When Ezra interviewed Rachel!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2022

But also, what David Brooks said: For our money, yesterday morning's New York Times offered two clear-eyed looks at the lay of the land.

We start with Peter Baker's essay concerning the political state of play regarding Donald J. Trump. 

The January 6 committee has made its case, Baker said. But with respect to public opinion, the needle hasn't moved.

The essay began as shown:

BAKER (10/14/22): If the goal was to essentially put former President Donald J. Trump on trial, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol succeeded in presenting a powerful case full of damning testimony mainly from the defendant’s own advisers, allies and even relatives.

But as the panel wrapped up what was likely the last of its evidentiary hearings on Thursday, it was not at all clear that it had persuaded the jury. Americans who already blamed the rampage on Mr. Trump came away from four months of sensational and at times jaw-dropping hearings with more evidence for their belief, while those who started out in his camp largely remained there.

The relatively little movement in public opinion since the hearings opened in June, at least as measured by an array of polls, underscored the calcification of American politics in recent years. Many voters have been locked into their viewpoints, seemingly immune to contrary information. 

Baker went on to detail a key fact: Trump's approval ratings have been unchanged over the course of the committee's nine hearings. Politically, nothing has changed! 

Politically, there's a reason for that. Politically, we're now two separate nations. The blue nation listened to the committee's work and tended to believe what it heard. The red tribe tuned it out.

We're now two separate nations! In his opinion column, David Brooks diagnosed a type of imperfect perceptual framework to which, or so he said, our own anti-Trump tribe is prone.

Headline included, his column started like this:

This Is What Happens When Race Is Everything

Besides being offended by the racist comments made by members of the Los Angeles City Council—as so many people were—I was also struck by the underlying worldview revealed during their leaked conversation.

Council President Nury Martinez—who has since resigned from the Council—along with two colleagues and a labor ally talked about a range of subjects, including redistricting, but two assumptions undergirded much of what they said. Their first assumption was that America is divided into monolithic racial blocs. The world they take for granted is not a world of persons; it’s a world of rigid racial categories.

Full disclosure:

For ourselves, we weren't "offended" by the council members' amazingly low-grade comments. Nor would we start by describing those comments as "racist," a term which has lost almost all meaning through massive overuse.

We think the culture of being offended—perhaps, of performing the state of being offended—has been extended way too far within our failing blue tribe. 

As to how we'd describe the council members' comments, we'd describe them in an array of ways. But we'd probably start with "human, all too human," then proceed to "depressingly stupid, destructive and dumb."

In Brooks' view, the racial / ethnic insults trafficked by the council members emerge from a part of blue tribe culture we ourselves have mentioned in the past. 

In our view, the insults emerge from the world in which our own blue tribe has stopped stressing the fact that we humans are all the same. They emerge from a world in which we have instead adopted a view in which different "racial" and ethnic groups are fundamentally different—are different all the way down.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our nation's two tribes aren't especially sharp. The red tribe reeks with ludicrous amounts of false and unfounded belief. Our own blue tribe struggles along with the culture of persistent moral accusation—and the culture of moral performance.

We also struggle with a fundamental change in liberal / progressive outlook. We liberals used to stress the basic idea that We Humans Are All The Same. 

We now stress Primal Difference.

The red tribe has stopped listening to our blue tribe's formulaic denunciations. Meanwhile, our blue tribe has established a prerequisite for tribal membership—we must never consider the possibility that we ourselves are falling short in some way.

Back to Baker and Brooks! As we pondered their offerings, weak and weary, we read the transcript of Ezra Klein's interview with Rachel Maddow. We view Klein and Maddow as very different types of people. But we were struck, reading the transcript, by a type of shared outlook.

Our culture reeks with ludicrous false and unfounded claims made by people in Maddow's profession. That said, you'd never know that this problem exists as you read Klein and Maddow's long discussion of the role now played by cable news, with Tucker Carlson receiving particular mention.

Maddow's new podcast was dropped this past week. We were struck, but not surprised, by the way the podcast starts.

Human nature is taking our nation apart. As Carlotta Valdes has frequently said, human nature has executed this task all through the course of human history. 

Watching Maddow discussing her podcast on MSNBC last week, a certain thought popped into our heads:

For people being paid $30 million per year by their corporate owners, life can still be amazingly good!

We assume that Maddow's a good, decent person. We'd be amazed to learn that she isn't.

We think her judgment, and that of our tribe, can frequently be a bit poor.

Starting Monday: Performance


55 comments:

  1. People are worried about the economy, healthcare prices and the unfairness of our economic system that gives all the spoils to the top 1%, not January 6th.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Speak for yourself. Many of us are worried about 1/6 too.

      Delete
    2. No you’re not.

      Delete
    3. Establishment Dems cried wolf too much with Russiagate. No one is listening to them on the Jan 6 thing. They are doing the same thing: overstating the evidence, feigning outrage and giving an inauthentic "moral performance".

      Delete
    4. And yet all of the testimony has been coming from Republicans during those hearings. You can ignore the statements that surround that testimony and still see plainly what Trump did and what happened on 1/6, from the mouths of Republicans.

      Delete
    5. 9:47,
      Calling those who worry about the economy, healthcare prices and the unfairness of our economic system that gives all the spoils to the top 1% "people"
      is dehumanizing Republicans. Dehumanizing "others" is what the Nazis did.

      Delete
  2. "For ourselves, we weren't "offended" by the council members' amazingly low-grade comments. "

    Of course not. The comments weren't being made about him.

    ReplyDelete

  3. "...made its case..."

    Your hate-mongering tribal chiefs made their hate-mongering case years ago, dear Bob.

    So, believe it or not, another show-trial (or a dozen) adds nothing to it. Brain-dead liberals will applaud, normal ordinary people will shrug and ignore.

    And that's all there is to it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Normal people will shrug and ignore Democrat hysteria and vote for Republicans, and Trump will become more popular.

      Delete
    2. Some will, and others will support the Democrats. The question is how many -- Democrats and people who lean Democratic make up more of the voting population than those who support Trump. That's why Trump-endorsed candidates will lose and Democrats are likely to win in most states during the midterms.

      Delete
    3. Meh. This is not about Democrat-Republican. This is about the establishment and a revolt against it.

      ...although, of course the ruling Democrat clique is particularly disgusting and dangerous. To quote Tulsi Gabbard, it's "under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith & spirituality, demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war."

      Delete
    4. To quote Tulsi Gabbard, it's (the ruling Democrat clique) "under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers..."

      Tulsi Gabbard's cries for a $100 Million annual defense budget is what has many talking about her as a potentially strong national candidate.

      Delete
    5. Gabbard's correct.
      Ignoring the war mongers will free-up enough cash to provide every man, woman, and child Universal Healthcare and free education (for starters). Show me one Republican who wouldn't be thrilled by that.

      Delete
    6. Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian stooge, bought and paid for.

      Delete
  4. Somerby misses the fact that Nury Martinez was forced to resign because this is explicitly NOT how Los Angeles wishes to think of people or categorize them or talk about them. Liberals are not supporting her actions, nor do we think that way ourselves, nor have we "created" the concept of race, as Somerby asserts (using Brooks for cover).

    ReplyDelete
  5. All wrongdoing, including criminal behavior, can be reduced by calling it just being human. But criminal behavior is defined by our society as beyond the pale, unacceptable for members, not permitted and not normal.

    At some extreme, Somerby's approach would excuse serial killers, rapists, con artists, armed robbers, all sorts of crooks and violent sadists, simply because they were born as human beings. Yet these actions are defined as deviant and abnormal, explicitly, because this is not tolerable by a civilized people, no matter where or how it originated in our species. A mad dog is not a dog and certainly not a house pet. Neither is a person who crosses boundaries in terms of acceptable behavior. At the extremes some states have capital punishment because human beings are not permitted to do any and every thing possible without consequences.

    I shouldn't have to be explaining this to Somerby. He should understand this. No philosophy major would argue against ethics and morality. Somerby has a purpose -- to excuse Nury Martinez -- and tomorrow he will excuse Trump and Roger Stone and Steve Bannon and Alex Jones. Because they are human beings too, and we should consider ourselves all one big happy group that encompasses them, no matter what damage they have done, no matter how many people died because of the 1/6 insurrection.

    Somerby calls the "blue tribe" denunciations formulaic. Yes, we all get tired of hearing "thou shalt not kill" -- people who insist on such rules are such a drag. Ditto the one about being your brother's keeper. That's no doubt why some people become Trump followers. But does that change any of the rules our society lives by? Republican gun-toting MAGAs have been asking "when do we get to use the guns?" and Somerby says nothing to them. That undermines his standing to tell us that we must stop holding Republicans accountable for their actions.

    Nury Martinez deserved to lose her job. She is supposed to represent all of her constituents and she cannot do that if she holds some groups in contempt. Trump should have lost his job when he refused to help blue states with disaster relief, when he used his office to punish liberals. Somerby said nothing then about his group definitions and his failure to govern, as grievous in the wake of hurricanes and wildfires as during his own insurrection when he refused to protect lawmakers threatened by his mob.

    I am more offended by Somerby today than by Martinez. She at least knew she had done something wrong, apologized and resigned. When will Somerby acknowledge that he is part of the division in this country, with his denial that racism is still wrong and must not be permitted to divide our country into haves and have nots? Never, I assume. Meanwhile, he is spreading Republican hate while he engages in performative kumbaya exhortations aimed at blue tribe surrender to the MAGA horde. Not going to happen.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Corby,TDH, most of the time, as he does here, tends to make perfect sense. As to the City Councilors, this was a recording of a private conversation. People talk this way, privately, all the time, and always have, about other people, whether they have a different race, religion, or political outlook, or whatever. - just about everyone does it, and it really doesn't do much harm. It's peoples action that count, not what they say privately, stupid as what they say might often be. It's Orwellian that people can be canceled this way.

      Delete
    2. You know what, AC/MA, most people do not talk like that in private all the time. SOME people do and many others do not. Your belief that "just about everyone does it" is not true and strikes me as self-justifying. Criminals also believe that no one else is honest. There is a name for that kind of bias, which I cannot recall right now. Actions do count, and speaking with others in such a way is an ACTION, it is behavior, not a thought. And when you do it with others, it is not private. Any of the others you talk to can tell other people what was said, even if it were not recorded.

      Martinez wasn't "cancelled." She resigned under pressure because so many people were upset with her behavior. @10:13 explained -- Martinez was representing the entire city as President of the City Council. It is her job to be respectful of her constituents and to represent them all in her position. She failed in her job, so it is right that she should resign. Any action she takes after this incident would be compromised by accusations that she was favoring one group or showing prejudice against another. She could not function with the trust of the people after showing bias like that.

      Delete
    3. Are these City Councilors really going to be "cancelled"?
      I'd love to never hear from/ about them ever again.

      Delete
    4. Only Martinez resigned.

      Delete
    5. Police officers shouldn't be fired for being racists. They should be fired for harassing black people.

      Delete
    6. The biggest problem with "cancel culture" is the lack of cancelling.

      Delete
  6. "Back to Baker and Brooks! As we pondered their offerings, weak and weary, we read the transcript of Ezra Klein's interview with Rachel Maddow. We view Klein and Maddow as very different types of people."

    Baker and Brooks are both conservatives. Maddow and Klein are not. Somerby himself acknowledges that these are "very different types of people." This contradicts what he said immediately before that about us all being part of one big human group without differences. And yet Somerby finds plenty of differences along political lines. Is he unable to "see" color but plenty willing to see "politics"?

    ReplyDelete
  7. "Human nature is taking our nation apart. As Carlotta Valdes has frequently said, human nature has executed this task all through the course of human history. "

    Carlotta Valdes never said any such thing. If she were not a fictional character, she would never endorse any of Somerby's ideas. Somerby invocation of a Hispanic-sounding validation of his ideas is pathetic.

    This sort of thing is outrageous and shows that Somerby doesn't take anything he writes here seriously. It is ALL performative for him -- no doubt for money -- because why would anyone go to this trouble to write pure garbage for any other reason. He would have told us that Bob Dylan agrees with him too, but he perhaps doubted anyone would believe him.

    Somerby is not a liberal. He is not saying anything convincing or even coherent today. He is writing in bad faith and making shit up, just to fill up a column-length essay, to no good purpose. He is furthering conservative talking points, chastising liberals and praising conservative pundits, and he has nothing to say to Democrats (if he ever did). And no, Carlotta Valdes does not support his ideas. She is a fictional as our own Cecelia.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Get some rest and sober up a bit, sugar. You’ll feel better in the morning.

      Delete
    2. Speaking from expericence?

      Delete
  8. If human nature is taking our nation apart, how do we change human nature? We cannot. And this is the heart of Somerby's nihilism. It is all useless to fight against -- we must all just surrender and become Trump supporters until the storm arrives, Trump is revealed as Christ come back to Earth to redeem his followers, and we are all reborn. Say it Somerby!

    ReplyDelete
  9. For people who make $30 million a year, life can be amazingly good. I tend to feel that my own life is pretty good, and in 2021 I made $17,266.91 and after an IRA deduction of $2,225, my AGI was about $15,000.

    Now, I live alone and basically have no friends, which kinda sucks, but is not really an income problem, except in the sense where you have to buy love in America.

    Most Americans make more money than me, many of them (lol) even make more than the median income of $70,000!! So I am surprised that there is not more happiness in the USA. The message I hear seems to be mostly woe, woe, woe, anger, anger, anger. The first commenter here even makes the ridiculous statement that "all the spoils" goto the legendary 1%. As if $60,000 a year is nothing, not even enough money to fill my tattoo needs for a year.

    Seems to me this is a media thing and social media. That a huge portion of it is trying to stir up anger (and unhappiness). Perhaps so people will be angry enough to go vote against something. Once somebody wins, the losing side thinks it needs to start generating anger and unhappiness to make sure it wins the next election.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I found your comments insightful and valuable. I just wish you’d take a minute and scare up a fake name here, so I could find other things you say in the future.

      Delete
    2. Don’t know why this won’t attach my name to my comments today. I’m Eric.

      Delete
  10. "We assume that Maddow's a good, decent person. We'd be amazed to learn that she isn't."

    And yet Somerby is the main person here saying that she isn't good and decent. She stuffs money down her pants. Somerby said so.

    ReplyDelete
  11. "Starting Monday: Performance"

    Somerby, who spent the bulk of his career on a stage, performing, is going to tell us about performance on Monday. Perhaps when you spend your own days performing, you come to believe that others do so too, even those who do not go near a stage.

    Somerby won't "mind read" Trump to decide whether he is lying or believes his own untruths, but he will mindread liberals to the point of claiming their strongly held beliefs are "performative". That should tell you where Somerby is coming from, if you still need more evidence.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Somerby uses Baker's column to dismiss the importance of the 1/6 Committee hearings, because he says they have not changed people's minds about Trump (although this is disputed by some polls showing changes in Independent and less extreme Republican views).

    The greater importance of the 1/6 Committee findings may be historical, as described by Claire Leavitt:

    "But as a scholar of oversight who in 2019 spent a year working on the Democratic majority staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, I believe the committee’s work will have historic impact. That effect, though, may take years to be seen and felt."

    She also says: "There is also some, though not overwhelming, evidence that the hearings diminished support for Trump both in the polls and among donors. However, it’s worth recalling that public opinion as the Watergate scandal was unfolding did not reflect the extent to which President Nixon’s legacy would suffer as a result."

    Her entire essay is available at The Conversation:

    https://theconversation.com/jan-6-committees-fact-finding-and-bipartisanship-will-lead-to-an-impact-in-coming-decades-if-not-tomorrow-192324

    ReplyDelete
  13. “In Brooks' view, the racial / ethnic insults trafficked by the council members emerge from a part of blue tribe culture we ourselves have mentioned in the past.”

    Of course this is Brooks’ view. It was entirely predictable. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, in fact.

    Bigotry is a part of human nature. Martinez is apparently a bigot. She happens to be a Democrat.

    But there are millions of liberals who don’t think or say the things Martinez said, and these liberals get no press. But a single example of a Democrat being an asshole bigot is supposed to confirm for all of us what liberalism really is.

    There are plenty of conservatives, some of them prominent, who also think and say bigoted things, but Brooks and Somerby have no intention of claiming that those people represent the true nature of conservatism.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anyone who thinks Somerby doesn't already realize he's being dishonest IS very stupid.

      Delete
  14. I like the way Bob's mind works.
    Let me try: If we de-fund the police, they'd have to disband, then no police officers would ever be killed in the line of duty. Those against de-funding the police are killing cops in the line of duty.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Meh.
    The anti de-funders have always been pro cop killing.

    ReplyDelete
  16. So Republican voters, who love Trump because he's a piece of shit, haven' been persuaded by the January 6th Committee Hearings to not vote for him again.
    Meanwhile Democratic and Independent voters, who dislike Trump because he's a piece of shit, are not being persuaded by the January 6th Committee Hearings to vote for him, as well.
    This Peter Baker guy really knows how to cut through the noise and get to the feelings of the voters.
    LOL.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If someone breaks the law, should they be prosecuted if it doesn't change the minds of voters?

      Delete
  17. "For people being paid $30 million per year by their corporate owners, life can still be amazingly good!"

    But money doesn't stop men like Somerby from attacking female cable hosts for no good reason at all, except possibly envy or dislike of gay people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Notice that the word "owners" is propaganda. No one owns anyone else and there is no evidence whatsoever that Maddow ever bent her news stories to suit corporate interests.

      This is like accusing football players of throwing their games simply because they receive huge salaries.

      Delete
    2. She wouldn't be getting 30 million or even have the job if she didn't suit the corporate interests. No journalist gets anywhere if they don't suit the corporate interests.

      Delete
    3. The corporate interest in this case may simply be getting good ratings.

      Delete
    4. Democratic elites at the top of the government may simply act on nothing but their voter's best interests.

      Delete
    5. This is the damage done by Somerby nihilism -- when he convinces people that there is no idealism left in the world, no self-sacrifice, no consideration for duty or the needs of others, or what is best for our country.

      Delete
  18. "We think the culture of being offended—perhaps, of performing the state of being offended—has been extended way too far within our failing blue tribe."

    Somerby offends me whenever he misappropriates some author, such as Robert Frost or Bob Dylan or Tolstoy, taking their creations and twisting them to support his own misbegotten ideas. These authors labored to produce their own expressions. They did not intend to be a shill for Somerby and, being dead, they cannot defend their own work against his revisionist interpretation. What Somerby is doing is wrong and I find it highly offensive. And no, I am not performing the state of being offended. I genuinely feel the emotions associated with Somerby's crime against dead writers, and they motivate me to protest his actions. Because the state of being offended or angry is motivational. Anger produces action. Offense tells us what direction to aim our behavior in order to change wrong things that are happening.

    Conservatives do not want change. They defend the status quo. Of course they think taking offense is performative. Of course they attack those who are offended. They don't want anything to be different.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thankfully Bob Dylan is still alive. Bob’s inability to meaningfully quote from other writers to make a point is not anything that should offend. It merely illustrates one of the many ways his cloudy thinking cannot achieve a logical or meaningful conclusion, even when he is on to something.

      Delete
    2. Castration, hysterectomies, and double mastectomies of children are "different" and represent mass mental illness and depravity on the left. Normal people prefer the status quo of reality-based policy.

      Delete
    3. There is no evidence that any of these procedures have been performed on children. Right wing whackos are persecuting hospitals over a procedure that is not being performed anywhere in the USA (on children).

      Delete
  19. Nury Martinez is a good, decent person.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Here is a critique of Brooks' column and a different take on the conflicts in Los Angeles, one that sees race differently than Somerby and Brooks do:

    http://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2022/10/lite-supremacy.html#more

    ReplyDelete
  21. Until we forgot the evidence presented this week suggesting Trump knew goddamn well he lost, Bob will abandon the insanity defense, as he does here. When we forget about it he will probably bring it back.
    We also know enough about what Trump has done to conclude that the law, basic decency, etc., are basically a popularity contest. Baker plays both sides of the street, he has come down hard on Trump of late, he was also a "but her emails," king. Is his view of what America thinks of Trump accurate? Maybe. Is it the bottom line on how decent people should act in the face of Trump's behavior?
    Only to a hapless fool like Bob Somerby.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It isn't known who won the election because there were countless irregularities.

      Delete
    2. All regularities were investigated and found to not affect the outcome of the election -- Biden won.

      Delete