EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

But that’s why we have to reopen everything now! (or so I’m constantly told)

Suicides aren't up

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/health/coronavirus-suicide-cdc.html

isn't that tweet a promo for Ezra's podcast with James Forman Jr?

i mean, i haven't listened to the episode yet, but this is the full description:

Early estimates find that in 2020, homicides in the United States increased somewhere between 25 percent and nearly 40 percent, the largest spike since 1960, when formal crime statistics began to be collected. And early estimates indicate that the increase has carried over to 2021.

Violent crime is a crisis on two levels. The first, and most direct, is the toll it takes on people and communities. The lost lives, the grieving families, the traumatized children, the families and businesses that flee, leaving inequality and joblessness for those who remain.

It’s also a political crisis: Violent crime can lead to more punitive, authoritarian and often racist policies, with consequences that shape communities decades later. In the 1970s and ’80s, the politics of crime drove the rise of mass incarceration and warrior policing, the political careers of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, the abandonment of inner cities. If these numbers keep rising, they could end any chance we have of building a new approach to safety, and possibly carry Donald Trump — or someone like him — back to the presidency in 2024.

There’s still time. Just this week, Philadelphia’s progressive district attorney, Larry Krasner, handily fended off a primary challenge. But the politics are changing, and fast: Democratic primary voters in New York City say crime and violence is the second most important problem facing the city, behind the coronavirus but ahead of affordable housing and racial injustice. And just a few weeks ago, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, who was facing political challengers attacking her for being soft on crime, announced she would not seek re-election in the fall.

So do liberals have an answer to violent crime? And if so, what is it?

James Forman Jr. is a professor of law at Yale Law School and the author “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America,” for which he received a Pulitzer Prize. In the book, Forman uses Washington, D.C., of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s as a case study to explore the political and psychological dynamics that rising crime produces. We discuss the toll of living amid both street and state violence; what the crime wave of the ’70s and ’80s did to Black politics; the causes of the “Great Crime Decline”; the extent to which policing and prisons actually reduce crime; why we should think of violence the way we think of pandemics; the Black community’s complex views of policing; the three-pronged approach liberals should take to safety; and much more.

Idk maybe try taking some people’s guns away

that podcast description is the dictionary definition of concern trolling

anyway

The subways will be filled with cops due to the political class's conviction, in the face of all evidence, that it is still 1980.
https://t.co/1L6hdj9zRs

— VICE (@VICE) May 18, 2021

In my experience, affluent New Yorkers (off all political colors) ALWAYS think crime is going up. They think it's going up when it's going up, they think it's going up when it's going down.

generally this is true of americans of all wealths

yeah I recall a poll showing exactly that

the richer you are the more obsessed you are with minorities taking your money hmmm

crime is funny in that the more police there are "doing their job" the more crime there is, weird

the memo has gone out

Important thread. On some issues, e.g. homosexuality and marijuana, public opinion has moved to the left and will probably stay there.

Crime is different. If crime surges, public opinion will move back to the right, fast. If progressives don't rein in crime, conservatives will. https://t.co/eTjXXSGCZo

— Will Saletan (@saletan) May 22, 2021

Silicon Valley weirdos are melting down over an alleged “shoplifting epidemic” pic.twitter.com/sk7SMHGceI

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) May 22, 2021

Idk I cringed when I saw the tweet, but I'm going to listen to the podcast later to understand EK's perspective better.

so is this like a US attempt at blue labour or is it just reheated 90s clintonism

why does this prick's racism deserve a more generous reading than trump's or whoever? because he's got graphs?

idk stinks of a manufactured moral panic and I guess I just don’t believe em. guess we’ll see in time.

wonder where wed be if anyone on the dem side ever tried to sell the fact that weve had a huge drop in crime oh well

ratchet effect

Idk I cringed when I saw the tweet, but I'm going to listen to the podcast later to understand EK's perspective better.

― jaymc, Saturday, May 22, 2021 12:36 PM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

thing is regardless of how thoughtful the podcast is doesnt excuse him writing fucked up sensationalistic headlines, pushing literal trump talking points, and further overnight this shit is just all over centrist media/politics, its trash

Matty: not very bright

https://i.imgur.com/G4oqbOi.png
https://i.imgur.com/ar6XZtz.png

loll

omg

p surprising that the first ngrams instance of empathy was around 1950

Someone on Twitter traced its growth to a paper from 1957.

i bet the people looking into this are very empathetic

I retweeted the Yglesias tweet because I think Ngrams are neat, and I even paused before doing so to wonder whether it was case-insensitive, but the screenshot showed the words "Case-insensitive"! But I guess that's something that you have to click, which would've highlighted that little bubble. I deleted the retweet after I saw that exchange. :/

this guy

https://i.imgur.com/K7pMtAh.png

What a guy to call someone “incurious”

Young Matt Yglesias

https://media2.giphy.com/media/3oriff8YpKIxspTvsA/giphy_s.gif

Well saying "nothing is popular at the start" is clearly hyperbole.

Today in "if only someone had tried this brilliant idea before!"

A good way to not have everything held hostage by Joe Manchin would be to nominate politicians who are more conservative than Joe Biden and try to win senate races in North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 4, 2021

lol unbelievable

theres literally never been a time when the democrats havent been doing that

The centrist troops who ran against Cornyn and McConnell got crushed IIRC

yeah centrism as practiced over the last 30 odd years is just not too popular right now

Is there any reason to think Theresa Greenfield isn't more conservative than Joe Biden? Was Cal Cunningham a flaming liberal? Not as far as I know. What exactly is the bad choice he thinks the Democrats are making here?

and the only democratic senator in those five states (Sherrod Brown) is markedly less conservative than Joe Biden

Maybe he wants to clone Strom Thurmond circa 1946 and bring back the Dixiecrats.

Hardcore identity politics surfaced in 2016 as an opportunistic anti-Bernie gambit but most of the Young Left took the critique to heart and woke radicalism was very in vogue in 2020 as Sunrise etc hopped on the defund police bandwagon. Adams now bringing it back full circle.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 20, 2021

totally

Sunrise etc

what percentage of americans have any clue who adams is

Who is he talking about? The Dilbert guy?

nyc mayor candidate

Not going to make an argument that this guy was ever good, but it's pretty clear that twitter has steadily fried his brain over the past 6 years or so

the twitter/substack combo has made brain fry irresistible to a handful of famous bloggers

him greenwald taibbi sully are just out there tweeting "big woke identity politics cancelation today" then writing insane emails and making millions of dollars, easy work

Yeah, was gonna say seems like Vox helped rein in some of his worst/laziest impulses.

i think one thing with the aforementioned substackers is despite building careers around being iconoclasts they really all are ultimately elitists and mass movements like blm really just offend their sensibilities

its amazing that matty tries to categorize defund the police as identity politics, its name is literally a policy proposal lol

oh so Iglesias has become one of those people who uses woke ironically/unironically, scare quotes/no scare quotes