Just to confirm, someone actually listed to the whole 270 minutes. Took a break over night to sleep but I did it. There are some WTYP fans here who can muster the mickle for such marathons.
I don't know if we came to any useful conclusions - and I notice we did NOT answer the What If Not Liberal Democracy question from my precipitating blog post ... miniver.blogspot.com/2022/07/what-if-not-liberal-democracy.html ... but I did have fun talking.
it's very interesting to listen to two people who have spent so much time thinking about and being engaged in politics over the years go back and forth over their beliefs and experiences, im curious if yall have any like lists of reading recommendations for a younger person trying to take a more active interest in this stuff?
Kind of you to say. I don't know where I would recommend starting on the deeper politics, but I do keep a long index of web articles on understanding the logics of US politics here: miniver.blogspot.com/2012/02/understanding-american-politics.html I would be curious to hear about what that sparks in your thinking.
I share many convictions with as Johnathan. I believe that governments act in our name and because of that we must vote. I don't think voting sufficient, but it is necessary condition. I believe individual autonomy and democratic partcipation and the government should reflect that.
Well governments SHOULD act in our name. There are plenty of authoritarian governments which do not. And while reasonable people may differ about the importance of electoral politics in one's political movement, in a society which holds elections voting is better than not voting.
Great discussion! Varn, you mentioned elite capture and the BLM. I just discovered the book you've mentioned it looks interesting, but I tend to believe the elite capture argument does not fully explain the BLM movement's actions and trajectory. However, I have also personally noted that the BLM has had 2 or more waves. And I think that this is something that's not acknowledged by many people on "the left". I did see that the publishers included endorsements from the likes of Robin D.G Kelly and others. I can recall that Kelly specifically was one of the biggest defenders of BLM from criticism coming from the left. I believe Ruth Wilson Gilmore was also a big defender but I can't recall. I tend to believe that elite capture argument unfortunately also works as a means to cover the movements failings and the involvement of its players. Kelly being one of these people. The lesson taken from the failings of the movement is: let's do this again, but without elite capture!
parenti was fucking awesome back in day, his work on places like cuba is a great intro into arguments disproving the imperialist propaganda surrounding such countries.
There are many reasons to think he is wrong about a bunch of things. But his positions are unmistakably legitimate.
2 года назад
ruclips.net/video/1vucKiNvfL8/видео.html So, the guy concluded that we cannot say that Nazis did bad things or Soviets did bad things but it's complicated. Sorry but, it is absolutely good that Soviets demolished the Nazis, nothing complex about that.
It seems very clear to me that Snyder would say that demolishing the Nazis was good but the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe in the process produced its own horrors,@.
2 года назад+1
@@JonathanKorman I may be missing something but I think all wars are horrible for the civilian population if that's what the writer meant. If he meant, it was bad that Eastern Europe came under the influence of the Soviet Republic instead of the "free world" of the US, then I disagree.
1:39:40 f - Yeah, what if not Westphalia... As a regulatory norm, it posits a form that political conflicts take (not their content, or empircal reality): the invocation of national interest and "self determination" - with "irregular wars" threatening the form itself. The Kantian dream points to eternal peace through republicanization within that setting; but also appears unfit to deal with itself, capital, and global commons. Yet most alternatives, insofar as they are conceivable, appear (all the more?) frightening.* Observing geopolitics from that angle feels like a double bind. * BTW, Schmitt is an "interesting case" here, critiquing Westphalia, proliferating "Großraum"-concepts, and rooting for Mao over Lenin in rendering him more "telluric" (if I recall correctly)...
Agreed. On the merits, the Westphalian order is morally horrifying and riven with practical contradictions. Fundamentally I want to displace it with global socialist libdem governance. But it is impossible to imagine getting there from here. The alternatives to the Westphalian order actually on offer are all even worse.
3:41:20 lol this guy, I knew something felt off The snarky little smile too, it's almost like acusing someone of genocide isn't even a serious allegation, what a lib I really felt Varn's sigh The end was pretty difficult to listen to with all the -itarianisms
If you read me as saying that the Chinese genocide of Uighurs is not a serious allegation, then you are reading me entirely wrong. It is very serious. Maoism is bad because it killed dozens of millions. Contemporary China is bad because (among other things) it is engaged in the crushing oppression and cultural genocide of Uighurs. I think one must recognize that contemporary China is categorically less bad than Maoist China, but my smirk is over the absurdity of Less Bad Than Mao being the lowest imaginable moral bar to clear.
I am pretty confident. Much of what is weird about HRC’s political method is adaptation to the strategies of movement conservatism. She slips punches movement con Republicans throw which KO other neolib Dems. She would have played defense, keeping any of their goofy pseudo-scandals from convincing Dems soft on her to stay home on Election Day. Having lived at the heart of the WJC Administration dodging those bullets, she might well be the most skilled Dem there is at facing that. There was no new dirt for them to find! DJT has a very different method from movement conservatives, requiring the exact opposite strategy. She had to convince Republicans who weakly supported DJT to stay home. She was the least-qualified Dem to do that because she labored under 25 years of conservative propaganda using President Hillary as the image of Götterdämmerung.
@@JonathanKorman movement conservatism completely coalesced around Trump after he won the nomination, and what do you mean by “she would have played defense?” Be specific, that’s vague, I watched the video I still don’t know what you mean by that. Also, Al Gore “labored” at the heart of the bill Clinton administration, just to lose to George Bush, another candidate that movement conservatism coalesced around once Bush won the nomination. “Laboring” at the “heart” of a presidential administration from the 90s doesn’t mean you’ll beat politicians who entered the game in the 2000s… Your whole analysis is completely bogged down in subjective, *vague* takes on campaign strategy - and completely ignores factors from the Obama administration, the economy, swing states, the internet, literally everything else that fuels who wins and loses elections in the year 2016.
I concur that movement conservatives - the people - almost entirely rallied behind DJT, @@MortVaanderwaal. But that reflects how movement conservatism - the movement, ideology, and political method - collapsed in the face of MAGA as a distinct movement. Ted Cruz, for example, was a perfect embodiment of movement conservatism, and fought DJT as illegitimate in 2016 Republican primaries largely because of DJT's attacks on the movement con establishment ... and then re-made himself as a MAGA champion and DJT loyalist. That is very different from Republican support for GWB, who was always a movement conservative creature. The thin rhetorical cloak of moderation GWB claimed to represent during the 2000 campaign evaporated the morning after Election Day. Part of Republican capitulation to Trump is dread of the MAGA base willing to primary Republicans who did not exhibit fealty to Maximum Leader. Part of it is new MAGA electeds. And yes, a big part of it is that DJT's disinterest in most policy meant that Republicans in Congress could work the movement conservative policy playbook with his support. But they no longer hold the tiller in the Party; it is now the party of DJT & MAGA, not movement conservatism. It is not obvious to me that this will last. So much of the coherence of MAGA as a movement is grounded in the persona of DJT ... while at the same time he cannot simply direct it ideologically, even if he cared to. The locus of power among conservative movements remains very much in flux, which is why we have so many distinct movements on the right jockeying for power, hoping to be the one in the big chair when the music stops. We are not in the wake of a re-alignment, we are in the middle of one which is still churning.
I grant that reasonable people may differ how effective HRC might have been against a movement cons like 2016 Ted Cruz, @@MortVaanderwaal. And I take your point that Gore demonstrates vividly how participation in the WJC administration does not necessarily make one a skilled knife fighter against the movement con playbook. I am no apologist for HRC's general political acumen; taken even on conventional political terms I think she is a bad strategist and her boosters are deluded. Movement conservative media efforts to gin up hate for HRC were extremely effective among the conservative true believers, but she has dodged their efforts to do the same in the eyes of the general public. Compare John Kerry getting played by failing to respond to the Swiftboat pseudo-scandal, while HRC faced down the Benghazi nonsense by saying "bring it on", showing up for the silly Congressional hearings without giving them a single soundbite to misrepresent. She is good at THAT. None of the movement cons have been able to sell their crap to inattentive voters as a positive vision since Reagan (which is the real reason why they revere RWR), so Cruz vs Clinton would have been Cruz trying the same anti-HRC tricks which she has long since learned to dodge. There is just no new dirt to turn up or invent! DJT, on the contrary, does sell a positive (though stupid) vision - "you'll get tired of all the Winning" - and HRC had nothing she could use to compete with that.
@@JonathanKorman maybe movement conservatism “collapsed” in the face of MAGA” because movement conservatism *is* MAGA, just with some new aesthetic differences. And your point about Ted Cruz attacking Trump as illegitimate is hardly notable - Cruz was trying to win the nomination, primary contenders attack each other for dozens of things only to walk them back later and the 2016 republicans were no different. Meanwhile MAGA politicians primarying from the right is movement conservatism 101, calling electeds “RINOs” or some variant has been occurring for decades. You’re pretending there is some divergence between MAGA and movement conservatism, with none of the evidence to back it up. It’s the same people in charge, staffing cabinets, running campaigns, writing checks, influencing the party, etc. Who are these new MAGA insurgents and where are they coming from? The same place movement conservatives always come from. They make the same campaign stops too, they come from politically similar districts and states, etc. And who are these republicans who also hate the Trump presidency, who hate maga? Only a handful do, because it’s served everyone very well so far.
Well my contention is that including private property in libdem principle is fraught, since concentrations of capital are so deeply undemocratic. So not only can I carry libdem principle with me to socialism, libdem principle carries me TO socialism.
@@JonathanKorman The democratic process in Liberalism doesn't extend to one's private property - though you are free to set up your own cooperative commune if you so wish, freedom baby! - so it shouldn't carry you to socialism?
@@SacClass650 control of property is power. Inequality in the control of property exists, is very substantial, and is exacerbated by liberal conceptions of property. democracy is about power, specifically: not simply "people having a say about things", but each person having a relevant say about things to the extent those affect them. But yes, liberalism doesn't extent to property in practice, it was in fact a way of making the transition from aristocracy "sting less" (read: beneficial) for the aristocrats. it's inconsistent. it has principles, meaning nice words that it says about itself, then it does different.
![SahBabii - Viking [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/D37cL92JX0I/mqdefault.jpg)
Just to confirm, someone actually listed to the whole 270 minutes. Took a break over night to sleep but I did it. There are some WTYP fans here who can muster the mickle for such marathons.
I missed/skipped it a few weeks ago, 40 mins in and I'm getting pumped
Thank you. This epic of an episode is an absolute masterclass in analyzing politics as a subset of broader human social structure formation.
I don't know if we came to any useful conclusions - and I notice we did NOT answer the What If Not Liberal Democracy question from my precipitating blog post ...
miniver.blogspot.com/2022/07/what-if-not-liberal-democracy.html
... but I did have fun talking.
It's not entirely answerable yet is why we didn't answer it.
Well that right there tells ya something.
You say you want a revolution? Well ya know, we all want to see the plan!
‘Well you know it’s gonna be alright’ feels like an unfitting follow up here…
I've heard more LaRouche discourse in the last six months than in the prior 25 years.
Funny how this bizarro stuff cycles, isn't it?
Lol I am holding firm: it's surprising but I do believe that it's organic, just as in, it's not the CIA doing it explicitly
This was excellent.
it's very interesting to listen to two people who have spent so much time thinking about and being engaged in politics over the years go back and forth over their beliefs and experiences, im curious if yall have any like lists of reading recommendations for a younger person trying to take a more active interest in this stuff?
Kind of you to say. I don't know where I would recommend starting on the deeper politics, but I do keep a long index of web articles on understanding the logics of US politics here:
miniver.blogspot.com/2012/02/understanding-american-politics.html
I would be curious to hear about what that sparks in your thinking.
@@JonathanKorman thank you! there's a lot of really interesting stuff in there
i listened to the whole thing
I love this format.
I share many convictions with as Johnathan. I believe that governments act in our name and because of that we must vote. I don't think voting sufficient, but it is necessary condition. I believe individual autonomy and democratic partcipation and the government should reflect that.
Well governments SHOULD act in our name. There are plenty of authoritarian governments which do not.
And while reasonable people may differ about the importance of electoral politics in one's political movement, in a society which holds elections voting is better than not voting.
Great discussion! Varn, you mentioned elite capture and the BLM. I just discovered the book you've mentioned it looks interesting, but I tend to believe the elite capture argument does not fully explain the BLM movement's actions and trajectory. However, I have also personally noted that the BLM has had 2 or more waves. And I think that this is something that's not acknowledged by many people on "the left".
I did see that the publishers included endorsements from the likes of Robin D.G Kelly and others. I can recall that Kelly specifically was one of the biggest defenders of BLM from criticism coming from the left. I believe Ruth Wilson Gilmore was also a big defender but I can't recall. I tend to believe that elite capture argument unfortunately also works as a means to cover the movements failings and the involvement of its players. Kelly being one of these people. The lesson taken from the failings of the movement is: let's do this again, but without elite capture!
I have noticed two different cycles of two to three waves
Parenti did yeoman's work in a hostile era. Appreciate Varn's stipulated defense here. Yes, nuance, criticism, etc. Comes down to it I'm with Parenti
parenti was fucking awesome back in day, his work on places like cuba is a great intro into arguments disproving the imperialist propaganda surrounding such countries.
1:12:00 Isn't Snyder a crackpot?
A Yale historian is genenrally not a crackpot. Ideologically Movitated in his historiography, sure. Almost definitely.
There are many reasons to think he is wrong about a bunch of things. But his positions are unmistakably legitimate.
ruclips.net/video/1vucKiNvfL8/видео.html So, the guy concluded that we cannot say that Nazis did bad things or Soviets did bad things but it's complicated. Sorry but, it is absolutely good that Soviets demolished the Nazis, nothing complex about that.
It seems very clear to me that Snyder would say that demolishing the Nazis was good but the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe in the process produced its own horrors,@.
@@JonathanKorman I may be missing something but I think all wars are horrible for the civilian population if that's what the writer meant. If he meant, it was bad that Eastern Europe came under the influence of the Soviet Republic instead of the "free world" of the US, then I disagree.
1:39:40 f - Yeah, what if not Westphalia...
As a regulatory norm, it posits a form that political conflicts take (not their content, or empircal reality): the invocation of national interest and "self determination" - with "irregular wars" threatening the form itself. The Kantian dream points to eternal peace through republicanization within that setting; but also appears unfit to deal with itself, capital, and global commons.
Yet most alternatives, insofar as they are conceivable, appear (all the more?) frightening.* Observing geopolitics from that angle feels like a double bind.
* BTW, Schmitt is an "interesting case" here, critiquing Westphalia, proliferating "Großraum"-concepts, and rooting for Mao over Lenin in rendering him more "telluric" (if I recall correctly)...
Agreed.
On the merits, the Westphalian order is morally horrifying and riven with practical contradictions. Fundamentally I want to displace it with global socialist libdem governance. But it is impossible to imagine getting there from here.
The alternatives to the Westphalian order actually on offer are all even worse.
3:41:20 lol this guy, I knew something felt off
The snarky little smile too, it's almost like acusing someone of genocide isn't even a serious allegation, what a lib
I really felt Varn's sigh
The end was pretty difficult to listen to with all the -itarianisms
If you read me as saying that the Chinese genocide of Uighurs is not a serious allegation, then you are reading me entirely wrong. It is very serious.
Maoism is bad because it killed dozens of millions. Contemporary China is bad because (among other things) it is engaged in the crushing oppression and cultural genocide of Uighurs. I think one must recognize that contemporary China is categorically less bad than Maoist China, but my smirk is over the absurdity of Less Bad Than Mao being the lowest imaginable moral bar to clear.
Welcome fellow liberal varn. Sam Seder debate when?
I don't do debates.
“Hillary Clinton would’ve crushed Ted Cruz or Paul Ryan” lmao what? He says that with way too much confidence
I am pretty confident.
Much of what is weird about HRC’s political method is adaptation to the strategies of movement conservatism. She slips punches movement con Republicans throw which KO other neolib Dems. She would have played defense, keeping any of their goofy pseudo-scandals from convincing Dems soft on her to stay home on Election Day. Having lived at the heart of the WJC Administration dodging those bullets, she might well be the most skilled Dem there is at facing that. There was no new dirt for them to find!
DJT has a very different method from movement conservatives, requiring the exact opposite strategy. She had to convince Republicans who weakly supported DJT to stay home. She was the least-qualified Dem to do that because she labored under 25 years of conservative propaganda using President Hillary as the image of Götterdämmerung.
@@JonathanKorman movement conservatism completely coalesced around Trump after he won the nomination, and what do you mean by “she would have played defense?” Be specific, that’s vague, I watched the video I still don’t know what you mean by that. Also, Al Gore “labored” at the heart of the bill Clinton administration, just to lose to George Bush, another candidate that movement conservatism coalesced around once Bush won the nomination. “Laboring” at the “heart” of a presidential administration from the 90s doesn’t mean you’ll beat politicians who entered the game in the 2000s…
Your whole analysis is completely bogged down in subjective, *vague* takes on campaign strategy - and completely ignores factors from the Obama administration, the economy, swing states, the internet, literally everything else that fuels who wins and loses elections in the year 2016.
I concur that movement conservatives - the people - almost entirely rallied behind DJT, @@MortVaanderwaal. But that reflects how movement conservatism - the movement, ideology, and political method - collapsed in the face of MAGA as a distinct movement. Ted Cruz, for example, was a perfect embodiment of movement conservatism, and fought DJT as illegitimate in 2016 Republican primaries largely because of DJT's attacks on the movement con establishment ... and then re-made himself as a MAGA champion and DJT loyalist.
That is very different from Republican support for GWB, who was always a movement conservative creature. The thin rhetorical cloak of moderation GWB claimed to represent during the 2000 campaign evaporated the morning after Election Day.
Part of Republican capitulation to Trump is dread of the MAGA base willing to primary Republicans who did not exhibit fealty to Maximum Leader. Part of it is new MAGA electeds. And yes, a big part of it is that DJT's disinterest in most policy meant that Republicans in Congress could work the movement conservative policy playbook with his support. But they no longer hold the tiller in the Party; it is now the party of DJT & MAGA, not movement conservatism.
It is not obvious to me that this will last. So much of the coherence of MAGA as a movement is grounded in the persona of DJT ... while at the same time he cannot simply direct it ideologically, even if he cared to. The locus of power among conservative movements remains very much in flux, which is why we have so many distinct movements on the right jockeying for power, hoping to be the one in the big chair when the music stops. We are not in the wake of a re-alignment, we are in the middle of one which is still churning.
I grant that reasonable people may differ how effective HRC might have been against a movement cons like 2016 Ted Cruz, @@MortVaanderwaal. And I take your point that Gore demonstrates vividly how participation in the WJC administration does not necessarily make one a skilled knife fighter against the movement con playbook.
I am no apologist for HRC's general political acumen; taken even on conventional political terms I think she is a bad strategist and her boosters are deluded.
Movement conservative media efforts to gin up hate for HRC were extremely effective among the conservative true believers, but she has dodged their efforts to do the same in the eyes of the general public. Compare John Kerry getting played by failing to respond to the Swiftboat pseudo-scandal, while HRC faced down the Benghazi nonsense by saying "bring it on", showing up for the silly Congressional hearings without giving them a single soundbite to misrepresent. She is good at THAT.
None of the movement cons have been able to sell their crap to inattentive voters as a positive vision since Reagan (which is the real reason why they revere RWR), so Cruz vs Clinton would have been Cruz trying the same anti-HRC tricks which she has long since learned to dodge. There is just no new dirt to turn up or invent! DJT, on the contrary, does sell a positive (though stupid) vision - "you'll get tired of all the Winning" - and HRC had nothing she could use to compete with that.
@@JonathanKorman maybe movement conservatism “collapsed” in the face of MAGA” because movement conservatism *is* MAGA, just with some new aesthetic differences. And your point about Ted Cruz attacking Trump as illegitimate is hardly notable - Cruz was trying to win the nomination, primary contenders attack each other for dozens of things only to walk them back later and the 2016 republicans were no different. Meanwhile MAGA politicians primarying from the right is movement conservatism 101, calling electeds “RINOs” or some variant has been occurring for decades.
You’re pretending there is some divergence between MAGA and movement conservatism, with none of the evidence to back it up. It’s the same people in charge, staffing cabinets, running campaigns, writing checks, influencing the party, etc. Who are these new MAGA insurgents and where are they coming from? The same place movement conservatives always come from. They make the same campaign stops too, they come from politically similar districts and states, etc. And who are these republicans who also hate the Trump presidency, who hate maga? Only a handful do, because it’s served everyone very well so far.
Liberal democracy to socialism - gosh, what a regression.
I am just tempted to respond with just mention of Battle of Manzikert about regression.
@@VarnVlog Is socialism playing the part of the Turks?
Well my contention is that including private property in libdem principle is fraught, since concentrations of capital are so deeply undemocratic. So not only can I carry libdem principle with me to socialism, libdem principle carries me TO socialism.
@@JonathanKorman The democratic process in Liberalism doesn't extend to one's private property - though you are free to set up your own cooperative commune if you so wish, freedom baby! - so it shouldn't carry you to socialism?
@@SacClass650
control of property is power. Inequality in the control of property exists, is very substantial, and is exacerbated by liberal conceptions of property.
democracy is about power, specifically: not simply "people having a say about things", but each person having a relevant say about things to the extent those affect them.
But yes, liberalism doesn't extent to property in practice, it was in fact a way of making the transition from aristocracy "sting less" (read: beneficial) for the aristocrats. it's inconsistent. it has principles, meaning nice words that it says about itself, then it does different.