W/r/t the normie lib enthusiasm for 70s-era leftist terrorism, I think it's just history, like John Brown and Nat Turner. On some level, those acts are seen something that may have been necessary to bring about the world today, in which of course no violence could ever be countenanced. To be clear I don't think it's usually thought through to that extent, it's just an impulse.
I read the article accompanying the question about CTU praising a convicted murderer in a tweet, which also mentioned how Angela Davis was celebrated even at the time for her role in the attempted jailbreak of a black revolutionary and the kidnapping and murder of a judge in the process. The concept has been bouncing around my head ever since.
It reminded me of some points made in Meditations on Violence, a book on martial arts, self defense, uses of force, and general understanding of violent behavior based on the writer's experience and research. He uses the metaphor of the rhinoceros and the unicorn-most people can more easily rattle off details about the entirely fictional unicorn than facts about the very real rhinoceros. Partly because unicorns are more enjoyable to know about; partly because they never truly expect to encounter a rhinoceros in their daily life; and perhaps in part because facts about rhinoceroses are falsifiable. So people know a lot about the story version of violence, but nothing about the reality.
Both the change in how the Weather Underground operated and how they were received can be seen through that lens. They get a lot of credit for their "nonviolent bombings," but that was a change which followed three of their number dying in an accidental detonation-being forced to acknowledge the rhinoceros. People then believe the myth (unicorn) that they were a principled resistance group, ignoring that the intended target for their nail bomb was a dance (rhinoceros).
In more recent events, I can see some of that same dynamic in the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination. The moment he (allegedly) pulled the trigger, Tyler Robinson was stuck in a reality of a massive adrenaline dump, security cameras, bad luck, guilt, a massive police manhunt, and the quickly developing understanding that he didn't even know how much of the fallout he never thought through. Up until that point he could cling to the fantasy of being a modern day partisan. Given the well documented psychological impact of killing someone as a sniper, the moment he saw the bullet hit...I think the killing impacted him far more than he expected it to.
Essentially, the reason why more or less normal, upper-middle to upper class progressives can valorize violent left wing revolutionaries is because modern liberalism has protected them from ever actual knowing fuck-all about violence.
My issue with Coates isn't that he tells bracing personal truths, it's that he only tells these truths when they benefit him, conveniently ignoring a great deal of harm that, by his own logic, he should be responsible for.
I find it a bit unbelievable that right at the tail end of the Iraq war where the US murdered hundreds of thousands of people, obliterated hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure, and unleashed a genocide on Assyrians and Yazidis, that he would decide that reparations were first and foremost not owed to the people of Iraq, but rather to Americans!
The only conclusion that I can draw is that racism is terrible when it happens to Americans of color (as it most surely is), but when it happens to non-Americans and especially when some of the perpetrators are Americans of color, then it's totally fine. Can't muddy that nice morally clear message no matter how inaccurate it might be, now can we? Nobody needs to be compensated; nobody needs to be called out. We can all just forget any of that ever happened. The very same whitewashing of racism that he accuses the media industry of perpetrating, he engages in himself.
I feel like he acknowledges that blind spot and specifically talked about how his visit to Israel made him reconsider the wisdom of reparations when he had previously held up Israel as an example of successful reparations.
Note that in Georgia one person participating in the Republican primary for governor is Brad Raffensperger, its Secretary of State. He is the only Republican official who I currently respect. He handled himself with integrity in the 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections.
Yep, I think any democrats interested in Duncan are more likely to crossover in the primary to vote for Raffensperger. If by some bizarre miracle it was Duncan vs. Raffensperger in the general, I have no idea how those same voters would split though.
> What explains why parts of the mainstream left still celebrate 1970s far left terrorists? The Chicago Teachers Union celebrated Assata Shakur yesterday
I mean, it's because of Tupac. No one is celebrating Sundiata Acoli.
I stopped taking Coates seriously some time ago. He simultaneously claims that the American electorate is irredeemably bigoted and yet Democratic politicians should center out-group victimhood as their main electoral strategy. This is a kind of "noble struggle" mentality where winning elections is clearly secondary to staying true to ones own "truths". He repeatedly says that losing is not alien to the out-groups he cares about and it should not be a big deal if you lose elections.
Structurally, there need to be two parties actually competing to "win" elections in a two-party FPTP democracy. Even if one of them unilaterally gives up on elections because they deem the population is too bigoted that is not a stable equilibrium. If Coates is correct that the population is irredeemably bigoted, then eventually, there will still be two parties, they will just be competing over some thing other than how to address the out-group victimhood Coates wants to center and the out-groups will simply be sidelined entirely.
Coates and his ilk should be celebrated by the GOP for injecting a suicidal "tail should wag the dog" mindset into Democratic politics.
If politicians need to flip from an unpopular position to a popular one, they should say that representing the actual views of their actual constituents is the morally correct thing for a politician to do. Representing their constituents is literally their job, and on issues that the public understands perfectly well they have no excuse for going against their constituents. Take a principled stand that a democratic government should do what the public wants, unless that will have consequences that the public won’t like.
There are many ways to justify changing ones own mind. A skilled politician can do it without coming across as a poll tested bot.
I would recommend Mamdani's appearance on the View in the face of semi-hostile questioning from good-faith questioners and contrast that with Kamala's View performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9maWcpLGZkM&t=930s
Mamdani may or may not win but he is a skilled politician who never gets caught equivocating and his base will give him plenty of leeway on changing his mind because he has credibility with them.
The difference between Dem establishment politicians like Pete, Kamala, Booker and Mamdani is that the former have no base, they have never taken any risks to gain credibility, so if they claim to change their mind about anything, no one will take them seriously. They will just think they are saying what the room wants to hear and that gets them no points.
>It seems to be some species of “If progressive politics is broadly speaking good, then extreme left politics must also be good.”
Wishing one was more revolutionary seems like a common aspiration among milquetoast liberals, probably as a way to tell themselves that during [insert historical injustice] they would have been the first on the [barricades/printing press/underground railroad].
I spoke to a friend once who was involved in city politics when an election was upcoming and she said she was going to vote for the most progressive mayoral candidate. I asked her why, given that her preferred policies seemed to align better with the centre left candidate. She took some time to think about about it and a little while later told me, rather sheepishly, that she would be voting for the centre left candidate after all.
Re: How to Blow Up A Pipeline. There's an actually really good movie version this from 2014 called Night Moves that takes these ideas seriously and shows where it would probably end up if you actually did it, plus it has Jesse Eisenberg as a terrorist, so what's not to love? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7-VqKLYZks
(The 1975 move Night Moves is pretty great as well but about different stuff)
I have an acquaintance who is in his late 30's, works in tech, and recently moved to DC. He tells me that he "can be involved [in efforts to oppose Trump]. Just trying to figure out whose door to knock on, and wanted to know if you had any ideas." He says that he's "trying to identify opportunities to have any personal impact on coalition-building in the next 14 months." He seems to me like a guy who would be amenable to a slow boring approach. Do any of y'all have any ideas for him?
I think the under appreciated piece about Coates wanting to take the role of a writer (tell the truth, not consider the politics) is that social media has nuked the barriers that once separated public intellectuals, professors, and writers from broader politics. Not only have many of those people leaned into building a brand for themselves on platforms like twitter/X, prominent figures who don’t will still be political fodder for pundits, politicians, and influencers. And so if you want to have an impact on politics these days you almost have to take tactics into consideration. The ivory tower is no more, or at least open to the public.
Re what issues not to campaign on even if you believe them, and on the advice "and that means not even nibbling around the edges of restricting people’s Second Amendment rights."
I agree in principle that you shouldn't campaign on unpopular issues, but the trend in popular opinion has been moving more towards gun control. I understand that the pro gun folks are much more invested, but I think a moderate position for more background checks and banning automatics for people under 21 would be popular.
W/r/t the normie lib enthusiasm for 70s-era leftist terrorism, I think it's just history, like John Brown and Nat Turner. On some level, those acts are seen something that may have been necessary to bring about the world today, in which of course no violence could ever be countenanced. To be clear I don't think it's usually thought through to that extent, it's just an impulse.
Hoyer's view on East Germany is disgusting.
I read the article accompanying the question about CTU praising a convicted murderer in a tweet, which also mentioned how Angela Davis was celebrated even at the time for her role in the attempted jailbreak of a black revolutionary and the kidnapping and murder of a judge in the process. The concept has been bouncing around my head ever since.
It reminded me of some points made in Meditations on Violence, a book on martial arts, self defense, uses of force, and general understanding of violent behavior based on the writer's experience and research. He uses the metaphor of the rhinoceros and the unicorn-most people can more easily rattle off details about the entirely fictional unicorn than facts about the very real rhinoceros. Partly because unicorns are more enjoyable to know about; partly because they never truly expect to encounter a rhinoceros in their daily life; and perhaps in part because facts about rhinoceroses are falsifiable. So people know a lot about the story version of violence, but nothing about the reality.
Both the change in how the Weather Underground operated and how they were received can be seen through that lens. They get a lot of credit for their "nonviolent bombings," but that was a change which followed three of their number dying in an accidental detonation-being forced to acknowledge the rhinoceros. People then believe the myth (unicorn) that they were a principled resistance group, ignoring that the intended target for their nail bomb was a dance (rhinoceros).
In more recent events, I can see some of that same dynamic in the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination. The moment he (allegedly) pulled the trigger, Tyler Robinson was stuck in a reality of a massive adrenaline dump, security cameras, bad luck, guilt, a massive police manhunt, and the quickly developing understanding that he didn't even know how much of the fallout he never thought through. Up until that point he could cling to the fantasy of being a modern day partisan. Given the well documented psychological impact of killing someone as a sniper, the moment he saw the bullet hit...I think the killing impacted him far more than he expected it to.
Essentially, the reason why more or less normal, upper-middle to upper class progressives can valorize violent left wing revolutionaries is because modern liberalism has protected them from ever actual knowing fuck-all about violence.
My issue with Coates isn't that he tells bracing personal truths, it's that he only tells these truths when they benefit him, conveniently ignoring a great deal of harm that, by his own logic, he should be responsible for.
I find it a bit unbelievable that right at the tail end of the Iraq war where the US murdered hundreds of thousands of people, obliterated hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure, and unleashed a genocide on Assyrians and Yazidis, that he would decide that reparations were first and foremost not owed to the people of Iraq, but rather to Americans!
The only conclusion that I can draw is that racism is terrible when it happens to Americans of color (as it most surely is), but when it happens to non-Americans and especially when some of the perpetrators are Americans of color, then it's totally fine. Can't muddy that nice morally clear message no matter how inaccurate it might be, now can we? Nobody needs to be compensated; nobody needs to be called out. We can all just forget any of that ever happened. The very same whitewashing of racism that he accuses the media industry of perpetrating, he engages in himself.
I feel like he acknowledges that blind spot and specifically talked about how his visit to Israel made him reconsider the wisdom of reparations when he had previously held up Israel as an example of successful reparations.
Note that in Georgia one person participating in the Republican primary for governor is Brad Raffensperger, its Secretary of State. He is the only Republican official who I currently respect. He handled himself with integrity in the 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections.
Yep, I think any democrats interested in Duncan are more likely to crossover in the primary to vote for Raffensperger. If by some bizarre miracle it was Duncan vs. Raffensperger in the general, I have no idea how those same voters would split though.
Just went through customs at jfk and it took 10 seconds to pause while an ipadish device recognized my face...
> What explains why parts of the mainstream left still celebrate 1970s far left terrorists? The Chicago Teachers Union celebrated Assata Shakur yesterday
I mean, it's because of Tupac. No one is celebrating Sundiata Acoli.
I stopped taking Coates seriously some time ago. He simultaneously claims that the American electorate is irredeemably bigoted and yet Democratic politicians should center out-group victimhood as their main electoral strategy. This is a kind of "noble struggle" mentality where winning elections is clearly secondary to staying true to ones own "truths". He repeatedly says that losing is not alien to the out-groups he cares about and it should not be a big deal if you lose elections.
Structurally, there need to be two parties actually competing to "win" elections in a two-party FPTP democracy. Even if one of them unilaterally gives up on elections because they deem the population is too bigoted that is not a stable equilibrium. If Coates is correct that the population is irredeemably bigoted, then eventually, there will still be two parties, they will just be competing over some thing other than how to address the out-group victimhood Coates wants to center and the out-groups will simply be sidelined entirely.
Coates and his ilk should be celebrated by the GOP for injecting a suicidal "tail should wag the dog" mindset into Democratic politics.
If politicians need to flip from an unpopular position to a popular one, they should say that representing the actual views of their actual constituents is the morally correct thing for a politician to do. Representing their constituents is literally their job, and on issues that the public understands perfectly well they have no excuse for going against their constituents. Take a principled stand that a democratic government should do what the public wants, unless that will have consequences that the public won’t like.
There are many ways to justify changing ones own mind. A skilled politician can do it without coming across as a poll tested bot.
I would recommend Mamdani's appearance on the View in the face of semi-hostile questioning from good-faith questioners and contrast that with Kamala's View performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9maWcpLGZkM&t=930s
Mamdani may or may not win but he is a skilled politician who never gets caught equivocating and his base will give him plenty of leeway on changing his mind because he has credibility with them.
The difference between Dem establishment politicians like Pete, Kamala, Booker and Mamdani is that the former have no base, they have never taken any risks to gain credibility, so if they claim to change their mind about anything, no one will take them seriously. They will just think they are saying what the room wants to hear and that gets them no points.
>It seems to be some species of “If progressive politics is broadly speaking good, then extreme left politics must also be good.”
Wishing one was more revolutionary seems like a common aspiration among milquetoast liberals, probably as a way to tell themselves that during [insert historical injustice] they would have been the first on the [barricades/printing press/underground railroad].
I spoke to a friend once who was involved in city politics when an election was upcoming and she said she was going to vote for the most progressive mayoral candidate. I asked her why, given that her preferred policies seemed to align better with the centre left candidate. She took some time to think about about it and a little while later told me, rather sheepishly, that she would be voting for the centre left candidate after all.
Re: How to Blow Up A Pipeline. There's an actually really good movie version this from 2014 called Night Moves that takes these ideas seriously and shows where it would probably end up if you actually did it, plus it has Jesse Eisenberg as a terrorist, so what's not to love? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7-VqKLYZks
(The 1975 move Night Moves is pretty great as well but about different stuff)
Hey Matt. Hey all.
I have an acquaintance who is in his late 30's, works in tech, and recently moved to DC. He tells me that he "can be involved [in efforts to oppose Trump]. Just trying to figure out whose door to knock on, and wanted to know if you had any ideas." He says that he's "trying to identify opportunities to have any personal impact on coalition-building in the next 14 months." He seems to me like a guy who would be amenable to a slow boring approach. Do any of y'all have any ideas for him?
Many thanks! <3
I think the under appreciated piece about Coates wanting to take the role of a writer (tell the truth, not consider the politics) is that social media has nuked the barriers that once separated public intellectuals, professors, and writers from broader politics. Not only have many of those people leaned into building a brand for themselves on platforms like twitter/X, prominent figures who don’t will still be political fodder for pundits, politicians, and influencers. And so if you want to have an impact on politics these days you almost have to take tactics into consideration. The ivory tower is no more, or at least open to the public.
I loved the answers about unpopular positions
Interesting use of "the July Days"
Re what issues not to campaign on even if you believe them, and on the advice "and that means not even nibbling around the edges of restricting people’s Second Amendment rights."
I agree in principle that you shouldn't campaign on unpopular issues, but the trend in popular opinion has been moving more towards gun control. I understand that the pro gun folks are much more invested, but I think a moderate position for more background checks and banning automatics for people under 21 would be popular.
Gallup does a yearly poll on whether respondents believe gun control should be stricter, less strict, or the same and since 2010 the percentage favoring stricter has risen from 43 to 56% ( https://news.gallup.com/poll/653489/majorities-back-stricter-gun-laws-assault-weapons-ban.aspx )
I think a moderate campaign on incremental reform could work.