Last night many of you had interesting things to say both for an against my general argument, something Marc summarizes better than I did.
[A] judgmental approach is counterproductive. It has nothing to do with whether conservatives are worse or even about the merits of the item being discussed. When you tell someone that they’re a bad person they will react badly. They react better if you are trying to convince them to change a behavior or belief.
Freddie DeBoer agrees. Maybe that should concern me but I am straying into his territory here. Not that it bothers me either way. I do not plan to go commando because George Dubya wore boxers. If someone has annoying qualities but also believes that you should try to get something done rather than vent your spleen, good for him. If anything I think that Freddie’s main problem is that he does not apply the principle enough. There is a pride you get from talking especially tough to your friends (Obama also does this), but it leaves you with an unnecessary number of pissed off friends.
In responding to DeBoer Kevin Drum makes me think of a tangential but related point.
If you make a mistake these days, you won’t just get a disapproving stare or maybe an email or two about it. You’ll get an endless stream of hate from Twitter and Facebook. And while it’s easy to point out that a few hundred angry tweets isn’t really all that many compared to the millions of people on Twitter, it can feel devastating if you’re on the business end of this kind of avalanche.
[…] If you write a blog post or a tweet, and the wrong person just happens to highlight it, your public is suddenly gigantic whether you meant it to be or not. Then the avalanche comes. And, as deBoer says, the avalanche is dominated by the loudest, angriest, least tolerant fringes of the language and conduct police.
Yep, everyone who twitters knows that casual hate comes out of nowhere like a tidal wave whereas Love and thoughtful responses, if they bother to speak up, generally use an inside voice. It almost seems like a tautology to point out that it takes a lot less effort to fill a short tweet with something stupid and rash than it takes to compress a thoughtful idea down to 140 characters.
The phenomenon annoys people on Twitter or drives them away; in Congress it kills. For various reasons only gentlest spark will move conservatives to pester their elected officials with whatever nonsense some Murdoch functionary thought up last week. Every phone volunteer in every district can tell you by noon exactly what insanity Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck crapped out last night. Roger Ailes might be a schmuck you can smell from space but he has the genius to channel the angry, stupid and easily riled GOP demographic into a Congress-bothering army.
Kevin sort of peters out without going anywhere, but I will finish the thought. Yes stupidity circles the world while thoughtful folk are getting their shoes on. But that hardly means the thoughtful ought to quit bothering. You get the twitterers and the Congress that you support. You are the thoughtful. Well, most of you. If you like something and want more of it then get your shoes on and support it. Subscribe to NPR if you like NPR (I do, warts and all), be the person who tweets back when you read something you like, and get on the damn phone when your Congressperson does something you support or looks like he or she might. At worst you will give some volunteer a short breath of fresh air. At best you will get more of the behavior you support. I think that is worth the occasional local or toll-free call.
Comrade Luke
Off to make some popcorn.
schrodinger's cat
Blogospheric Navel Gazing, you are doing it right.
jame
Meh. This is not news. The way to be heard is dollars, everything else is just static.
Tim F.
@jame: Every Representative’s legislative director will call you crazy to think that. Every single one.
Villago Delenda Est
Assumes self awareness not in evidence, especially among those on the right, who are pretty sure that some divine being fully backs their fuckheaded notions 100%.
schrodinger's cat
@efgoldman: I haven’t read him since he stopped posting here. Is he still obsessed with Girls?
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: Not everyone is open to persuasion, no matter what tactic you use, the uber religious morality police are one example.
Cervantes
@efgoldman:
!
Cervantes
Maybe in the trivial sense that “react badly” involves a shotgun and “react better” does not?
srv
I’m trying to figure out if this is some form of sophisticated trolling on your part, or you’ve just waited until DougJ moved on to express your fee-fees.
DougJ’s early existence was predicated on the thought that commenters are bad, their motives are bad, and the new intertubes was a forum for these very bad people to project their opinions and values under cover of PC-ish codeworded banter.
Blogs became like diners in the south where you’d walk in and it was filled with polite folks eating before their KKK rally.
Doug would them gently troll them until they went Full Metal N-Clang, Full Metal Islamobigot or Godwin’d.
After several years of seeing just how expansive the Post-Racial America was under Obama, I’m not sure where the polite medium is between Birth Certificates and Drones.
The intertubes failure is a function of too many people emoting and too few people telling them to STFU and crawl back into their cave.
Keith G
Hate – or better yet – anger/aggression is wired into us just like love is. And for waaaay too many the dopamine release for one condition is not too different from the other. Weirdly enough, the expression of anger in many forums will get one in less trouble than the expression of attraction.
The internet is all about defining ourselves and our tribal affiliations by who we express our anger for. Take this wonderfully reasoned argument from your previous post.
I think that the above is provably false, but a lot depends on the metrics. Nonetheless the statement is not offered as a entry to discussion, but as a planting of a flag. We saw some of that in several of the discussions this week. A judgmental approach feels good (dopamine, endorphins, or whatever) that’s why it is such a very common type of human interaction throughout this species’ history.
the Conster
Conservatism is a psychopathology – they’re shameless. Guilt is what you feel, shame is what you’re made to feel. Shame and guilt are a highly developed evolutionary response to living in community. What I think we liberals have such a hard time grokking is conservatives total lack of empathy. The Steve King style of shamelessness about being ignorant and eliminationist is just so shocking – if someone is incapable of feeling shame, then forget guilt, and then forget a sense of any common humanity and we know where that path goes. That way of thinking is a virus scarier than Ebola. I don’t have the faintest clue as to what to do about it, because I was taught and believed in the Golden Rule.
Mike in NC
Today’s daily dose of conservative stupidity in revisiting NoVA included spotting several of those new yellow Tea Party license plates, authorized by ex-AG Ken Cuccinelli, based on the Gadsden rattlesnake flag. Apparently it makes them feel good about themselves, like some gang symbols.
Also lots of hilarious wingnut bumper stickers, including one with the smiling sociopath Ronald Reagan in a fucking cowboy hat and the words “Remember when HOPE and CHANGE meant something?”. No, neither do we.
Cervantes
@the Conster: What does your Golden Rule say about calling all conservatives psychopaths?
Dog On Porch
Those unflinching who are never politically cowed by racism or corporate America, and in their own ways continually strive for a more perfect union, have a lot in common with the original 49ers. The 1849 49ers.
“The cowards never started, and the weak died along the way”.
PJ
@Keith G: Actually, the commenter (Aimai?) went on to describe why Drum was wrong in this instance. You might disagree with it, but a cogent argument was offered. Is it the “full of shit” you object to? Because if it’s the tone you object to, you might be reading the wrong website.
Bill E Pilgrim
I’m going to go ahead and disagree with the whole premise — of this new post, I mean. What I read in Drumm’s piece doesn’t fit what Marc describes. If the message being delivered is that humans are more easily persuaded when other humans don’t make them feel guilty, well yes of course.
What I read by Drumm on the other hand included lines like this:
“A lot” is a quantitative, comparative expression. A lot compared to whom? Compared to what? If liberals rely on guilt tripping people only about as much as every other segment of society does, then what sense does “a lot” make?
“Guilt tripping is counterproductive” is a statement I wouldn’t have disagreed with. That’s not what I read in Drumm’s piece however.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Keith G:
Is that really true?
I haven’t kept up on the research on these things, but it seems to me that a lot of the hate we carry around with us is learned from those around us. Parents, teachers, friends, colleagues, etc.
Love, it seems to me, is pretty strongly innate. Child for mother, especially. And love of others can be very intense in a child – at least I remember it was when I was ~ 7 or so…
Does a 1 year old (genuinely) hate? 2? 3? 4? If so, is it absent in any other cultures?
Now maybe the substrate for hate is in all of us – the connections are there at the start, just waiting to be turned on. I’d prefer to think of hate as being something like an infection that twists the brain in abnormal (and generally destructive) ways. Which is actually correct? Dunno.
Any pointers?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
kindness
Yikes! Using Freddie to back you, eh? Well I admit I’ve been reading his stand in posts over at Sully’s. Not terrible but I just don’t get it. Freddie too often (and Sully) voices a reasonable position but then back people who don’t even lie about supporting that position (ie-some conservatives…OK, a whole bunch of conservatives).
I’ll give you a pass this once but don’t let me catch you using mamby-pamby pablum strong voices like Freddie in the future. Next thing you know you’ll be throwing McArgleBargle at us saying she makes sense.
Keith G
@PJ: To me, it more about the “as usual” which is a type of ‘poisoning the well’ position.
JDM
You have to take into account that the people saying you’re “guilt tripping” tend to be people who say you’re racist for pointing out their racism, and who call you intolerant because you don’t think they should be allowed to impose their religious/social intolerance on others. Those folks plus “both sides do it” tone trolls.
Drum is sometimes/often good, but when he falls off the wagon he just just holds onto those reins anyway; doesn’t even notice the rocks he’s getting dragged over.
Turgidson
I recognize that most comments sections (present company obviously excluded, along with plenty of other places) on the web and social media are cesspools of a particular brand of hate that the usually-anonymous authors wish they could go around saying out loud, but can’t, because of PC thugs, blah blah freedom.
But as I noted in the comments to Drum’s piece, I can’t help but troll Ron Fournier. It is out of concern for his obvious early-onset dementia and/or severe head trauma. So far he refuses to take my advice to heart and talk to his buddy Karl Rove about finding a doctor. Makes me sad.
Cervantes
@Bill E Pilgrim: We can put it more bluntly. I mean, when was the last time you made an argument of the following form?
I’ll be generous and assume Drum does not offer such “arguments” himself. If he thinks he’s paraphrasing “typical left” arguments, then the best thing one can say is that paraphrase is not his forte. With friends like him, who needs Republicans?
Turgidson
@efgoldman:
True. I just mention Karl because I want Ron to remember that he’s not alone in this world.
Mike J
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Some people think not.
Keith G
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I am left to wonder: Does a 1 year old (genuinely) love?
Edit, I see Mike J got there a beat ahead with a link no less.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mike J: :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
scav
Generally in favor of discussion, but must admit to a solid bit of angst that the focus is becoming what the pale feel about the entire situation rather than, I don’t know, something more concrete, practical, physical, possibly even bloodied and in the streets. Don’t lets drop any of the fronts, even the imperfectly articulated and uncomfortable ones.
kindness
I read Kevin. I agree with him a lot but I see a whole bunch of the value settings of Orange County in him and that causes him to be blind to some stuff. Kevin’s comment section drives me bonkers. Always a troll fight. Why bother?
Manday
@kindness:
And BJ shows yet again that it’s all about the source of the views that is paramount, rather than the views themselves.
Is the source of the ideas on our approved list? Yaaaay!!!!
Is the source of the ideas on our shit list? Booooo!!!!
Sometimes BJ is like a bunch of insecure Valley Girls bitching to each other after school.
Bobby Thomson
@Bill E Pilgrim:
What does he mean, “us”? Drum’s as much of a leftie as Mickey Kaus is a liberal Democrat.
Keith G
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: And…there is a lot of interesting writing going on about to what extent humans are like other animals and are predisposed to be very aware, very cautious, and even anxious about the “other” beings that are not like them or are not a part of their affiliated pack.
If that was a pro evolutionary trait (much emphasis on “if”) then maybe there is some biochemical process that has served to reinforce that behavior.
We feel good about being part of the team and some can easily be persuaded from there that those others – part of a different team – are less good, less smart, less deserving of patience and a full hearing. And then beyond that, it becomes easier to vilify and attack those bad and stupid others.
There is a lot left to hypothesis and still there is more and more work being done that show interesting connections.
max
@srv: After several years of seeing just how expansive the Post-Racial America was under Obama, I’m not sure where the polite medium is between Birth Certificates and Drones.
TPM reader post:
This is one of the people I was talking about last night. (Or DougJ.)
max
[‘Arguing about this stuff is like arguing with center-left types about Iraq circa 2004 – ‘What did you guys *think* was going on? What did you think was going to happen? Ponies?”]
geg6
@kindness:
Seriously. And then we’d have to do an intervention for that adorable baby girl. And Max. And Dr. Mrs. Tim F.
Donald
What is the problem people here have with Freddie? I wasn’t around much when he posted here. Is it the Glennbot vs. Obamabot type of thing? That sort of tribalism is another illustration of the problem. This place goes a little nuts when GG’s name is invoked, or if he is anywhere near a particular issue. Sometimes hippies like to punch each other.
schrodinger's cat
The other side wants to destroy those who don’t think like they do, or look like they do, or pray to a different deity, or no deity at all, speak more than one language, who were not born here, and we are concerned about hurting their tender feelings, you have got to be kidding me.
different-church-lady
not @max, but @ the person he quoted:
Holy… I mean… I can’t… wha… [head desk head desk head desk]
srv
@Donald:
https://balloon-juice.com/author/freddie-deboer/
Enjoy
schrodinger's cat
@srv:
That is not the word I would use.
ETA: BTW, thanks for all the info about SF and its surroundings, it was really helpful
Percysowner
So the same people who tell me that using the pill or an IUD or any form of birth control (unless it’s a condom that a man controls) makes me a murderer; the same people who say since Michael Brown looked like someone who maybe robbed a store and smoked pot he deserved to die; the same people who say gay marriage will destroy the world; the people who say that kids who are seeking asylum must be sent back to DIE because they don’t have the proper papers; These people must have their precious fee fees coddled because if they are made to feel bad then they won’t listen to reason? Telling me I’m going to Hell is fine and dandy and I should listen respectfully to their opinion to find common ground? To me that’s just ludicrous.
Marc
@Villago Delenda Est:
Of course you can’t convince the 27% to change their views. But there are a lot of people who don’t belong to the 27%, who might be reachable, and who will check out the second the conversation turns to (or begins with) telling them how wrong they are, how their opinions and experiences are invalidated, or how they should just keep quiet.
Turgidson
@efgoldman:
Jubilee!!
Turgidson
@efgoldman:
Also, his skin is so thin you need an electron microscope to measure its width.
srv
@schrodinger’s cat: YW. Hope you enjoyed our winter.
schrodinger's cat
@srv: Thanks to you, I knew that and dressed in layers. BTW, the weather seemed more like fall than winter to me.
Donald
@srv: Okay, I’m not sure I get what was so terrible about those posts, but never mind.
J R in WV
@Donald:
Freddie is talky, he likes long words and lots of them; verbose. It makes his stuff hard to read, hard to follow. But his points are good, at least they were in that set of posts, I only read the first 3 or 4, they were OK, I expected much worse from what people say about him.
Mnemosyne
@Donald:
Make sure you read through the comments as well — what really got Freddie hated around here is that he was a WATB who hated to be disagreed with.
ETA: IOW, it’s not so much what he wrote in the main posts as how he reacted in the comments when people disagreed with those posts.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Also he’s condescending and sure of himself in the classic Eternal Grad Student fashion. “Why am I cursed to live among these lesser beings?” he keens by default.
I don’t know why anyone listens to him, links to him, or acknowledges his existence. We all know that guy in real life. And learn to avoid him.
Heliopause
Clever. You mention Freddie deBoer in something other than an utterly disdainful tone, then toss this out. But since Doug hardly posts anymore I guess somebody has to do this.
moonbat
Personally, I have never met a liberal of any stripe who has started, built or finished an argument with “You should feel guilty about…” When does that happen? I think Drum and Tim F. have taken one of the classic RWNJ cases of projection and run with it as though it were gospel.
Sorry that facts have a liberal bias. If people are starting to feel the pain (whether private guilt or public shame) of their untenable positions on any issue I say Hallelujah! If we are going to turn this giant ship of state in a more sane direction we need to stop coddling the feelings of people who insist they can live in defiance of reality. The national “media” have that based pretty well covered.
I’ll meet anyone halfway if they are capable of coming to the table with facts and want to debate what to do about them. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to pretend that their long held biases, bigotry, bad information, and downright lies are a good starting point for an informed debate.
mclaren
Welcome to planet earth. This is typical mob behavior. A crowd is a beast with a thousand heads and no brains. We encounter this kind of behavior in the Balloon-Juice commentariat all the time where stuff like “You have butt rabies” (General Stuck) and “You are a dog-fucking piece of shit of the lowest possible denomination” (Raven) gets perceived as insightful and witty additions to the conversation.
Stating documented facts like “America has murdered thousands of little girls and their mothers by mistake in wedding parties since 9/11 and only a handful of proven terrorists with its drone strikes,” and you can expect a veritable Old Faithful geyser of this kind of verbal sewage.
Use elementary logic, like “The president of the united states has to obey the constitution,” and you’ll wind up wading through a cesspool of smears and insults and mis-spelled name-calling by an army of no-neck mouth-breathers who never passed their GEDs.
That’s just life in these Benighted States.
“The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind,” Gustave le Bon, 1841.
Because a lone dissenting individual retains hi/r intelligence, any contest between a crowd and a lone thoughtful individual is always unfair — the individual has an overwhelming advantage. And the more cogent points the individual makes in response to the ravings and gibberings of the crowd, the more inflamed and more enraged the crowd becomes, and consequently the more mindless its utterances. This process explains most of American politics, and all of American history.
slag
Why are so many white dudes (ahem Freddie) incapable of recognizing this reality without extrapolating it to mean that they’re a “bad, bad person”?
Yes. You are living life on the easy setting. And quite likely, every movie is racist, misogynistic, and problematic in some way that you probably failed to recognize. Welcome to the world. You can like the things you like while seeing the problems with those things. Embrace some fucking nuance, so many white dudes! And try to get over the fact that it’s not always all about you.
slag
Repeat post. In short, watching white dudes complain about people complaining is not very compelling. Their next obvious step is to be “outraged by the outrage.”
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@slag: You seem to be doing a good job of that in your own way. No one else need bother.
Chris
@the Conster:
That, plus the tribal component of their pride/shame thing, where they derive an unhealthy amount of their personal self-worth from their group identities (being American, being Christian, being a Westerner… being white). Therefore, anything that challenges their belief that said in-groups are a paragon of righteous awesomeness and a shining beacon of light to the masses (slavery, Indian genocide, Vietnam…) is taken as an assault on their own worth as a human being and responded to in kind.
It boggles my mind because I have had enough German friends since childhood to get a pretty clear picture of how a person should relate to the sins in his group’s past. You are very, very unlikely to find a German defending the swastika on the grounds of “heritage, not history.” You are very, very unlikely to find a German calling it the War of Allied Aggression. You are very, very unlikely to find a German whining that nobody focuses on all the good things Hitler did (the Autobahn! Volkswagen! Economic recovery!) the way Americans whine that nobody appreciates all the good aspects of (slave owners, Westward expansion, wev). Or dismissing it with “hey, it would’ve been worse under Stalin” or whatever. The basic reaction to the Holocaust/World War Two is “yes, it was a horrific thing. And it’s incumbent on us to make sure it never happens again.” Full stop.
Is it “guilt?” Who cares? It’s easily the most appropriate response to the crimes in your country’s past I’ve ever come across.
It is, unfortunately, very much the minority. Not only compared to Americans, but most European countries in re their own past of colonization… Japanese in re their own World War Two history, etc.
Chris
@Cervantes:
Like someone said yesterday, I don’t even know what “the left” is supposed to mean anymore in this country – “the left” and DFHs today are just a straw man onto which conservatives and moderates project all their anxieties, insecurities and resentments. They’re just talking to the voices in their own heads: whatever actual thing they might once have been criticizing, the caricature has long since overtaken it.
Frank McCormick
Tim, in general, this is good advice, especially at a personal level. However, one of the things that bothers me about this type of article (NOT this type of advice [grin]) is that it is presented as a one size fits all solution for political strategy.
I personally believe that one of the Republican Party’s strengths is that their strategies are multifaceted. Sort of good cop/bad cop, on steroids, with gamma ray infusion.
Think about what happened with the Occupy movements. There was a lot of criticism about how the protests were not the perfect way to bring attention to “the cause”. However, instead of saying, in addition to let’s do this, it came across as you’re doing it wrong, shut up and sit down.
chopper
@mclaren:
Also, accusations of working for a ‘CIA psyop program’.
chopper
@FlipYrWhig:
He certainly fredsplained a lot. As the one true pure liberal(tm), he had a very hard time brooking any disagreement.
slag
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): That’s exactly the lack of nuance to which I refer. There’s a difference between being uncompelled and being outraged. And it’s not even a subtle one.
Racer_X
“I do not plan to go commando because George Dubya wore boxers.”
I invented the phrase “going commando” – you owe me a dollar.
Cervantes
@mclaren: Find myself wondering if you have read Canetti on the subject of crowds and power.
Rob in CT
People don’t like Freddie, even though he often is saying good things, because:
1) He can’t write for shit. He uses 3x the words he needs too.
2) Other liberals are always Doing It Wrong, according to Freddie. He’s a scold (which is funny, given the topic under discussion).
3) He’s really, really, really thin-skinned. When he writes something stupid and gets called out for it, he reacts with long (of course), whiny shitfits.
It’s really #3 that’s the killer.
chopper
@Rob in CT:
#2 was funny, given a number of commenters here had been doing the whole ‘progressive causes’ thing longer than he’s been alive. he came off as a lecturing college boy who’s never really gotten his hands dirty telling everyone else they aren’t good enough.
Rex Everything
Gotta dissent from the general opinion here. Freddie’s not verbose; he’s precise.
I get the feeling most of the folks complaining about FdB’s “long windedness” only really like to read snark and judge everything they read by the standards of snark. I remember some front pager linked to a piece by Corey Robin awhile back and it got the same reaction Freddie gets. I suspect anyone who brings any kind of depth and rigor to their work, or writes in anything approaching long form, would be derided here. I’d hate to see what the usual suspects would do to a piece by Joan Didion or even David Foster Wallace if they didn’t know who wrote it, let alone really serious stuff.
Anyway, Freddie’s series on Israel at the Dish this week was really excellent, and not a word too long. He does things that Tbogg can’t do, and it stands a chance of changing minds Tbogg can’t reach. Don’t be so quick to write him off.
brantl
First of all, liberals don’t say “You’re a bad person.”, about unconscious behavior, we say that about willfully, consciously bad behavior. Second, the conservatives tell you you’re a slut, because you want your birth control covered (just like viagra, and they don’t shame men for that), even if you’re married with a ton of kids. Don’t anybody tell me how the liberals in this country are doing any more than giving people the chance to do the right thing, minus a few assholes that any cause has, and that’s a very few. A large portion of the right wing in this country, has been flaming with outrage about saying Happy Holidays, for fuck’s sake.
brantl
@Manday: Sure, and a gut that is full of his own ragegasm, and snit is right this time, the one-out-of-100th-time. Sure, he is. This is definitely that time.
brantl
@mclaren: It explains you, at any rate.