THE WAY WE ARE: The Way We Are, loathing The Others-wise!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2017

Part 1—Nicholas Kristof's advice:
Now that we're several decades too late, what should We Liberals do?

In yesterday morning's New York Times, Paul Krugman offered his advice. On the whole, we'd call his advice rather bad, remarkably unintelligent.

Headline included, this is the way he began:
KRUGMAN (2/27/17): The Uses of Outrage

Are you angry about the white nationalist takeover of the U.S. government? If so, you are definitely not alone.
The first few weeks of the Trump administration have been marked by huge protests, furious crowds at congressional town halls, customer boycotts of businesses seen as Trump allies. And Democrats, responding to their base, have taken a hard line against cooperation with the new regime.

But is all this wise? Inevitably, one hears some voices urging everyone to cool it—to wait and see, to try to be constructive, to reach out to Trump supporters, to seek ground for compromise.

Just say no.

Outrage at what’s happening to America isn’t just justified, it’s essential. In fact, it may be our last chance of saving democracy.
Signalling his moral greatness, Krugman praises those who are angry about "the white nationalist takeover of the U.S. government." He scolds those people who are "urging everyone to cool it," without quite having the moral greatness to name or quote the people to whom he refers.

Who exactly is "urging everyone" "to wait and see, to try to be constructive, to reach out to Trump supporters, to seek ground for compromise?" We don't know, and Krugman, despite his moral greatness, wasn't quite willing to say.

For all his moral greatness, we think Krugman's advice was, on balance, not good. We recall the political cluelessness of the gentleman's past, extending all the way, by his own account, into the 1990s.

As we recall all that cluelessness, we suggest one possible explanation for the way we got where we are today. All too often, our brightest professors were perhaps building careers instead of paying attention!

Whatever! Today, Krugman says we shouldn't "try to be constructive" (!)—and we shouldn't "reach out to Trump supporters." That last phrase makes us wonder if the fiery columnist is talking about Nicholas Kristof, his colleague at the Times.

Uh-oh! Four days earlier, Kristof had written one of Those Columns. Under an offensive headline ("Fight Trump, Not His Voters"), Kristof suggested that liberals would be well advised to stop trashing Trump voters in sweeping, name-calling ways.

Kristof loves to offend in such ways. Here's part of what he was willing to say:
KRISTOF (2/23/17): I understand the vehemence. Trump is a demagogue who vilifies and scapegoats refugees, Muslims, undocumented immigrants, racial minorities, who strikes me as a danger to our national security. By all means stand up to him, and point out his lies and incompetence. But let's be careful about blanket judgments.

My hometown, Yamhill, Ore., a farming community, is Trump country, and I have many friends who voted for Trump. I think they're profoundly wrong, but please don't dismiss them as hateful bigots.

The glove factory closed down. The timber business slimmed. Union jobs disappeared. Good folks found themselves struggling and sometimes self-medicated with methamphetamine or heroin. Too many of my schoolmates died early; one, Stacy Lasslett, died of hypothermia while she was homeless.

This is part of a national trend: Mortality rates for white middle-aged Americans have risen, reflecting working-class ''deaths of despair.'' Liberals purport to champion these people, but don't always understand them.

In Yamhill, plenty of well-meaning people were frustrated enough that they took a gamble on a silver-tongued provocateur. It wasn't because they were ''bigoted unthinking lizard brains,'' but because they didn't know where to turn and Trump spoke to their fears.
It happens every time! Whenever Kristof wants to offend, he returns to Yamhill and claims that his friends aren't all slobbering racists.

He knows the way such remarks will offend. He makes them all the same.

For ourselves, we have no idea why Kristof would say that we liberals "purport to champion" the white working-class people whose gap-toothed bigotry he likes to support.

Plainly, that isn't the case; surely, Kristof knows this. Plainly, we liberals don't "champion" the rustics in Kristof's home town.

You can discern this fact from Krugman's column, where our smartest liberal journalist makes a series of sweeping, unpleasant generalizations about the white working class. As has been true since we crawled from the swamp, Those People The Others are all alike in Krugman's fiery column.

At any rate, we can't help thinking that Krugman was debating Kristof when he penned yesterday's column, in which he urged us liberals to please not be constructive—and to please avoid "reaching out to Trump supporters."

Should we liberals "reach out to Trump supporters?" The phrase is so vague as to be virtually meaningless. Such things routinely happen when we get our dander up twenty-five years too late.

Kristof didn't say that liberal should "reach out" so much as he said that we should stop issuing sweeping denunciations, in which we bomb 63 million people in one large nuclear blast. We're inclined to agree with him on that point. After all, consider where our fiery instincts have left us.

Last Friday night, Judy Woodruff became the latest to note the sad state of the more liberal national party. What should the Democrats do now? She introduced a pseudo-discussion of that question with this sad overview:

"November's presidential defeat, along with years of losses in Congress, governor's mansions and statehouses, have left the Democratic Party with less power at the federal and state level than it has had in more than 80 years."

Jeez! Despite our flawless liberal instincts, the more liberal party is in a very sad state, local, state and national politics-wise. Will the thought ever enter our thick, soft heads that this could possibly, in some trivial measure, be a small referendum on Us?

For our money, Kristof's column made much more sense than Krugman's. That said, we were especially struck by the three letters the New York Times published the day after Kristof's column appeared.

They were only three letters, of course.
But they were the letters the Times chose to publish in response to Kristof—and we think we liberals may have a lot to learn from the reasoning found in those letters.

More specifically, we think we liberals may have a lot to learn about ourselves from those letters. The reasoning in them is very familiar—and highly unimpressive.

In yesterday's column, Krugman generalized madly about Those People, as We're strongly inclined to do.

Like Kristof, we're inclined to see that as bad politics. As reasoning, though, it's utterly hopeless, familiarly mega-dumb.

Might that be The Way We Are? Are we less sharp than we think?

Tomorrow: Our love of constructing The Other

Hooray for Hollywood: In an ongoing tribute to the season, we've sampled aspects of The Way We Were and of The Apartment.

Umbrellas of Cherbourg? Not so much.

39 comments:

  1. Protest is working to preserve ACA. It is also working to stiffen the resolve of our Democrats in office. It is working to make it clear to Republicans that they cannot sweep Trump's Russian connections under any rug. Issa called for a special prosecutor because he is running for reelection against a strong challenger in a district that went for Hillary and protests work.

    Somerby seems to want Krugman to back off. That is a big mistake on Somerby's part. Because protest is working.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Issa didn't call for a special prosecutor.

      Delete
    2. Yes, he did, in his interview with Bill Maher. He said that Sessions couldn't simply recuse himself because his deputy is a political appointee too, so a special prosecutor is needed.

      Delete
    3. Anon. @ 11:31, your lizard brain has told you that Bob does not think protest is effective. If you read his piece more carefully you will see that you are comparing apples to oranges. He is saying something else entirely. Of course, I could be wrong.

      Delete
    4. So, why is Somerby criticizing Krugman when all Krugman is doing is calling for protest?

      Delete
    5. Issa didn't call for a special prosecutor. He was talking about a hypothetical process for a hypothetical crime as he clarified today.

      There were no crimes by Trump. There is no Russia collusion between Trump and "the Russians" or on behalf of him. This will be the finding of the FBI.

      Delete
    6. Yes, he is walking it back under white house pressure.

      Delete
    7. There were no crimes by Trump, per the GOP, who chased Whitewater for a half-dozen years.

      There is no Russia collusion between Trump and "the Russians" or on behalf of him, per the GOP, who saw the corruption of a Clinton Charity donor asking for a meeting with the State Department and being turned down.
      This will be the finding of the FBI, the GOP, who shutdown ACORN for registering minorities to vote, hopes.

      Delete
    8. "There is no Russia collusion between Trump and "the Russians" or on behalf of him. This will be the finding of the FBI."

      So you're betting that this turns-up as empty as the 8 GOP-led investigations into HRC's corruption?

      Delete
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      Delete
  2. There were no good reasons to vote for Trump. There is no good reason to ask people why they voted for Trump because there are no good answers to that question.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. One of the reasons that may be considered good is that he vowed to address trade imbalances. He was the only one who addressed it. And also a reason is a vote for him is a vote against liberals and liberalism which has turned its back on the working class in a lot of ways. And, to Bob's point, liberals are total assholes, sorry I know, I am one too but we are assholes and major, major dicks and the people hate us for it so they vote against us to rub our faces in it and that is what they are doing and will continue to do for as long as they can - rub our asshole faces in it. I know it doesn't make sense to you people but just read Dostoyevsky Notes from the Underground and he spells it all out in the second book.

      Delete
    2. Dave the Guitar PlayerFebruary 28, 2017 at 12:29 PM

      If in 4 years the same people who voted for Trump vote for him again and the people who did not vote for Trump vote for whoever the Democrats put up against him, we will be in for yet another 4 years of President Trump. One way to change this dynamic is to make the alternative to Trump more attractive, which will be difficult if we do not try to find out what it is that we can do. If you believe that Trump voters cannot be changed, then we lose. I would rather win.

      Delete
    3. One reason is powerlessness. Good reason? Not sure. What the hell do liberals care about the powerless? (the non-gay powerless)

      Delete
    4. If we lost the popular vote it might make sense to try to figure out how to attract Trump voters, but we didn't. Russia interfered, not least by funding Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders and encouraging their defection (via WikiLeaks), so Democrats didn't come out to support the nominee. That suggests we need to be talking to Democrats, not Trump voters. More urgently, we need to get Russia out of our election process.

      Delete
    5. Stein and Sanders and their voters were entitled to be motivated by whatever and whomever they chose including information revealed by illegal hacking. Getting Russia out of the business of hacking isn't going to prevent others interested in affecting an outcome from doing it so that wouldn't do much good.

      Delete
    6. "Take your typical Hollywood actor living behind a wall and telling average Americans they do not deserve the same protections."

      Unlike, say, the GOP-led Congress---who gets solid gold healthcare insurance while telling Americans they don't deserve the same. Americans still love the Right (for their bigotry).

      Delete
    7. Nanny-state Conservatives are hoping Daddy Trump will keep his promise and keep the world from progressing.

      Delete
  3. Anonymous@February 28, 2017 at 11:33 AM - agreed! Krugman +1 Somersby -1

    ReplyDelete
  4. There is another good reason not to join the unhinged Trump haters. You're instantly identified as gullible or deranged by rational people.

    "Washington (CNN)House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said Monday that he has not yet seen any evidence that President Donald Trump's campaign coordinated with Russian officials"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Of course it wasn't Russian interference. It was good ol' American White Supremacy, which won Trump the election.
      Unlike the corporate-owned media talking heads, I'm not paid to make believe this isn't obviously true.

      Delete
  5. I don't see the connection between your quote and your statement above it.

    Nunes hasn't seen any evidence yet because no evidence whatsoever has been presented to the committee -- it hasn't started its hearings yet. So this is a kind of lie, told at the behest of the White House. It may fool Trump supporters but it won't fool the Democratic members of the committee, who will continue investigating if we keep putting pressure on them.

    How can someone legitimately condone this sort of lying? It is one thing to try to understand how Trump supporters got fooled -- isn't it obvious? It is another thing to join them in their delusion. What is the point of figuring out that people will support a liar if they are motived to believe the lies?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rachel Maddow did a piece on the Russian connection. It was rambling, too cute, twice as long as it needed to be.

      She also has the goods on him. Others do too.

      Bob's old, old, OLD "we should be more nice to them" bit could not be more embarrassing at this point.

      Delete
  6. As near as I can tell, Somerby thinks we can gain political leverage by making concessions in the culture war.

    The fight between fundamentalists and modernists is going on all over the world. It is at the heart of the appeal of the Taliban and ISIS, not just conservatives at home. It is not a forgone conclusion that modernism will win -- look at the dark ages for an example. But I just can't see Somerby convincing liberals to give up what seems like progress in the name of empathy.

    Look at what life was like in the Dark and Middle Ages. Maybe the way to convince Trump voters is to show them that -- maybe starting with Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Connie Willis's Domesday Book. Those are accessible but get the point across.

    There is no way to persuade others without some condescension because persuasion starts with the idea that someone else is wrong and needs to be taught otherwise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Conservatives believe the left is destroying law, order, family, democracy, education, and every other civilizing force so good luck persuading any of them they are wrong and you could teach them something.

      Delete
    2. You can't. These are "dead-enders", if you will.

      Delete
  7. Elections are about winning, and the winning margin in our irrational system was razor-thin this time. I think Democrats have to try to reach out to the demographic that Bob is talking about. The double standard is frustrating, though. Right-wingers get to call Obama the "n" word, and Hillary the "b" word, and liberals "traitors/commies" and they are just exercising their free speech. When a liberal says "that's racist/sexist/deplorable...etc", they are accused of being authoritarians trying to deny freedom of speech or worse. So, the frustrating reality is that the right seems to have more free speech than the left these days. But a winning strategy will probably have to take that into account. How, I don't know.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Straw man. They aren't accused of being authoritarians for calling someone deplorable who called Obama the "n" word. They are rightly accused of being authoritarians for calling someone deplorable who called Obama "wrong" on any issue.

      Delete
    2. at 4:11.

      I call your bullshit. No one has ever done that.

      Delete
    3. It was Trump who generalized the term deplorable to all Trump supporters. Go back and see who Hillary was talking about.

      Delete
    4. Conservatives are authoritarians, because that is who they are.
      Even the shitheads, who bought the NRA's lies about the Second Amendment being to fight the "tyranny of the government" side with the police 100% of the time.

      Delete
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