MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2022
Attention should be paid: Our nation is absorbed with its first-world problems, as in this HELP DESK report on the front page of the online Washington Post:
Baby boomers can’t stop staring at their phones
For today, we're going to stay where we were yesterday. This morning, we find that we're still considering the terrible plight of the world's most deserving child.
At some point, attention ought to be paid! We may return to the incompetent, mundane, inane and local when we return on the morrow.
It's a "problem in philosophy," more specifically in ethics. We understood this at age 17. Slowly, we drifted away.
Here are the headlines I currently see on the online Post's front page:
ReplyDeleteThree dead, two injured in shooting on U-Va. campus; suspect remains at large
Biden says there ‘need not be a new Cold War’ after meeting with China’s Xi
Chile’s millennial first lady wants to end the job for good
Below those, the opinion section starts, which mostly concerns politics -- e.g., one opinion piece is entitled Republicans lost the election — and so did Putin, MBS and Netanyahu
Maybe this is what Somerby considers "incompetent, mundane, inane and local"?
Delete
ReplyDelete"At some point, attention ought to be paid!"
Don't worry, dear Bob, your tribe's vacuous virtue signaling is not getting unnoticed. We know: you care.
...but do try being more melodramatic, please. More feelings.. Better performance is all we ask for...
One must be virtuous in order to engage in virtue signaling. What is wrong with having a little more virtue in this world?
DeleteRepublicans do virtue signaling by locking migrant children in cages, separate from their mothers. Is that better? I don't think so.
Outrage porn is good, but more feelings, dear dembot, please.
DeleteShow us how you really feel about it, please: despair, anguish, pain, anger. Go ahead.
"Outrage porn is good,.."
DeleteThe January 6th, "SnowflakeFest 2021" temper tantrum is one for the ages.
Few surpass your Shithead Signaling.
Delete"we're still considering the terrible plight of the world's most deserving child"
ReplyDeleteWhat makes this 6 year old any more or less deserving than any other child (older or younger) of migrants fleeing to the US?
Somerby calls her plight "terrible". Did he perhaps miss the part where she was reunited with her mother? Does Somerby imagine that everyone living outside the US must necessarily have a worse existence than ours here in this country?
Is it OK for the relatively safe, prosperous Americans who can afford to sit beneath their pear trees and contemplate Wittgenstein, to rank order the world's children in terms of the terribleness of their plight or their relative deservingness? Is this what Somerby does when not writing his essays? Did he do this to the kids in his Baltimore classrooms?
Or is his phrase "the world's most deserving child" a mocking condemnation of the pathos with which the Post imbued that story? If so, Somerby has failed to signal his intent. He cannot both condemn the trivial reports on the Post's front page while also mocking the very serious one about the difficulties of seeking asylum in our country.
Rather than bathing in that pathos, Somerby might write about the way in which climate change will exacerbate poverty and conflict over resources in other countries, causing more migrants to seek help from the US. Ultimately, no one uproots themselves from their home without strong motives, and hunger or violence related to it is a strong motivator. People come here because we are wealthy as a nation (if not as individuals), but even the poorest of us is generally better off than those seeking help here.
Is it right for Somerby to rank order the need of others, to call them beautiful while refusing them empathy, to join Republicans in excluding needy people while indulging in our American excesses? How do I know he doesn't feel differently than I am accusing him of today? He would have written a very different essay if he did. Based on his writing style, no one would ever mistake Somerby for a warm person.
Notice that his sole emphasis concerning this child has been on the way she has made HIM feel, the way she has ruined his day and put him off his usual schedule. How inconvenient! As he calls her "beautiful" in her misery, he clearly doesn't she her at all.
"It's a "problem in philosophy," more specifically in ethics. We understood this at age 17."
ReplyDeleteProblems in philosophy are considered in hypotheticals and abstracts in order to make clear the underlying issues and principles.
This child is real, not hypothetical. Caring about her requires recognizing that she is a human being and seeing her specifically for who she is and what she is experiencing. That has nothing whatsoever to do with "problems in philosophy".
When empathy results in distressing feelings, it is a form of escape to reduce a person to an abstract or a generality, in order to feel better oneself. That is a selfish indulgence that marks the difference between those who feel for others and those who reject the needs of others because they dislike feeling those messy emotions. Today, Somerby is running from feeling bad about children with problems. Perhaps he thinks that is noble, to have the feelings in the first place. But it is wrong to turn aside from them because it is nicer to feel good, ignoring their needs. And that is what Somerby does when he refuses to talk about immigration but is happy to talk about philosophy problems and his 15 year old friend, safely in the past.
Democrats actually increased their hold on the all-important U.S. Senate by one seat. Democrats could increase it further if current Democrat U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock wins Georgia’s December runoff against Republican Herschel Walker. Last week, Warnock did beat Walker by nearly a full point. Because no one topped 50 percent in that race, the state requires a runoff.
Deletehttps://digbysblog.net/2022/11/14/republicans-in-disarray-4/
DeleteI'm glad Somerby was really really in love with this 15 year old and not merely preying on her relative lack of sophistication. She gave him permission to be selfish and ignore the rest of the world's problems. Has he never considered that perhaps she was callous and self-centered because of her youth and lack of experience, not supremely "wise"? Many intelligent children discover altruism in middle school. This girl may have just been a bit backward. I suppose that doesn't occur to someone who is smitten, as Somerby describes. But then one wonders what he was admiring about her.
ReplyDeleteTaegan Goddard (Political Wire) says that Democrats most likely will have lost the House due to Republican gerrymandering.
ReplyDelete"“Donald Trump blasted American Jews for failing to vote for Republicans in sufficient numbers,” Haaretz reports.
ReplyDeleteSaid Trump: “You do have people in this country that happen to be Jewish that are not doing the right thing for Israel – too many. The Democrats get 75 percent of the Jewish vote, which is hard to believe. We can’t let that continue.”
Trump noted “all of the horrible things that have taken place with Biden and Barack Hussein Obama… and then it’s 75 percent of the vote.”
"Our nation is absorbed with its first-world problems, as in this HELP DESK report on the front page of the online Washington Post:
ReplyDeleteBaby boomers can’t stop staring at their phones"
How did baby boomers suddenly become "our nation"?
Does Somerby have any idea how old baby boomers are these days? They are 68-76. That means many, if not most, are retired. What is the harm in looking at their phones at that age?
When someone is hungry, you help them get food. You do not refuse to eat your own food because of their hunger.
The Help Desk at the Post is behind a paywall, so I cannot read an article about how much boomers should stare at their phones, but it does strike me as ridiculous to be limiting such an activity in old age. But so is Somerby's belief that the news should only address what he is interested in.
If we had to ignore every 1st world concern in our news, there would be nothing left to print. Even when it comes to food (everyone must eat and drink, right?), our consumption will be consistent with first world behavior, not third world, because we live in a first world country, not in the third world. Pretending otherwise is sillier than Somerby's criticisms.
Isn't Mao's nym a form of cultural misappropriation? No one here thinks he is Chinese American or Chinese. Most of us think he is a Russian troll.
ReplyDeleteMaochengji is a Chinese novel.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Country_(novel)
How does that change anything?
DeleteIt doesn’t change anything. Mao is worthless.
DeleteFrom Digby:
ReplyDeleteWhen someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The terms “negro,” “oriental,” “handicapped” or “chick” for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad” and “chick” were merely the feminine equivalents of “guy,” “dude” or “fellow.” The negative connotations have been attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights activists have gone so far as to reject the word “pet” and insist on its replacement by “animal companion.” Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative.
1. This is not from digby -- a simple search shows that.
Delete2. You have not done a good job of capturing digby's writing style, so this is not much of a satire, if intended that way.
3. Your psychobabble isn't convincing because it is inconsistent with the published literature.
4. Beyond that, there is a whole bunch of disinformation here, about civil rights, motivation, self esteem and anthropology.
Even so, we get the message -- you don't want to have to care about stigmatized groups and you think civil rights activism is bunk. You don't like being called racist (or whatever) so you toss it back at "activists" as if it were that easy to escape what makes you tick.
Anthropologists of any political orientation take care not to impose the standards of their own culture on other people, but that doesn't mean they ignore negative things. Further, they no longer use the term "primitive" to refer to non-technological societies, largely because these are not necessarily primitive in other ways. Your use of the term primitive is thus another sign of where you're coming from with this. You want to continue to look down on people whose cultures are different than your own.
It doesn't take any extra effort to avoid offending people. For those who cling to derogatory terms, the cruelty is the point. If you stopped projecting your own feelings onto others, you might understand yourself better.
Meanwhile, it is not OK to adopt a pseudo-academic tone and then use a bunch of derogatory terms to describe people. You perhaps think you are being clever, but you are just another bigot getting off on kicking down.
Please stop maligning people here.
Digby wrote it.
DeleteIt was posted on her eponymous blog February of last year.
DeleteNot according to a search of her blog.
DeleteIt's not digby.net, it's digby.com.
DeleteBefore the midterm, conservative trolls had been telling us that Hispanics were going to vote Republican. That didn't happen in CO, where Latinos were important to Democratic wins:
ReplyDelete"Colorado’s Latino voters showed a strong preference for Democrats in the 2022 midterms, according to a new exit poll that says the Latino electorate was mobilized to vote based on the issues they care about.
The Colorado Latino Exit Poll, released for the first time this year, was organized by the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights and Voces Unidas, and it was conducted by BSP Research. The survey spoke with 531 Latino and Latina voters across the state, with a larger sample in the new 8th Congressional District because of its high number of Latino voters. It overwhelmingly found that Colorado’s Latino electorate cared more about voting in support of issues they care about and making positive change than political party loyalty. "
Later the report says:
"“There was speculation that there would be a red wave election and that would be fueled primarily by Latino movement toward the Republican Party,” Sanchez said. “I’ll note that there was movement, but it was relatively modest and in line with what we typically see in off-year elections where a lot of voters move away from the incumbent president, in this context, Biden’s party the Democrats — so there was movement, but it wasn’t earth-shattering.”
Looking specifically at the 8th Congressional District, the Colorado Latino Policy Agenda highlighted that Latinos value seeing other Latinos elected to office, which translated to 75% of Latinos in the district supporting Caraveo. Since the 2020 election, the poll found that Latino voters in the district shifted toward more liberal attitudes and ideologies.
“We can definitely say without the Latino electorate going hard for her, she would not be the first Latina ever to enter the U.S. House from the state of Colorado,” Sanchez said of Caraveo. " [The 8th district was created by redistricting.]
From Lawyers Guns and Money:
ReplyDeleteThe Democratic Party has been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have created widespread psychological suffering and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the party. They will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.
Not LGM, obviously.
DeleteIt most certainly is.
Deletesod off
DeleteLook pal, it was written on the blog on May 9th.
DeleteFirst there was a bogus Digby post. Then a bogus LGM post. I fear this can only mean one thing: we've been visited by Fanny Clapper.
DeleteFrom Somerby:
ReplyDeleteRacism doesn't matter, even if it were to exist, which it doesn't.
Dems should focus more on facilitating right winger's access to young girls, even those underage, because for one thing it is very exciting how young girls sometimes show no empathy towards people of color.
Also Dems should stop calling out Republican corruption, and generally be nice to those intent on converting our country to fascism.
I mean, hey, what's so wrong with the trains running on time, amiright?
How young?
Delete14
DeleteHow many young people here know the famous quote from Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman"?
ReplyDelete"I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person."
Why do you think it is important for young people to know this quote?
DeleteGo crawl back under your rock, David.
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ReplyDelete