United States Politics Thread 47

[jcb]

I'm not that good at the technology side of making memes, but I made one about the news that Elon Musk wants to throw a whole lot of cash into the Senate Maine race in support of Susan Collins anyway.

elon-susan-small.jpg

(All images that went into making this are in the public domain.)

White text on a yellow/orange background is not easily readable.

[Raphael]

White text on a yellow/orange background is not easily readable.

Thank you for the heads-up. I'll try to keep that in mind in the future

[malloc]

The primaries held this past Tuesday yielded some good results for progressives, with the election of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan widely celebrated. Unfortunately my own area was not among those victories. The left-wing candidate for St Louis representative, Cori Bush, lost catastrophically. Not surprising given the intense conservatism of Missouri with even its most progressive areas still quite backward, but still disappointing considering I spent months canvassing.

[Raphael]

Speaking of primaries, does anyone know anything about the Tennessee 5th Congressional District Republican primary? Apparently it was a bog-standard GOP primary between two standard-issue horrible early 21st century Republicans, but the one of the two who's the incumbent and who was endorsed by Trump lost. Anything to that? My first guess would be that there are simply some matters specific to Tennessee, or to that district, that I simply don't know anything about, which might have caused this. But I'm curious.

[malloc]

Having said all that, it does sound like Cori Bush has some genuine baggage, accusations of corruption and faith-healing nonsense, that my DSA chapter glossed over. More generally she ran a weak campaign and failed to articulate her points well. This does tarnish my impression of the local DSA and strongly suggests that they simply aren't good at vetting candidates or seriously evaluating their chances of electoral victory. Time to wipe this egg off my face and remember not to fall prey to unmerited optimism and good will.

More positively, Missouri voted down two right wing ballot measures by remarkably wide margins. One would have eliminated the income tax and the other would have made ballot measures nearly impossible by requiring them to win a majority in every congressional district. Both failed with over eighty percent against.

[Raphael]

Ed Case got renominated. Bummer. I mean, he voted for the fucking SAVE Act!

[Raphael]

Could have posted this in the "What are you reading [...]" Thread, but decided to post it here because of what it's about.

I've now read the introduction and most of the first few chapters of After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics-and How to Fix It by Will Bunch. I mostly like it, but have mixed feelings about some parts.

The book is about something that I, and I think a few other ZBB members as well, have been talking about for a while: the way how, over the course of the last few generations, formal education got treated as more and more important, and effectively became more and more important, to live a half-way non-sucky life in the modern world, and how that had all kinds of bad consequences, which most people who have a lot of formal education, for some mysterious reason, don't like to think about too much. Bunch focuses entirely on the USA, but there've been similar developments in some other places.

I don't know whether jcb has read the book - I suspect he probably has - but I'm relatively sure he would at least partly like it if he would read it.

The general process was something like

1) make it possible for a lot more people to go to college

2) make more and more jobs and career opportunities college-graduate only*

3) make it more and more difficult, at least compared to how things used to be during Stage 1), to go to college.

And voilà! - more and more people get to be more and more miserable!

The first chapter is about the author visiting a very rural, very Republican county in Ohio which, in one corner, contains a small and very expensive college, which, according to his descriptions, is full of wealthy young people with bog-standard progressive political and cultural attitudes and their equally progressive professors. Culture clash!

Bunch presents the perspectives of both sides in that place, but IMO shows more understanding for the local Trump lovers than they deserve. And there are occasional subtle hints that perhaps not everything is the way he mostly tries to present it. For instance, he himself points out that the probably most important individual Trump supporter in that place is a heiress from a family of factory owners. Doesn't that partly demolish his own apparent point?

And there's one small aspect that is, by now, a bit of a pet peeve for me: at various points in the chapter, Bunch mentions Trump supporters in that county driving around in pickup trucks. That's apparently supposed to underline how working class they are. But you know what? There's no way how, with the kind of money I myself have access to, I could ever pay for a pickup truck. And that's unlikely to change any time soon. So when I hear about some guy driving around in a pickup truck, either he or his family has more money than I've ever had. So I'm not the slightest bit interested in listening to him whining or bitching about how I'm supposedly the out-of-touch elitist snob who's supposedly looking down on him.

All in all good book so far, though.

*No, I'm not interested in lectures about the knowledge economy of the future and all that. There are clearly various jobs that used to be open to people without college degrees and which now supposedly require college degrees. It's fair to ask whether what changed when it comes to these jobs is really what's needed to do these jobs, or just what's needed to get hired for these jobs. As for knowledge, yes, that's important, but it's not the same as having a formal degree.

[Travis B.]

To me, anyone who sympathizes with Trump supporters, especially people who are still Trump supporters at this point, can go to hell. Trump supporters are utter and complete scum, and deserve to be shat upon. And they have no right to complain about how they are poor oppressed working class people, as either they have no consciousness of what their God-Emperor stands for despite it being so blindingly obvious, or they, more likely, are perfectly aware of the evil that is Trump and consciously support it.

[Raphael]

To me, anyone who sympathizes with Trump supporters, especially people who are still Trump supporters at this point, can go to hell. Trump supporters are utter and complete scum, and deserve to be shat upon. And they have no right to complain about how they are poor oppressed working class people, as either they have no consciousness of what their God-Emperor stands for despite it being so blindingly obvious, or they, more likely, are perfectly aware of the evil that is Trump and consciously support it.

That's far from the main point of the book, though, And while there are a few annoying "this is how Trump supporters see thing" passages, basically everything else in the book is very good.

In fact, having gotten as far into the book as I have by now, I've come to think that it's the best one-book explanation of US politics in the recent past and present I've ever seen.

[alice]

I think the motivation was something like the union of the following:

- increased numbers of people in higher education
- increased necessity for higher education qualifications to get employment
- increased cost of higher education

= $$$

[Raphael]

I think the motivation was something like the union of the following:

- increased numbers of people in higher education
- increased necessity for higher education qualifications to get employment
- increased cost of higher education

= $$$

Looks like that from today's perspective, but historically, the individual parts seem to have arrived one by one, and gradually, and in the early stages of the process - 1944 to roughly the 1970s - there weren't that many $$$ to be made.

Now that I'm almost through, my biggest problem with the book might be that it blames a cultural development that's happening in a number of countries - right-wing populist, or, if you prefer, "populist" anti-intellectualism, on an apparently rather US specific economic development of ever-more expensive higher education.

[zompist]

I haven't read the book, but I did read this very interesting review. A few thoughts...

61% of Americans attend at least some college; 45% get at least a two-year degree. I'm wary if this percentage of people is depicted as "wealthy" or "elite".

Credentialism is a thing, but I'd love to see statistics on it. How many jobs are actually locked behind unnecessary credential checks? This seems like an issue blue states could address with legislation.

Tuition is obviously a major problem here. As so often, Americans just don't seem to realize or care that alternatives are possible, like making at least undergrad education free. I suspect there are a lot of ratchet effects here: there is rarely any downside, to the institution, for raising tuition. Does Bunch explain where all the money is going? To my knowledge, it's not going to the teachers.

The review makes clear that there's been a decades-long attack on college by the right. That too makes me wary of claims that too many people go to college; that's a great smokescreen for people not wanting nonwhite people to go to college, or wanting to eliminate programs that make students think too much.

National service? Cool, do it, but that is essentially a big new redistribution program, so the right will probably hate it or keep it too small to work.

To be cynical, two-year colleges seem to me to be a bandaid on poor high-schools, and those exist because the right has carried on a decades-long attack on good schooling for poor people. Note that Republicans make sure their kids' schools get money. Would we even need 2-year degrees if the primary/secondary schools were doing a good job for everyone?

The loss of manufacturing jobs is not due to anything colleges did. And they're very likely not coming back. China is building cars with robots— possibly creating problems for its own youth— and while they're doing that, we're not going to be able to recreate 1950s Detroit. It'd be nice if CEOs were not laser-focused on eliminating expensive labor and on increasing their own pay, but again, it's not colleges that created plutocracy.

Republican politiicans know that they can't enact plutocratic policies with just the votes of the rich. So they have to invent the culture wars. Of course Democrats should fight for the working class and the poor. But that should be done by improving their lives, not by repeating Republican talking points.
(Not saying Bunch is doing so, though from your mention of pickup trucks I'd worry that he is.)

[malloc]

The review makes clear that there's been a decades-long attack on college by the right. That too makes me wary of claims that too many people go to college; that's a great smokescreen for people not wanting nonwhite people to go to college, or wanting to eliminate programs that make students think too much.

Quite. There are benefits to college education aside from getting a job, for both the individual and society. It exposes us to new ideas and people outside our narrow demographic, teaching tolerance and critical thinking. Those contribute greatly to the cause of left wing politics of course, but they're also practically beneficial in a diverse society facing ever-changing circumstances.

[Raphael]

For the record, I wrote all my previous posts here about that book before I had gotten to the last chapters, where he moves from diagnosis to prescription. I find him generally more convincing on diagnosis than on prescription, though he says some interesting things on prescription, too.

Anyway, here are two extended quotes from the book that I quite like:

From Chapter 4 - Yuppies, Dittoheads, and a “Big Sort”: College and the Culture Wars

Although the onslaught against the “PC culture” on campus was mostly coming from the right flank, some people associated with the 1960s rise of the New Left were dismayed that the Democratic Party now seemed dominated by identity politics. The most vocal such critic was Todd Gitlin, a communications professor and author who’d served as president of the national SDS in the period right after Tom Hayden had published the Port Huron Statement. In a 1995 book titled The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars, Gitlin bemoans the fact that late-twentieth-century leftists “were marching on the English Department while the Right took the White House.”

From the section Gap Year: The Quad: The Four People You Meet in Today’s America, between Chapters 5 and 6:

I came to see these groups as defined not only by what they had but by what they felt they had lost, in a nation of broken promises. And in the spirit of the college campuses that played a role in shaping it, I came to call these groups The Quad.

Here’s how they break down:

The Left Perplexed are the generations advantaged by the changes in American society in the quarter century after the end of World War II. Millions reaped the benefits of expanding lower-cost college options. But as a voting bloc, this cohort also includes older, home-owning people of color and women, as folks who benefited—albeit in wildly uneven ways—from the wider ethos of new opportunity that accompanied the postwar college boom. Consumed with protecting their gains in both economic and social status, baby boomers and to some degree Gen Xers have been left bewildered both by the resentments of the non-college-educated Trump voters in what was once brushed off as “flyover country,” but also to some extent by the radicalism of today’s rising youth, as many embrace socialism.

The Left Broke are, for the most part, the children of the Left Perplexed. They were raised with the idea that going to the right college was a defining moral value for their family and for themselves—even when confronted with the high hurdles of SAT-and-essay pressure and astronomical tuition and fees that should have challenged all of their fundamental assumptions. For those who earned their degree and even for some who fell short, college was a formative political experience, because it would meld the identity politics that dominated on campus with the debt crisis that so many faced after graduation. The new ideas and new reality for America’s under-forty college-educateds would lead to the rise of a New New Left that would march in the streets for racial justice, strike for debt cancellation, and become highly receptive to the democratic socialism of leaders like Senator Bernie Sanders—often perplexing their parents, who hewed to more traditional liberalism.

The Left Behind are the baby boomers and Gen Xers who were raised in a bygone world in which they could go directly from high school to a job that provided a middle-class lifestyle. For the Left Behind, it was during their lifetime that America’s growing numbers of college grads came to be perceived as a threat to their standing—primarily in the job market, as their assembly-line regime was toppled by “the knowledge economy,” but also from their identity politics against entrenched racism and sexism in Middle America. In Donald Trump, these older, blue-collar voters found a champion—not so much because he embraced their concerns, but because he tormented their enemies in the professional and managerial classes.

The Left Out are the forgotten young people born into shrinking factory towns, or isolated communities—or urban poverty—who were never on a college track and then, adding insult to social injury, were judged as lacking merit, or worth, for not getting their degree. These Left Out young people are increasingly atomized—living online, disconnected from any kind of community fabric. They had little job prospects beyond the massive new warehouses that lined the interstates, and the dim neon worlds of fast food and retail. Increasingly, they were lowering the nation’s life expectancy thanks to booze, or opioids, or suicide.

[Ares Land]

The review makes clear that there's been a decades-long attack on college by the right. That too makes me wary of claims that too many people go to college; that's a great smokescreen for people not wanting nonwhite people to go to college, or wanting to eliminate programs that make students think too much.

Ah, that neatly summarizes the caveats I've had for a long time and never really managed to articulate properly.

Although as a European, the elephant in the room is the insane tuition fees, something that never seems to be adressed properly in US politics.

[Travis B.]

The problem with the rise of "PC culture" after the 1960's was really that it sought justice for the few rather than justice for all and naturally provoked reaction amongst those deemed not oppressed enough, not being able to be described by enough of the right adjectives or being described by too many of the wrong ones.

Are you a straight cisgendered White man? Then you are a privileged piece of shit, even if you have no idea of what kind of privilege one could have (e.g. you grew up with few opportunities).

Are you a straight cisgendered Black man? Then you are merely one category away from being a privileged piece of shit, the fact that you were born into one of the sections of American society with the lowest life expectancies and highest incarceration rates is irrelevant. (Yes, I have seen feminists argue this in earnest.)

If we want people to support us, we must not tell people that they are pieces of shit for being born into the wrong categories. Don't want people to run into the arms of the 'manosphere'? Then don't tell them that they are bad people for being born into the wrong half of humanity.

[rotting bones]

The problem with the rise of "PC culture" after the 1960's was really that it sought justice for the few rather than justice for all and naturally provoked reaction amongst those deemed not oppressed enough, not being able to be described by enough of the right adjectives or being described by too many of the wrong ones.

Are you a straight cisgendered White man? Then you are a privileged piece of shit, even if you have no idea of what kind of privilege one could have (e.g. you grew up with few opportunities).

Are you a straight cisgendered Black man? Then you are merely one category away from being a privileged piece of shit, the fact that you were born into one of the sections of American society with the lowest life expectancies and highest incarceration rates is irrelevant. (Yes, I have seen feminists argue this in earnest.)

If we want people to support us, we must not tell people that they are pieces of shit for being born into the wrong categories. Don't want people to run into the arms of the 'manosphere'? Then don't tell them that they are bad people for being born into the wrong half of humanity.

I also oppose PC culture. To play the devil's advocate, some people, including some cishet men, genuinely feel that men being men are pieces of shit because they were bullied for not being manly enough. The alternative was some oppressed people (including geeks back in the day) being unable to express how they genuinely feel. Nowadays, this is expressed as "toxic masculinity" instead of "kill all men".

[Raphael]

I hate to do this, but I have to come down on the side of bothsidism on this matter.

Yes, the effect Travis describes is real. Yes, telling people "You've sucked ever since you were born, and you have an obligation to support us!" is both ethically repulsive and politically suicidal.

But, well, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and all the various -isms and -phobias are fucking real, too, and they need to be fought against, and that means that they need to be talked about. And it's really very, very convenient for cis straight men to dismiss that stuff as distractions from the things that really matter.

Besides, you can't really have much insight into the current right-wing without trying to analyze gender and race dynamics (NSFW though non-explicit):

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-int ... verything/

[Ares Land]

Are the side effects of PC culture really that bad in the US?
I don't think I've ever suffered any kind of prejudice whatsoever for being a straight cis white male.
At worst some activists I'll never even meet say bad things about categories I notionally belong too.

[rotting bones]

Are the side effects of PC culture really that bad in the US?
I don't think I've ever suffered any kind of prejudice whatsoever for being a straight cis white male.
At worst some activists I'll never even meet say bad things about categories I notionally belong too.

The bad effects are all imagined by terminally online people.