I find the comment about Better Call Saul rather puzzling. The entire prequel gave us no less than 5 different major story lines of Saul’s progressive corruption. We know what he did when Kim left, basically all the same shit he was getting away with as a con artist, followed by shady lawyer fighting for the little guy and then finally a drug lawyer…then he lost his last gravitational pull toward morality. I’m not sure there was much more to say about the dirty layer gig. And we already saw him as WW’s personal lawyer..
The ending is a bigger puzzler than the decision to stop going through his descent into total venality..I’ll avoid spoilers but the whole thing seemed more improbable than WW pulling a combined A-Team/Macguyver as a swan song.
But as MY already mentioned, it’s very hard to stick the landing on a series..
The Sam Harris/Trigonometry thing is interesting. Sam argues that Trump was a special kind of threat to our democracy and a few institutions getting together and tipping the scales was the right thing to do.
Many who are on Sam’s side of the woke debate (like the Trig guys) take issue with this and say it’s unfair and unDemocratic. I agree the press is often unfair to conservatives. Sam says, for him, this is not ideological. It’s about the personality cult of Trumpism and it’s threat to Democracy. Everyone here is, from their perspective, on the side of Democracy.
Many media (Rising for example) misrepresented what Sam said and went so far as to say he even advocated for illegal activities. He didn’t and specifically said he didn’t. I don’t think anyone did anything illegal by not reporting on Biden’s laptop. Partisan sure.
I think it’s interesting how people like the Trig guys can say they are on the side of Democracy and truth and carry water for Trump who clearly doesn’t care about either. This is Trumps biggest political advantage. He creates an ecosystem where everyone knows he is a shitbag and accept it. But if his adversaries step out a line a little bit then it’s made into a big deal. Double standards to his advantage.
I don’t think Sam advocated for the media to do anything that Fox News doesn’t do every day. It is a tough one and he said it is.
Research funding: It is true that overhead charges are high and growing, but that does not mean that "... about a third of all grant money doesn't go toward scientific research."
(*) Universities do actually incur very substantial overhead costs. You could argue that they are not 58%, but they are not zero, or anywhere close to it. To avoid having to list the costs, I will simply ask you to look at how other countries handle this. The US rates are simply not that different from those in many European countries with much more streamlined systems.
(*) Whatever the "fair" percentage is, you need to allow universities some profit margin. This incentivizes administrators to support successful research, and sustains a high level of competitiveness in the system. Remember that the vast majority of proposals are not funded.
(*) The fact that there is a profit margin gives the feds leverage to steer the direction of university research. For instance, some disciplines shrink (e.g. aerospace) and some grow (e.g. AI, biotech), and the US government wants universities to be attentive to its preferences.
(*) An important reason that overhead keeps going up is that the government keeps ratcheting up the cost of "compliance" with federal rules and laws - Title IX, ADA, research on human subjects, etc. The feds do not want to dial this back, and with that being the case, somebody needs to pay for it.
Having said all that, I do think there is a strong case for trying to stop the upwards creep. I would welcome a freeze or a ceiling, but I would want to federal government to compensate for this by doing a very serious overhaul of the regulatory system. This stuff is out of control, in a way that differentiates the US from our competitors. Universities should not be forced to hire legions of lawyers and compliance officers.
"instead of trying to pick “the best” proposals, set some kind of bar for “good enough” and then use a lottery to decide which “good enough” proposals get the money."
except for the lottery part, this is already done, and the bar is absurdly low. This is so the funding agencies can claim that only a small [percentage of "approvable" proposals get funded so they can get more funding. Competition to be "the best" is an obvious way to raise the bar on what gets funded.
I have to disagree on the diet front. Sure, people have a very generic idea of what a healthy lifestyle would look like. But a major part of the problem is how you get to a sustainable situation that doesn't require constant exertion of discipline not possessed by 90% of the public. And people are doing tons of stuff that they think of as 'healthy', which isn't really helping. One big part of the problem is just that the science here is really hard because it's not just about calories in/out - you also have to account for the biological feedback loops that create urges. But also there has been just a lot of bad advice out there for a long time.
I think MY’s answer on the establishment clause seriously misses the mark. To participate in Christian school prayer can go directly against the religious teachings of some minority students. This means they would be forced to seek an exemption, which, even if granted, socially isolates them from their peers. This kind of visible marking out of said minority students as different, potentially from a very young age, can’t be simply dismissed as “not a big deal”. Alternatively , those minority students might be tempted to go against their own religious doctrines in order to fit in. A third option is that they will have to withdraw from public school altogether. None of this is in line with pluralism or the logic of the first amendment as understood for decades. It’s a very sad day for America.
Kennedy v. Bremerton is still nowhere near a blanket permission for school prayer--the media overhyped it a lot because of the Dobbs background, it wasn't exceptional versus the mine run of other recent SCOTUS religious liberty cases
It’s a step in that direction. We’re debating the principle itself. Why we need the establishment clause anyway and what is the danger in its erosion of any with regards to public schools. I’m aware that we have reached rock bottom of the slippery slope yet, and I hope we never will, but I don’t think it’s crazy to think we may get closer and closer with the composition of this court and the precedents being set in recent years.
In principle I agree fully, but in practice I thought his answer was pretty accurate. I went to elementary school in a small town and I and a couple of Jehovah's Witness kids were the only ones who didn't participate in classroom Christmas, Easter, etc, activities. It was no big deal, and even gave us a bit of superiority over the other kids because they all thought Santa was real, whereas we knew they were just gullible. But don't mistake what I'm saying as support for prayers and other religious observations in public school.
You may have taken it that way, others won’t. We also don’t know how the majority group took it when considering you. I think we’ll agree that the fact that some come out fine (even better off!) with this kind of structural ostracizing hardly justifies it.
"Because assholes have lots of ways of making you feel uncomfortable regardless of the rules, and kind people can make everyone feel included, even if there are crucifixes on the wall."
That’s hardly the point though. The question is to whom does the public sphere belong? Is this a Christian nation in which everyone else can just hope to do ok because the majority won’t be assholes towards them, or is this a secular nation in which everyone is on an equal footing and people may or may not be assholes individually but the state itself does not take sides?
Strong upvote. In today's world it gets missed a lot that most of the plaintiffs from the great separation of church and state cases from the mid-20th century were not atheists, but devout practitioners of minority religions. If schools are insistent in bringing back Christian rituals of the most common variant, this shit will hit the fan once again.
(1) "Assholes have lots of ways of making you feel uncomfortable regardless of the rules, and kind people can make everyone feel included, even if there are crucifixes on the wall."
(2) The modern Republican party: "a big, pluralistic tent of charlatans and scammers."
"I don’t quite know how else to say this but they played to win. They ran an ad of a white male doctor talking about his need to be able to use his best medical judgment, rather than wringing their hands over whether that was a patronizing and paternalistic message. They tried to appeal to people who are queasy or uncertain about abortion by invoking libertarian and anti-government tropes. A lot of the time, progressives only want to run with messages that they feel good about, rather than messages that are calibrated to win."
Good example for discussing "Stancil-Beutler Thought" which we were talking about yesterday. I think what SBT would say is that the only reason why paternalistic messages and anti-government tropes work in the first place is that establishment liberals are unwilling to directly challenge those messages and tropes, to meet them head-on, fight fire with fire (choose your own idiom). Hiding in the safety of conservative values may get you a few wins in the very short term, but in the big picture it causes the entire playing field to be tilted even more toward the right. So what Matt describes as "playing to win" is, to them sort of like the Charlotte Hornets just trying to do enough to make the NBA playoffs every year without any plan to win a title. If you truly want to "play to win," you need to go for it all. You should push all your chips in, and make it a win-or-die objective to persuade the electorate to adopt (or to newly recognize that it already shares) *your* values.
I am not saying that Mr. Stancil or Mr. Beutler have said these things about Kansas post-vote. That would be unwise since Kansas was a great victory and you have to pick your battles. Instead, I think what they've done is dispute the factual premise that Kansas was won with conservative-friendly messaging.
"I don’t think that’s just because the reporters are bad or the media is bad, it’s genuinely what people mostly want."
I think that constitutes saying that the reporters are bad and the media is bad. Good media deliberately refuses to give people what they want because it doesn't give people an effective understanding of the world.
Of course, they would lose in a free market to media that gives people what they want, but the media and reporters should be a profession that refuses collectively to give people what they want - in the same way that doctors will give you lifestyle advice you don't want to follow instead of just saying you can eat what you like and giving you a pill to compensate for the damage your diet and lack of exercise are doing; in the same way that lawyers tell you what to do rather than telling you they will win the case and you can do what you like (which is what most people want from their lawyer).
I used to be of the "well, in a democracy people get the government they deserve" school of thought. But I've grown to feel that's not tenable. Reasonably enlightened political leadership matters. Or, at least, reasonably non-corrupt and non-stupid leadership matters. Too many voters simply don't follow policy enough to expect popular "wisdom" to be a dependable provider of decent governance.
Also, Matt frequently cites James Fallows’ “Breaking the News,” which early on argues that actually people DO want substantive policy discussion and that not getting it is why they hate the media. I guess it could be a revealed preference thing but I would still be curious as to whether he thinks Fallows is right.
One of the problems with the metrics that the media uses is that they treat all clicks the same, so enough clickbait to get people to skim is enough, even though the result is that they hate the media that presents it to them.
Indeed, reading something you like and find interesting and informative is probably less valuable than something you're only 10% engaged with, as if you are fully engaged you are less likely to click on an ad - so you are less valuable as a reader/listener/viewer.
It's only subscriptions that reverse that incentive - the highly engaged reader is the only one that will subscribe.
Agree. Clicks important but if it could be weighted in a sliding scale along with quality of info (kinda like metacritic for articles that would be helpful need someone to incorporate that into a business model though.
And there has got to be a huge gap between what people click on and what they want. I get baited into clicking on Britney spears articles all the time and I don’t want them and I get suggested more of them and I keep clicking. Obviously I’m an idiot but still please can someone talk to someone and turn off the Britney updates on my newsfeed?
So many great topics and answers today! On retiring early, I like your basic answer, “It depends….” One thing I would add is: Purchase long term care insurance while you are mid-life, if you are able. It will be less expensive than if you wait until you are old.
On the religion question in schools, my experience follows your advice that it really depends on the sensitivity of the teacher. About 50 years ago, in a public school in an upscale town, I taught The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to a top level reading group of 6th graders. Of course they had all read the story much earlier. However we explored C.S. Lewis’s spiritual journey from Druidism, through many assorted world religions including Judaism, to Christianity and how the book can be read recognizing Christian symbols. Although my class contained Jewish & Chinese students as well as Christian ones, no parent complained and many felt it was a good early vehicle for introducing how to examine more difficult books. Now I know times have changed and States, school districts, parents and twelve year olds are different today, I just wanted to give an example about a non-threatening way a potentially hot topic can be successfully handled.
This sounds great but respectfully I don’t see how it’s a comparable case. You were *discussing* religions. The problem raised was the *practice* of one specific religion in school, forcing kids from other religions (or of no religion) to either exercise a religion foreign to them (potentially against the direct prohibitions of their own religion) or risk being social outcasts.
Your concern is certainly valid when a particular religion is forced on children. Don’t you think parents can discuss and explore with their children which elements agree with the family’s beliefs and which are considered invalid. For example, in the Episcopal Church we study both the Old and New Testaments. The Ten Commandants are valid to both Jewish and Christian beliefs, I think. For a Buddhist family, emphasizing that The Great Buddha is as powerful a spiritual belief as the Christian God. Of course, there are always Charter Schools as an option.
On the retirement question - it seems like for at least some people, winding down the hours they work while not retiring entirely might be the best option. (especially if the cognitive decline issue is real, as I find it difficult to imagine that there’s much marginal “keeping in practice” value to hours five through eight each day)
Of course that’s difficult for a lot of jobs, but it seems to work well for e.g. academics who take emeritus status.
I think incorporating some of your retirement goals into your younger life is important too. Want to travel more? Then travel more! My dad had 8 months of vacation left when he retired. He’s riding bikes every day and extremely happy. Could have done that before too (job wasn’t heavy on hours.)
I really think your answer to the "pluralism" question and SCOTUS' apparent turn towards favoring more conservative religion is not nearly alarmist enough. It's PRECISELY because church attendance is dropping that SCOTUS (and state legislatures) are more likely to want to implement more theocratic elements into our laws and governance (overrepresentation of rural voters and gerrymandering are likely reasons 1 and 2 why various states seem hell bent on passing the most extremist and unpopular anti-abortion legislation, but it's also the religious right fighting what they see say as the creeping secularization of society). As you note in your previous slow boring post, identification as evangelical Christian is the one religious identity that has increased (and even there as you note, that's more of a identity politics signaling, then it is increased adherence to actual precepts of evangelical Christianity).
The long and short of it; the more secularization occurs, the more conservative Christians will feel "threatened", the more likely they will want to impose their value system through the law...and they just so happen to have 5 SCOTUS justices that are themselves extremely conservative Christians* (Thomas being a bit of wild card in that regard as usual).
*In all the debates about representation and how cabinets and legislatures should be representative of the ethnic and religious make up of America. Can we at least agree that the most wildly overrepresented group who's views get to create policy in our lives is conservative Catholics? Honestly, what percentage of people in America subscribe to the very particular conservative Catholicism that at least four of the justices subscribe to, 5% at most? Likely less then that.
I'm confused about your comment about the conservative justices' religions. Thomas is a conservative Catholic religiously, Gorsuch is from all appearances a liberal Episcopalian religiously.
I also think you are conceptually confused. Pushing "value systems through law," religious or not, is just democracy. Tons of political movements on both right and left, now and historically, have been religiously motivated.
Insofar as you're worried about First Amendment jurisprudence, none of the recent religious liberty cases except (very debatably, and not really) Kennedy have involved imposing religion on others in any way. They're overwhelmingly about religious exemptions, and the key flashpoint is the continuing viability of Employment Division v. Smith, the most important exemptions precedent.
Your last paragraph though points toward an additional reason why fears about an impending theocracy are overblown -- not only are evangelical Christians a shrinking part of the population, the putative enforcers of theocracy are not themselves evangelical Christians. It would be like imagining revolutionary Iran having a "Council of Guardians" composed of Wahabi scholars -- there would be a lot of overlap between what they are interested in doing and what the rural "Twelver" Shi'a population wanted on social policy, but at the end of the day they diverge on a bunch of essential theological issues.
To put it another way, I've challenged people to identify a single example in the past 400 years -- anywhere on the planet -- where a domestically generated theocracy took power despite the overwhelming majority of the population not sharing the same religious traditions as the would-be theocrats. No one has ever provided me an example. (The closest thing I can come up with from my own research are the Taiping in mid-19th Century China, but there was a very heavy nationalist/anti-Manchu vibe to the Taiping that attracted supporters to them despite their theocratic politics and a major reason for the Taiping's ultimate failure was pretty clearly that they got high on their own supply and became overaggressive in enforcing their religious views on non-believers.)
Difficult question. I think theocracies have certainly been forced on an unwilling population, or at any rate by a minority faction, as in Iran. However in that case the majority did come from the same tradition. However is there a reason to think that’s a necessary safeguard? Communism was imposed on Russia by a minority (Bolsheviks) and with no previous tradition. Is there a relevant difference between that and a theocracy ? And of course although with a serious risk of anachronism, historically the two biggest world religions took over from the minority position, be it Christianity in the Roman Empire by converting the imperial family or Islam by conquering much of the near East and Mediterranean basin.
I think the issue is, I'm not sure on a practical level there's much difference between what the conservative Catholics want and what Evangelical Christians want. It's not a mistake that practicing Catholics have shifted to the GOP over the past 50 years. Reality is the differences just don't matter as much anymore when you're "enemy" is secularism (And let's be truly real here, the thing they really care about is women having agency over their sex lives and their body (the two obviously related). That has been that tie that binds conservative religions of all stripes for centuries).
As far as your question as to whether a theocracy has taken hold in a place where only a minority of the population wanted it, I mean it's a good question and I think the question is, does the majority of the population need to fully support everything the government does? Or just aspects? I'm thinking of Saudi Arabia for example. Technically it's a monarchy and it's government is quasi-secular. And yet the population lives under a theocracy essentially. I suspect most women would probably like to vote and drive, but would may also bristle at is at some of the social beliefs of the more left wing people in America.
For me, it's just difficult to find much of a difference between the "conservative religious agenda" and "what Republicans want to do anyway". I don't think there are many people that might freak out over a declining number of Christians that aren't already freaked out by a host of other reasons.
(This is coming from someone that used to have an autographed copy of The God Delusion.)
The conflation of conservative Christianity and Trump worship (forget GOP) seems very real for sure. David French has written a lot about this in pretty alarming tones.
Having said that I think the Kansas referendum was a pretty good data point for the idea that there a significant number of GOP voters who are NOT on board with the religious right agenda
I honestly think that between stuff like Dobbs, other rulings that will likely favor conservative Christianity and the very clear desire on the part of at least 4 justices and possibly 6 justices to essentially recreate the economic policies/laws/regulations that existed in 1900; there’s a real “careful what you wish for” moment for the GOP right now.
Thank you, Slow Boring Co, for addressing my question. I'm tickled. Happy to read multiple interesting threads in the comments section.
Sorry, Scandinavians, for assuming that you have euthanasia laws. I should have at least looked at the map in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_euthanasia.
Sorry, Netherlands, for continuing to mistake that you are part of Scandinavia. That unfortunately can never be rectified.
Dammit Matt now I have a craving for sour peach gummies.
Am I the only one who read the sub header and expected to get some analysis on the Devontae Adams trade?
I find the comment about Better Call Saul rather puzzling. The entire prequel gave us no less than 5 different major story lines of Saul’s progressive corruption. We know what he did when Kim left, basically all the same shit he was getting away with as a con artist, followed by shady lawyer fighting for the little guy and then finally a drug lawyer…then he lost his last gravitational pull toward morality. I’m not sure there was much more to say about the dirty layer gig. And we already saw him as WW’s personal lawyer..
The ending is a bigger puzzler than the decision to stop going through his descent into total venality..I’ll avoid spoilers but the whole thing seemed more improbable than WW pulling a combined A-Team/Macguyver as a swan song.
But as MY already mentioned, it’s very hard to stick the landing on a series..
The Sam Harris/Trigonometry thing is interesting. Sam argues that Trump was a special kind of threat to our democracy and a few institutions getting together and tipping the scales was the right thing to do.
Many who are on Sam’s side of the woke debate (like the Trig guys) take issue with this and say it’s unfair and unDemocratic. I agree the press is often unfair to conservatives. Sam says, for him, this is not ideological. It’s about the personality cult of Trumpism and it’s threat to Democracy. Everyone here is, from their perspective, on the side of Democracy.
Many media (Rising for example) misrepresented what Sam said and went so far as to say he even advocated for illegal activities. He didn’t and specifically said he didn’t. I don’t think anyone did anything illegal by not reporting on Biden’s laptop. Partisan sure.
I think it’s interesting how people like the Trig guys can say they are on the side of Democracy and truth and carry water for Trump who clearly doesn’t care about either. This is Trumps biggest political advantage. He creates an ecosystem where everyone knows he is a shitbag and accept it. But if his adversaries step out a line a little bit then it’s made into a big deal. Double standards to his advantage.
I don’t think Sam advocated for the media to do anything that Fox News doesn’t do every day. It is a tough one and he said it is.
Research funding: It is true that overhead charges are high and growing, but that does not mean that "... about a third of all grant money doesn't go toward scientific research."
(*) Universities do actually incur very substantial overhead costs. You could argue that they are not 58%, but they are not zero, or anywhere close to it. To avoid having to list the costs, I will simply ask you to look at how other countries handle this. The US rates are simply not that different from those in many European countries with much more streamlined systems.
(*) Whatever the "fair" percentage is, you need to allow universities some profit margin. This incentivizes administrators to support successful research, and sustains a high level of competitiveness in the system. Remember that the vast majority of proposals are not funded.
(*) The fact that there is a profit margin gives the feds leverage to steer the direction of university research. For instance, some disciplines shrink (e.g. aerospace) and some grow (e.g. AI, biotech), and the US government wants universities to be attentive to its preferences.
(*) An important reason that overhead keeps going up is that the government keeps ratcheting up the cost of "compliance" with federal rules and laws - Title IX, ADA, research on human subjects, etc. The feds do not want to dial this back, and with that being the case, somebody needs to pay for it.
Having said all that, I do think there is a strong case for trying to stop the upwards creep. I would welcome a freeze or a ceiling, but I would want to federal government to compensate for this by doing a very serious overhaul of the regulatory system. This stuff is out of control, in a way that differentiates the US from our competitors. Universities should not be forced to hire legions of lawyers and compliance officers.
"instead of trying to pick “the best” proposals, set some kind of bar for “good enough” and then use a lottery to decide which “good enough” proposals get the money."
except for the lottery part, this is already done, and the bar is absurdly low. This is so the funding agencies can claim that only a small [percentage of "approvable" proposals get funded so they can get more funding. Competition to be "the best" is an obvious way to raise the bar on what gets funded.
Excellent read:
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/a-realist-defense-of-legislative-supremacy/
“A Realist Defense of Legislative Supremacy” by (neoliberal) Adam Gurri
That essay above reminded me of this essay attacking Bill Barr’s enthusiastic support for executive supremacy (as opposed to legislative supremacy):
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/barr-speech-federalist-society-impeachment.html
I have to disagree on the diet front. Sure, people have a very generic idea of what a healthy lifestyle would look like. But a major part of the problem is how you get to a sustainable situation that doesn't require constant exertion of discipline not possessed by 90% of the public. And people are doing tons of stuff that they think of as 'healthy', which isn't really helping. One big part of the problem is just that the science here is really hard because it's not just about calories in/out - you also have to account for the biological feedback loops that create urges. But also there has been just a lot of bad advice out there for a long time.
I think MY’s answer on the establishment clause seriously misses the mark. To participate in Christian school prayer can go directly against the religious teachings of some minority students. This means they would be forced to seek an exemption, which, even if granted, socially isolates them from their peers. This kind of visible marking out of said minority students as different, potentially from a very young age, can’t be simply dismissed as “not a big deal”. Alternatively , those minority students might be tempted to go against their own religious doctrines in order to fit in. A third option is that they will have to withdraw from public school altogether. None of this is in line with pluralism or the logic of the first amendment as understood for decades. It’s a very sad day for America.
Kennedy v. Bremerton is still nowhere near a blanket permission for school prayer--the media overhyped it a lot because of the Dobbs background, it wasn't exceptional versus the mine run of other recent SCOTUS religious liberty cases
It’s a step in that direction. We’re debating the principle itself. Why we need the establishment clause anyway and what is the danger in its erosion of any with regards to public schools. I’m aware that we have reached rock bottom of the slippery slope yet, and I hope we never will, but I don’t think it’s crazy to think we may get closer and closer with the composition of this court and the precedents being set in recent years.
In principle I agree fully, but in practice I thought his answer was pretty accurate. I went to elementary school in a small town and I and a couple of Jehovah's Witness kids were the only ones who didn't participate in classroom Christmas, Easter, etc, activities. It was no big deal, and even gave us a bit of superiority over the other kids because they all thought Santa was real, whereas we knew they were just gullible. But don't mistake what I'm saying as support for prayers and other religious observations in public school.
You may have taken it that way, others won’t. We also don’t know how the majority group took it when considering you. I think we’ll agree that the fact that some come out fine (even better off!) with this kind of structural ostracizing hardly justifies it.
"Because assholes have lots of ways of making you feel uncomfortable regardless of the rules, and kind people can make everyone feel included, even if there are crucifixes on the wall."
Just a relevant line from Matt's answer.
That’s hardly the point though. The question is to whom does the public sphere belong? Is this a Christian nation in which everyone else can just hope to do ok because the majority won’t be assholes towards them, or is this a secular nation in which everyone is on an equal footing and people may or may not be assholes individually but the state itself does not take sides?
Strong upvote. In today's world it gets missed a lot that most of the plaintiffs from the great separation of church and state cases from the mid-20th century were not atheists, but devout practitioners of minority religions. If schools are insistent in bringing back Christian rituals of the most common variant, this shit will hit the fan once again.
Just giving a hat tip to two sharp observations:
(1) "Assholes have lots of ways of making you feel uncomfortable regardless of the rules, and kind people can make everyone feel included, even if there are crucifixes on the wall."
(2) The modern Republican party: "a big, pluralistic tent of charlatans and scammers."
"I don’t quite know how else to say this but they played to win. They ran an ad of a white male doctor talking about his need to be able to use his best medical judgment, rather than wringing their hands over whether that was a patronizing and paternalistic message. They tried to appeal to people who are queasy or uncertain about abortion by invoking libertarian and anti-government tropes. A lot of the time, progressives only want to run with messages that they feel good about, rather than messages that are calibrated to win."
Good example for discussing "Stancil-Beutler Thought" which we were talking about yesterday. I think what SBT would say is that the only reason why paternalistic messages and anti-government tropes work in the first place is that establishment liberals are unwilling to directly challenge those messages and tropes, to meet them head-on, fight fire with fire (choose your own idiom). Hiding in the safety of conservative values may get you a few wins in the very short term, but in the big picture it causes the entire playing field to be tilted even more toward the right. So what Matt describes as "playing to win" is, to them sort of like the Charlotte Hornets just trying to do enough to make the NBA playoffs every year without any plan to win a title. If you truly want to "play to win," you need to go for it all. You should push all your chips in, and make it a win-or-die objective to persuade the electorate to adopt (or to newly recognize that it already shares) *your* values.
I am not saying that Mr. Stancil or Mr. Beutler have said these things about Kansas post-vote. That would be unwise since Kansas was a great victory and you have to pick your battles. Instead, I think what they've done is dispute the factual premise that Kansas was won with conservative-friendly messaging.
"I don’t think that’s just because the reporters are bad or the media is bad, it’s genuinely what people mostly want."
I think that constitutes saying that the reporters are bad and the media is bad. Good media deliberately refuses to give people what they want because it doesn't give people an effective understanding of the world.
Of course, they would lose in a free market to media that gives people what they want, but the media and reporters should be a profession that refuses collectively to give people what they want - in the same way that doctors will give you lifestyle advice you don't want to follow instead of just saying you can eat what you like and giving you a pill to compensate for the damage your diet and lack of exercise are doing; in the same way that lawyers tell you what to do rather than telling you they will win the case and you can do what you like (which is what most people want from their lawyer).
Similar to politics.
I used to be of the "well, in a democracy people get the government they deserve" school of thought. But I've grown to feel that's not tenable. Reasonably enlightened political leadership matters. Or, at least, reasonably non-corrupt and non-stupid leadership matters. Too many voters simply don't follow policy enough to expect popular "wisdom" to be a dependable provider of decent governance.
Also, Matt frequently cites James Fallows’ “Breaking the News,” which early on argues that actually people DO want substantive policy discussion and that not getting it is why they hate the media. I guess it could be a revealed preference thing but I would still be curious as to whether he thinks Fallows is right.
One of the problems with the metrics that the media uses is that they treat all clicks the same, so enough clickbait to get people to skim is enough, even though the result is that they hate the media that presents it to them.
Indeed, reading something you like and find interesting and informative is probably less valuable than something you're only 10% engaged with, as if you are fully engaged you are less likely to click on an ad - so you are less valuable as a reader/listener/viewer.
It's only subscriptions that reverse that incentive - the highly engaged reader is the only one that will subscribe.
Agree. Clicks important but if it could be weighted in a sliding scale along with quality of info (kinda like metacritic for articles that would be helpful need someone to incorporate that into a business model though.
And there has got to be a huge gap between what people click on and what they want. I get baited into clicking on Britney spears articles all the time and I don’t want them and I get suggested more of them and I keep clicking. Obviously I’m an idiot but still please can someone talk to someone and turn off the Britney updates on my newsfeed?
So many great topics and answers today! On retiring early, I like your basic answer, “It depends….” One thing I would add is: Purchase long term care insurance while you are mid-life, if you are able. It will be less expensive than if you wait until you are old.
On the religion question in schools, my experience follows your advice that it really depends on the sensitivity of the teacher. About 50 years ago, in a public school in an upscale town, I taught The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to a top level reading group of 6th graders. Of course they had all read the story much earlier. However we explored C.S. Lewis’s spiritual journey from Druidism, through many assorted world religions including Judaism, to Christianity and how the book can be read recognizing Christian symbols. Although my class contained Jewish & Chinese students as well as Christian ones, no parent complained and many felt it was a good early vehicle for introducing how to examine more difficult books. Now I know times have changed and States, school districts, parents and twelve year olds are different today, I just wanted to give an example about a non-threatening way a potentially hot topic can be successfully handled.
SallyJones
This sounds great but respectfully I don’t see how it’s a comparable case. You were *discussing* religions. The problem raised was the *practice* of one specific religion in school, forcing kids from other religions (or of no religion) to either exercise a religion foreign to them (potentially against the direct prohibitions of their own religion) or risk being social outcasts.
Your concern is certainly valid when a particular religion is forced on children. Don’t you think parents can discuss and explore with their children which elements agree with the family’s beliefs and which are considered invalid. For example, in the Episcopal Church we study both the Old and New Testaments. The Ten Commandants are valid to both Jewish and Christian beliefs, I think. For a Buddhist family, emphasizing that The Great Buddha is as powerful a spiritual belief as the Christian God. Of course, there are always Charter Schools as an option.
On the retirement question - it seems like for at least some people, winding down the hours they work while not retiring entirely might be the best option. (especially if the cognitive decline issue is real, as I find it difficult to imagine that there’s much marginal “keeping in practice” value to hours five through eight each day)
Of course that’s difficult for a lot of jobs, but it seems to work well for e.g. academics who take emeritus status.
I think incorporating some of your retirement goals into your younger life is important too. Want to travel more? Then travel more! My dad had 8 months of vacation left when he retired. He’s riding bikes every day and extremely happy. Could have done that before too (job wasn’t heavy on hours.)
I really think your answer to the "pluralism" question and SCOTUS' apparent turn towards favoring more conservative religion is not nearly alarmist enough. It's PRECISELY because church attendance is dropping that SCOTUS (and state legislatures) are more likely to want to implement more theocratic elements into our laws and governance (overrepresentation of rural voters and gerrymandering are likely reasons 1 and 2 why various states seem hell bent on passing the most extremist and unpopular anti-abortion legislation, but it's also the religious right fighting what they see say as the creeping secularization of society). As you note in your previous slow boring post, identification as evangelical Christian is the one religious identity that has increased (and even there as you note, that's more of a identity politics signaling, then it is increased adherence to actual precepts of evangelical Christianity).
The long and short of it; the more secularization occurs, the more conservative Christians will feel "threatened", the more likely they will want to impose their value system through the law...and they just so happen to have 5 SCOTUS justices that are themselves extremely conservative Christians* (Thomas being a bit of wild card in that regard as usual).
*In all the debates about representation and how cabinets and legislatures should be representative of the ethnic and religious make up of America. Can we at least agree that the most wildly overrepresented group who's views get to create policy in our lives is conservative Catholics? Honestly, what percentage of people in America subscribe to the very particular conservative Catholicism that at least four of the justices subscribe to, 5% at most? Likely less then that.
I'm confused about your comment about the conservative justices' religions. Thomas is a conservative Catholic religiously, Gorsuch is from all appearances a liberal Episcopalian religiously.
I also think you are conceptually confused. Pushing "value systems through law," religious or not, is just democracy. Tons of political movements on both right and left, now and historically, have been religiously motivated.
Insofar as you're worried about First Amendment jurisprudence, none of the recent religious liberty cases except (very debatably, and not really) Kennedy have involved imposing religion on others in any way. They're overwhelmingly about religious exemptions, and the key flashpoint is the continuing viability of Employment Division v. Smith, the most important exemptions precedent.
Your last paragraph though points toward an additional reason why fears about an impending theocracy are overblown -- not only are evangelical Christians a shrinking part of the population, the putative enforcers of theocracy are not themselves evangelical Christians. It would be like imagining revolutionary Iran having a "Council of Guardians" composed of Wahabi scholars -- there would be a lot of overlap between what they are interested in doing and what the rural "Twelver" Shi'a population wanted on social policy, but at the end of the day they diverge on a bunch of essential theological issues.
To put it another way, I've challenged people to identify a single example in the past 400 years -- anywhere on the planet -- where a domestically generated theocracy took power despite the overwhelming majority of the population not sharing the same religious traditions as the would-be theocrats. No one has ever provided me an example. (The closest thing I can come up with from my own research are the Taiping in mid-19th Century China, but there was a very heavy nationalist/anti-Manchu vibe to the Taiping that attracted supporters to them despite their theocratic politics and a major reason for the Taiping's ultimate failure was pretty clearly that they got high on their own supply and became overaggressive in enforcing their religious views on non-believers.)
Difficult question. I think theocracies have certainly been forced on an unwilling population, or at any rate by a minority faction, as in Iran. However in that case the majority did come from the same tradition. However is there a reason to think that’s a necessary safeguard? Communism was imposed on Russia by a minority (Bolsheviks) and with no previous tradition. Is there a relevant difference between that and a theocracy ? And of course although with a serious risk of anachronism, historically the two biggest world religions took over from the minority position, be it Christianity in the Roman Empire by converting the imperial family or Islam by conquering much of the near East and Mediterranean basin.
I think the issue is, I'm not sure on a practical level there's much difference between what the conservative Catholics want and what Evangelical Christians want. It's not a mistake that practicing Catholics have shifted to the GOP over the past 50 years. Reality is the differences just don't matter as much anymore when you're "enemy" is secularism (And let's be truly real here, the thing they really care about is women having agency over their sex lives and their body (the two obviously related). That has been that tie that binds conservative religions of all stripes for centuries).
As far as your question as to whether a theocracy has taken hold in a place where only a minority of the population wanted it, I mean it's a good question and I think the question is, does the majority of the population need to fully support everything the government does? Or just aspects? I'm thinking of Saudi Arabia for example. Technically it's a monarchy and it's government is quasi-secular. And yet the population lives under a theocracy essentially. I suspect most women would probably like to vote and drive, but would may also bristle at is at some of the social beliefs of the more left wing people in America.
For me, it's just difficult to find much of a difference between the "conservative religious agenda" and "what Republicans want to do anyway". I don't think there are many people that might freak out over a declining number of Christians that aren't already freaked out by a host of other reasons.
(This is coming from someone that used to have an autographed copy of The God Delusion.)
The conflation of conservative Christianity and Trump worship (forget GOP) seems very real for sure. David French has written a lot about this in pretty alarming tones.
Having said that I think the Kansas referendum was a pretty good data point for the idea that there a significant number of GOP voters who are NOT on board with the religious right agenda
I honestly think that between stuff like Dobbs, other rulings that will likely favor conservative Christianity and the very clear desire on the part of at least 4 justices and possibly 6 justices to essentially recreate the economic policies/laws/regulations that existed in 1900; there’s a real “careful what you wish for” moment for the GOP right now.