To follow up with the last post on the importance of recognizing the early stages of mass radicalizing violence, I stumbled upon this chart from the Anti-Defamation League and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, a group of folks who probably know a little bit about the subject. Note all of the stages before the violence stage, and ponder how travel bans, list of crimes, and other early actions of the Trump administration might fit into the ol' Pyramid of Hate here.
Saturday, March 25, 2017
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Godwin's Law and Trump's Fascist Cosplay
Probably everyone who has ever used the internet (at least in the English-speaking world) is familiar with Godwin's Law, if not by name than at least by experience. Godwin's Law, in full, is that the longer a conversation occurs on the internet, the likelihood that someone invokes Hitler or the Nazi party will approach 1 (on the classic statistical scale of 0-1). It's important to note that Godwin's law is descriptive and not proscriptive; that is, it doesn't say anything about whether it's a good idea or not, or whether it's relevant or not, or anything else about the invocation of Hitler or the Nazi party, other than that the longer the conversation goes on, the more likely it is to happen.
However, the rule has become greatly distorted (much to the dismay of Godwin himself) to now hold that anyone who ever invokes Hitler or the Nazi party is engaging in hyperbole and is automatically wrong.
This is not good! For many, many reasons. One of the biggest, of course, is that Hitler and the Nazi party were not magical monsters, but instead regular ol' human beings. So by keeping them to rarified air that no one else can ever approach for any other reason, we do ourselves quite a disservice, as plenty of other humans have proven themselves just as capable of enacting Nazi policies and actions. For instance, there have been multiple genocides since the Holocaust.
Another major reason is that plenty of people are happy to call themselves Nazis (or maybe not use the exact term due to its baggage, but otherwise hold all of the beliefs). In large part this blog post was inspired by me reading an article this morning in which Richard Spencer (he of the Nazi getting punched in the face memes) was referred to as a Nazi. One of the first comments on the article was someone chastising the author for using the term Nazi so cavalierly, arguing that it devalues it to apply it to just anyone you don't like.
But the problem is: Spencer's a Goddamned Nazi. He regularly quotes Nazi propaganda, denounces pretty much anything ever done by a Jewish person, and has refused to denounce Hitler or the holocaust any time he's been asked. He's done everything short of walking around carrying a comically-large sign reading "I AM A NAZI."
So if you can't call an active Nazi a Nazi, then whom can you call a Nazi? No one, I guess. And that's the very problem with how people abuse Godwin's law. Nazi is a very useful term to describe Nazis, and we shouldn't throw it out because people online occasionally engage in hyperbole.
For instance, today Trump unveiled his promised list of crimes committed by undocumented peoples, a list which will apparently be a weekly phenomenon.
You know who else published a regular list of supposed crimes committed by a group of people he didn't like and was actively trying to make others scared of? Hint: he had a funny little mustache.
This is important, because this isn't one of those "Hitler once said he didn't like bowties, so if you don't like bowties you're just like Hitler!!1!1!!1!" kind of ridiculousness that the people ruining Godwin's law think they're fighting against.
Rather, the regular publication of lists of "crimes" committed by Jewish people was an integral part of the necessary dehumanizing of Jewish people so that regular human beings could be goaded into killing them en masse. As plenty of people have pointed out, the Nazis didn't start with the Holocaust. Or any mention of the Final Solution. Or really, any sort of public pronouncement as to what was actually coming.
No, instead what they did was spend years spreading misinformation, falsehoods, and straight-up lies about Jewish people to dehumanize them. To get regular, otherwise good-natured people to see Jewish people as some kind of unique threat. You know, the kind of threat that means you need to build a giant wall to keep out of your nation.
And this is why we can't throw out the Nazi baby with the hyperbolic Nazi-accusations bath water. Because we've seen this exact thing before and we've seen exactly where it leads.
Is Trump Hitler? No. But is he quite literally enacting a centerpiece of Hitler's methods for dehumanizing a group of people? Yes, he is doing exactly that.
So we compare him to Hitler. Not because we don't like him, but because he is literally doing what Hitler did.
And remember how we had this whole big thing after the Nazis were defeated where we collectively as a world declared we wouldn't let this happen again? Well, it's happening again. Let's not let it.
However, the rule has become greatly distorted (much to the dismay of Godwin himself) to now hold that anyone who ever invokes Hitler or the Nazi party is engaging in hyperbole and is automatically wrong.
This is not good! For many, many reasons. One of the biggest, of course, is that Hitler and the Nazi party were not magical monsters, but instead regular ol' human beings. So by keeping them to rarified air that no one else can ever approach for any other reason, we do ourselves quite a disservice, as plenty of other humans have proven themselves just as capable of enacting Nazi policies and actions. For instance, there have been multiple genocides since the Holocaust.
Another major reason is that plenty of people are happy to call themselves Nazis (or maybe not use the exact term due to its baggage, but otherwise hold all of the beliefs). In large part this blog post was inspired by me reading an article this morning in which Richard Spencer (he of the Nazi getting punched in the face memes) was referred to as a Nazi. One of the first comments on the article was someone chastising the author for using the term Nazi so cavalierly, arguing that it devalues it to apply it to just anyone you don't like.
But the problem is: Spencer's a Goddamned Nazi. He regularly quotes Nazi propaganda, denounces pretty much anything ever done by a Jewish person, and has refused to denounce Hitler or the holocaust any time he's been asked. He's done everything short of walking around carrying a comically-large sign reading "I AM A NAZI."
So if you can't call an active Nazi a Nazi, then whom can you call a Nazi? No one, I guess. And that's the very problem with how people abuse Godwin's law. Nazi is a very useful term to describe Nazis, and we shouldn't throw it out because people online occasionally engage in hyperbole.
For instance, today Trump unveiled his promised list of crimes committed by undocumented peoples, a list which will apparently be a weekly phenomenon.
You know who else published a regular list of supposed crimes committed by a group of people he didn't like and was actively trying to make others scared of? Hint: he had a funny little mustache.
This is important, because this isn't one of those "Hitler once said he didn't like bowties, so if you don't like bowties you're just like Hitler!!1!1!!1!" kind of ridiculousness that the people ruining Godwin's law think they're fighting against.
Rather, the regular publication of lists of "crimes" committed by Jewish people was an integral part of the necessary dehumanizing of Jewish people so that regular human beings could be goaded into killing them en masse. As plenty of people have pointed out, the Nazis didn't start with the Holocaust. Or any mention of the Final Solution. Or really, any sort of public pronouncement as to what was actually coming.
No, instead what they did was spend years spreading misinformation, falsehoods, and straight-up lies about Jewish people to dehumanize them. To get regular, otherwise good-natured people to see Jewish people as some kind of unique threat. You know, the kind of threat that means you need to build a giant wall to keep out of your nation.
And this is why we can't throw out the Nazi baby with the hyperbolic Nazi-accusations bath water. Because we've seen this exact thing before and we've seen exactly where it leads.
Is Trump Hitler? No. But is he quite literally enacting a centerpiece of Hitler's methods for dehumanizing a group of people? Yes, he is doing exactly that.
So we compare him to Hitler. Not because we don't like him, but because he is literally doing what Hitler did.
And remember how we had this whole big thing after the Nazis were defeated where we collectively as a world declared we wouldn't let this happen again? Well, it's happening again. Let's not let it.
Monday, March 06, 2017
The Free Market Is Only Free When It Does What I Want It To (Academia Version)
The American right wing loves the free market. Listen to literally any of them talk for more than three sentences, and it's all but guaranteed that not only will they mention the free market in glowing terms, they will have also suggested it as the solution to whatever you're discussing. Taxation? Free market. Income inequality? Free market. Hang nail? Free market.
Except when the free market doesn't do what they want it to, that is. This is, of course, why we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. The actual consequences of an actually free market only apply to the lessers of the world.
Take, for instance, the latest in the cottage industry of "libruls are ruining universities!!11!1!!1!" pieces that seem to run in the Chronicle of Higher Education pretty much every day. (Don't judge: the Chronicle is my favorite hate read. It's like an slightly more sober but significantly more niche Breitbart).
This piece was written by one of the interchangeable jagoffs who writes these things, most of whom typically hold some sort of position with "freedom" in its name, and who are always ironically complaining that conservatives in academia are oppressed and never given a platform while never noticing the irony of themselves being a conservative academic with a prominent platform. But my point is not their individual hypocrisy (though there's plenty of it!), but the larger issue of them suddenly and completely abandoning the singular solution they offer to everything else.
Because if the professorate has been drifting ever leftward (though the evidence always offered for this is, to put it lightly, incredibly suspect, but again, not the point) despite the fact that students have not (as the linked article claims), and if this is truly a problem in that students are being denied the viewpoints they so desperately crave, then the question becomes obvious: why hasn't the free market stepped in and solved this?
After all, if our universities were truly dominated by a rigidly leftist ideology with little-to-no variety in thought, then shouldn't the market be supplying an alternative? Shouldn't there be a cadre of conservative professors rising through the ranks, with their classes swelling past capacity as students flock to the ideologies they've been so cruelly denied all these years? Shouldn't individual departments and colleges, not to mention entire universities, note this market inefficiency and recruit conservative faculty members so they can capitalize on this woefully underserved market?
I find this incredibly interesting because I hate-read pretty much every article I can find about how universities are the worst examples of rigid group think and ideological orthodoxy, and yet I've never once seen the argument made by conservatives that the free market will solve it. Which, again, is quite odd, as these same folks hold that the free market will cure literally everything. And yet, the free market has had literal decades to solve the "problem" of academic ideology, and yet according to these same people, the problem is actually getting "worse!"
Now, of course, you and I and every person who has the ability to reason beyond the level of 6 year old knows this is because markets don't and never have operated in such a simplistic manner. But then you and I and every person who has the ability to reason beyond the level of 6 year old have not suggested the market as the cure to every social ill.
Of course, none of this is to address the fact that said ideological orthodoxy does not actually exist, but even if it did, wouldn't that mean the market has spoken and said that this is what the people want? And who the fuck are we to disagree with the omnipotent brilliance of the free market?
Except when the free market doesn't do what they want it to, that is. This is, of course, why we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. The actual consequences of an actually free market only apply to the lessers of the world.
Take, for instance, the latest in the cottage industry of "libruls are ruining universities!!11!1!!1!" pieces that seem to run in the Chronicle of Higher Education pretty much every day. (Don't judge: the Chronicle is my favorite hate read. It's like an slightly more sober but significantly more niche Breitbart).
This piece was written by one of the interchangeable jagoffs who writes these things, most of whom typically hold some sort of position with "freedom" in its name, and who are always ironically complaining that conservatives in academia are oppressed and never given a platform while never noticing the irony of themselves being a conservative academic with a prominent platform. But my point is not their individual hypocrisy (though there's plenty of it!), but the larger issue of them suddenly and completely abandoning the singular solution they offer to everything else.
Because if the professorate has been drifting ever leftward (though the evidence always offered for this is, to put it lightly, incredibly suspect, but again, not the point) despite the fact that students have not (as the linked article claims), and if this is truly a problem in that students are being denied the viewpoints they so desperately crave, then the question becomes obvious: why hasn't the free market stepped in and solved this?
After all, if our universities were truly dominated by a rigidly leftist ideology with little-to-no variety in thought, then shouldn't the market be supplying an alternative? Shouldn't there be a cadre of conservative professors rising through the ranks, with their classes swelling past capacity as students flock to the ideologies they've been so cruelly denied all these years? Shouldn't individual departments and colleges, not to mention entire universities, note this market inefficiency and recruit conservative faculty members so they can capitalize on this woefully underserved market?
I find this incredibly interesting because I hate-read pretty much every article I can find about how universities are the worst examples of rigid group think and ideological orthodoxy, and yet I've never once seen the argument made by conservatives that the free market will solve it. Which, again, is quite odd, as these same folks hold that the free market will cure literally everything. And yet, the free market has had literal decades to solve the "problem" of academic ideology, and yet according to these same people, the problem is actually getting "worse!"
Now, of course, you and I and every person who has the ability to reason beyond the level of 6 year old knows this is because markets don't and never have operated in such a simplistic manner. But then you and I and every person who has the ability to reason beyond the level of 6 year old have not suggested the market as the cure to every social ill.
Of course, none of this is to address the fact that said ideological orthodoxy does not actually exist, but even if it did, wouldn't that mean the market has spoken and said that this is what the people want? And who the fuck are we to disagree with the omnipotent brilliance of the free market?
Wednesday, March 01, 2017
Holy Shit! Some Lady Put Her Feet On A Couch!
Look, I get it: you hate Trump. I hate Trump. Lots of people hate Trump. Hell, if we count the entire world, it's probably true that the majority of people hate Trump. Heck, I wouldn't be too surprised if a majority of Americans hate Trump. He's a white supremacist, a moron, and most definitely a jagoff.
But! That doesn't mean it's cool to just throw every possible negative thing about Trump and his cronies against the wall in the mad hope that something will stick.
This isn't coming from some misguided notion to respect the office of the Presidency or be fair to Trump or any of that other milquetoast centrist shit people keep coming up with. Rather, it's about strategy and recognizing the fact that opposing this dude will require some effort and discipline.
The current hubbub over Kellyanne Conway being photographed sitting with her feet tucked underneath her on a couch in the Oval Office is a perfect example of what I'm talking about here. People are freaking out like she murdered a baby and bathed in its blood, not sat awkwardly on some fancy furniture.
For one, here's literally dozens of pictures of Obama putting his feet up on the furniture in the Oval Office, which somehow did not draw the same level of condemnation from people freaking out right now. But more important than who has or who has not put their feet on furniture, this is not something to be concerned about. Because, and I genuinely cannot believe I have to point this out, the reason the Trump administration poses such a threat is not because of their disrespect for furniture. Making any criticism about Trump's team hinge on such a superficial (and come the fuck on, completely meaningless) action only serves to legitimate them.
This odd freakout is wrong-headed for the same reason it's completely moronic for people to reply to exhortations to give Trump a chance with some version of the faux-witty rejoinder of "Oh, just like you gave Obama a chance?" Because, again, opposition to Trump is not because the other side was mean to the Democratic president, so now we all get to be mean to the Republican president.
Engaging in petty squabbles like this serves to legitimate the Trump administration, because it gives credence to the notion that "both sides do it." Our opposition to Trump is nothing like the Tea Party's opposition to Obama -- they opposed him because he's Black and they think he's a Muslim, we oppose Trump because his cabinet is stuffed full of ardent white supremacists and he's openly courted a growing fascist movement.
Those two things are not equal.
But when you equate them by pointing out the Tea Party did the "same" thing, or focus on completely meaningless superficial things like the way a woman sat once, you're building a narrative that the opposition to Trump is due nothing more than the fact that he has the wrong party affiliation, and the demonstrations are nothing more than the predictable anger of the losing side of the election. This is what allows America's desperately-seeking-the-middle-and-objectivity media to normalize Trump's actions -- sure, they draw massive protests, but lots of people didn't like Obama, either. It's just the way shit goes!
I mean, look, if you want to clown on Conway for sitting awkwardly, fine whatever, I'm sure she's heard worse. But quit trying to make this out to be some giant scandal. This is like complaining that Hitler drank shitty beer. Yeah, drinking shitty beer is a dumb thing to do, but that's not what was bad about Hitler. We've got a woman happy to go on television while spouting obvious lies and framing them as "alternative facts" while giving cover to the closest America has had to a genuine fascist threat in decades if not ever, and we've got half the internet freaking out about how she sits on a couch.
I just...I mean...come on. I don't know how to end this post other than with a series of bewildered ellipses as I struggle to put into words how idiotic this whole "scandal" is. But for what it's worth, I've written this all while sitting politely in a desk chair with both of my feet planted firmly on the floor, so you can take my word for it...
But! That doesn't mean it's cool to just throw every possible negative thing about Trump and his cronies against the wall in the mad hope that something will stick.
This isn't coming from some misguided notion to respect the office of the Presidency or be fair to Trump or any of that other milquetoast centrist shit people keep coming up with. Rather, it's about strategy and recognizing the fact that opposing this dude will require some effort and discipline.
The current hubbub over Kellyanne Conway being photographed sitting with her feet tucked underneath her on a couch in the Oval Office is a perfect example of what I'm talking about here. People are freaking out like she murdered a baby and bathed in its blood, not sat awkwardly on some fancy furniture.
For one, here's literally dozens of pictures of Obama putting his feet up on the furniture in the Oval Office, which somehow did not draw the same level of condemnation from people freaking out right now. But more important than who has or who has not put their feet on furniture, this is not something to be concerned about. Because, and I genuinely cannot believe I have to point this out, the reason the Trump administration poses such a threat is not because of their disrespect for furniture. Making any criticism about Trump's team hinge on such a superficial (and come the fuck on, completely meaningless) action only serves to legitimate them.
This odd freakout is wrong-headed for the same reason it's completely moronic for people to reply to exhortations to give Trump a chance with some version of the faux-witty rejoinder of "Oh, just like you gave Obama a chance?" Because, again, opposition to Trump is not because the other side was mean to the Democratic president, so now we all get to be mean to the Republican president.
Engaging in petty squabbles like this serves to legitimate the Trump administration, because it gives credence to the notion that "both sides do it." Our opposition to Trump is nothing like the Tea Party's opposition to Obama -- they opposed him because he's Black and they think he's a Muslim, we oppose Trump because his cabinet is stuffed full of ardent white supremacists and he's openly courted a growing fascist movement.
Those two things are not equal.
But when you equate them by pointing out the Tea Party did the "same" thing, or focus on completely meaningless superficial things like the way a woman sat once, you're building a narrative that the opposition to Trump is due nothing more than the fact that he has the wrong party affiliation, and the demonstrations are nothing more than the predictable anger of the losing side of the election. This is what allows America's desperately-seeking-the-middle-and-objectivity media to normalize Trump's actions -- sure, they draw massive protests, but lots of people didn't like Obama, either. It's just the way shit goes!
I mean, look, if you want to clown on Conway for sitting awkwardly, fine whatever, I'm sure she's heard worse. But quit trying to make this out to be some giant scandal. This is like complaining that Hitler drank shitty beer. Yeah, drinking shitty beer is a dumb thing to do, but that's not what was bad about Hitler. We've got a woman happy to go on television while spouting obvious lies and framing them as "alternative facts" while giving cover to the closest America has had to a genuine fascist threat in decades if not ever, and we've got half the internet freaking out about how she sits on a couch.
I just...I mean...come on. I don't know how to end this post other than with a series of bewildered ellipses as I struggle to put into words how idiotic this whole "scandal" is. But for what it's worth, I've written this all while sitting politely in a desk chair with both of my feet planted firmly on the floor, so you can take my word for it...
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