Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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On July 13 2023 08:04 ChristianS wrote: @Mohdoo: I mean, I’ve got my complaints about the FDA myself. But my point was more about the idea of *creating* a regulatory framework in the first place, going back to like 1906. That was something where as a government it was possible to look at an unregulated market like drugs, with a lot of cutting edge scientific questions around what a regulatory framework would even mean, and go ahead and build one anyway. It’s unfathomable to me that we could do something like that today (e.g. with unregulated markets like social media or AI).
That the existing regulatory frameworks are becoming increasingly inadequate too is only further evidence of the institutional decay I’m trying to describe.
@GH: Come on now, I’m not insisting that anyone “tolerate the increasing deprivation of their rights indefinitely.” If you or anybody else has a plan to get those rights back I’m eager to hear it. Saying “letting Republicans get elected will demonstrably make this problem worse, not better” is not explicitly or implicitly saying that anybody should tolerate it a second longer than they have to.
If you’ve got a way that *not* voting for the person with a D by their name would give those rights back, I’m very interested to hear how that works. Otherwise, filling out a ballot only takes part of a day every couple years. Why can’t we spend the other 364 days working on non-electoral solutions, without ceding control of government to fascists?
It very much reads that you are to me.
You already know the ideas/plans I relate to are rooted in revolutionary socialism. I've given plenty of recommendations for further reading/understanding of what that means to me over the years. I welcome sincere and serious engagement on anything I've recommended or other relevant socialist perspectives.
To be specific, it's a disagreement about how long and under what conditions "they have to", hence the reference to Dr. King's white moderate quote about paternalistically setting the timetable for other peoples' freedom. This isn't a new argument and the decades following Dr. King calling it out so poignantly have thoroughly shown its futility imo.
You used the euphemistic "transformational change" for revolution but this is where this conversation always ends up for social democrats.
The acceptance that the US probably needs "transformational change", recognizing that the politicians in power (including Democrats) will never allow those changes, and then the realization they have no plan beyond continuing to vote to keep those politicians in power to (hopefully at best) slow down the march toward full blown fascism with maybe some futile support for bastardized socialist policy/strategies sprinkled in. That wouldn't be as egregious if they didn't simultaneously dismiss the progenitors of the socialist/anarchist policies/strategies they bastardize to conform to the Democrat party framework and provide the superficial appearance of solidarity while undermining revolutionary energy.
Since I’m being called a “white moderate” I thought it was a good time to go reread the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Maybe this is poor reading comprehension on my part, but isn’t it kind of definitional to a “white moderate” that they’re discouraging some means of affecting positive change as too hasty/extreme? Where have I done that?
If I read that letter with the question “how should I view the electoral system in trying to affect positive change?” I, at least, get something like this: the electoral system is real, it’s important, and it’s okay to care about its outcomes; but voting alone insufficient to achieve necessary change. As King mentions, their Birmingham Campaign delayed mass demonstrations because they didn’t want to influence the election; specifically, they hoped to see Albert Boutwell defeat Bull Connor (even though, as King also mentions, Boutwell was merely a more moderate segregationist). Once Connor was defeated, they didn’t cancel the campaign and go home, they went right back to demonstrating. If someone had told Dr. King “I’m thinking of voting for Boutwell,” I doubt he would have said “Don’t!” Doing my best to understand what he’s saying in his letter, it seems to me that he would have told them to go ahead, but that it wasn’t enough on its own. (I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of trying to put words in Dr. King’s mouth, but it seems essential to engaging deeply with a text to try to apply its lessons to new situations; if you think I’m misreading it, I’m eager to hear what you think I’ve failed to understand.)
I didn’t intend the phrase “transformational change” to be euphemistic. I suppose you’d prefer “revolutionary change?” I shy away only because I’m never sure how metaphorical the “revolution” is, and when I’m not really sure what a phrase means I try to avoid it. A lot of times people read you calling for revolution and think that means recruiting soldiers, obtaining weapons, and engaging in pitched battles against the military in hopes of triumphing on the battlefield and overthrowing the government. Maybe that’s what you do mean? But if that’s what we’re talking about I’d like to make that more explicit. Otherwise if “revolution” is meant to be more abstract/metaphorical, I was hoping to avoid that distraction.
or anarchists, nor am I telling them to conform their activities to the Democratic Party framework. If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them! I have no interest in tone policing or prescribing appropriate and inappropriate methods. I can’t promise to believe whatever they tell me to; I’m not a blind follower, I have to engage critically with ideas and decide for myself whether to believe them. But I’m not opposed to reading some of the theory you push for either (although finding time and energy for it has been pretty difficult; the reading always seems to be pretty dense).
I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us.
If I wanted to get gaslit I'd just engage BJ.
Yeah, later in the same paragraph I also said I’m not promising to believe whatever they tell me. I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me. I know socialists whose ideas I’ll happily listen to on political subjects, but so far, I’m not about to call myself a socialist. If “I read some socialist theory but so far I’m not convinced enough to call myself one” counts as “dismissing socialists,” then you’re right, I’m dismissing socialists and a whole lot of other people too.
Under other circumstances maybe I’d want to get into my reservations right now, but honestly? If I engaged BJ right now I think I’d have a much better chance of somebody actually reading what I wrote, thinking about it, and then telling me what they think I’m getting right or wrong. So maybe I should just hold off for a bit, huh?
On July 13 2023 21:02 Magic Powers wrote: "From the pool of officers charged with murder between 2005 and 2019, about a third were convicted on any charges. Seven officers – just 5% – have been convicted of murder."
"In 2020, murder and manslaughter charges had the highest crime clearance rate in the United States, with 54.4 percent of all cases being cleared by arrest or so-called exceptional means."
The discrepancy (edit: in successful convictions) for murder and manslaughter charges is between 54.4% (general population) and 5% (police officers). That is 1 in 1.8 compared to 1 in 20.
Lesser charges against police officers were also far less likely to be successful.
Hmmmm but aren't you comparing apples and oranges (or pears) here? The first is conviction rates and the second clearance rates, which basically means that a suspect was apprehended.
What is crime clearance? Within the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal cases can be cleared (or closed) one of two ways. The first is through arrest, which means that at least one person has either been arrested, charged with an offense, or turned over to the court for prosecution. [...]
That's a valid point. I'm now trying to find the true rate of conviction for murder and manslaughter charges in the US, but this information doesn't seem to exist. I'll try for a while longer but if nothing comes up I'll have to concede this point. But don't worry, I have yet another angle that supports my argument.
Gun ownership rates
Non-hispanic white: 35% (personal ownership) and 46% (gun household) Non-white: 23% (personal ownership) and 35% (gun household)
The ratios are 1.5 to 1 (personal ownership) and 1.3 to 1 (gun household) in favor of white people.
We would therefore expect white people to get killed by police at a slightly higher rate than black people, that is if officers are more likely to shoot at armed individuals. What we find is that it's actually a disproportional opposite from the expectation.
"Black people are 2.9x more likely to be killed by police than white people in the US"
Other sources say the ratio is closer to 2 to 1. Whichever one is true, the point stands.
So this discrepancy adds to the narrative that the police in the US is harboring and protecting trigger-happy racists. It's hard to argue that a person without a gun is more likely to get shot than a person with a gun, and it's also hard to argue that white people generally are several times less trigger-happy than non-white people. A small difference can be explained, but certainly not a 2 to 2.9 times difference when the rate of ownership already clearly favors white people.
The narrative makes sense that there are very well-protected individuals in the police force who go out of their way to target ethnic minorities.
You should never look up crime statistics by race from the USA, because then your whole point would reverse and change to "police actually kill way less African-Americans then they statistically should".
Why?
Can't find the source right now but I read it some time ago.
When you look only at race, too many black americans get shot. When you look at "criminals + race" the police seems to be more likely to shoot white criminals than black ones. Maybe the numbers i saw were missleading (pretty likely because overpolicing of black people was probably not factored in), i don't know but the point is simple.
It's not helpfull to discuss what race is getting shot/killed by police, the simple fact is that the police is shooting way too many people. If the US numbers would be similar to european countries except for one Race/Minority, then looking into it would make plenty of sense, but US-Cops seem to be equal opportunity shooters.
Yes. Black Americans commit 8x more homicides per capita then white Americans. I've never been to the US so I can't really speak to the lived experience but in my mind the societal problems have more to do with economics and the tough balance of freedom vs safety then skin color.
When those economics are a result of a few centuries of policies that economically favour people of one skin colour over the other, this discussion is about skin colour almost by definition.
You simply cannot seperate economics and skin colour, especially (but not limited to) the US.
On July 13 2023 21:02 Magic Powers wrote: "From the pool of officers charged with murder between 2005 and 2019, about a third were convicted on any charges. Seven officers – just 5% – have been convicted of murder."
"In 2020, murder and manslaughter charges had the highest crime clearance rate in the United States, with 54.4 percent of all cases being cleared by arrest or so-called exceptional means."
The discrepancy (edit: in successful convictions) for murder and manslaughter charges is between 54.4% (general population) and 5% (police officers). That is 1 in 1.8 compared to 1 in 20.
Lesser charges against police officers were also far less likely to be successful.
Hmmmm but aren't you comparing apples and oranges (or pears) here? The first is conviction rates and the second clearance rates, which basically means that a suspect was apprehended.
What is crime clearance? Within the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal cases can be cleared (or closed) one of two ways. The first is through arrest, which means that at least one person has either been arrested, charged with an offense, or turned over to the court for prosecution. [...]
That's a valid point. I'm now trying to find the true rate of conviction for murder and manslaughter charges in the US, but this information doesn't seem to exist. I'll try for a while longer but if nothing comes up I'll have to concede this point. But don't worry, I have yet another angle that supports my argument.
Gun ownership rates
Non-hispanic white: 35% (personal ownership) and 46% (gun household) Non-white: 23% (personal ownership) and 35% (gun household)
The ratios are 1.5 to 1 (personal ownership) and 1.3 to 1 (gun household) in favor of white people.
We would therefore expect white people to get killed by police at a slightly higher rate than black people, that is if officers are more likely to shoot at armed individuals. What we find is that it's actually a disproportional opposite from the expectation.
"Black people are 2.9x more likely to be killed by police than white people in the US"
Other sources say the ratio is closer to 2 to 1. Whichever one is true, the point stands.
So this discrepancy adds to the narrative that the police in the US is harboring and protecting trigger-happy racists. It's hard to argue that a person without a gun is more likely to get shot than a person with a gun, and it's also hard to argue that white people generally are several times less trigger-happy than non-white people. A small difference can be explained, but certainly not a 2 to 2.9 times difference when the rate of ownership already clearly favors white people.
The narrative makes sense that there are very well-protected individuals in the police force who go out of their way to target ethnic minorities.
You should never look up crime statistics by race from the USA, because then your whole point would reverse and change to "police actually kill way less African-Americans then they statistically should".
Why?
Can't find the source right now but I read it some time ago.
When you look only at race, too many black americans get shot. When you look at "criminals + race" the police seems to be more likely to shoot white criminals than black ones. Maybe the numbers i saw were missleading (pretty likely because overpolicing of black people was probably not factored in), i don't know but the point is simple.
It's not helpfull to discuss what race is getting shot/killed by police, the simple fact is that the police is shooting way too many people. If the US numbers would be similar to european countries except for one Race/Minority, then looking into it would make plenty of sense, but US-Cops seem to be equal opportunity shooters.
This can't be correct. The ratio in recent years according to statista.com of white and black people being shot to death is (x to 1) 1.7 in 2019, 1.9 (2020, 2021), 1.7 (2022). The ratio of of white and black people living in the US in 2021 was 4.7 to 1. That means black people were shot to death by police at a 2.5 times higher rate than white people. Bare in mind that this is with black people owning fewer guns, so this 2.5 times higher rate is even more skewed against black people than it looks on a surface level.
To argue that race is not a meaningful factor in this discussion is absurd. Racist policies cannot be shrugged off. The incarceration rate, the rate of death by police, the low conviction rate of officers, the much higher likelihood of black people living in underprivileged communities, all of this indicates that black people are being discriminated against by the system, and one element of that system is the police.
On July 13 2023 21:00 Gahlo wrote: Sounds to me like the issue is the shooting, regardless of direction.
It's a fun deflection chain.
You talk about police violence, and the prevalence of guns is the problem, not the violent police.
You talk about guns, and it is a mental health crisis.
Police violence happens because there are (violent) criminals. A lot of it is justified. The amount of unjustified police violence will increase as a side effect of police having to deal with violent crime, simply as a statistical side effect, as well as due to some police themselves doing questionable or illegal things.
Conversely, the US doesn't have anywhere near as much (gun) crime as it has guns.
In short, if you talk about police violence, the main problem is actual crime. If you talk about guns, the main problem is actual crime. Crime and police overreach can be address together, the problem is it requires actual work.
If anyone tells you they can solve these problem sequentially - i.e. step 1, vacuum all the guns, step 2, become Japan somehow - they are a politician selling you a pipe dream that will never happen, and they know it will never happen, and they don't want it to happen, because the minute they solve a supposed problem, they lose the ability to sell their ineffective fake bullshit solution for it and so erase their own reason for existing.
On July 13 2023 21:14 Simberto wrote: You talk about mental health and healthcare in general, and the US has the best possible system in the world.
ESPECIALLY nobody believes this, especially about mental health. The trouble is that mental health is the same as normal health. If the population doesn't take care of their health to begin with, you can't count on any kind of system to rescue them - ex. from obesity and heart disease. Similarly, you can't wait until the culture and society has fucked up everyone's mental health and relationships and then expect any amount of asylums and pharma cash crops (although those are necessary to) to rescue them.
On July 13 2023 21:02 Magic Powers wrote: "From the pool of officers charged with murder between 2005 and 2019, about a third were convicted on any charges. Seven officers – just 5% – have been convicted of murder."
"In 2020, murder and manslaughter charges had the highest crime clearance rate in the United States, with 54.4 percent of all cases being cleared by arrest or so-called exceptional means."
The discrepancy (edit: in successful convictions) for murder and manslaughter charges is between 54.4% (general population) and 5% (police officers). That is 1 in 1.8 compared to 1 in 20.
Lesser charges against police officers were also far less likely to be successful.
Hmmmm but aren't you comparing apples and oranges (or pears) here? The first is conviction rates and the second clearance rates, which basically means that a suspect was apprehended.
What is crime clearance? Within the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal cases can be cleared (or closed) one of two ways. The first is through arrest, which means that at least one person has either been arrested, charged with an offense, or turned over to the court for prosecution. [...]
That's a valid point. I'm now trying to find the true rate of conviction for murder and manslaughter charges in the US, but this information doesn't seem to exist. I'll try for a while longer but if nothing comes up I'll have to concede this point. But don't worry, I have yet another angle that supports my argument.
Gun ownership rates
Non-hispanic white: 35% (personal ownership) and 46% (gun household) Non-white: 23% (personal ownership) and 35% (gun household)
The ratios are 1.5 to 1 (personal ownership) and 1.3 to 1 (gun household) in favor of white people.
We would therefore expect white people to get killed by police at a slightly higher rate than black people, that is if officers are more likely to shoot at armed individuals. What we find is that it's actually a disproportional opposite from the expectation.
You might expect that if you naively or sophistically assumed both that that was true, and that that was the only dimension on which the two populations in your analysis present differently to the police. Police are not shooting a statistical random sampling of black and white people. They are for the most part interacting with criminals.
On July 13 2023 22:03 Magic Powers wrote: "Black people are 2.9x more likely to be killed by police than white people in the US"
Other sources say the ratio is closer to 2 to 1. Whichever one is true, the point stands.
So this discrepancy adds to the narrative that the police in the US is harboring and protecting trigger-happy racists. It's hard to argue that a person without a gun is more likely to get shot than a person with a gun, and it's also hard to argue that white people generally are several times less trigger-happy than non-white people. A small difference can be explained, but certainly not a 2 to 2.9 times difference when the rate of ownership already clearly favors white people.
The narrative makes sense that there are very well-protected individuals in the police force who go out of their way to target ethnic minorities.
I don't know if you have visited or lived in America. The concept of a right in the American system is that the government can't just execute you for exercising it. It's not see gun -> shoot citizen. A PCP laden white man with a knife going berserk has a much shorter life expectancy with police officers than a black FFL pulled over with a trunk full of automatic weapons, who has nothing to worry about.
The structure of your argument seems more to me like you expect there to be a linear relationship between the number of guns in a population and the number of police killings, as though police see you have a gun and can then kill you, and then because that result didn't happen, there are therefore racist serial killers of minorities hiding in police forces.
There are more serial killers in hospitals than in the police - in hospitals it's still easier to get away with because people aren't wearing body cameras and they don't have to literally file reports explicitly saying they had to kill someone today. The serial killers who DO exist in law enforcement are generally not doing the serial killing during their day job. You need to look for other explanations to explain your data, I also recommend glancing at some of the Youtube channels that cover police interactions.
There you can see what the bad eggs look like, and you can see what happens when the good eggs and bad eggs meet (including police arresting/reporting one another). You can also see the extraordinary patience some police have and I doubt you won't be asking why there aren't MORE police killings. You can see criminals lying on the ground screaming "I don't have a gun" multiple times at the top of their lungs and then pulling out a gun and getting taken out a split second before murdering a police officer.
If your assumption is that any police shooting is inherently not justified and that it's the police's fault for existing, it's a non-starter.
Most of the ways in which the bad eggs of the police trespass your rights will not be fatal in the end. A lot of the ways are systemic (in the REAL way) - in the sense that the system needs them to be doing "wrong" things in order to meet quotas, or to pad statistics, because of the incorrect ways "success" is measured. And therefore the system selects for hiring certain people who excel under those parameters. And hiring certain incompetent people who do their best to succeed by the wrong metrics. Police shootings can be a lightning rod for criticism even when they're justified, they bring immediate scrutiny and review from inside and outside the police. If you think there are a bunch of "well-protected" individuals who are literally hunting minorities with their badge, and don't want people to read that as a conspiracy theory, I recommend more direct evidence.
On July 13 2023 08:04 ChristianS wrote: @Mohdoo: I mean, I’ve got my complaints about the FDA myself. But my point was more about the idea of *creating* a regulatory framework in the first place, going back to like 1906. That was something where as a government it was possible to look at an unregulated market like drugs, with a lot of cutting edge scientific questions around what a regulatory framework would even mean, and go ahead and build one anyway. It’s unfathomable to me that we could do something like that today (e.g. with unregulated markets like social media or AI).
That the existing regulatory frameworks are becoming increasingly inadequate too is only further evidence of the institutional decay I’m trying to describe.
@GH: Come on now, I’m not insisting that anyone “tolerate the increasing deprivation of their rights indefinitely.” If you or anybody else has a plan to get those rights back I’m eager to hear it. Saying “letting Republicans get elected will demonstrably make this problem worse, not better” is not explicitly or implicitly saying that anybody should tolerate it a second longer than they have to.
If you’ve got a way that *not* voting for the person with a D by their name would give those rights back, I’m very interested to hear how that works. Otherwise, filling out a ballot only takes part of a day every couple years. Why can’t we spend the other 364 days working on non-electoral solutions, without ceding control of government to fascists?
It very much reads that you are to me.
You already know the ideas/plans I relate to are rooted in revolutionary socialism. I've given plenty of recommendations for further reading/understanding of what that means to me over the years. I welcome sincere and serious engagement on anything I've recommended or other relevant socialist perspectives.
To be specific, it's a disagreement about how long and under what conditions "they have to", hence the reference to Dr. King's white moderate quote about paternalistically setting the timetable for other peoples' freedom. This isn't a new argument and the decades following Dr. King calling it out so poignantly have thoroughly shown its futility imo.
You used the euphemistic "transformational change" for revolution but this is where this conversation always ends up for social democrats.
The acceptance that the US probably needs "transformational change", recognizing that the politicians in power (including Democrats) will never allow those changes, and then the realization they have no plan beyond continuing to vote to keep those politicians in power to (hopefully at best) slow down the march toward full blown fascism with maybe some futile support for bastardized socialist policy/strategies sprinkled in. That wouldn't be as egregious if they didn't simultaneously dismiss the progenitors of the socialist/anarchist policies/strategies they bastardize to conform to the Democrat party framework and provide the superficial appearance of solidarity while undermining revolutionary energy.
Since I’m being called a “white moderate” I thought it was a good time to go reread the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Maybe this is poor reading comprehension on my part, but isn’t it kind of definitional to a “white moderate” that they’re discouraging some means of affecting positive change as too hasty/extreme? Where have I done that?
If I read that letter with the question “how should I view the electoral system in trying to affect positive change?” I, at least, get something like this: the electoral system is real, it’s important, and it’s okay to care about its outcomes; but voting alone insufficient to achieve necessary change. As King mentions, their Birmingham Campaign delayed mass demonstrations because they didn’t want to influence the election; specifically, they hoped to see Albert Boutwell defeat Bull Connor (even though, as King also mentions, Boutwell was merely a more moderate segregationist). Once Connor was defeated, they didn’t cancel the campaign and go home, they went right back to demonstrating. If someone had told Dr. King “I’m thinking of voting for Boutwell,” I doubt he would have said “Don’t!” Doing my best to understand what he’s saying in his letter, it seems to me that he would have told them to go ahead, but that it wasn’t enough on its own. (I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of trying to put words in Dr. King’s mouth, but it seems essential to engaging deeply with a text to try to apply its lessons to new situations; if you think I’m misreading it, I’m eager to hear what you think I’ve failed to understand.)
I didn’t intend the phrase “transformational change” to be euphemistic. I suppose you’d prefer “revolutionary change?” I shy away only because I’m never sure how metaphorical the “revolution” is, and when I’m not really sure what a phrase means I try to avoid it. A lot of times people read you calling for revolution and think that means recruiting soldiers, obtaining weapons, and engaging in pitched battles against the military in hopes of triumphing on the battlefield and overthrowing the government. Maybe that’s what you do mean? But if that’s what we’re talking about I’d like to make that more explicit. Otherwise if “revolution” is meant to be more abstract/metaphorical, I was hoping to avoid that distraction.
or anarchists, nor am I telling them to conform their activities to the Democratic Party framework. If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them! I have no interest in tone policing or prescribing appropriate and inappropriate methods. I can’t promise to believe whatever they tell me to; I’m not a blind follower, I have to engage critically with ideas and decide for myself whether to believe them. But I’m not opposed to reading some of the theory you push for either (although finding time and energy for it has been pretty difficult; the reading always seems to be pretty dense).
You literally said:
I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us.
If I wanted to get gaslit I'd just engage BJ.
Yeah, later in the same paragraph I also said I’m not promising to believe whatever they tell me. I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me. I know socialists whose ideas I’ll happily listen to on political subjects, but so far, I’m not about to call myself a socialist. If “I read some socialist theory but so far I’m not convinced enough to call myself one” counts as “dismissing socialists,” then you’re right, I’m dismissing socialists and a whole lot of other people too.
Under other circumstances maybe I’d want to get into my reservations right now, but honestly? If I engaged BJ right now I think I’d have a much better chance of somebody actually reading what I wrote, thinking about it, and then telling me what they think I’m getting right or wrong. So maybe I should just hold off for a bit, huh?
I read it, thought about it, and told you one central and glaring thing I thought was wrong with it. It is unreasonable for me to go deeper into it without confronting the absurdity that you weren't being dismissive of socialists.
When I recommended "What is to be Done" (it's about a 6 hour read assuming 1/2 the avg reading pace) to you 7 months ago (so that's less than 2 minutes a day or 15 minutes a week or 1 hour per month to finish) it was in this context:
You're not an idiot. You know how to research a topic and develop a better understanding through at least traditional academic means. Reading Lenin's "Where to Begin?" and "What Is To Be Done" seems like a reasonable place to look. Not as gospel to be carried out unquestioningly, but as a reference point to bring to a dialectical engagement about what makes sense for one's own role in the struggle with respect to one's own material conditions.
That one struggles to find the time and energy is at least believable (and true for most of us). But that's a struggle with prioritization, not ignorance.
If someone is in an org, ingesting theory, and applying/refining that theory through praxis with the org, they're exponentially further along than the overwhelming majority of the country and even a lot of people that call themselves socialist.
When I recommended it again about 4 months ago it was in this context:
I know surviving capitalist oppression is a struggle and a half, but in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (more specifically an introduction by Donaldo Macedo) there's something relevant, and as it's all I readily know you've at least tried to engage with to answer your questions, it seems appropriate. Basically it touches on the perceived complexity of Freire and how it's accessibility is probably less about language than it is ideology/identity (for lack of a better word).
I am often amazed to hear academics complain about the complexity of a particular discourse because of its alleged lack of clarity. It is as if they have assumed that there is a mono-discourse that is characterized by its clarity and is also equally available to all. If one begins to probe the issue of clarity, we soon realize that it is class specific, thus favoring those of that class in the meaningmaking process.
The following two examples will bring the point home: Henry Giroux and I gave a speech at Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts to approximately three hundred unwed mothers who were part of a GED (graduate-equivalency diploma) program. The director of the program later informed us that most of the students were considered functionally illiterate. After Giroux's speech, during the question-and-answer period, a woman got up and eloquently said, "Professor Giroux, all my life I felt the things you talked about. I just didn't have a language to express what I have felt. Today I have come to realize that I do have a language. Thank you."
Paulo Freire told me the story of what happened to him at the time he was preparing the English translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He gave an African American student at Harvard a chapter of the book to read to see how she would receive it. A few days later when he asked the woman if she had read it, she enthusiastically responded, "Yes. Not only did I read it, but I gave it to my sixteen-year-old son to read. He read the whole chapter that night and in the morning said, 'I want to meet the man who wrote this. He is talking about me "
One question that I have for all those "highly literate" academics who find Giroux's and Freire's discourse so difficult to understand is, Why is it that a sixteen-year-old boy and a poor, "semiliterate" woman could so easily understand and connect with the complexity of both Freire and Girouxs language and ideas, and the academics, who should be the most literate, find the language incomprehensible?
I believe that the answer has little to do with language and everything to do with ideology. That is, people often identify with representations that they are either comfortable with or that help deepen their understanding of themselves. The call for language clarity is an ideological issue, not merely a linguistic one. The sixteen-year-old and the semiliterate poor woman could readily connect with Freire's ideology, whereas the highly literate academics are put off by some dimensions of the same ideology. It is, perhaps, for this reason that a university professor I know failed to include Freire's work in a graduate course that she taught on literacy. When I raised the issue with her, she explained that students often find Freire's writing too difficult and cumbersome. It could also be the reason that the Divinity School at Harvard University offers a course entitled "Education for Liberation," in which students study Freire and James Cone extensively, whereas no such opportunities are available at Harvard's School of Education. For me, the mundane call for a language of "simplicity and clarity" represents yet another mechanism to dismiss the complexity of theoretical issues, particularly if these theoretical constructs interrogate the prevailing dominant ideology
I promise it was at least as hard (in many ways harder if you look into what it took for various communities that have embraced Freire to even have access to Freire's work). As daunting as it might seem, you can dig into this stuff and find various answers to your questions from various socialists to develop your own perspective and understanding if you genuinely want to.
Maybe Freire isn't where you personally should start, maybe for you Lenin's "What is to be Done" is better, maybe it's some sort of modern "socialism for dummies" book, hard for me to say much until you start reading/watching/listening/engaging with more socialist perspectives and develop an understanding of at least what's initially resonating with you and where you think there's a problem you need to dig into deeper. I do think we owe the most horrifically oppressed people around the world, and the people that sacrificed before us at least this much. The older the material the more socialists you'll likely find that noticed the same problems and had their own prescriptions for them. Then when you ask "how do we address X concern of mine" you're bringing your own perspective rooted in at least a perfunctory understanding of the framework you and your comrades are attempting to use to address your concerns. Then they can say "I tend to agree with Y when they say Z about X" and you can have some idea what that means in a larger socialist context and eventually some of the common critiques of "Y and/or his Z" as well as other popular ways socialists address your concerns.
Like many things in life, if you want the results you have to put in the work. If folks went back to their professors or even k-12 teachers and told them something to the effect of "I think there might be something important I need to learn about" and proceed to describe their efforts to learn about socialism (particularly their reliance on someone like myself) their professor/teacher would probably be some blend of concerned and confused, don't ya think?
That's not to say I'm not trying or willing to keep working together on this stuff (or don't think it's valuable for all of us), but people have to remember I'm busy surviving capitalist oppression too and they know better when it comes to learning about something they think is important. It's also not like I'm talking to people that haven't been hearing about socialism as an alternative to capitalism for years and this is their first time encountering the idea or me presenting it to them.
Then you're going to show up all these months later saying:
I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us. I tend to look at non-governmental solutions (stuff like unions and mutual aid) as promising alternative routes
Which makes sense when you acknowledge you struggled to get past the introduction of either of the two (out of dozens of) suggested readings/figures:
I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me.
But stands as a stark contradiction with your repeated insistence that:
If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them!
So get into your reservations, or into the socialists you happily listen to and why they haven't convinced you to call (or more importantly comport) yourself (as) a socialist, or bury your head in the sand or whatever, just don't stand there pissin in my face trying to convince me it's rain and get indignant about me calling it out.
On July 14 2023 01:18 oBlade wrote: I don't know if you have visited or lived in America. The concept of a right in the American system is that the government can't just execute you for exercising it. It's not see gun -> shoot citizen. A PCP laden white man with a knife going berserk has a much shorter life expectancy with police officers than a black FFL pulled over with a trunk full of automatic weapons, who has nothing to worry about.
Atatiana Jefferson was killed in 2019 in the manner that you claim isn't happening. Cop sees gun -> shoots citizen.
There's footage of the crime. What isn't shown is that neither of the officers made any efforts to announce their presence. They entered Jefferson's property with guns drawn, arriving in her backyard. She was sitting in the bedroom with her nephew when she noticed the intruders and grabbed her gun, and was shot dead by one of the officers.
The officer Dean received 11 years for manslaughter, which is the lesser sentence for the charge. I'd argue a regular citizen would've been found guilty for murder.
Footage:
Robert Dotson was killed recently in his home by several cops. The cops knock and then wait. When they're about to leave, they see Dotson coming out the door while holding a gun by his side and they immediately start shooting. Later they also shoot at his wife, who didn't realize the people outside were cops (gee I wonder why she didn't immediately catch that detail, might've had something to do with her husband getting shot). Fortunately she didn't get hit.
The next case is almost as outrageous as the one of Jefferson. Ryan Whitaker was shot and killed by Jeff Cooke in 2020. Two officers knock at Whitaker's door, who proceeds to open it and come out with a gun held by his waist. He realizes that they're cops, backs off and drops to the floor. Cooke then shoots Whitaker twice and kills him.
You can also read how Cooke got away with murder. "In November 2020, a $3 million settlement was negotiated with Whitaker's family, pending approval by the Phoenix City Council on November 25, 2020.[8][4] The settlement was approved by Phoenix City Council on December 2, 2020.[9] In January 2021, Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel announced that she would not be pursuing criminal charges against Cooke"
Money. A convenient way to escape a prison sentence.
Footage:
I've analyzed all of this footage in detail (and much more over the years). It's always the same preventable death, each and every time.
1) I didn't say it never happens, I said that your race-baiting hypothesis was dead on arrival if you were operating on the assumption that police in the US get to just shoot people based on percent of households of that person's skin color that have guns, and therefore we need an extra reason to explain why not enough white people are being shot and killed by police under those assumptions.
2) Two thirds of your examples are white and the only case with a criminal conviction thus far is the case where the victim was a black girl. Doesn't seem super race-based at first.
Things can be tragic, avoidable, and also not murder - I don't know if you have owned a gun either, but even on your own property you can't just brandish it at someone who is a police officer. That's one of the first things you learn. No pointing guns at police. No-knock warrants issue aside, Dotson's wife also shot at them which wasn't in your forthcoming inventory of facts. And that case was quite recent so there doesn't seem to be an update yet on possible civil or criminal actions.
3) I am completely in favor of appointing district attorneys who prosecute all serious crimes committed by anyone. We're in agreement. We probably need some kind of apparatus of security personnel employed by the state who can patrol around and find and catch those people for us as well.
Like we can talk about the edgiest edge cases if you want, except if you're cherry picking them to be representative of all the cases of police killing. There's only like 1,000 cases, it's low enough to literally manually go through and get an actual sense of everything for real, without drawing these vast conclusions for no legitimate reasons.
Here's some more just from April from your own link.
The male was slain during a shootout with officers [2]
An FBI agent shot and killed Yang, a 33-year old Asian man, while serving an arrest warrant for him at a home near Dowling and DuPoint avenues in North Minneapolis. According to the FBI, Yang had barricade himself inside the house for several hours and he was holding a firearm when he later emerged from the home.[4][5]
Klimenko was terrorizing a woman with knife inside a Jacksonville home. She escaped through a bathroom window and called police. When the Jacksonville police arrived, they tried to talk Klimenko out of the home with a bullhorn. After that they deployed a K-9 to apprehend Klimenko. After Klimenko appeared to attack the K-9 with the knife, the police shot and killed him.[7]
Klimenko was terrorizing a woman with knife inside a Jacksonville home. She escaped through a bathroom window and called police. When the Jacksonville police arrived, they tried to talk Klimenko out of the home with a bullhorn. After that they deployed a K-9 to apprehend Klimenko. After Klimenko appeared to attack the K-9 with the knife, the police shot and killed him.[7]
Sturgeon shot several people at a bank he formerly worked at, killing five, before being killed by police.[8]
Solomon was shot and killed by an off-duty officer working security, shortly after shooting and wounding a man.[11]
World is not a nice place.
You know what's not in this list of police killings? Shootings that weren't fatal. Other encounters that were less than lethal. You've either tricked yourself or are intentionally misleading. Go also look up the woman who should by all rights like the above 3 cases have gotten shot because she mishandled her open carry at a traffic stop, but the cop showed restraint. Look up the cases of people literally shooting at police from their homes and then surrendering alive to be arrested. Look up the police tackling a guy who is clearly deranged instead of letting him commit suicide by cop.
On July 14 2023 02:01 Magic Powers wrote: I've analyzed all of this footage in detail (and much more over the years). It's always the same preventable death, each and every time.
Sturgeon shot several people at a bank he formerly worked at, killing five, before being killed by police.[8]
On July 14 2023 02:01 Magic Powers wrote: always the same preventable death, each and every time
Unfortunately we have arrived at the impasse of different functional definitions of "always" and "preventable."
The idea that illegitimate police violence is caused by crime absolves police of any responsibility for their own excesses. You might as well say that war crimes are caused by war. No war, no war crimes.
Just because someone is guilty of a crime doesn't mean they deserve death by police execution, even if their crime is murder. Do you agree with this statement oBlade?
On July 13 2023 08:04 ChristianS wrote: @Mohdoo: I mean, I’ve got my complaints about the FDA myself. But my point was more about the idea of *creating* a regulatory framework in the first place, going back to like 1906. That was something where as a government it was possible to look at an unregulated market like drugs, with a lot of cutting edge scientific questions around what a regulatory framework would even mean, and go ahead and build one anyway. It’s unfathomable to me that we could do something like that today (e.g. with unregulated markets like social media or AI).
That the existing regulatory frameworks are becoming increasingly inadequate too is only further evidence of the institutional decay I’m trying to describe.
@GH: Come on now, I’m not insisting that anyone “tolerate the increasing deprivation of their rights indefinitely.” If you or anybody else has a plan to get those rights back I’m eager to hear it. Saying “letting Republicans get elected will demonstrably make this problem worse, not better” is not explicitly or implicitly saying that anybody should tolerate it a second longer than they have to.
If you’ve got a way that *not* voting for the person with a D by their name would give those rights back, I’m very interested to hear how that works. Otherwise, filling out a ballot only takes part of a day every couple years. Why can’t we spend the other 364 days working on non-electoral solutions, without ceding control of government to fascists?
It very much reads that you are to me.
You already know the ideas/plans I relate to are rooted in revolutionary socialism. I've given plenty of recommendations for further reading/understanding of what that means to me over the years. I welcome sincere and serious engagement on anything I've recommended or other relevant socialist perspectives.
To be specific, it's a disagreement about how long and under what conditions "they have to", hence the reference to Dr. King's white moderate quote about paternalistically setting the timetable for other peoples' freedom. This isn't a new argument and the decades following Dr. King calling it out so poignantly have thoroughly shown its futility imo.
You used the euphemistic "transformational change" for revolution but this is where this conversation always ends up for social democrats.
The acceptance that the US probably needs "transformational change", recognizing that the politicians in power (including Democrats) will never allow those changes, and then the realization they have no plan beyond continuing to vote to keep those politicians in power to (hopefully at best) slow down the march toward full blown fascism with maybe some futile support for bastardized socialist policy/strategies sprinkled in. That wouldn't be as egregious if they didn't simultaneously dismiss the progenitors of the socialist/anarchist policies/strategies they bastardize to conform to the Democrat party framework and provide the superficial appearance of solidarity while undermining revolutionary energy.
Since I’m being called a “white moderate” I thought it was a good time to go reread the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Maybe this is poor reading comprehension on my part, but isn’t it kind of definitional to a “white moderate” that they’re discouraging some means of affecting positive change as too hasty/extreme? Where have I done that?
If I read that letter with the question “how should I view the electoral system in trying to affect positive change?” I, at least, get something like this: the electoral system is real, it’s important, and it’s okay to care about its outcomes; but voting alone insufficient to achieve necessary change. As King mentions, their Birmingham Campaign delayed mass demonstrations because they didn’t want to influence the election; specifically, they hoped to see Albert Boutwell defeat Bull Connor (even though, as King also mentions, Boutwell was merely a more moderate segregationist). Once Connor was defeated, they didn’t cancel the campaign and go home, they went right back to demonstrating. If someone had told Dr. King “I’m thinking of voting for Boutwell,” I doubt he would have said “Don’t!” Doing my best to understand what he’s saying in his letter, it seems to me that he would have told them to go ahead, but that it wasn’t enough on its own. (I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of trying to put words in Dr. King’s mouth, but it seems essential to engaging deeply with a text to try to apply its lessons to new situations; if you think I’m misreading it, I’m eager to hear what you think I’ve failed to understand.)
I didn’t intend the phrase “transformational change” to be euphemistic. I suppose you’d prefer “revolutionary change?” I shy away only because I’m never sure how metaphorical the “revolution” is, and when I’m not really sure what a phrase means I try to avoid it. A lot of times people read you calling for revolution and think that means recruiting soldiers, obtaining weapons, and engaging in pitched battles against the military in hopes of triumphing on the battlefield and overthrowing the government. Maybe that’s what you do mean? But if that’s what we’re talking about I’d like to make that more explicit. Otherwise if “revolution” is meant to be more abstract/metaphorical, I was hoping to avoid that distraction.
or anarchists, nor am I telling them to conform their activities to the Democratic Party framework. If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them! I have no interest in tone policing or prescribing appropriate and inappropriate methods. I can’t promise to believe whatever they tell me to; I’m not a blind follower, I have to engage critically with ideas and decide for myself whether to believe them. But I’m not opposed to reading some of the theory you push for either (although finding time and energy for it has been pretty difficult; the reading always seems to be pretty dense).
You literally said:
I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us.
If I wanted to get gaslit I'd just engage BJ.
Yeah, later in the same paragraph I also said I’m not promising to believe whatever they tell me. I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me. I know socialists whose ideas I’ll happily listen to on political subjects, but so far, I’m not about to call myself a socialist. If “I read some socialist theory but so far I’m not convinced enough to call myself one” counts as “dismissing socialists,” then you’re right, I’m dismissing socialists and a whole lot of other people too.
Under other circumstances maybe I’d want to get into my reservations right now, but honestly? If I engaged BJ right now I think I’d have a much better chance of somebody actually reading what I wrote, thinking about it, and then telling me what they think I’m getting right or wrong. So maybe I should just hold off for a bit, huh?
I read it, thought about it, and told you one central and glaring thing I thought was wrong with it. It is unreasonable for me to go deeper into it without confronting the absurdity that you weren't being dismissive of socialists.
When I recommended "What is to be Done" (it's about a 6 hour read assuming 1/2 the avg reading pace) to you 7 months ago (so that's less than 2 minutes a day or 15 minutes a week or 1 hour per month to finish) it was in this context:
You're not an idiot. You know how to research a topic and develop a better understanding through at least traditional academic means. Reading Lenin's "Where to Begin?" and "What Is To Be Done" seems like a reasonable place to look. Not as gospel to be carried out unquestioningly, but as a reference point to bring to a dialectical engagement about what makes sense for one's own role in the struggle with respect to one's own material conditions.
That one struggles to find the time and energy is at least believable (and true for most of us). But that's a struggle with prioritization, not ignorance.
If someone is in an org, ingesting theory, and applying/refining that theory through praxis with the org, they're exponentially further along than the overwhelming majority of the country and even a lot of people that call themselves socialist.
When I recommended it again about 4 months ago it was in this context:
I know surviving capitalist oppression is a struggle and a half, but in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (more specifically an introduction by Donaldo Macedo) there's something relevant, and as it's all I readily know you've at least tried to engage with to answer your questions, it seems appropriate. Basically it touches on the perceived complexity of Freire and how it's accessibility is probably less about language than it is ideology/identity (for lack of a better word).
I am often amazed to hear academics complain about the complexity of a particular discourse because of its alleged lack of clarity. It is as if they have assumed that there is a mono-discourse that is characterized by its clarity and is also equally available to all. If one begins to probe the issue of clarity, we soon realize that it is class specific, thus favoring those of that class in the meaningmaking process.
The following two examples will bring the point home: Henry Giroux and I gave a speech at Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts to approximately three hundred unwed mothers who were part of a GED (graduate-equivalency diploma) program. The director of the program later informed us that most of the students were considered functionally illiterate. After Giroux's speech, during the question-and-answer period, a woman got up and eloquently said, "Professor Giroux, all my life I felt the things you talked about. I just didn't have a language to express what I have felt. Today I have come to realize that I do have a language. Thank you."
Paulo Freire told me the story of what happened to him at the time he was preparing the English translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He gave an African American student at Harvard a chapter of the book to read to see how she would receive it. A few days later when he asked the woman if she had read it, she enthusiastically responded, "Yes. Not only did I read it, but I gave it to my sixteen-year-old son to read. He read the whole chapter that night and in the morning said, 'I want to meet the man who wrote this. He is talking about me "
One question that I have for all those "highly literate" academics who find Giroux's and Freire's discourse so difficult to understand is, Why is it that a sixteen-year-old boy and a poor, "semiliterate" woman could so easily understand and connect with the complexity of both Freire and Girouxs language and ideas, and the academics, who should be the most literate, find the language incomprehensible?
I believe that the answer has little to do with language and everything to do with ideology. That is, people often identify with representations that they are either comfortable with or that help deepen their understanding of themselves. The call for language clarity is an ideological issue, not merely a linguistic one. The sixteen-year-old and the semiliterate poor woman could readily connect with Freire's ideology, whereas the highly literate academics are put off by some dimensions of the same ideology. It is, perhaps, for this reason that a university professor I know failed to include Freire's work in a graduate course that she taught on literacy. When I raised the issue with her, she explained that students often find Freire's writing too difficult and cumbersome. It could also be the reason that the Divinity School at Harvard University offers a course entitled "Education for Liberation," in which students study Freire and James Cone extensively, whereas no such opportunities are available at Harvard's School of Education. For me, the mundane call for a language of "simplicity and clarity" represents yet another mechanism to dismiss the complexity of theoretical issues, particularly if these theoretical constructs interrogate the prevailing dominant ideology
I promise it was at least as hard (in many ways harder if you look into what it took for various communities that have embraced Freire to even have access to Freire's work). As daunting as it might seem, you can dig into this stuff and find various answers to your questions from various socialists to develop your own perspective and understanding if you genuinely want to.
Maybe Freire isn't where you personally should start, maybe for you Lenin's "What is to be Done" is better, maybe it's some sort of modern "socialism for dummies" book, hard for me to say much until you start reading/watching/listening/engaging with more socialist perspectives and develop an understanding of at least what's initially resonating with you and where you think there's a problem you need to dig into deeper. I do think we owe the most horrifically oppressed people around the world, and the people that sacrificed before us at least this much. The older the material the more socialists you'll likely find that noticed the same problems and had their own prescriptions for them. Then when you ask "how do we address X concern of mine" you're bringing your own perspective rooted in at least a perfunctory understanding of the framework you and your comrades are attempting to use to address your concerns. Then they can say "I tend to agree with Y when they say Z about X" and you can have some idea what that means in a larger socialist context and eventually some of the common critiques of "Y and/or his Z" as well as other popular ways socialists address your concerns.
Like many things in life, if you want the results you have to put in the work. If folks went back to their professors or even k-12 teachers and told them something to the effect of "I think there might be something important I need to learn about" and proceed to describe their efforts to learn about socialism (particularly their reliance on someone like myself) their professor/teacher would probably be some blend of concerned and confused, don't ya think?
That's not to say I'm not trying or willing to keep working together on this stuff (or don't think it's valuable for all of us), but people have to remember I'm busy surviving capitalist oppression too and they know better when it comes to learning about something they think is important. It's also not like I'm talking to people that haven't been hearing about socialism as an alternative to capitalism for years and this is their first time encountering the idea or me presenting it to them.
Then you're going to show up all these months later saying:
I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us. I tend to look at non-governmental solutions (stuff like unions and mutual aid) as promising alternative routes
Which makes sense when you acknowledge you struggled to get past the introduction of either of the two (out of dozens of) suggested readings/figures:
I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me.
But stands as a stark contradiction with your repeated insistence that:
If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them!
So get into your reservations, or into the socialists you happily listen to and why they haven't convinced you to call (or more importantly comport) yourself (as) a socialist, or bury your head in the sand or whatever, just don't stand there pissin in my face trying to convince me it's rain and get indignant about me calling it out.
Danglars used to have this quality where it was really hard to talk to him and understand what his motivations were until I realized that most of the time, there was something I had said several pages ago, probably not even addressing him, that he was still steaming about. With that context, it got a lot easier to understand what he was upset about. I started taking a mental inventory every time I started talking to him of what I had said recently that he would probably disagree with, and it got a lot easier to understand what his oblique hostile remarks were actually about. Useful lesson, although it was kind of exhausting, and one of the bigger reasons I didn’t make more fuss when he got banned.
Thing is, I was actually doing that same thing *in this conversation* – I just guessed wrong which thing you were holding a grudge about! I thought it was because I said I still think people should vote for Democrats; turns out it’s because several pages ago DPB asked me What Is To Be Done, and I essentially said “I don’t really know, here’s some (mostly leftist) ideas I think are promising; GH would say ‘revolutionary socialism’ but I’m not convinced Lenin has the answers.” I should have realized *that* was why I was getting brief, curt responses calling me a white moderate gaslighter.
Here’s the thing, I’m not expecting you to like me. At the end of the day I’m a white kid raised by rich conservative Mormons who went to school for chemistry, got a job in the pharma industry, bought a house I couldn’t afford to live in and rented it out to other people. I’m checking boxes for “rich white parents,” “pharma industry worker,” and “landlord;” if you start liking me I start worrying I’ve misrepresented myself somehow. But you have ideas you want to promote that I think are worth considering, so I discuss with you, and try my best to engage sincerely and honestly with them.
Sorry I haven’t done my homework. It’s probably true that I could block out 6 hours with a microphone and read that whole book aloud, and you could check the recording and confirm my brain had processed every word enough to verbalize it. Since I *haven’t* done the reading, I wasn’t jumping out of my chair to discuss my reservations with you, considering for all I know, they’re addressed on the next page. If DPB hadn’t asked me directly where I’m at on pretty much exactly this, I wouldn’t have brought it up at all.
But political theory isn’t my area; I have a lot of trouble finding time to read it, and even more feeling like I understood what I just read enough to move to the next paragraph. I don’t think at the end of that 6 hours I would feel any more confident in raising whatever objections I have to what Lenin wrote.
As for socialists whose opinions I value, I’m not particularly proud of the list, but: Austin Walker, formerly of Giant Bomb and Waypoint Radio. The whole Waypoint/Remap crowd, too. Robert Evans is more of an anarchist, but I’m usually interested in what he thinks. David Shor is clearly very smart, even if I don’t always agree with him. And, well, you! I don’t find a whole lot of time in my schedule for *any* books, not just socialist ones, so people that can be heard on podcasts or read online tend to make it into my information diet more readily – not ideal, I know, but whatever, I’m doing my best with what I’ve got.
I’m thinking I should probably take a break from this thread for a few days, so, uh, don’t expect too many quick replies from me. But hey, I’d rather get called a white moderate gaslighter by you than just read page after page of tirades how terrible trans people are. So thanks for that I guess.
Also, I notice you took my statement out of context. When I talked about preventable deaths, I was talking about how officers are practically creating the circumstances for their victims to get shot. I've only shown you cases where innocent people get shot to death without sufficient reason. I wasn't talking about a case like that of Sturgeon where the officers can expect a great level of violence from the perpetrator (edit: or suspect rather).
Furthermore, the woman who shot at the officers was completely within her right to fire at any of the invaders. They were on her property, meaning they were infringing on her castle doctrine, and her husband was just murdered in front of her. I don't know if you're aware of the legality? By that point it doesn't matter that they're cops, because she had no way of discerning whether they're cops or regular criminals. The officers had no right to be there.
On July 13 2023 08:04 ChristianS wrote: @Mohdoo: I mean, I’ve got my complaints about the FDA myself. But my point was more about the idea of *creating* a regulatory framework in the first place, going back to like 1906. That was something where as a government it was possible to look at an unregulated market like drugs, with a lot of cutting edge scientific questions around what a regulatory framework would even mean, and go ahead and build one anyway. It’s unfathomable to me that we could do something like that today (e.g. with unregulated markets like social media or AI).
That the existing regulatory frameworks are becoming increasingly inadequate too is only further evidence of the institutional decay I’m trying to describe.
@GH: Come on now, I’m not insisting that anyone “tolerate the increasing deprivation of their rights indefinitely.” If you or anybody else has a plan to get those rights back I’m eager to hear it. Saying “letting Republicans get elected will demonstrably make this problem worse, not better” is not explicitly or implicitly saying that anybody should tolerate it a second longer than they have to.
If you’ve got a way that *not* voting for the person with a D by their name would give those rights back, I’m very interested to hear how that works. Otherwise, filling out a ballot only takes part of a day every couple years. Why can’t we spend the other 364 days working on non-electoral solutions, without ceding control of government to fascists?
It very much reads that you are to me.
You already know the ideas/plans I relate to are rooted in revolutionary socialism. I've given plenty of recommendations for further reading/understanding of what that means to me over the years. I welcome sincere and serious engagement on anything I've recommended or other relevant socialist perspectives.
To be specific, it's a disagreement about how long and under what conditions "they have to", hence the reference to Dr. King's white moderate quote about paternalistically setting the timetable for other peoples' freedom. This isn't a new argument and the decades following Dr. King calling it out so poignantly have thoroughly shown its futility imo.
You used the euphemistic "transformational change" for revolution but this is where this conversation always ends up for social democrats.
The acceptance that the US probably needs "transformational change", recognizing that the politicians in power (including Democrats) will never allow those changes, and then the realization they have no plan beyond continuing to vote to keep those politicians in power to (hopefully at best) slow down the march toward full blown fascism with maybe some futile support for bastardized socialist policy/strategies sprinkled in. That wouldn't be as egregious if they didn't simultaneously dismiss the progenitors of the socialist/anarchist policies/strategies they bastardize to conform to the Democrat party framework and provide the superficial appearance of solidarity while undermining revolutionary energy.
Since I’m being called a “white moderate” I thought it was a good time to go reread the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Maybe this is poor reading comprehension on my part, but isn’t it kind of definitional to a “white moderate” that they’re discouraging some means of affecting positive change as too hasty/extreme? Where have I done that?
If I read that letter with the question “how should I view the electoral system in trying to affect positive change?” I, at least, get something like this: the electoral system is real, it’s important, and it’s okay to care about its outcomes; but voting alone insufficient to achieve necessary change. As King mentions, their Birmingham Campaign delayed mass demonstrations because they didn’t want to influence the election; specifically, they hoped to see Albert Boutwell defeat Bull Connor (even though, as King also mentions, Boutwell was merely a more moderate segregationist). Once Connor was defeated, they didn’t cancel the campaign and go home, they went right back to demonstrating. If someone had told Dr. King “I’m thinking of voting for Boutwell,” I doubt he would have said “Don’t!” Doing my best to understand what he’s saying in his letter, it seems to me that he would have told them to go ahead, but that it wasn’t enough on its own. (I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of trying to put words in Dr. King’s mouth, but it seems essential to engaging deeply with a text to try to apply its lessons to new situations; if you think I’m misreading it, I’m eager to hear what you think I’ve failed to understand.)
I didn’t intend the phrase “transformational change” to be euphemistic. I suppose you’d prefer “revolutionary change?” I shy away only because I’m never sure how metaphorical the “revolution” is, and when I’m not really sure what a phrase means I try to avoid it. A lot of times people read you calling for revolution and think that means recruiting soldiers, obtaining weapons, and engaging in pitched battles against the military in hopes of triumphing on the battlefield and overthrowing the government. Maybe that’s what you do mean? But if that’s what we’re talking about I’d like to make that more explicit. Otherwise if “revolution” is meant to be more abstract/metaphorical, I was hoping to avoid that distraction.
or anarchists, nor am I telling them to conform their activities to the Democratic Party framework. If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them! I have no interest in tone policing or prescribing appropriate and inappropriate methods. I can’t promise to believe whatever they tell me to; I’m not a blind follower, I have to engage critically with ideas and decide for myself whether to believe them. But I’m not opposed to reading some of the theory you push for either (although finding time and energy for it has been pretty difficult; the reading always seems to be pretty dense).
You literally said:
I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us.
If I wanted to get gaslit I'd just engage BJ.
Yeah, later in the same paragraph I also said I’m not promising to believe whatever they tell me. I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me. I know socialists whose ideas I’ll happily listen to on political subjects, but so far, I’m not about to call myself a socialist. If “I read some socialist theory but so far I’m not convinced enough to call myself one” counts as “dismissing socialists,” then you’re right, I’m dismissing socialists and a whole lot of other people too.
Under other circumstances maybe I’d want to get into my reservations right now, but honestly? If I engaged BJ right now I think I’d have a much better chance of somebody actually reading what I wrote, thinking about it, and then telling me what they think I’m getting right or wrong. So maybe I should just hold off for a bit, huh?
I read it, thought about it, and told you one central and glaring thing I thought was wrong with it. It is unreasonable for me to go deeper into it without confronting the absurdity that you weren't being dismissive of socialists.
When I recommended "What is to be Done" (it's about a 6 hour read assuming 1/2 the avg reading pace) to you 7 months ago (so that's less than 2 minutes a day or 15 minutes a week or 1 hour per month to finish) it was in this context:
You're not an idiot. You know how to research a topic and develop a better understanding through at least traditional academic means. Reading Lenin's "Where to Begin?" and "What Is To Be Done" seems like a reasonable place to look. Not as gospel to be carried out unquestioningly, but as a reference point to bring to a dialectical engagement about what makes sense for one's own role in the struggle with respect to one's own material conditions.
That one struggles to find the time and energy is at least believable (and true for most of us). But that's a struggle with prioritization, not ignorance.
If someone is in an org, ingesting theory, and applying/refining that theory through praxis with the org, they're exponentially further along than the overwhelming majority of the country and even a lot of people that call themselves socialist.
When I recommended it again about 4 months ago it was in this context:
I know surviving capitalist oppression is a struggle and a half, but in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (more specifically an introduction by Donaldo Macedo) there's something relevant, and as it's all I readily know you've at least tried to engage with to answer your questions, it seems appropriate. Basically it touches on the perceived complexity of Freire and how it's accessibility is probably less about language than it is ideology/identity (for lack of a better word).
I am often amazed to hear academics complain about the complexity of a particular discourse because of its alleged lack of clarity. It is as if they have assumed that there is a mono-discourse that is characterized by its clarity and is also equally available to all. If one begins to probe the issue of clarity, we soon realize that it is class specific, thus favoring those of that class in the meaningmaking process.
The following two examples will bring the point home: Henry Giroux and I gave a speech at Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts to approximately three hundred unwed mothers who were part of a GED (graduate-equivalency diploma) program. The director of the program later informed us that most of the students were considered functionally illiterate. After Giroux's speech, during the question-and-answer period, a woman got up and eloquently said, "Professor Giroux, all my life I felt the things you talked about. I just didn't have a language to express what I have felt. Today I have come to realize that I do have a language. Thank you."
Paulo Freire told me the story of what happened to him at the time he was preparing the English translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He gave an African American student at Harvard a chapter of the book to read to see how she would receive it. A few days later when he asked the woman if she had read it, she enthusiastically responded, "Yes. Not only did I read it, but I gave it to my sixteen-year-old son to read. He read the whole chapter that night and in the morning said, 'I want to meet the man who wrote this. He is talking about me "
One question that I have for all those "highly literate" academics who find Giroux's and Freire's discourse so difficult to understand is, Why is it that a sixteen-year-old boy and a poor, "semiliterate" woman could so easily understand and connect with the complexity of both Freire and Girouxs language and ideas, and the academics, who should be the most literate, find the language incomprehensible?
I believe that the answer has little to do with language and everything to do with ideology. That is, people often identify with representations that they are either comfortable with or that help deepen their understanding of themselves. The call for language clarity is an ideological issue, not merely a linguistic one. The sixteen-year-old and the semiliterate poor woman could readily connect with Freire's ideology, whereas the highly literate academics are put off by some dimensions of the same ideology. It is, perhaps, for this reason that a university professor I know failed to include Freire's work in a graduate course that she taught on literacy. When I raised the issue with her, she explained that students often find Freire's writing too difficult and cumbersome. It could also be the reason that the Divinity School at Harvard University offers a course entitled "Education for Liberation," in which students study Freire and James Cone extensively, whereas no such opportunities are available at Harvard's School of Education. For me, the mundane call for a language of "simplicity and clarity" represents yet another mechanism to dismiss the complexity of theoretical issues, particularly if these theoretical constructs interrogate the prevailing dominant ideology
I promise it was at least as hard (in many ways harder if you look into what it took for various communities that have embraced Freire to even have access to Freire's work). As daunting as it might seem, you can dig into this stuff and find various answers to your questions from various socialists to develop your own perspective and understanding if you genuinely want to.
Maybe Freire isn't where you personally should start, maybe for you Lenin's "What is to be Done" is better, maybe it's some sort of modern "socialism for dummies" book, hard for me to say much until you start reading/watching/listening/engaging with more socialist perspectives and develop an understanding of at least what's initially resonating with you and where you think there's a problem you need to dig into deeper. I do think we owe the most horrifically oppressed people around the world, and the people that sacrificed before us at least this much. The older the material the more socialists you'll likely find that noticed the same problems and had their own prescriptions for them. Then when you ask "how do we address X concern of mine" you're bringing your own perspective rooted in at least a perfunctory understanding of the framework you and your comrades are attempting to use to address your concerns. Then they can say "I tend to agree with Y when they say Z about X" and you can have some idea what that means in a larger socialist context and eventually some of the common critiques of "Y and/or his Z" as well as other popular ways socialists address your concerns.
Like many things in life, if you want the results you have to put in the work. If folks went back to their professors or even k-12 teachers and told them something to the effect of "I think there might be something important I need to learn about" and proceed to describe their efforts to learn about socialism (particularly their reliance on someone like myself) their professor/teacher would probably be some blend of concerned and confused, don't ya think?
That's not to say I'm not trying or willing to keep working together on this stuff (or don't think it's valuable for all of us), but people have to remember I'm busy surviving capitalist oppression too and they know better when it comes to learning about something they think is important. It's also not like I'm talking to people that haven't been hearing about socialism as an alternative to capitalism for years and this is their first time encountering the idea or me presenting it to them.
Then you're going to show up all these months later saying:
I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us. I tend to look at non-governmental solutions (stuff like unions and mutual aid) as promising alternative routes
Which makes sense when you acknowledge you struggled to get past the introduction of either of the two (out of dozens of) suggested readings/figures:
I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me.
But stands as a stark contradiction with your repeated insistence that:
If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them!
So get into your reservations, or into the socialists you happily listen to and why they haven't convinced you to call (or more importantly comport) yourself (as) a socialist, or bury your head in the sand or whatever, just don't stand there pissin in my face trying to convince me it's rain and get indignant about me calling it out.
Danglars used to have this quality where it was really hard to talk to him and understand what his motivations were until I realized that most of the time, there was something I had said several pages ago, probably not even addressing him, that he was still steaming about. With that context, it got a lot easier to understand what he was upset about. I started taking a mental inventory every time I started talking to him of what I had said recently that he would probably disagree with, and it got a lot easier to understand what his oblique hostile remarks were actually about. Useful lesson, although it was kind of exhausting, and one of the bigger reasons I didn’t make more fuss when he got banned.
Thing is, I was actually doing that same thing *in this conversation* – I just guessed wrong which thing you were holding a grudge about! I thought it was because I said I still think people should vote for Democrats; turns out it’s because several pages ago DPB asked me What Is To Be Done, and I essentially said “I don’t really know, here’s some (mostly leftist) ideas I think are promising; GH would say ‘revolutionary socialism’ but I’m not convinced Lenin has the answers.” I should have realized *that* was why I was getting brief, curt responses calling me a white moderate gaslighter.
Here’s the thing, I’m not expecting you to like me. At the end of the day I’m a white kid raised by rich conservative Mormons who went to school for chemistry, got a job in the pharma industry, bought a house I couldn’t afford to live in and rented it out to other people. I’m checking boxes for “rich white parents,” “pharma industry worker,” and “landlord;” if you start liking me I start worrying I’ve misrepresented myself somehow. But you have ideas you want to promote that I think are worth considering, so I discuss with you, and try my best to engage sincerely and honestly with them.
Sorry I haven’t done my homework. It’s probably true that I could block out 6 hours with a microphone and read that whole book aloud, and you could check the recording and confirm my brain had processed every word enough to verbalize it. Since I *haven’t* done the reading, I wasn’t jumping out of my chair to discuss my reservations with you, considering for all I know, they’re addressed on the next page. If DPB hadn’t asked me directly where I’m at on pretty much exactly this, I wouldn’t have brought it up at all.
But political theory isn’t my area; I have a lot of trouble finding time to read it, and even more feeling like I understood what I just read enough to move to the next paragraph. I don’t think at the end of that 6 hours I would feel any more confident in raising whatever objections I have to what Lenin wrote.
As for socialists whose opinions I value, I’m not particularly proud of the list, but: Austin Walker, formerly of Giant Bomb and Waypoint Radio. The whole Waypoint/Remap crowd, too. Robert Evans is more of an anarchist, but I’m usually interested in what he thinks. David Shor is clearly very smart, even if I don’t always agree with him. And, well, you! I don’t find a whole lot of time in my schedule for *any* books, not just socialist ones, so people that can be heard on podcasts or read online tend to make it into my information diet more readily – not ideal, I know, but whatever, I’m doing my best with what I’ve got.
I’m thinking I should probably take a break from this thread for a few days, so, uh, don’t expect too many quick replies from me. But hey, I’d rather get called a white moderate gaslighter by you than just read page after page of tirades how terrible trans people are. So thanks for that I guess.
Doesn't really have anything to do with liking you?
I'm just not going to pretend someone who can't find 6 hours in 7 months for something they claim is critically important is actually trying or sincere (with me or themselves) about their commitment to a remedy.
If you came here telling people you really want to be gm at SC2 and you don't understand why masters/gm/pro players are insisting you're not serious about it because you can't find time to practice more than a couple hours every six months in between occasionally watching bronze league heroes games it would be immediately obvious to everyone how ridiculous your position is.
It seems you don't have a firm grasp on the reasons you aren't(/objections you have to being) gm in SC2 a socialist and until you do I don't think there's much anyone can do to explain why they're wrong.
On July 13 2023 21:02 Magic Powers wrote: "From the pool of officers charged with murder between 2005 and 2019, about a third were convicted on any charges. Seven officers – just 5% – have been convicted of murder."
"In 2020, murder and manslaughter charges had the highest crime clearance rate in the United States, with 54.4 percent of all cases being cleared by arrest or so-called exceptional means."
The discrepancy (edit: in successful convictions) for murder and manslaughter charges is between 54.4% (general population) and 5% (police officers). That is 1 in 1.8 compared to 1 in 20.
Lesser charges against police officers were also far less likely to be successful.
Hmmmm but aren't you comparing apples and oranges (or pears) here? The first is conviction rates and the second clearance rates, which basically means that a suspect was apprehended.
What is crime clearance? Within the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal cases can be cleared (or closed) one of two ways. The first is through arrest, which means that at least one person has either been arrested, charged with an offense, or turned over to the court for prosecution. [...]
That's a valid point. I'm now trying to find the true rate of conviction for murder and manslaughter charges in the US, but this information doesn't seem to exist. I'll try for a while longer but if nothing comes up I'll have to concede this point. But don't worry, I have yet another angle that supports my argument.
Gun ownership rates
Non-hispanic white: 35% (personal ownership) and 46% (gun household) Non-white: 23% (personal ownership) and 35% (gun household)
The ratios are 1.5 to 1 (personal ownership) and 1.3 to 1 (gun household) in favor of white people.
We would therefore expect white people to get killed by police at a slightly higher rate than black people, that is if officers are more likely to shoot at armed individuals. What we find is that it's actually a disproportional opposite from the expectation.
"Black people are 2.9x more likely to be killed by police than white people in the US"
Other sources say the ratio is closer to 2 to 1. Whichever one is true, the point stands.
So this discrepancy adds to the narrative that the police in the US is harboring and protecting trigger-happy racists. It's hard to argue that a person without a gun is more likely to get shot than a person with a gun, and it's also hard to argue that white people generally are several times less trigger-happy than non-white people. A small difference can be explained, but certainly not a 2 to 2.9 times difference when the rate of ownership already clearly favors white people.
The narrative makes sense that there are very well-protected individuals in the police force who go out of their way to target ethnic minorities.
You should never look up crime statistics by race from the USA, because then your whole point would reverse and change to "police actually kill way less African-Americans then they statistically should".
Why?
Can't find the source right now but I read it some time ago.
When you look only at race, too many black americans get shot. When you look at "criminals + race" the police seems to be more likely to shoot white criminals than black ones. Maybe the numbers i saw were missleading (pretty likely because overpolicing of black people was probably not factored in), i don't know but the point is simple.
It's not helpfull to discuss what race is getting shot/killed by police, the simple fact is that the police is shooting way too many people. If the US numbers would be similar to european countries except for one Race/Minority, then looking into it would make plenty of sense, but US-Cops seem to be equal opportunity shooters.
This can't be correct. The ratio in recent years according to statista.com of white and black people being shot to death is (x to 1) 1.7 in 2019, 1.9 (2020, 2021), 1.7 (2022). The ratio of of white and black people living in the US in 2021 was 4.7 to 1. That means black people were shot to death by police at a 2.5 times higher rate than white people. Bare in mind that this is with black people owning fewer guns, so this 2.5 times higher rate is even more skewed against black people than it looks on a surface level.
To argue that race is not a meaningful factor in this discussion is absurd. Racist policies cannot be shrugged off. The incarceration rate, the rate of death by police, the low conviction rate of officers, the much higher likelihood of black people living in underprivileged communities, all of this indicates that black people are being discriminated against by the system, and one element of that system is the police.
Are you daft or something? The whole point of my post was, that police shoots to many people. That should stop.
What does making it about race help with this situation?
Pls tell me... What good does the stuff you just wrote do?
On July 13 2023 21:02 Magic Powers wrote: "From the pool of officers charged with murder between 2005 and 2019, about a third were convicted on any charges. Seven officers – just 5% – have been convicted of murder."
"In 2020, murder and manslaughter charges had the highest crime clearance rate in the United States, with 54.4 percent of all cases being cleared by arrest or so-called exceptional means."
The discrepancy (edit: in successful convictions) for murder and manslaughter charges is between 54.4% (general population) and 5% (police officers). That is 1 in 1.8 compared to 1 in 20.
Lesser charges against police officers were also far less likely to be successful.
Hmmmm but aren't you comparing apples and oranges (or pears) here? The first is conviction rates and the second clearance rates, which basically means that a suspect was apprehended.
What is crime clearance? Within the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal cases can be cleared (or closed) one of two ways. The first is through arrest, which means that at least one person has either been arrested, charged with an offense, or turned over to the court for prosecution. [...]
That's a valid point. I'm now trying to find the true rate of conviction for murder and manslaughter charges in the US, but this information doesn't seem to exist. I'll try for a while longer but if nothing comes up I'll have to concede this point. But don't worry, I have yet another angle that supports my argument.
Gun ownership rates
Non-hispanic white: 35% (personal ownership) and 46% (gun household) Non-white: 23% (personal ownership) and 35% (gun household)
The ratios are 1.5 to 1 (personal ownership) and 1.3 to 1 (gun household) in favor of white people.
We would therefore expect white people to get killed by police at a slightly higher rate than black people, that is if officers are more likely to shoot at armed individuals. What we find is that it's actually a disproportional opposite from the expectation.
"Black people are 2.9x more likely to be killed by police than white people in the US"
Other sources say the ratio is closer to 2 to 1. Whichever one is true, the point stands.
So this discrepancy adds to the narrative that the police in the US is harboring and protecting trigger-happy racists. It's hard to argue that a person without a gun is more likely to get shot than a person with a gun, and it's also hard to argue that white people generally are several times less trigger-happy than non-white people. A small difference can be explained, but certainly not a 2 to 2.9 times difference when the rate of ownership already clearly favors white people.
The narrative makes sense that there are very well-protected individuals in the police force who go out of their way to target ethnic minorities.
You should never look up crime statistics by race from the USA, because then your whole point would reverse and change to "police actually kill way less African-Americans then they statistically should".
Why?
Can't find the source right now but I read it some time ago.
When you look only at race, too many black americans get shot. When you look at "criminals + race" the police seems to be more likely to shoot white criminals than black ones. Maybe the numbers i saw were missleading (pretty likely because overpolicing of black people was probably not factored in), i don't know but the point is simple.
It's not helpfull to discuss what race is getting shot/killed by police, the simple fact is that the police is shooting way too many people. If the US numbers would be similar to european countries except for one Race/Minority, then looking into it would make plenty of sense, but US-Cops seem to be equal opportunity shooters.
This can't be correct. The ratio in recent years according to statista.com of white and black people being shot to death is (x to 1) 1.7 in 2019, 1.9 (2020, 2021), 1.7 (2022). The ratio of of white and black people living in the US in 2021 was 4.7 to 1. That means black people were shot to death by police at a 2.5 times higher rate than white people. Bare in mind that this is with black people owning fewer guns, so this 2.5 times higher rate is even more skewed against black people than it looks on a surface level.
To argue that race is not a meaningful factor in this discussion is absurd. Racist policies cannot be shrugged off. The incarceration rate, the rate of death by police, the low conviction rate of officers, the much higher likelihood of black people living in underprivileged communities, all of this indicates that black people are being discriminated against by the system, and one element of that system is the police.
Are you daft or something? The whole point of my post was, that police shoots to many people. That should stop.
What does making it about race help with this situation?
Pls tell me... What good does the stuff you just wrote do?
You tell me. What good does it do to be honest about things and not pretend reality is actually something else than what I know it to be? What's the purpose of that? Should I lie and pretend racism is not systemic? Would that help?
On July 13 2023 08:04 ChristianS wrote: @Mohdoo: I mean, I’ve got my complaints about the FDA myself. But my point was more about the idea of *creating* a regulatory framework in the first place, going back to like 1906. That was something where as a government it was possible to look at an unregulated market like drugs, with a lot of cutting edge scientific questions around what a regulatory framework would even mean, and go ahead and build one anyway. It’s unfathomable to me that we could do something like that today (e.g. with unregulated markets like social media or AI).
That the existing regulatory frameworks are becoming increasingly inadequate too is only further evidence of the institutional decay I’m trying to describe.
@GH: Come on now, I’m not insisting that anyone “tolerate the increasing deprivation of their rights indefinitely.” If you or anybody else has a plan to get those rights back I’m eager to hear it. Saying “letting Republicans get elected will demonstrably make this problem worse, not better” is not explicitly or implicitly saying that anybody should tolerate it a second longer than they have to.
If you’ve got a way that *not* voting for the person with a D by their name would give those rights back, I’m very interested to hear how that works. Otherwise, filling out a ballot only takes part of a day every couple years. Why can’t we spend the other 364 days working on non-electoral solutions, without ceding control of government to fascists?
It very much reads that you are to me.
You already know the ideas/plans I relate to are rooted in revolutionary socialism. I've given plenty of recommendations for further reading/understanding of what that means to me over the years. I welcome sincere and serious engagement on anything I've recommended or other relevant socialist perspectives.
To be specific, it's a disagreement about how long and under what conditions "they have to", hence the reference to Dr. King's white moderate quote about paternalistically setting the timetable for other peoples' freedom. This isn't a new argument and the decades following Dr. King calling it out so poignantly have thoroughly shown its futility imo.
You used the euphemistic "transformational change" for revolution but this is where this conversation always ends up for social democrats.
The acceptance that the US probably needs "transformational change", recognizing that the politicians in power (including Democrats) will never allow those changes, and then the realization they have no plan beyond continuing to vote to keep those politicians in power to (hopefully at best) slow down the march toward full blown fascism with maybe some futile support for bastardized socialist policy/strategies sprinkled in. That wouldn't be as egregious if they didn't simultaneously dismiss the progenitors of the socialist/anarchist policies/strategies they bastardize to conform to the Democrat party framework and provide the superficial appearance of solidarity while undermining revolutionary energy.
Since I’m being called a “white moderate” I thought it was a good time to go reread the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Maybe this is poor reading comprehension on my part, but isn’t it kind of definitional to a “white moderate” that they’re discouraging some means of affecting positive change as too hasty/extreme? Where have I done that?
If I read that letter with the question “how should I view the electoral system in trying to affect positive change?” I, at least, get something like this: the electoral system is real, it’s important, and it’s okay to care about its outcomes; but voting alone insufficient to achieve necessary change. As King mentions, their Birmingham Campaign delayed mass demonstrations because they didn’t want to influence the election; specifically, they hoped to see Albert Boutwell defeat Bull Connor (even though, as King also mentions, Boutwell was merely a more moderate segregationist). Once Connor was defeated, they didn’t cancel the campaign and go home, they went right back to demonstrating. If someone had told Dr. King “I’m thinking of voting for Boutwell,” I doubt he would have said “Don’t!” Doing my best to understand what he’s saying in his letter, it seems to me that he would have told them to go ahead, but that it wasn’t enough on its own. (I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of trying to put words in Dr. King’s mouth, but it seems essential to engaging deeply with a text to try to apply its lessons to new situations; if you think I’m misreading it, I’m eager to hear what you think I’ve failed to understand.)
I didn’t intend the phrase “transformational change” to be euphemistic. I suppose you’d prefer “revolutionary change?” I shy away only because I’m never sure how metaphorical the “revolution” is, and when I’m not really sure what a phrase means I try to avoid it. A lot of times people read you calling for revolution and think that means recruiting soldiers, obtaining weapons, and engaging in pitched battles against the military in hopes of triumphing on the battlefield and overthrowing the government. Maybe that’s what you do mean? But if that’s what we’re talking about I’d like to make that more explicit. Otherwise if “revolution” is meant to be more abstract/metaphorical, I was hoping to avoid that distraction.
or anarchists, nor am I telling them to conform their activities to the Democratic Party framework. If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them! I have no interest in tone policing or prescribing appropriate and inappropriate methods. I can’t promise to believe whatever they tell me to; I’m not a blind follower, I have to engage critically with ideas and decide for myself whether to believe them. But I’m not opposed to reading some of the theory you push for either (although finding time and energy for it has been pretty difficult; the reading always seems to be pretty dense).
You literally said:
I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us.
If I wanted to get gaslit I'd just engage BJ.
Yeah, later in the same paragraph I also said I’m not promising to believe whatever they tell me. I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me. I know socialists whose ideas I’ll happily listen to on political subjects, but so far, I’m not about to call myself a socialist. If “I read some socialist theory but so far I’m not convinced enough to call myself one” counts as “dismissing socialists,” then you’re right, I’m dismissing socialists and a whole lot of other people too.
Under other circumstances maybe I’d want to get into my reservations right now, but honestly? If I engaged BJ right now I think I’d have a much better chance of somebody actually reading what I wrote, thinking about it, and then telling me what they think I’m getting right or wrong. So maybe I should just hold off for a bit, huh?
I read it, thought about it, and told you one central and glaring thing I thought was wrong with it. It is unreasonable for me to go deeper into it without confronting the absurdity that you weren't being dismissive of socialists.
When I recommended "What is to be Done" (it's about a 6 hour read assuming 1/2 the avg reading pace) to you 7 months ago (so that's less than 2 minutes a day or 15 minutes a week or 1 hour per month to finish) it was in this context:
You're not an idiot. You know how to research a topic and develop a better understanding through at least traditional academic means. Reading Lenin's "Where to Begin?" and "What Is To Be Done" seems like a reasonable place to look. Not as gospel to be carried out unquestioningly, but as a reference point to bring to a dialectical engagement about what makes sense for one's own role in the struggle with respect to one's own material conditions.
That one struggles to find the time and energy is at least believable (and true for most of us). But that's a struggle with prioritization, not ignorance.
If someone is in an org, ingesting theory, and applying/refining that theory through praxis with the org, they're exponentially further along than the overwhelming majority of the country and even a lot of people that call themselves socialist.
When I recommended it again about 4 months ago it was in this context:
I know surviving capitalist oppression is a struggle and a half, but in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (more specifically an introduction by Donaldo Macedo) there's something relevant, and as it's all I readily know you've at least tried to engage with to answer your questions, it seems appropriate. Basically it touches on the perceived complexity of Freire and how it's accessibility is probably less about language than it is ideology/identity (for lack of a better word).
I am often amazed to hear academics complain about the complexity of a particular discourse because of its alleged lack of clarity. It is as if they have assumed that there is a mono-discourse that is characterized by its clarity and is also equally available to all. If one begins to probe the issue of clarity, we soon realize that it is class specific, thus favoring those of that class in the meaningmaking process.
The following two examples will bring the point home: Henry Giroux and I gave a speech at Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts to approximately three hundred unwed mothers who were part of a GED (graduate-equivalency diploma) program. The director of the program later informed us that most of the students were considered functionally illiterate. After Giroux's speech, during the question-and-answer period, a woman got up and eloquently said, "Professor Giroux, all my life I felt the things you talked about. I just didn't have a language to express what I have felt. Today I have come to realize that I do have a language. Thank you."
Paulo Freire told me the story of what happened to him at the time he was preparing the English translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He gave an African American student at Harvard a chapter of the book to read to see how she would receive it. A few days later when he asked the woman if she had read it, she enthusiastically responded, "Yes. Not only did I read it, but I gave it to my sixteen-year-old son to read. He read the whole chapter that night and in the morning said, 'I want to meet the man who wrote this. He is talking about me "
One question that I have for all those "highly literate" academics who find Giroux's and Freire's discourse so difficult to understand is, Why is it that a sixteen-year-old boy and a poor, "semiliterate" woman could so easily understand and connect with the complexity of both Freire and Girouxs language and ideas, and the academics, who should be the most literate, find the language incomprehensible?
I believe that the answer has little to do with language and everything to do with ideology. That is, people often identify with representations that they are either comfortable with or that help deepen their understanding of themselves. The call for language clarity is an ideological issue, not merely a linguistic one. The sixteen-year-old and the semiliterate poor woman could readily connect with Freire's ideology, whereas the highly literate academics are put off by some dimensions of the same ideology. It is, perhaps, for this reason that a university professor I know failed to include Freire's work in a graduate course that she taught on literacy. When I raised the issue with her, she explained that students often find Freire's writing too difficult and cumbersome. It could also be the reason that the Divinity School at Harvard University offers a course entitled "Education for Liberation," in which students study Freire and James Cone extensively, whereas no such opportunities are available at Harvard's School of Education. For me, the mundane call for a language of "simplicity and clarity" represents yet another mechanism to dismiss the complexity of theoretical issues, particularly if these theoretical constructs interrogate the prevailing dominant ideology
I promise it was at least as hard (in many ways harder if you look into what it took for various communities that have embraced Freire to even have access to Freire's work). As daunting as it might seem, you can dig into this stuff and find various answers to your questions from various socialists to develop your own perspective and understanding if you genuinely want to.
Maybe Freire isn't where you personally should start, maybe for you Lenin's "What is to be Done" is better, maybe it's some sort of modern "socialism for dummies" book, hard for me to say much until you start reading/watching/listening/engaging with more socialist perspectives and develop an understanding of at least what's initially resonating with you and where you think there's a problem you need to dig into deeper. I do think we owe the most horrifically oppressed people around the world, and the people that sacrificed before us at least this much. The older the material the more socialists you'll likely find that noticed the same problems and had their own prescriptions for them. Then when you ask "how do we address X concern of mine" you're bringing your own perspective rooted in at least a perfunctory understanding of the framework you and your comrades are attempting to use to address your concerns. Then they can say "I tend to agree with Y when they say Z about X" and you can have some idea what that means in a larger socialist context and eventually some of the common critiques of "Y and/or his Z" as well as other popular ways socialists address your concerns.
Like many things in life, if you want the results you have to put in the work. If folks went back to their professors or even k-12 teachers and told them something to the effect of "I think there might be something important I need to learn about" and proceed to describe their efforts to learn about socialism (particularly their reliance on someone like myself) their professor/teacher would probably be some blend of concerned and confused, don't ya think?
That's not to say I'm not trying or willing to keep working together on this stuff (or don't think it's valuable for all of us), but people have to remember I'm busy surviving capitalist oppression too and they know better when it comes to learning about something they think is important. It's also not like I'm talking to people that haven't been hearing about socialism as an alternative to capitalism for years and this is their first time encountering the idea or me presenting it to them.
Then you're going to show up all these months later saying:
I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us. I tend to look at non-governmental solutions (stuff like unions and mutual aid) as promising alternative routes
Which makes sense when you acknowledge you struggled to get past the introduction of either of the two (out of dozens of) suggested readings/figures:
I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me.
But stands as a stark contradiction with your repeated insistence that:
If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them!
So get into your reservations, or into the socialists you happily listen to and why they haven't convinced you to call (or more importantly comport) yourself (as) a socialist, or bury your head in the sand or whatever, just don't stand there pissin in my face trying to convince me it's rain and get indignant about me calling it out.
Danglars used to have this quality where it was really hard to talk to him and understand what his motivations were until I realized that most of the time, there was something I had said several pages ago, probably not even addressing him, that he was still steaming about. With that context, it got a lot easier to understand what he was upset about. I started taking a mental inventory every time I started talking to him of what I had said recently that he would probably disagree with, and it got a lot easier to understand what his oblique hostile remarks were actually about. Useful lesson, although it was kind of exhausting, and one of the bigger reasons I didn’t make more fuss when he got banned.
Thing is, I was actually doing that same thing *in this conversation* – I just guessed wrong which thing you were holding a grudge about! I thought it was because I said I still think people should vote for Democrats; turns out it’s because several pages ago DPB asked me What Is To Be Done, and I essentially said “I don’t really know, here’s some (mostly leftist) ideas I think are promising; GH would say ‘revolutionary socialism’ but I’m not convinced Lenin has the answers.” I should have realized *that* was why I was getting brief, curt responses calling me a white moderate gaslighter.
Here’s the thing, I’m not expecting you to like me. At the end of the day I’m a white kid raised by rich conservative Mormons who went to school for chemistry, got a job in the pharma industry, bought a house I couldn’t afford to live in and rented it out to other people. I’m checking boxes for “rich white parents,” “pharma industry worker,” and “landlord;” if you start liking me I start worrying I’ve misrepresented myself somehow. But you have ideas you want to promote that I think are worth considering, so I discuss with you, and try my best to engage sincerely and honestly with them.
Sorry I haven’t done my homework. It’s probably true that I could block out 6 hours with a microphone and read that whole book aloud, and you could check the recording and confirm my brain had processed every word enough to verbalize it. Since I *haven’t* done the reading, I wasn’t jumping out of my chair to discuss my reservations with you, considering for all I know, they’re addressed on the next page. If DPB hadn’t asked me directly where I’m at on pretty much exactly this, I wouldn’t have brought it up at all.
But political theory isn’t my area; I have a lot of trouble finding time to read it, and even more feeling like I understood what I just read enough to move to the next paragraph. I don’t think at the end of that 6 hours I would feel any more confident in raising whatever objections I have to what Lenin wrote.
As for socialists whose opinions I value, I’m not particularly proud of the list, but: Austin Walker, formerly of Giant Bomb and Waypoint Radio. The whole Waypoint/Remap crowd, too. Robert Evans is more of an anarchist, but I’m usually interested in what he thinks. David Shor is clearly very smart, even if I don’t always agree with him. And, well, you! I don’t find a whole lot of time in my schedule for *any* books, not just socialist ones, so people that can be heard on podcasts or read online tend to make it into my information diet more readily – not ideal, I know, but whatever, I’m doing my best with what I’ve got.
I’m thinking I should probably take a break from this thread for a few days, so, uh, don’t expect too many quick replies from me. But hey, I’d rather get called a white moderate gaslighter by you than just read page after page of tirades how terrible trans people are. So thanks for that I guess.
Doesn't really have anything to do with liking you?
I'm just not going to pretend someone who can't find 6 hours in 7 months for something they claim is critically important is actually trying or sincere (with me or themselves) about their commitment to a remedy.
If you came here telling people you really want to be gm at SC2 and you don't understand why masters/gm/pro players are insisting you're not serious about it because you can't find time to practice more than a couple hours every six months in between occasionally watching bronze league heroes games it would be immediately obvious to everyone how ridiculous your position is.
It seems you don't have a firm grasp on the reasons you aren't(/objections you have to being) gm in SC2 a socialist and until you do I don't think there's much anyone can do to explain why they're wrong.
More like someone expresses interest in improving their SC2 skills, and you give them crap for not reaching GM like you did. Playing Starcraft is hard, and nobody needs a particular reason or excuse to not have hit GM like you did.
On July 13 2023 08:04 ChristianS wrote: @Mohdoo: I mean, I’ve got my complaints about the FDA myself. But my point was more about the idea of *creating* a regulatory framework in the first place, going back to like 1906. That was something where as a government it was possible to look at an unregulated market like drugs, with a lot of cutting edge scientific questions around what a regulatory framework would even mean, and go ahead and build one anyway. It’s unfathomable to me that we could do something like that today (e.g. with unregulated markets like social media or AI).
That the existing regulatory frameworks are becoming increasingly inadequate too is only further evidence of the institutional decay I’m trying to describe.
@GH: Come on now, I’m not insisting that anyone “tolerate the increasing deprivation of their rights indefinitely.” If you or anybody else has a plan to get those rights back I’m eager to hear it. Saying “letting Republicans get elected will demonstrably make this problem worse, not better” is not explicitly or implicitly saying that anybody should tolerate it a second longer than they have to.
If you’ve got a way that *not* voting for the person with a D by their name would give those rights back, I’m very interested to hear how that works. Otherwise, filling out a ballot only takes part of a day every couple years. Why can’t we spend the other 364 days working on non-electoral solutions, without ceding control of government to fascists?
It very much reads that you are to me.
You already know the ideas/plans I relate to are rooted in revolutionary socialism. I've given plenty of recommendations for further reading/understanding of what that means to me over the years. I welcome sincere and serious engagement on anything I've recommended or other relevant socialist perspectives.
To be specific, it's a disagreement about how long and under what conditions "they have to", hence the reference to Dr. King's white moderate quote about paternalistically setting the timetable for other peoples' freedom. This isn't a new argument and the decades following Dr. King calling it out so poignantly have thoroughly shown its futility imo.
You used the euphemistic "transformational change" for revolution but this is where this conversation always ends up for social democrats.
The acceptance that the US probably needs "transformational change", recognizing that the politicians in power (including Democrats) will never allow those changes, and then the realization they have no plan beyond continuing to vote to keep those politicians in power to (hopefully at best) slow down the march toward full blown fascism with maybe some futile support for bastardized socialist policy/strategies sprinkled in. That wouldn't be as egregious if they didn't simultaneously dismiss the progenitors of the socialist/anarchist policies/strategies they bastardize to conform to the Democrat party framework and provide the superficial appearance of solidarity while undermining revolutionary energy.
Since I’m being called a “white moderate” I thought it was a good time to go reread the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Maybe this is poor reading comprehension on my part, but isn’t it kind of definitional to a “white moderate” that they’re discouraging some means of affecting positive change as too hasty/extreme? Where have I done that?
If I read that letter with the question “how should I view the electoral system in trying to affect positive change?” I, at least, get something like this: the electoral system is real, it’s important, and it’s okay to care about its outcomes; but voting alone insufficient to achieve necessary change. As King mentions, their Birmingham Campaign delayed mass demonstrations because they didn’t want to influence the election; specifically, they hoped to see Albert Boutwell defeat Bull Connor (even though, as King also mentions, Boutwell was merely a more moderate segregationist). Once Connor was defeated, they didn’t cancel the campaign and go home, they went right back to demonstrating. If someone had told Dr. King “I’m thinking of voting for Boutwell,” I doubt he would have said “Don’t!” Doing my best to understand what he’s saying in his letter, it seems to me that he would have told them to go ahead, but that it wasn’t enough on its own. (I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of trying to put words in Dr. King’s mouth, but it seems essential to engaging deeply with a text to try to apply its lessons to new situations; if you think I’m misreading it, I’m eager to hear what you think I’ve failed to understand.)
I didn’t intend the phrase “transformational change” to be euphemistic. I suppose you’d prefer “revolutionary change?” I shy away only because I’m never sure how metaphorical the “revolution” is, and when I’m not really sure what a phrase means I try to avoid it. A lot of times people read you calling for revolution and think that means recruiting soldiers, obtaining weapons, and engaging in pitched battles against the military in hopes of triumphing on the battlefield and overthrowing the government. Maybe that’s what you do mean? But if that’s what we’re talking about I’d like to make that more explicit. Otherwise if “revolution” is meant to be more abstract/metaphorical, I was hoping to avoid that distraction.
or anarchists, nor am I telling them to conform their activities to the Democratic Party framework. If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them! I have no interest in tone policing or prescribing appropriate and inappropriate methods. I can’t promise to believe whatever they tell me to; I’m not a blind follower, I have to engage critically with ideas and decide for myself whether to believe them. But I’m not opposed to reading some of the theory you push for either (although finding time and energy for it has been pretty difficult; the reading always seems to be pretty dense).
You literally said:
I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us.
If I wanted to get gaslit I'd just engage BJ.
Yeah, later in the same paragraph I also said I’m not promising to believe whatever they tell me. I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me. I know socialists whose ideas I’ll happily listen to on political subjects, but so far, I’m not about to call myself a socialist. If “I read some socialist theory but so far I’m not convinced enough to call myself one” counts as “dismissing socialists,” then you’re right, I’m dismissing socialists and a whole lot of other people too.
Under other circumstances maybe I’d want to get into my reservations right now, but honestly? If I engaged BJ right now I think I’d have a much better chance of somebody actually reading what I wrote, thinking about it, and then telling me what they think I’m getting right or wrong. So maybe I should just hold off for a bit, huh?
I read it, thought about it, and told you one central and glaring thing I thought was wrong with it. It is unreasonable for me to go deeper into it without confronting the absurdity that you weren't being dismissive of socialists.
When I recommended "What is to be Done" (it's about a 6 hour read assuming 1/2 the avg reading pace) to you 7 months ago (so that's less than 2 minutes a day or 15 minutes a week or 1 hour per month to finish) it was in this context:
You're not an idiot. You know how to research a topic and develop a better understanding through at least traditional academic means. Reading Lenin's "Where to Begin?" and "What Is To Be Done" seems like a reasonable place to look. Not as gospel to be carried out unquestioningly, but as a reference point to bring to a dialectical engagement about what makes sense for one's own role in the struggle with respect to one's own material conditions.
That one struggles to find the time and energy is at least believable (and true for most of us). But that's a struggle with prioritization, not ignorance.
If someone is in an org, ingesting theory, and applying/refining that theory through praxis with the org, they're exponentially further along than the overwhelming majority of the country and even a lot of people that call themselves socialist.
When I recommended it again about 4 months ago it was in this context:
I know surviving capitalist oppression is a struggle and a half, but in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (more specifically an introduction by Donaldo Macedo) there's something relevant, and as it's all I readily know you've at least tried to engage with to answer your questions, it seems appropriate. Basically it touches on the perceived complexity of Freire and how it's accessibility is probably less about language than it is ideology/identity (for lack of a better word).
I am often amazed to hear academics complain about the complexity of a particular discourse because of its alleged lack of clarity. It is as if they have assumed that there is a mono-discourse that is characterized by its clarity and is also equally available to all. If one begins to probe the issue of clarity, we soon realize that it is class specific, thus favoring those of that class in the meaningmaking process.
The following two examples will bring the point home: Henry Giroux and I gave a speech at Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts to approximately three hundred unwed mothers who were part of a GED (graduate-equivalency diploma) program. The director of the program later informed us that most of the students were considered functionally illiterate. After Giroux's speech, during the question-and-answer period, a woman got up and eloquently said, "Professor Giroux, all my life I felt the things you talked about. I just didn't have a language to express what I have felt. Today I have come to realize that I do have a language. Thank you."
Paulo Freire told me the story of what happened to him at the time he was preparing the English translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He gave an African American student at Harvard a chapter of the book to read to see how she would receive it. A few days later when he asked the woman if she had read it, she enthusiastically responded, "Yes. Not only did I read it, but I gave it to my sixteen-year-old son to read. He read the whole chapter that night and in the morning said, 'I want to meet the man who wrote this. He is talking about me "
One question that I have for all those "highly literate" academics who find Giroux's and Freire's discourse so difficult to understand is, Why is it that a sixteen-year-old boy and a poor, "semiliterate" woman could so easily understand and connect with the complexity of both Freire and Girouxs language and ideas, and the academics, who should be the most literate, find the language incomprehensible?
I believe that the answer has little to do with language and everything to do with ideology. That is, people often identify with representations that they are either comfortable with or that help deepen their understanding of themselves. The call for language clarity is an ideological issue, not merely a linguistic one. The sixteen-year-old and the semiliterate poor woman could readily connect with Freire's ideology, whereas the highly literate academics are put off by some dimensions of the same ideology. It is, perhaps, for this reason that a university professor I know failed to include Freire's work in a graduate course that she taught on literacy. When I raised the issue with her, she explained that students often find Freire's writing too difficult and cumbersome. It could also be the reason that the Divinity School at Harvard University offers a course entitled "Education for Liberation," in which students study Freire and James Cone extensively, whereas no such opportunities are available at Harvard's School of Education. For me, the mundane call for a language of "simplicity and clarity" represents yet another mechanism to dismiss the complexity of theoretical issues, particularly if these theoretical constructs interrogate the prevailing dominant ideology
I promise it was at least as hard (in many ways harder if you look into what it took for various communities that have embraced Freire to even have access to Freire's work). As daunting as it might seem, you can dig into this stuff and find various answers to your questions from various socialists to develop your own perspective and understanding if you genuinely want to.
Maybe Freire isn't where you personally should start, maybe for you Lenin's "What is to be Done" is better, maybe it's some sort of modern "socialism for dummies" book, hard for me to say much until you start reading/watching/listening/engaging with more socialist perspectives and develop an understanding of at least what's initially resonating with you and where you think there's a problem you need to dig into deeper. I do think we owe the most horrifically oppressed people around the world, and the people that sacrificed before us at least this much. The older the material the more socialists you'll likely find that noticed the same problems and had their own prescriptions for them. Then when you ask "how do we address X concern of mine" you're bringing your own perspective rooted in at least a perfunctory understanding of the framework you and your comrades are attempting to use to address your concerns. Then they can say "I tend to agree with Y when they say Z about X" and you can have some idea what that means in a larger socialist context and eventually some of the common critiques of "Y and/or his Z" as well as other popular ways socialists address your concerns.
Like many things in life, if you want the results you have to put in the work. If folks went back to their professors or even k-12 teachers and told them something to the effect of "I think there might be something important I need to learn about" and proceed to describe their efforts to learn about socialism (particularly their reliance on someone like myself) their professor/teacher would probably be some blend of concerned and confused, don't ya think?
That's not to say I'm not trying or willing to keep working together on this stuff (or don't think it's valuable for all of us), but people have to remember I'm busy surviving capitalist oppression too and they know better when it comes to learning about something they think is important. It's also not like I'm talking to people that haven't been hearing about socialism as an alternative to capitalism for years and this is their first time encountering the idea or me presenting it to them.
Then you're going to show up all these months later saying:
I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us. I tend to look at non-governmental solutions (stuff like unions and mutual aid) as promising alternative routes
Which makes sense when you acknowledge you struggled to get past the introduction of either of the two (out of dozens of) suggested readings/figures:
I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me.
But stands as a stark contradiction with your repeated insistence that:
If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them!
So get into your reservations, or into the socialists you happily listen to and why they haven't convinced you to call (or more importantly comport) yourself (as) a socialist, or bury your head in the sand or whatever, just don't stand there pissin in my face trying to convince me it's rain and get indignant about me calling it out.
Danglars used to have this quality where it was really hard to talk to him and understand what his motivations were until I realized that most of the time, there was something I had said several pages ago, probably not even addressing him, that he was still steaming about. With that context, it got a lot easier to understand what he was upset about. I started taking a mental inventory every time I started talking to him of what I had said recently that he would probably disagree with, and it got a lot easier to understand what his oblique hostile remarks were actually about. Useful lesson, although it was kind of exhausting, and one of the bigger reasons I didn’t make more fuss when he got banned.
Thing is, I was actually doing that same thing *in this conversation* – I just guessed wrong which thing you were holding a grudge about! I thought it was because I said I still think people should vote for Democrats; turns out it’s because several pages ago DPB asked me What Is To Be Done, and I essentially said “I don’t really know, here’s some (mostly leftist) ideas I think are promising; GH would say ‘revolutionary socialism’ but I’m not convinced Lenin has the answers.” I should have realized *that* was why I was getting brief, curt responses calling me a white moderate gaslighter.
Here’s the thing, I’m not expecting you to like me. At the end of the day I’m a white kid raised by rich conservative Mormons who went to school for chemistry, got a job in the pharma industry, bought a house I couldn’t afford to live in and rented it out to other people. I’m checking boxes for “rich white parents,” “pharma industry worker,” and “landlord;” if you start liking me I start worrying I’ve misrepresented myself somehow. But you have ideas you want to promote that I think are worth considering, so I discuss with you, and try my best to engage sincerely and honestly with them.
Sorry I haven’t done my homework. It’s probably true that I could block out 6 hours with a microphone and read that whole book aloud, and you could check the recording and confirm my brain had processed every word enough to verbalize it. Since I *haven’t* done the reading, I wasn’t jumping out of my chair to discuss my reservations with you, considering for all I know, they’re addressed on the next page. If DPB hadn’t asked me directly where I’m at on pretty much exactly this, I wouldn’t have brought it up at all.
But political theory isn’t my area; I have a lot of trouble finding time to read it, and even more feeling like I understood what I just read enough to move to the next paragraph. I don’t think at the end of that 6 hours I would feel any more confident in raising whatever objections I have to what Lenin wrote.
As for socialists whose opinions I value, I’m not particularly proud of the list, but: Austin Walker, formerly of Giant Bomb and Waypoint Radio. The whole Waypoint/Remap crowd, too. Robert Evans is more of an anarchist, but I’m usually interested in what he thinks. David Shor is clearly very smart, even if I don’t always agree with him. And, well, you! I don’t find a whole lot of time in my schedule for *any* books, not just socialist ones, so people that can be heard on podcasts or read online tend to make it into my information diet more readily – not ideal, I know, but whatever, I’m doing my best with what I’ve got.
I’m thinking I should probably take a break from this thread for a few days, so, uh, don’t expect too many quick replies from me. But hey, I’d rather get called a white moderate gaslighter by you than just read page after page of tirades how terrible trans people are. So thanks for that I guess.
Doesn't really have anything to do with liking you?
I'm just not going to pretend someone who can't find 6 hours in 7 months for something they claim is critically important is actually trying or sincere (with me or themselves) about their commitment to a remedy.
If you came here telling people you really want to be gm at SC2 and you don't understand why masters/gm/pro players are insisting you're not serious about it because you can't find time to practice more than a couple hours every six months in between occasionally watching bronze league heroes games it would be immediately obvious to everyone how ridiculous your position is.
It seems you don't have a firm grasp on the reasons you aren't(/objections you have to being) gm in SC2 a socialist and until you do I don't think there's much anyone can do to explain why they're wrong.
More like someone expresses interest in improving their SC2 skills, and you give them crap for not reaching GM like you did. Playing Starcraft is hard, and nobody needs a particular reason or excuse to not have hit GM like you did.
No. It's like they say they want to get better without doing the obviously necessary work while acting indignant that anyone would point that out to them.
EDIT: That said, a lot of people here have probably read more BJ than socialists over the past 6 months so it's not that they don't have time anyway, it's a matter of what they prioritize. If people (ChristianS is less guilty than most of this kind of thing) read a passage from a socialist every time they gear up to post about some ridiculous thing some right winger said/did/believes and brought it here to discuss we'd all be a lot better off and it wouldn't be so ridiculous to portray posters here as genuinely pursuing informing themselves about an alternative (socialism) to a status quo they basically all recognize is necessary to change.
People can say they want to get better without doing the necessary work. I do it all the time!
Tomorrow I start eating less Tomorrow I start working out Tomorrow I go to bed earlier Tomorrow I'll read more
Sometimes I get some of the stuff done, sometimes not at all. Life is exhausting, I don't have the mental willpower to stay on top of my game on everything all the time. I just want to survive for as long as possible without falling behind too much.
On July 14 2023 07:16 Uldridge wrote: People can say they want to get better without doing the necessary work. I do it all the time!
Tomorrow I start eating less Tomorrow I start working out Tomorrow I go to bed earlier Tomorrow I'll read more
Sometimes I get some of the stuff done, sometimes not at all. Life is exhausting, I don't have the mental willpower to stay on top of my game on everything all the time. I just want to survive for as long as possible without falling behind too much.
Yes and if for 6 months years you only eat less, work out, go to bed earlier, and read more a grand total of a couple times, anyone would be valid in pointing out that you are not prioritizing those goals in a realistic way to achieve your desired results and you have no grounds to be indignant about it.
EPT
