to CNN or MSNBC as something like a methadone clinic.
Tell me how racist white people don't see themselves as members of a group that are not black, Latino etc. Race is itself based on classing people as "not white."
You know, all I ask of other progressives/liberals is to simply stay quiet and let me work. I am signed up to teach, to persuade, particularly about trans people. I am better prepared to engage with people who are somewhat hostile, because being cisgendered, I'm not threatened by it particularly.
I have had countless discussions where it seemed like I had a chance of making some headway ruined by some other person who shares my goals jumping in on the conversation and tossing spraying insults around.
It would be one thing if they were (in this case) trans people, who are acting from direct trauma. But more often they aren't.
Progress can be both slow and spotty. This can be discouraging. But it is possible. It is happening.
I find I'm more prepared than most cisgender persons mostly because:
I actually took puberty-blocking meds before I chose to transition.
I transitioned officially transitioned twenty-six years ago this month.
I did public speaking about trans issues in 1998.
Having newly transitioned or trans kids speak just doesn't have the same gravitas as I can muster, saying, 'Hey, this is not new, and I did it over twenty years ago' or experience dealing with bigots and invective.
But that's what usually happens, most trans speakers are newly transitioned and therefore more exposed, both legally and emotionally. It's not really fair for them,
I disagree. Just because they are in the minority of thinking people they should not attack the majority with a straw man argument.
https://twitter.com/AugustJPollak/status/1535645483363966977?s=20&t=NqOAt8PEMH9oY7dWTSzDnQ
https://twitter.com/Winter/status/1535617109245427713?s=20&t=NqOAt8PEMH9oY7dWTSzDnQ
Kevin, next thing you know, you'll be saying politics is the art of the possible, rather than just my personal wants. Sorry, I just didn't like Hillary. Eff millions of poor women.
Isn’t it at least conceivable that, as the actual candidate, Hillary bore at least some of the responsibility to try to persuade people to vote for her? Perhaps even to the extent of visiting Wisconsin?
I like that you bring this up on the commemoration of the Pulse Niteclub Shooting, for which Hillary cancelled her Wisconsin campaign swing.
The shooting was in June, the election was in November. And she’d didn’t suspend her campaign—she made several appearances in June and July., just not in Wisconsin. There was nothing stopping her from campaigning in the traditional Democratic firewall states in the Midwest once she understood that she badly needed to solidify her position in those key states.
She did campaign, so...
Yeah. What did she do wrong, that includes actual things?
Insofar as I’m aware, from the end of the party convention to the end of the general election, Hillary made exactly zero visits to Wisconsin (even as her campaign was told by locals that her support among the base, and particularly among African Americans, was slipping. And, again, she never bothered to find out why she was losing support in those Midwest battleground and firewall states.
Basically, assuming that the party’s base (including disaffected Bernie supporters and African Americans) would ultimately “self-actualize” themselves to the polls without her needing to address their issues was a fatal mistake.
I think it all gets back to the intractability of taste, of preference: we tend to favor the music we liked at age 17, & I can see this tendency crossing to language. So, Kevin, in this case, was a self-professed woke child, as wokeness existed, in 1975, & he just can't get with the words that people born in 2005 are using now, or even those born in 1993 or 1975.
We have become too woke!
woke = red pilled
Real world discussions of problems and ways of treating them need to happen.
TV shows have multiple detectives working on single case, cops always getting the right man, and cases actually solved in an hour.
A lot of education needs to be done.
Woke=Conservatives. Understand that, understand where it comes from.
I watched the Wire rather than NCIS as a kid so maybe my expectations were appropriately tempered on the subject
Against capitalism?? How??? Nothing they did were against capitalism, but indeed it's support.
"Conservatives, by contrast, who face a stewing cauldron of students and faculty who all disagree with them, learn fast that they'd better figure out how to make convincing arguments."
Really? Name one.
Absolutely true. But they have learned very well how to (a) re-package the argument in emotionally-evocative negative terms, and/or (b) change the subject altogether.
+10
👍👍👍
Drumm writes that conservatives, “learn fast that they'd better figure out how to make convincing arguments.” I don't think that's true of conservatives whose highest priority is to cut taxes for the wealthy, because there probably are no arguments that will convince the typical American voter that the biggest problem facing the country right now is that the wealthy pay too much in taxes. In 2016, most conservatives lined up behind a professional con man who promised to build the wall and eliminate the carried interest loophole. Once in office, Trump ignored those promises and instead push through a tax cut that mainly benefited the wealthy. (Trump did try to push for his wall after the Democrats captured the House in 2018, but by then it was too late.) Conservatives rely on Fox News lies and emotional manipulation because they don't have valid arguments that will convince people.
+1
I guess we have to start over.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Oh, no you don't. I want women included, too, from Day One.
"Woke" is just another iteration of "commie," "socialist," "CRT," "groomer," etc. The reason Movement Conservatism is veering into ending democracy is that there are no rational arguments for conservatism. Besides, the electorally dispositive conservative cohort is in the Fox, etc. silo and unreachable. Folks that may be reachable don't matter electorally.
You know better than that. It’s easier to make a persuasive argument when you can pretend that everything is easily solved. Just cut taxes. Just blame those people who don’t look like you. Just allow biz to pay whatever it wants while putting out products of whatever quality it wants. Just go back to how things were in the perfect 1950s. Easy arguments to make. Easy to believe. Difficult to refute.
Just drill more wells and gas will be down to 50 cents!! …. Actually, I guess liberals could work harder at making real solutions sound as simplistic as conservative solutions.
Yep. "Make America Great Again" is devoid of any real meaning but it sure fits on a baseball cap.
Devoid? Nah.
MAGA is definitely meaningful, but just like it's Blue Twin #OurRevolution, it's simply mid-century nostalgia for when a white dude on a factory floor could say "n*gg*r" or "f*gg*t" without being sent to Human Resources by some beta colleague. (But also, in this nostalgist's fantasia, there is no human resources, it's just the hiring office, & your fellow employees are coworkers.)
Why do we always have to bend to them? To assume theirs is the "norm" that we need to explain our very selves to? In the age of Google, they can look it up for themselves, for one thing.
And lastly, since when has talking nicely and bending the knee to conservatives done a damned thing other that gotten us closer to getting kicked?
I've had some interesting discussions with conservatives, but often their arguments are based on premises that, while they seem firm enough to a conservative, didn't cut any ice with me. Premises like originalism, Christian doctrine and laissez faire capitalist thinking combined with voodoo economics.
You can criticize woke culture on campuses all you like, but if you are looking for social equality, that's where it's current push is coming from. When you talk about trans and gay rights to conservatives, what do you get from them in return? More support for a tyranny of what USED to be a majority but is now a minority.
It isn't true that college campuses are full of nothing but liberals. It depends on the department. You find conservative faculty and students in computer science, physics, economics and business, engineering. You find liberals in the social sciences and humanities, although there are conservatives in history and philosophy, and liberals in teacher education. This idea that colleges are monolithically liberal is wrong. You also find evangelical Christians concentrated in certain majors and not others. Also, depends on what type of university and were you are in the country. Loma Linda University and Pepperdine are not woke campuses.
It seems to me that Kevin is buying into the assault on higher education made by conservatives, who claim that universities are indoctrinating students into wokeness and not allowing freedom of inquiry. The conservative caricature of higher ed bears little resemblance to what is actually happening.
How soon til we find out Kevin Drum was forced out at Mother Jones for moonlighting with FIRE?
From my perspective, the advantage conservatives have over progressives in "persuasion" is that conservatives are unconstrained by facts or reason: conservatives know the goal they want to achieve in advance; the value of any effort at "persuasion" is measured entirely by how much it advances that goal, and not by whether it is supported by facts or reason.
So "Biden made gas cost $5 a gallon" is a very good assertion for conservatives.
Progressives generally believe that part of the purpose for discussion is to reveal facts and reason.
So if you accept this position -- and you might not (conservative assertion: "But Milton Friedman said the exact same thing, so just know that you are disagreeing with a Nobel Laureate if you don't accept the position") -- should progressives take off their gloves and "persuade" in the same fact- and reason-devoid manner of conservatives?
As practiced now by Republicans, and by the type of conservative in other countries who are also now described as "populists", politics is a matter of tapping into basic group instincts, especially racism but also religion. Real logical arguments have little to do with it. Active Republican politicians scarcefly bother with persuasion based on facts or consistency, it is just allegations and often wild accusations. Aside from appealing to instinct, Republicans "persuade" with simple repetition. This is not something that is learned on college campuses - Trump, for example, owes nothing to rightist intellectualism.
Patient, sociable, rational persuasion makes little headway when polarization is extreme. Leftists would probably do better with less dogmatism, but that is not the real problem. The current dangerous situation is not likely to be resolved with patient persuastion - it may take drastic events, such as a recession, to change many minds. There could be a reaction on the lower-income right if and when people realize that Republicans are not delivering on promises.
“Trump … owes nothing to rightist intellectualism”
That’s for sure!
Well, the lefty ivory-tower echo chamber idea sure helps explain the failure of messaging and the brain-dead nonsense slogans that the left has been coming up with for many years now. "Akademic-speak" from the liberal arts side and those fields that have to tack "science" onto their titles to make them seem serious, has tended to be bloated, incomprehensible, and often means the opposite of what it seems to. It's not a good fit for communicating with people who haven't marinated in that academic environment: that is, 99%.of the population.
By contrast, not only can the right wing make up any desired crap to motivate people, they also come from the worlds of business, advertising, and flat out criminal conning. They're aided by the old principle of "A lie will make it around the world before the truth 0something something)". And modern media/social media amplifies these methods.
Democrats are pretty good at politicking among other elected folk. But communication to the voters? The party as a whole needs a massive upgrade. After all, they are the party with solutions. They're the ones who are actually trying to do something. They're even the majority! And lying is not their standard approach. There has to be a way of getting this across to Americans.
It seems unlikely that university culture is driving Republican/conservative messaging or forcing them to use emotion and fear in their messaging.
Let's not pretend that anything in the conservative messaging playbook is new or original. Plus, it is present and works in other countries, not just the US.
But I realize that its fun to blame liberals, in particular the liberal boogeymen that conservatives spend so much time on. The argument doesn't need to make sense, its just important to signal our dislike of these boogeymen.
+1
Adler-Bell's article was a good one and while I agree that certainly activists need to drop the academic jargon just to communicate, it should also points its just much easier to talk among one selves. Generations of Occupy, SDS and union organizers and activists, heck even going all the way back to the Narodniks in Russia (Going to the People Movement) find that even trying to talk and persuade people in their own language is down difficult next to impossible and quite disillusioning and its why they retreat back to the ivory tower.
You, KD. I've seen your cynicism and it's very much inline with this type of critic identified by Sam. It's easy to identify, just by the fact that you left out Sam's definition of "wokeness":
I'm not absolving Sam of his own sins of cynicism, though. His word choice points to an attempt to veil his disparaging view on those who would abuse "wokeness". "Wokeness" is far more simple: It is the point at which you see the underlying truth about accepted norms.
Cash bail, for instance, isn't about trying to hold dangerous or flighty suspects. It is meant to collect a guarantee that the suspect will return for trial. And yet, despite the 8A against excessive bail, the poor (particularly Black Americans) are held indefinitely in jails on account that they're unable to afford bail. Cash bail has been abused to become a penalty for being a poor (as opposed to a wealthy) suspect.
Well this post from Kevin does not appear to be very popular. But, frankly, some of the comments in response really do sound out of touch to me. I’m curious if any of you actually still are in any kind of university setting? I’m still trying to get through a Grad program, and, based on my experience, this observation from Kevin is spot on:
“They say—correctly, I think—that the overwhelming dominance of the left on university campuses weakens progressives because they're never forced to learn how to persuade non-progressives.”
I’ve made this point - during in-person discussions, in zoom meetings, on class online forums, in submitted papers - many, many times. Again, speaking from experience, I’ve encountered so many seemingly well-intentioned progressives in my classes who seem downright shocked - and apparently unable to coherently respond - if and when I attempt to constructively question parts of their orthodoxy.
It has become clear to me that certain areas of higher Ed (such as literature and - especially - composition) are so thoroughly radicalized that a student can go all the way through a PHD program without encountering much if any challenge to their Far Left ideology. Hence, Grad school, in certain fields, becomes a way of producing highly qualified extremists rather than open minded scholars.
Based on the comments here, my observations may be unpopular and/or dismissed as Fox News style propaganda. But there’s a difference. Fox News takes some extreme examples and then uses them to tar and feather all of higher Ed as a whole. That’s not what I’m trying to do. But the fact remains that those extreme examples not only exist but in fact seem to be alarmingly numerous. They do not constitute all of higher Ed, but they do seem to constitute far more of it than they should.
I speak based on what I experience with my own eyes and ears in higher Ed at this present moment. And discounting what are uncomfortable truths on “our side” doesn’t necessarily do us any good.
I grew up in a red area, certainly no bastion of liberalism but until Howard Dean I had no ability to counter conservative attacks. I knew I was right but couldn't say why. Because the overwhelming majority of conservatives argue in bad faith or rhetorical slight of hand, profressive or lefty responses need to be taught. Rhetoric classes for the left.
But this isn't unique to the current moment, nor is it only kids, liberals or people at universities. Very few people are good at making coherent, effective arguments for societal issues/changes.
I've lived in red Texas, purple Michigan and deep blue Colorado....bad arguments that pursuade noone but the true believers are everywhere. I've stocked shelves, worked retail, graduated from a good university, worked in a fortune 500 middle executive position.....bad arguments that persuade no one but the true believers are everywhere.
The real problem with universities is that there are a bunch of people there. Issues with people are present at universities.
But this isn't unique to the current moment, nor is it only kids, liberals or people at universities.
You're absolutely right.
But partisan sorting along education attainment lines—which translates into more and more Democrats jam-packed into an ever tighter geographic footprint—means Madison and Hamilton are giving a huge assist to the GOP. This dynamic is turbo-charged by Fox News, hyper precise gerrymandering, and several other factors.
So, in short, there are some things that are unique about this moment.
I'm not a pessimist about the Democratic Party's chances over the longer term (provided MAGA can be prevented from plunging the country into authoritarianism). I think it's highly likely the party's prospects—and thus the country's prospects for decent governance and the attainment of much-needed reforms—will improve in the 2030s.
But we are undeniably, I think, in something of a tricky spot here in the early 2020s. And it would be very desirable if Democrats could figure out how to regularly and effectively reach non university-educated voters again. They haven't been doing such a great job of this of late. And the problems is not confined only to White voters.
Thanks for the report back from the front! My question: does this apply in the "liberal arts" and also science/engineering? Or is it just a LibArts thing?
It's been so long since I was at the U (studying the sciences) that my experience is irrelevant, but Back In The Day, the science/engineering parts didn't flog much of a political agenda, lefty or otherwise. Hey, it was so long ago that Texas was Democratic!! (okay, "Dixiecratic".)
Kind of amazing how many comments are simply personal attacks on KD and don't engage the hypothesis. Love 2022.
Kevin deserves all the vitriol he gets as a vibesey pangloss, just a SoCal variation on Nate Silver's Vernor's mainlining Michigander knowitall.
+1 for the Vernor’s namedrop
Yes. I would think people would assume that some of these inflammatory posts are mainly to inspire this kind of discussion.
I certainly get pretty pissed off at offensive and nonsensical latinx!
"Latin Ex". Is that a person who was formerly a "Latino"? Or a kind of laxative? And who comes up with this flup?
I guess it's undeniable that lots of Sociology professors are leftists who don't see their job as changing minds. They probably (I haven't asked) see their job as teaching students the tools of Sociology.
Meanwhile, back in reality, after the election of Donald Trump, "progressives" got to work marching, knitting, protesting, and most of all -- organizing to use the political process to take back power. Which they did, first the House, then the Senate, then the Presidency. So I have a hard time seeing the logic of the argument that "progressives" haven't done the work.
Big subject, but I'll also note that in the week I spent canvassing for Katie Porter in 2018 I discovered that that type of organizing is 1% having respectful discussions and convincing people to change their minds, and 99% reminding liberal voters that there's an election and a candidate they should go to the trouble of voting for. The idea that politics in America now has anything to do with persuasion, is pure fantasy. It's about getting out the vote of people who aren't homeowners (because the homeowners get out and vote Republican without any prodding.)
Academics preface their persuasive arguments with acknowledgements to the theorists whose work they build upon. They do not use the communicative register of slang to describe their critiques but instead attempt to thoroughly discuss the chosen subject using critical theory. Their thoroughness may be exhausting to the layperson, which their ideological opponents utilize to disparage these arguments as unpersuasive rather than addressing the basis of the conclusions. The challenge of academics is to overcome the emotional reaction of those unfamiliar with academic discourse to the charges of their opponents that laypersons are being insulted by their works explaining the history, mechanisms, and affect of how the human condition has arrived at this point in time. Academics are not politicians. It is not their job to sway popular opinion. They must make their arguments utilizing the language of academia rather than the patois of the masses. Politicians and pundits are responsible for translating the work of academic theorists for popular consumption if they choose to guide the electorate to best governance practices. There lies the field for discussion of how to persuade, which itself is a refined discipline referred to as public relations and propaganda.
Wow, here I am upvoting Goosedat again! I have to ruefully admit that university and graduate school pretty much robbed be of my former ability to write clean, clear, sinewy* prose; now I have to caveat every assertion, and lay out the conditions under which it may not hold.
*I was going to write ‘muscular’ here, but that seems too embedded in patriarchy. See what I mean?
Adler-Bell: As leftists, we must make this offer — of interdependence in exchange for shared liberation — again and again, in different places, to different people, in different ways and hope that it begins to make sense. That’s the whole game. Won’t you join me?
Drum: This is why it drives me nuts whenever some progressive says "It's not my job to teach you ______ ." Of course it is. Not only that, it's your job to teach others constantly, patiently, sociably, and in language they can understand. If you aren't willing to do this, you don't really care about winning support for progressive ideas.
What kind of world do you live in, where the other side is open to patient and sociable dialogue, open to being taught, open to persuasion? Does it exist in the metaverse where VR headsets are required? Because in the world where I live -- that sphere normally known as reality -- it does not exist.
The idea that it's the liberals' burden to engage in cordial, good-faith discourse to win over the side that is launching an all-out assault on the pillars of our democracy and our civilization is preposterous. It's like saying it's Zelensky's job to persuade Putin to recognize borders. If you take your head out of your butt you would realize the other side is not interested in a diplomatic solution to our differences. If the disillusioned centrists stopped blaming liberals for the transgressions of conservatives, we might begin to make real progress. Until that time, you are (at best) collaborators.
One other note: "woke" does not come from the academy. Its roots go back to Lead Belly in the 1930s. The word is not the problem. The problem is the the right-wing propaganda machine that effectively stigmatizes whatever language and ideas that we use to discuss political and social issues.
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Republicans are like some middle segment of the worm that can't crawl anywhere, just festers and oozes guts all over and complains about how it's got all the guts.