Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

I'm very proud of ILX for once again having what was turning into an edifying, interesting and one might even say enlightening conversation turned into a fucking Bill Maher panel by an obvious troll sock. Jesus fucking Christ you people.

Is Breitbart writing for the working class? I honestly don't know but I do feel like there's a pretty bad impulse rn to assume that because people voted Trump in, that means they're all in for everything that's glommed on to him - be it Milo or Pepe or GamerGate or whatever.

the anthropological studies of "angry working class whites" are totally dehumanizing, as are all the people saying it's "hard" for them to "sympathize" with the plight of Trump voters. it's not so different than the war on black people the GOP has been waging for decades with the approval and cooperation of the Democratic party. this regime, too, was bolstered by damaging stereotypes about black criminality, reinforced in the media in shows like COPS and news stories about the "knockout game" and other urban legends. a million examples. maybe the worst was donald trump's advertisement advocating for the death penalty for black teenagers.

use your head, peacock. the elite classes in American society find excuses not to care about communities they have no use for. this isn't about the "white" working class -- it's about more white people joining the ranks of the disdained as their skills don't meet the needs of the labor market. they are not "worse off" than minorities. they are however finding themselves in a similar predicament, that is, they're becoming the "other." they need to make common cause with the working people of other ethnic groups to fight for an economy that works for everybody.

Yeah, this argument about media makes no sense to me at all. Who do you seriously think most mainstream American media caters to?

<10% of the population obviously, that's how they make money, duh

Also, can we restrict arguments about the Cathedral to the alt-right thread or something?

It might be interesting to dissect this supposed elite disdain for the "white working class" (NB, I think this is all at least 80% confirmation bias by self-appointed members of said WWC and their champions, who of course do exactly the same shit they accuse "effete lefties" of doing wrt every other minority they don't belong to):

1. true blue preppies and rich folks, who have only encountered the WWC in service contexts and in occasional interactions with "townies"
2. upwardly mobile former members of the WWC who are intimately familiar with their ways and have worked very hard to differentiate themselves
3. Non-W working class, who are presumably extremely intimate with being hated by WWC members but probably don't know or care why that is

I think know #1 is probably where the NYT sympathy stories and anthropology-in-the-hope-of-absolution crap comes from.
Meanwhile those of us in #2 read those pieces about Trump voters and reflexively eye-puke fire-blood because OH FUCK YOU UNCLE FRANK, YOU DUMB HATEFUL SHIT
I can't speak for #3 but I suspect most of its membership looks at all of the above and thinks we're all fucking crazy.

btw, why should we suppose the "white working class" has any different interests than the "working class" generally, and if they do have different interests, why would it be a good thing to cater to those particular interests, rather than trying to address the interests of the "working class" generally without reference to color?

Indeed why should they? But then perhaps it's the very language of the elite that creates that division?

the elite classes in American society find excuses not to care about communities they have no use for.

I agree that the elite find excuses to disdain the non-elite. This is the fundamental problem we wrestle with when trying to structure a society that improves on Democracy.

i would like to hear an example of a hypothetically non-existent "take" in sports media catering to the sensibility of the white working class

See, Colin Kaepernick. Though Trent Dilfer did sort of tepidly dip his toe in there.

This is the dumbest (non-Trump quote) thing I have read in a long time and that's saying a lot

I've noticed that you sputter with anger quite often, but I've never actually seen you ever refute anything. Are you sure you're as smart as you think you are?

Peacock and Daniel_Rf are also both raccoon tanuki im pretty sure

Indeed why should they? But then perhaps it's the very language of the elite that creates that division?

yeah, especially the language of the right wing elites, especially the republicans, who at least since nixon have leveraged the politics of backlash to support a sadistic pro-corporate agenda

Can we get some more dudes in here who capitalize Democracy

2. upwardly mobile former members of the WWC who are intimately familiar with their ways and have worked very hard to differentiate themselves

This illustrates exactly what I'm talking about with the white striving classes. Congrats! You are one of "the good ones" that hates your own people. Nothing pathological there.

What kind of solace does it provide you to believe that I'm raccoon tanuki?

I couldn't possibly care less who you are, question mark man

Treeship, I agree with much of what you say with respect to the elite dividing the working classes against each other. But I would suggest that corporate-minded "liberals" accomplish much the same division, even with their "good intentions." I don't want to re-litigate the Democratic primaries though.

then there is no place for you on ilx

Peacock, he makes you think. Of course, he doesn't oblige himself to directly address any point you make in response to his questions, but he asks such deep questions that one feels one must answer even if you are talking to the equivalent of a weight and fortune machine.

btw, did this Peacock person ever appear anywhere on ilx before orientalmammal quickly appeared and then as magically disappeared?

haha silby I think this racoon guy is the pits and disagree with 100% of what he's said on this thread at least but as a super longtime lurker who's just spontaneously decided to post again I guess I can see how my timing might be suspicious.

yeah, but you act and talk like someone who wants to engage, not someone who wants to provoke.

You are one of "the good ones" that hates your own people.

ok. that's straying into alt-right shit-posting territory. fp'd you for that.

I would suggest that corporate-minded "liberals" accomplish much the same division, even with their "good intentions."

liberals have been along for the ride for decades but it is right wing ideology that blames people for their failure to adapt to the global market. it is conservatives who think that the mass poverty in our country is due to a failure on the part of the poor, not society in general. no liberal would have written these lines, from kevin williamson of the national review:

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America.... The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible.

liberals buy into versions of this but they picked it up from the right. the plight of white america has nothing do with some liberal antipathy toward white people, it has to do with a general failure, on the part of society, to take working class concerns seriously. the people who voted for trump because they thought he'd re-open the coal mine need to stop thinking of themselves as white people and start thinking of themselves as people in general -- people whose interests are at odds with those of the ruling class. people whose interests are shared by many minority groups who disproportionally find themselves in a similar economic predicament.

These are the optics being debated upthread?

https://twitter.com/almostjingo/status/827009436749164544
https://twitter.com/janeygak/status/826998516144697344
https://twitter.com/hunterswogg/status/827018838755667968

― Peacock, Friday, 3 February 2017 03:05 (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did peacock register just to post that

― global tetrahedron, Friday, 3 February 2017 03:42 (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Aimless, I'm sorry I didn't address you more directly, but I never asserted that the interests of the White working class diverged from the interests of POC working class. I only made the distinction in order to make the distinction with the white striving classes and the noted divergence in sensibilities. And I only refer to the white striving classes to the extent they differ at all from the striving classes in general. Non-elite poc and WWC have long had to demonstrate that they fit in with the sensibilities of the ruling classes in order to move up the ladder. Treeship makes good points about the elite trying to justify their positions in society, and having "bien pensant" opinions now appears to be a part of that, down to what are in fact numerically disputed opinions concerning white privilege and intersectional jargon.

Can you tell what it is yit

ok. that's straying into alt-right shit-posting territory. fp'd you for that.

How so? My entire contention is that in a stunning historical reversal it is in fact the burden of striving whites to demonstrate appropriate attitudes. I've been descriptive not prescriptive on this point.

How so?

The idea that, by exercising one's freedom to think and associate as one pleases, you must "hate your own people" is both cringeworthy and un-American in the most basic sense. And the phrase "your own people" in regard to whites prances so close to closet racism that it goes over the line.

Implicating the Freedom of Association is reading something that isn't anywhere in the those comments. You read more into it than what was there frankly. "Uncle Frank" is your own people, no?

But yeah, if you say "fuck you uncle Frank you racist!" and hate him and the people you grew up with for not spouting intersectional jargon, then you get a cookie. My whole point.

if you say "fuck you uncle Frank you racist!" and hate him and the people you grew up with for not spouting intersectional jargon, then you get a cookie.

So you say. I have never seen any evidence that what you have described here is in touch with any reality I know of. You certainly don't give me any. It seems like an appeal to prejudice, and where the desired prejudice is lacking, the argument is entirely empty.

All in all you seem very muddled.

You assert that white people aren't even on top in the west, but give absolutely no reason why you said this or think this. You keep making distinctions about white working class and white striving classes. You nod at class-based analysis of privilege, yet, when you speak of elites you always elide the white qualifier.

You seem to have the idea that if the NYT treats NASCAR afficianados as foreign to their readers, this somehow is cause for deep resentment, but if Breitbart treats NYT readers as ignoramuses, then this is OK, because Breibart is serving the needs of their audience.

All I can make out from you is that when you speak plainly, your ideas are not consistent and when you are challenged on your gratuitous focus on whiteness as a factor in group identity, your sentences become unreadable and jargony.

iow, you think you are thought-provoking, but you are just provoking and when you aren't you are pointless, afaics.

pewdiepie

So you say. I have never seen any evidence that what you have described here is in touch with any reality I know of.

Come on. You don't know people who make a show of "cutting off" their uneducated relatives due to political differences?

Well, I would disagree with just about every single contention you make in that post. But perhaps it is indeed a failure on my part to communicate more clearly. I guess I've become somewhat pessimistic about this conversation continuing productively. I feel like I've said what I had to say as clearly as I can say it. I wish you well though.

xp not that they are wrong to do that, but still, there is something weird about those folks who congratulate themselves about being less ignorant than people with fewer educational opportunities. The paradigm of this hard bigotry of high expectations held in bad faith is Borat -- Cambridge educated millionaire traverses America to "expose" the ignorance of hicks.

You don't know people who make a show of "cutting off" their uneducated relatives due to political differences?

Nope. Nobody making a show of it. ime, when it's done, it's usually done very gradually and very quietly. Even sadly.

And as I recall, the formulation I was asked to accept was: "people who say "fuck you uncle Frank you racist!" and hate him and the people they grew up with for not spouting intersectional jargon get a cookie."

That formulation was not only loaded with prejudicial characterizations, it proposed that this hatred was purposely and materially rewarded. In my reality, employers do not give two shits whether you hate your Uncle Frank, or if you exchange K-Bar knives at Christmas. They don't ask and they don't care. I have no fucking idea who is giving people "cookies" for hating their relatives.

Perhaps it's ill-advised to re-engage, but do you always wander around in such a heavy layer of protective obtusity?

"Fuck you uncle Frank" came directly from the Tombot post you doddering old twat.

I think Aimless's point still stands. You need to show that people who reject their WWC relatives are being rewarded for it.

I've become somewhat pessimistic about this conversation continuing productively.

In order to continue productively, it would have to have been productive at some point. It never was.

You may be surprised to know I spent nearly a decade mired deeply in a series of internet forums that were largely inhabited by your type. I already see replicated in you some the weasel habits I saw often in the worst inhabitants of those forums. Incidentally, the worst were never the ones who were honest and straightforward about their opinions, but rather the ones who used rhetoric skillfully, but dishonestly. Trying to pin them down on their dishonesty and evasiveness was impossible. I learned finally that it was a fool's errand and stopped trying.

"Fuck you uncle Frank" came directly from the Tombot post you doddering old twat.

It wasn't the key piece of what you said. I took the part about getting a cookie for hating people for not spouting intersectional garbage was more your point. But I appreciate the thought.

You are an obtuse imbecile, and watching other people try and engage with you seriously makes me sad. There is no requirement whatsoever for anyone to continue to associate and empathize with hateful people whether they are related or used to work together or are the same color or whatever. This is patently obvious. There is no special category for white grievance that elevates it above anybody else's. That is also obvious. You are a troll; how that fact continues to elude people is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A troll, certainly. An imbecile? I'm tempted to say he's a younger, more sophomoric, Dollar Store version of our friend Charlie Krauthammer. But that might be too much of a compliment.

Dollar Store Charlie Krauthammer, imbecile, Raccoon Tanuki sock - life's too short

Krauthammer is an imbecile, trust me.

There is no requirement whatsoever for anyone to continue to associate and empathize with hateful people whether they are related or used to work together or are the same color or whatever.

there is, like... snobbishness against hicks though. at the very expensive, very mediocre college i attended people thought it was a fun game to remark on the "shady" townies, their missing teeth, sometimes their schizophrenic outbursts outside the 7/11. i think sometimes this snobbishness comes in a liberal flavor and has to do with the political beliefs of people who mainline right wing media all day long.

like, this media is pandering to the worst instincts of people who are down and out... ressentiment. but i wish they weren't so down and out. i blame society in general for creating the conditions where tons of people live in poverty or near poverty, whether they live in rural america or urban america. maybe peacock is saying something different, but as someone who has always run with a pretty liberal, very privileged crowd i am wary of liberal self-satisfaction when it comes to how we relate to any demographic we think of as alien

this media = right wing media, obviously. p.s. how much do i have to drink to forget all about american politics for good?

Who even bothers to produce media for the white working class, outside of, say, Breitbart? The New York Times for example discusses these people as if they are a foreign population subject to anthropological study, trying to come up with explanations for why they do what they do (such as vote Trump). Why would these people in turn, read the New York Times and view it as an institution that represents them when their articles and opinion columns are written from a point of view of condescension if not outright disdain? Even in sports media, it is very difficult to find "takes" that cater to the sensibility of these people. My point is not that their views are right substantively, but I find it bizarre that they aren't represented at all!

But yeah, that "white people" are doing it to themselves is the most plausible explanation, but I do enjoy conspiracy theories.

― Peacock, Saturday, March 25, 2017 11:42 AM (one hour ago)

garg, fucked up & lost my response :(

no loss, i'm sure

"Fuck you uncle Frank" came directly from the Tombot post you doddering old twat.

OK, so this is outing himself as RT too - i.e., someone who has had no contact with the White Working Class in his entire (short) life. What is this White Striving Class garbage?

yeah, and i'm just baffled by the suggestion that the american news media, as a whole, fails to speak for & the concerns of the white middle/working class. as far as i can tell, that's the implied audience of like 90% of it. demographic analysis will always feel somewhat condescending to those under the magnifying glass, but the NYT speaks from an equally lofty vantage when discussing black voters, the working poor, immigrants, and even urban white liberals.

outing himself as RT too

Yeah. He posted one word as "orientalmammal" after creating his new Peacock sock, but it was a feeble ruse. His extreme youth is pretty easy to read in his adopting at least four very different 'voices' or writing styles in his small batch of posts as Peacock, as if he has no idea how to just write his thoughts, probably because they aren't thoughts so much as regurgitations of flotsam and jetsam which haven't been sorted into any kind of personal shape.

regardless of his intentions i think the other people in this thread are overcorrecting. this country is extremely classist. minorities who find themselves on lower economic rungs fare the worst -- they are stereotyped as criminals -- but similar things happen with white people with rough manners or whatever. the numbers showed that wealthy white people voted for trump in similar numbers to working class white people and still frank rich says it is the "hillbilly" we shouldn't have sympathy for.

Trying and failing to hide the fact that he's British, which is so obvious to me that it's somewhat disappointing that other people haven't picked up on it.