EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

i want to know who the some posters are who are embodying the caricature of the self-involved american and british

The point is not merely ‘you have it good in the West’, it’s that populist movements describing the West as something that is out of touch with reality is bad. The right wing does it ‘we are becoming the third world’ and some on the left does it too.

Yeah, this to me is a fundamental misunderstanding of what people itt are doing when they characterise the US as dystopian. It's not about a lack of awareness of how bad things are elsewhere (Americans who don't care about what goes on in the rest of the world tend to think the US is BETTER off than it is, not worse); it's pushback against the official mainstream narrative (not just "republican", this is a bipartisan consensus) that America is The Greatest Country In The World and obviously the best place to live in the world. It's holding a mirror to the country's propaganda and looking just how far sgort it falls.

Additionally, it certainly rankles with me for you to take offense in the name of ppl from countries that are worse off when, as I said previously, immigrants from those countries who come to places like the US and the UK are amongst the ppl most likely to face the worst of what those countries have to offer dystopiawise, in terms of state surveillance, inequality, racism, etc.

Never said that everyone who disagreed with me was incurious

No, you just casually ignored ever post that you couldn't twist into that narrative :)

And c’mon, the percentage of anglo-saxons people on this board is what? 65%?

If you want to switch that to native English speakers, I'm not at all arguing that this isn't the main demographic of ILX. What I am arguing against is that your disagreements with ILX consensus are down to that factor - I mean even my father in law enjoys a good guillotine reference, and he voted Macron!

And I dunno harbl you kept saying that tweet wasn’t important even though it was important to me, you scoff at the fact that I might think a cultural barrier exist instead of listening and trying to make things better. You keep saying you understood my point and yet there’s no mention on how first world privilege and rethoric might seem really off to many people, without acknowleging my expressions that yes, some stuff in the US is quite terrible. Maybe if you don’t quite get what to make of it is because you’ve come to your conclusions without reading and can’t seem to understand that someone who don’t agree with you doesn’t neccessarily come from a place of bad faith to piss you off.

I should note that I live in one of the world's worst countries, Florida.

And I dunno harbl you kept saying that tweet wasn’t important even though it was important to me, you scoff at the fact that I might think a cultural barrier exist instead of listening and trying to make things better. You keep saying you understood my point and yet there’s no mention on how first world privilege and rethoric might seem really off to many people, without acknowleging my expressions that yes, some stuff in the US is quite terrible. Maybe if you don’t quite get what to make of it is because you’ve come to your conclusions without reading and can’t seem to understand that someone who don’t agree with you doesn’t neccessarily come from a place of bad faith to piss you off.

since i don't want to be accused of being mad online, i'll respond. i've read what you said. it was not an important tweet. it was disingenuous of matt yglesias to use it as a jumping off point for a dunk, especially when the response is to post data that must be well known to the original poster of the tweet, as it is to us here. i also don't value his comments on left-wing strategy, not least because the tweet was not a part of any strategy. the tweet only became important here because it's a thread about how much matty sucks and is frustrating.

i reject the notion that a general comment on the state of the u.s. is exhibiting "first world privilege" without some other context. it is not "first world privileged" to comment on things that are bad here. these conditions would be bad for all humans even if they are worse elsewhere, and as daniel pointed out, often negatively affect people who have come here from other countries to have a better life. we've also talked about things that are uniquely dire here such as high incarceration and school shootings. discussing that and other problems does not "insult" people in other countries who are doing poorly. i am frustrated because you have persisted in trying to force people to address things primarily in relative terms (unless they want to be self-involved), when that is not called for in this particular discussion.

i also have noticed on this and other threads that when challenged you like to attribute it to others just not knowing the things you know, which is offensive and also not the source of the problem.

Yglesias's West Side Story tweet should get him a suspension lmao.

hmmm that seems like an intelligent and well argued refutation of Betamax’s points but probably more likely they just didn’t penetrate your carapace xp

Fuck me, the whine off this
― coombination gazza hut & scampo bell (wins), Saturday, 11 December 2021 16:59 (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Lol first world problems amirite?

what da fuck is anglo saxon

It does seem to me that VHS has here espoused an entirely unsupportable argument because if you take it on its own terms it invalidates itself

I want to hear what Ezra Klein has to say about all this.

folks i just want to remind you that if u want to achieve maximum civility make me a mod and i will simply ban ppl who do Bad Posts without further explanation thus saving you many evenings of consternation #wellness

hmm might want to take a look at his record as ilh mod when evaluating this campaign promise comrades

banns are self care

wowwwww betrayed by my hoops brethren, a betrael if u will

xp

What even is a hoop

maybe if bad posts were less tolerated on ilh we wouldnt have gotten to this point

What even is a hoop

― plax (ico), Saturday, December 11, 2021 12:41 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://i.imgur.com/Ndl8ody.png

;_; i just want to ban ppl

it is aggravating that people from the US, a nation entirely made up of middle class white people, whine about their first world problems

Oh right, for kids?

thats the one

All I know is before she leaves for school I tell my daughter to put her Anglo socks on

In order to channel the dystopia discussion to the dystopia thread may I present:

The absolute most Covid-cautious people I know are less cautious than like random NYT articles and I’m not really sure how much deeper into the educated/lib bubble you can get than my life.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 12, 2021

I think this is an interesting one for many reasons. First among them is the idea, which must be hard to avoid sinking into in MY's line of work, that the real question is not "what should people be doing about COVID" but "what ARE people doing about COVID, especially the people I know, and is the NYT staff appropriately calibrated to it?" Like a music critic who never writes about whether the music is good or bad, only about whether it's over- or underrated by Pitchfork.

But also: what does Yglesias see as the level of caution espoused by "random NYT articles"? I'm finding it hard to imagine he really knows no one who, e.g., is eating inside in restaurants less than they usually do. So the level of caution he sees as NYT-median is.... more cautious than that? Does he think the NYT line is "no eating in restaurants at all?" "Mask on when you're jogging in Central Park?" What?

There’s a lot of people who think they are more Covid cautious than they are in real life. I’m thinking people who won’t let vaccinated family members in their homes but go to the supermarket regularly. Stuff like that.

— Helaine Olen (@helaineolen) December 12, 2021

could it be that one of these is optional and involves long-term direct exposure and the other... is a requirement to survive?

"a lot of people." how old are the family members? what was the person's stated reasoning? very mysterious.

look helaine's got it covered okay

I don't know who Helaine Olen is, is she part of the Extended Yglesias Universe?

WaPo opinion columnist

Centrist dweebs starting to circle toward the May 2020 MAGA argument of "if you're so concerned with COVID why don't you quit your job and stay home forever SO I CAN GO OUT AND LIVE MAH LIFE"

I had to read the Yglesias tweet several times. One of my buddies posted it in our WhatsApp thread a couple hours ago. He offered the following interpretation: even among liberal circles the performative standard of care talked about in outlets like the NYT doesn’t align with the actual behavior of the community. In NY at least even in the most liberal pockets like the West Village less and less people are wearing masks, people are having parties, going to bars, concerts because you can’t do anything without being vaxxed in NY.

Which made the most sense to me. I still don't get the point of posting such a thing, though.

there's a lot of people who think they are more washing-your-hands-after-using-the-bathroom cautious than they are in real life

And I'm not willing to go to their barbecues. If I want poop on my burgers I'll just go to

It seems plausible that Matty’s irl friendship circle is composed of liberal/educated ppl who are giant idiots and narcissists

the performative standard of care talked about in outlets like the NYT doesn’t align with the actual behavior of the community.

But that's what I don't get. I read the New York Times every day. Its coverage takes for granted that people are going to restaurants, having Thanksgiving and Christmas with family, etc, and talks about how to do that in a way that doesn't create unneeded extra risk of accelerating COVID spread. Which seems to me like... exactly in keeping with what the people in Matt's SES/political tranche are doing, to the extent that it's the same as the people in my own etc etc? I feel like he's reading some shadow version of the New York Times that advocates individual commitments to Austria-style lockdown.

Like maybe he's saying he doesn't know anybody who's taken a rapid test? That's a thing people certainly sometimes do in my circles when they have symptoms they're concerned might be COVID, maybe it's unknown in DC, I dunno.

It seems plausible that Matty’s irl friendship circle is composed of liberal/educated ppl who are giant idiots and narcissists

I have vague memories of pictures of him and Megan McArdle hangin' out at the gun range, like people do.

cmon do we really think matt has friends or even knows people

I'm sure he found his profile on OKCUPID and started to date himself.

It seems plausible that Matty’s irl friendship circle is composed of liberal/educated ppl who are giant idiots and narcissists

― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Sunday, December 12, 2021 6:58 PM (yesterday)

lol otm. Also, I've found it pretty easy to hang out with more "educated" people than Matt Y. Not a cheap own, I just know a bunch of academics

I live in Montreal and just visited Chicago and Milwaukee. The level of local variation in Covid caution can't be exaggerated, even just between the two US cities

what are the particularities of that

Montreal: masks everywhere, you can't ride public transit without one, so people are often wearing them outside too, plus it's winter now; official vax proof required to enter bars/restaurants; masks required in stores; pretty high vaccination rate in Quebec; however, cases are super spiking right now anyway

Chicago: lots of masks outside due to an outdoor mask requirement (now lifted I think, but people stuck with it, honestly it was a little weird seeing solo people walking around at night masked); no official vax proof required anywhere I went; rampant dick-nosing in ORD, though that's obvs not "local"; crazy high prices for a quick-ish PCR test

Milwaukee: no vax mentions whatsoever; no mask mandate anywhere; the hotel we stayed at had a sign in front when we checked in asking unvaccinated people to wear a mask, it had been taken down the next day; majority of restaurant staff I saw when getting takeout were unmasked; reasonable prices for a quick-ish PCR test (free); mix of masked/unmasked at the art openings we went too (my partner was installing a show)

pretty subjective of course, and in Chicago I stayed with family, in Milwaukee a downtown hotel, so not an equal comparison probably

interesting thanks

I've been pretty locked down in MTL, so staying in a hotel was something of a culture shock: locals coming to a *hotel bar* to listen to bad music, company holiday parties in the ballroom, sales conferences in interior, windowless rooms, unmasked coworkers packing the elevator, etc.

I was also on edge the whole time because I couldn't reenter Canada if I tested positive. So even if I got a not-bad case of Covid, my life would have been seriously disrupted

just come to vermont well take you over on a quad

I could quarantine in Vermont. When I stayed in White River Junction a few years ago, the elderly hippie woman selling me coffee asked me where I was from and unhesitatingly launched into an anti-trump tirade as soon as I said Canada