Well. Several points to make. Part of the reasons for extending school closures was the very real fears that school-age children, who for the most part didn’t get seriously ill or were often asymptomatic would bring the virus home to parents and grandparents, who were more susceptible to life-threatening illness. Second, the Free Market ideology is bankrupt, because there has never been a true free market, specifically because governments realized the downside to free markets and have always interceded. Margaret always fluctuated between more and fewer regulations, but there have always been regulations or taxes or embargoes or unions or piracy. Free markets exist in theory only, similar to the “invisible hand.” Libertarianism is a bankrupt philosophy--its tenets always break down under analysis and deserves much more discussion.
Mostly love this column but a couple of key missing points: 1) It's impossible to discuss this subject without acknowledging the anti-democratic (small d) trend of the Republican party in the last 10 years, and especially under Trump. Besides all the obvious pieces, the reality is that Republicans have essentially abandoned urban politics and created a situation where the institutional left has no counter weight. It says a lot that the only leading member of the Democratic party to lose reelection in recent years was Joe Crowley - in a primary, to AOC. 2) I'm surprised to not see this mentioned by you of all writers but Indian Point was at heart a NIMBY issue. I grew up partially in the town where it was based, my coaches worked there, so it's something I was fairly steeped in, and the most effective opposition was NOT that "all nuclear was bad." It was that positioning a site with a long tail chance of disaster in the NYC suburbs didn't make sense if there was ever a need to evacuate. It helped that those suburbs are generally wealthier than the upstate communities that still host nuclear power today. If you'd polled the median voter in Northern Westchester 20 years ago they'd have likely said the plant should be rebuilt upstate.
Was tempted to say one counter example is abortion but I actually think the GOP simply moved the law more to the right while attitudes likely haven’t shifted much recently?
I think the "conflict vs mistake" framing is helpful here. As polarization increases it is more tempting to think as problems being fundamentally simple and being caused by greed, corruption or just being evil as opposed to problems arising because solving them is difficult.
For example, if you think climate change is all about conflict between factions instead of it genuinely being a hard technological problem, then shutting down nuclear power plants makes sense. You just need to drive away anyone who isn't ecofriendly enough and problem solved.
The more heavily you lean into problems bring conflict the more you care about the purity of your candidate's values as opposed to their track record getting things done, because the solutions all exist, we just need someone who actually wants to implement them. This meshes well with standpoint theory and the modern version of communism being espoused by progressives.
Everyone throws around "The Left"as if we all agreed what it stood for, but I'm not convinced there is very much truly "Left" about the identity-obsessed Social Justice Warrior.
I realize Marxism is perhaps just a subset of The Left, but in most fundamental ways Marxism is diametrically opposed to the Identity Synthesis. In the public mind, "The Left" and "liberalism" are commonly conflated, yet liberalism is, in principle, at least as opposed to the new Woke Dispensation as is Marxism.
Consequently, Matt's "everything has just moved Left" cannot explain what is going on. Labels like Left and Right are getting in the way of understanding our new reality.
Good piece. I'll say that in my neck of the woods (Rust Belt) the increase in scope of the left discourse space is still an online phenomenon. I've never heard words out loud that match anything I've read on, say, Twitter.
I think some of the woke left extremes are a pale and distorted shadow of bed-rock movements for change in the '60s. For God's sake, do not equate Haniyeh of Hamas with Mandela or Lumumba. Hamas does not represent a legitimate revolutionary movement for national liberation. It is dedicated to terrorism as a strategy (anarchism) meant to lure an oppressive state to clamp down harder on its own people, so-called 'heightening the contradictions' between oppressed and oppressor. Hamas is a backwards-looking cult. The ANC and NMC were based in and mobilized their people over years and decades of hard won struggle. They never set them up to be mowed down defenseless by the vastly superior enemy. Period.
I was at the football game (Cal-USC) where the Del Valle protestors got onto the field. We're obviously quite used to protest at Berkeley and acknowledge that it's what we're known for. That they would rightly expect that Cal football fans may know and care about issues is a good thing.
We thought it was at least related to Palestine (which would be a common topic). But these folks? Lol get off the field.
P.S.: The game was a 50-49 spectacle that effectively ended on a failed 2-point conversion.
This got linked in the neoliberal subreddit and there's some good discussion but also some turds for whom Matt is their "bitch eating crackers". Like literally:
"I won't read anything from this transphobic asshole"
Great graphics. The heroin cartoon illustrates a motte and bailey fallacy with an actual motte and bailey. MY could write a great post on this style of argumentation. For example J.K. Rowling tends to make motte and bailey arguments.
One aspect of this leftward shift that MY doesn't address, though I really like the article, is how places that used to have 5-10% conservative populations have gone to < 1%, with bad consequences. Institutions that used to be left leaning, but still nominally neutral, have become explicitly partisan, or so left-wing in their makeup that they might as well be. I'm thinking of important truth seeking organizations like universities and the news media.
Even when good liberals (no sarcasm) want to do unbiased truth seeking, not having any conservatives around hurts them. They have blind spots, and make mistakes that a conservative could easily have caught. Mistakes that cost them credibility.
Also, I suspect conservatives played an important institutional immune system function that helped keep crazy people from getting control, and helped create an environment where people could engage in honest debate.
Let me offer a different theory. Because of increasing polarization, Trump and sorting people on the left (like those on the right) feel like they are under attack from the right. The natural human response to this is to coalesce and to distance yourself from the adversary (German Americans in WW2 suddenly stopped appearing so German). This effectively suppresses moderate views in the democratic party as they risk sounding republicanish and amplifies extreme views (even if dumb they clearly telegraph the speaker is firmly on your side).
Regarding opiate prescription policies, I think it's important to distinguish the questions of whether regulation was too lax or merely that the medical establishment was too willing to go along with big pharma. I think the answer is the later and regulatory interference (outside honest pill-mills) will make things even worse.
The recognition that many patients pain was undertreated was a correct and accurate one. Unfortunately, rather than balance opiate risks with their benefits (and always have a long term plan for a patients opiate usage) the doctors let the pharma companies talk them into handing out oxies.
But many people do need pain treatment and substituting the DEA's judgement for medical judgement isn't a great way to achieve good outcomes.
In everyone’s defense it’s important to note that, like alcohol, 96% of people aren’t susceptible to opioid addiction. You can give opioids to 100 patients having dental surgery or their appendix removed etc. and 96% of them will take them and that will be that.
The problem is that 4% will take them and it will be an amazing transcendent experience that they will destroy their lives trying to replicate.
Let me also add that you can turn someone who doesn't crave some substance into one who does by effectively associating it with a pleasant experience. The relief of pain is rewarding so even if initially the individual isn't into opiates you give them 2 years where their pain disappears each time they pop a pill and the brain provides the reward.
Most of us have had narcotic pain meds at some point. And many of us will say while the pain went away that was it. Others will say it was an amazing experience.
That's pretty misleading -- and part of what caused the opiate crisis. You are absolutely correct that the vast majority of people won't end up with opiate addiction after a short duration use like post-operative care. Especially on weak opiates like codeine or hydrocodone. Those were the studies (valid) used to encourage prescription of oxy.
But that's not how they were prescribed. They were handed out for back pain or other chronic conditions and anyone who takes a few oxy a day for a few months will end up with some withdrawal symptoms.
Moreover, like alcohol, it's highly context dependent. It's not that 96% of people are immune but that 96% of the time people aren't at risk. Sure, different nuerochemistry means different drugs for different people but quite a large fraction of people enjoy these drugs enough that in the right context they'll be tempted to abuse them. Most social drinkers have no problems but put them in a situation where they had to drink at 9am every day and suddenly they lose a job and have nothing to do but sit in front of the tv and maybe they start taking a few more sips.
That was the issue with the oxy prescribing. Same person who has no problem with the drug after surgery takes it every day for 2 years and maybe at some point they have a really bad day and...well it wouldn't hurt if I took my next pill a bit early.
Shit they are now out of pills and have a week left before a refill. They'll lose their job if they go into withdrawal now...so they ask a friend if they can borrow some pills. You see how things snowball.
Basically the scripting practices turned it into the same issue w/ weight loss...this thing makes u feel good and u must have some each day but only a bit. And that's hard.
Well. Several points to make. Part of the reasons for extending school closures was the very real fears that school-age children, who for the most part didn’t get seriously ill or were often asymptomatic would bring the virus home to parents and grandparents, who were more susceptible to life-threatening illness. Second, the Free Market ideology is bankrupt, because there has never been a true free market, specifically because governments realized the downside to free markets and have always interceded. Margaret always fluctuated between more and fewer regulations, but there have always been regulations or taxes or embargoes or unions or piracy. Free markets exist in theory only, similar to the “invisible hand.” Libertarianism is a bankrupt philosophy--its tenets always break down under analysis and deserves much more discussion.
Mostly love this column but a couple of key missing points: 1) It's impossible to discuss this subject without acknowledging the anti-democratic (small d) trend of the Republican party in the last 10 years, and especially under Trump. Besides all the obvious pieces, the reality is that Republicans have essentially abandoned urban politics and created a situation where the institutional left has no counter weight. It says a lot that the only leading member of the Democratic party to lose reelection in recent years was Joe Crowley - in a primary, to AOC. 2) I'm surprised to not see this mentioned by you of all writers but Indian Point was at heart a NIMBY issue. I grew up partially in the town where it was based, my coaches worked there, so it's something I was fairly steeped in, and the most effective opposition was NOT that "all nuclear was bad." It was that positioning a site with a long tail chance of disaster in the NYC suburbs didn't make sense if there was ever a need to evacuate. It helped that those suburbs are generally wealthier than the upstate communities that still host nuclear power today. If you'd polled the median voter in Northern Westchester 20 years ago they'd have likely said the plant should be rebuilt upstate.
Was tempted to say one counter example is abortion but I actually think the GOP simply moved the law more to the right while attitudes likely haven’t shifted much recently?
I think the "conflict vs mistake" framing is helpful here. As polarization increases it is more tempting to think as problems being fundamentally simple and being caused by greed, corruption or just being evil as opposed to problems arising because solving them is difficult.
For example, if you think climate change is all about conflict between factions instead of it genuinely being a hard technological problem, then shutting down nuclear power plants makes sense. You just need to drive away anyone who isn't ecofriendly enough and problem solved.
The more heavily you lean into problems bring conflict the more you care about the purity of your candidate's values as opposed to their track record getting things done, because the solutions all exist, we just need someone who actually wants to implement them. This meshes well with standpoint theory and the modern version of communism being espoused by progressives.
Everyone throws around "The Left"as if we all agreed what it stood for, but I'm not convinced there is very much truly "Left" about the identity-obsessed Social Justice Warrior.
I realize Marxism is perhaps just a subset of The Left, but in most fundamental ways Marxism is diametrically opposed to the Identity Synthesis. In the public mind, "The Left" and "liberalism" are commonly conflated, yet liberalism is, in principle, at least as opposed to the new Woke Dispensation as is Marxism.
Consequently, Matt's "everything has just moved Left" cannot explain what is going on. Labels like Left and Right are getting in the way of understanding our new reality.
Good piece. I'll say that in my neck of the woods (Rust Belt) the increase in scope of the left discourse space is still an online phenomenon. I've never heard words out loud that match anything I've read on, say, Twitter.
I think some of the woke left extremes are a pale and distorted shadow of bed-rock movements for change in the '60s. For God's sake, do not equate Haniyeh of Hamas with Mandela or Lumumba. Hamas does not represent a legitimate revolutionary movement for national liberation. It is dedicated to terrorism as a strategy (anarchism) meant to lure an oppressive state to clamp down harder on its own people, so-called 'heightening the contradictions' between oppressed and oppressor. Hamas is a backwards-looking cult. The ANC and NMC were based in and mobilized their people over years and decades of hard won struggle. They never set them up to be mowed down defenseless by the vastly superior enemy. Period.
Always thoughtful and nuanced, Matt.
Left-Yglesias-Thought shall prevail, no matter what the comments section says
I was at the football game (Cal-USC) where the Del Valle protestors got onto the field. We're obviously quite used to protest at Berkeley and acknowledge that it's what we're known for. That they would rightly expect that Cal football fans may know and care about issues is a good thing.
We thought it was at least related to Palestine (which would be a common topic). But these folks? Lol get off the field.
P.S.: The game was a 50-49 spectacle that effectively ended on a failed 2-point conversion.
This got linked in the neoliberal subreddit and there's some good discussion but also some turds for whom Matt is their "bitch eating crackers". Like literally:
"I won't read anything from this transphobic asshole"
"Ok, how is he transphobic?"
"Just read his twitter"
"I do, I don't know what you are referring to"
"I'm not going to do your work for you"
So… can we repeal the Jones Act?
Great graphics. The heroin cartoon illustrates a motte and bailey fallacy with an actual motte and bailey. MY could write a great post on this style of argumentation. For example J.K. Rowling tends to make motte and bailey arguments.
One aspect of this leftward shift that MY doesn't address, though I really like the article, is how places that used to have 5-10% conservative populations have gone to < 1%, with bad consequences. Institutions that used to be left leaning, but still nominally neutral, have become explicitly partisan, or so left-wing in their makeup that they might as well be. I'm thinking of important truth seeking organizations like universities and the news media.
Even when good liberals (no sarcasm) want to do unbiased truth seeking, not having any conservatives around hurts them. They have blind spots, and make mistakes that a conservative could easily have caught. Mistakes that cost them credibility.
Also, I suspect conservatives played an important institutional immune system function that helped keep crazy people from getting control, and helped create an environment where people could engage in honest debate.
Let me offer a different theory. Because of increasing polarization, Trump and sorting people on the left (like those on the right) feel like they are under attack from the right. The natural human response to this is to coalesce and to distance yourself from the adversary (German Americans in WW2 suddenly stopped appearing so German). This effectively suppresses moderate views in the democratic party as they risk sounding republicanish and amplifies extreme views (even if dumb they clearly telegraph the speaker is firmly on your side).
Regarding opiate prescription policies, I think it's important to distinguish the questions of whether regulation was too lax or merely that the medical establishment was too willing to go along with big pharma. I think the answer is the later and regulatory interference (outside honest pill-mills) will make things even worse.
The recognition that many patients pain was undertreated was a correct and accurate one. Unfortunately, rather than balance opiate risks with their benefits (and always have a long term plan for a patients opiate usage) the doctors let the pharma companies talk them into handing out oxies.
But many people do need pain treatment and substituting the DEA's judgement for medical judgement isn't a great way to achieve good outcomes.
In everyone’s defense it’s important to note that, like alcohol, 96% of people aren’t susceptible to opioid addiction. You can give opioids to 100 patients having dental surgery or their appendix removed etc. and 96% of them will take them and that will be that.
The problem is that 4% will take them and it will be an amazing transcendent experience that they will destroy their lives trying to replicate.
Let me also add that you can turn someone who doesn't crave some substance into one who does by effectively associating it with a pleasant experience. The relief of pain is rewarding so even if initially the individual isn't into opiates you give them 2 years where their pain disappears each time they pop a pill and the brain provides the reward.
Do you have a link to that?
Most of us have had narcotic pain meds at some point. And many of us will say while the pain went away that was it. Others will say it was an amazing experience.
That's pretty misleading -- and part of what caused the opiate crisis. You are absolutely correct that the vast majority of people won't end up with opiate addiction after a short duration use like post-operative care. Especially on weak opiates like codeine or hydrocodone. Those were the studies (valid) used to encourage prescription of oxy.
But that's not how they were prescribed. They were handed out for back pain or other chronic conditions and anyone who takes a few oxy a day for a few months will end up with some withdrawal symptoms.
Moreover, like alcohol, it's highly context dependent. It's not that 96% of people are immune but that 96% of the time people aren't at risk. Sure, different nuerochemistry means different drugs for different people but quite a large fraction of people enjoy these drugs enough that in the right context they'll be tempted to abuse them. Most social drinkers have no problems but put them in a situation where they had to drink at 9am every day and suddenly they lose a job and have nothing to do but sit in front of the tv and maybe they start taking a few more sips.
That was the issue with the oxy prescribing. Same person who has no problem with the drug after surgery takes it every day for 2 years and maybe at some point they have a really bad day and...well it wouldn't hurt if I took my next pill a bit early.
Shit they are now out of pills and have a week left before a refill. They'll lose their job if they go into withdrawal now...so they ask a friend if they can borrow some pills. You see how things snowball.
Basically the scripting practices turned it into the same issue w/ weight loss...this thing makes u feel good and u must have some each day but only a bit. And that's hard.