You're underselling the importance of persuasion in the fight for gay marriage. Yes, morality was on our side, but it absolutely wasn't won by lecturing, but rather by appealing to the moral sensibilities of our opponents to actually convince them it was the right thing to do. See Andrew Sullivan's pioneering writing on this from back in the day. I myself changed a lot of minds on this simply by being decent towards (and even friends with) many conservative Christians, allowing them to accept me on their own terms. "Lecturing" was rather the tactic of the right in that fight, and it only hurt their position.
I think this all has more to do with misattributing the success of gay marriage, rather than just wrong lessons learned. The "lecturing left" has been around for at least the past 60 years, and from their home base in academia, they take credit for civil rights successes, and their students believe them. But look closer at those successes, and it's generally the "normie" folks doing the patient work of persuasion that actually win the day. We learn the wrong lessons because we're listening to the wrong teachers.
Came here to say this. To the degree that there was lecturing and hectoring in favor of gay marriage, it likely harmed the cause on the margin. We were just lucky that the issue itself, with the help of the enormous amounts of persuasion that many of us were out there doing, was strong enough to succeed fantastically in spite of that.
Addendum re gay marriage - gay politics in the 70s and early 80s was crazy. Conservatives didn't pull "they want to destroy the traditional family" or "feminists want women to become lesbians" out of nowhere - they just listened to the lunatic fringe. NAMBLA had to be barred from Pride in the 80s. It took a lot of refinement of arguments to get to the point of a cause as easy as marriage. 2010s progressives thought you could just go straight in with the craziest ideas (defund the police) without the road test.
The gay marriage fight was very much won as an appeal to normality. Lots of imagery of gay nuclear families doing normal wholesome American activities together.
appeals to normality only work after extremism pushes the overton window out to what used to look bizarre apprear normal in contrast. the former depends on the latter. the gay rights movement depended on wacky pride parades and "we're here, we're queer, get used to it".
RuPaul's Drag Race was (is) a popular show, drag queens are basically cartoon characters as far as children understand, and they were willing to volunteer their time to entertain kids so parents who were Drag Race fans could indulge in a thing they enjoyed with their kids in a family-friendly way.
I think there's another aspect of the gay marriage argument too- the media and representation. You can start to trace the rise in gay marriage acceptance with shows like Ellen and Will & Grace breaking through to normies. Then the 2000s saw a lot of gay characters and gay storylines in various TV shows, Brokeback Mountain was a huge movie moment in 2005, there was the later 2000s rise in bisexuality in pop music (Gaga, Katy Perry) and TV (Tila Tequila's show being the first reality dating show to have male and female contestants, IIRC), etc. And it makes sense- there was a feedback loop where more gay people being represented in the media led to more gay people feeling comfortable enough to risk coming out, which then led to other closeted gay people seeing more gay people in daily life and feeling comfortable with coming out themselves, while people opposed to gay rights were being forced to reconcile those beliefs with having gay friends or family members.
There was this idea within activism that the more the media represented various people, the more normies would empathize with them and normalize them. We saw this start to play out with trans people too, the early 2010s had Orange is the New Black and Transparent and the Danish Girl and Drag Race, and I think that's why I look back to 2015 and remember people mostly thinking "that's weird, but whatever" when Caitlyn Jenner first came out and why North Carolina's bathroom bill was pushed back against so hard. Similarly to how the greater representation of gay people in the media led to more gay people coming out, more trans representation led to more trans people coming out.
That just doesn't seem to work anymore. With the death of the Monoculture in the mid-late 2010s into the pandemic as the internet allowed everyone to silo off their media diet, there aren't the same kind of tentpole shows that EVERYONE watched, music that EVERYONE listens to. Not only that, but with an effort to increase diversity in casting also rose a right-wing cottage industry of angry loser nerds throwing a fit and whipping people up over "forced diversity" in pop culture that primes people to see this kind of normalizing representation in a negative light.
Like, I saw someone on Reddit cite Nick Fury as a character that proved people were okay with diversity in casting, but that they hated race-swapping characters just for the sake of diversity. *Nick Fury*. A white guy in the mainline Marvel universe. If Nick Fury played by Samuel L Jackson were introduced to the MCU today- and not in 2008- there would be a million YT videos bitching about race-swapping a "beloved" character none of them had heard of before and it would be a culture war moment.
The nerds would argue that when Nick Fury became Samuel Jackson, the character was a C-list, nobody made a big deal out of his blackness and Samuel Jackson is just naturally cool and it's his coolness, not his blackness, what made him an A list character. But Disney or whoever misunderstood the message. The character isn't cool because he is black. He is cool first and black is second. A lot of the trans/DIE/whatever you call it stuff would go down better if the character was a character first, and a whatever second. And speaking of Lady Gaga, her whole song was about being Born this Way and how God doesn't make mistakes. Suddenly, God does make mistakes by sticking souls in wrong bodies, and only science can fix this mistake? I'm not even Christian, but we've swung from gays are natural to maybe some gays are actually women and require more than $10,000+ to be fixed. If you need to pay big bucks to be yourself, how real is this self you bought? Like, these people are using credit cards to be "their true selves"? How is this not peak capitalist dystopia? (Which is funny because online, they seem so left.)
Lady Gaga never denied rumors that she had a penis because she didn't want kids to think there was anything wrong with that.
And trans people getting surgeries isn't an example of peak capitalist dystopia. Let's apply your argument to people who need glasses. "If god doesn't make mistakes, why would anyone need to change their eyes? And now you've got people spending hundreds of dollars on glasses or thousands of dollars to shoot laser beams into their eyeballs to make them a shape that can see better? Peak capitalist dystopia."
Being trans is natural - there have been trans people throughout all of history and there will be trans people for the rest of humanity's run. Some people are just trans. People can be mad about it, but they'll be on their deathbed angry about the existence of trans people because they're simply not going away.
My take is that we're in a transitionary period (no pun intended lol) where trans stuff is just starting to get more visibility, and there's a big backlash because of that visibility. But trans people's existence threatens to upturn the gender norms of society and that's very scary to people, so it'll take time to get more accepted.
Having bad eyesight is genetic, feeling your soul is trapped in the wrong body is religion. That's the difference. You need to believe in souls to make the whole trans work. If your religion requires surgery, that's on you, and you pay for it with your own money.
Also, Lady Gaga, I love her but I can't believe anyone takes popstars seriously. She does what she does for money and attention. She told you what you wanted to hear so you would give her money and loyalty. If society suddenly decided that dressing like an astronaut is cool, shed dress like an astronaut and support space exploration. And her statement worked! Here you are, 10 years later, still being a loyal Stan. You never considered she only said it because her brand is edge and wants money? Really?
Trans does not require the concept of a soul, It’s about the lived experience of gender. So if that’s your hangup, that’s great because it’s not real. Some people might use the concept of a soul to talk about how they feel about gender, but it’s not required by any means. Trans people have been around forever and they’ll be around until your dying days. You can’t argue it out of people, and not understanding it won’t change people.
I don't really like Lady Gaga's music and I never have. You’re assuming a lot of things out of what seems like cynicism or trolling. It’s not an edgy money grab to *not* deny rumors and then address that passivity years later. It’s not edgy to be trans. Some people are just trans. It’s not a choice folks are making, it’s an innate feeling.
"It's an innate feeling"? So you don't even have the dignity of physical reality, it's all about feelings. In fact, it's about being in a fad. Like a goth. An emo. A hipster.
So it's a subculture but also a condition that requires medical intervention but also doesn't require medical intervention because it doesn't really exists in physical reality, but actually exists in physical reality because requires medical intervention, but doesn't actually require medical intervention but healthcare should cover it, even though it's more like a feeling that doesn't require intervention.
Gotcha.
If you declare yourself an emo, but there's no Hot Topic to buy a band T-shirt, are you really an emo? Why, it seems to be a subculture that can only exist if you are consumer that shows off his identity via shopping. It's like a capitalist dystopia or something. Huh.
yes, being trans is in innate feeling... that you act upon with things like behavioral modifications, voice training, apparel, hair styling, skincare, nails, and yes - the surgeries to physically change the body that you *just* expressed disdain for. I'd be curious what your core philosophies for life are because you seem like an inconsistent troll. Maybe not though, some people are just weirdos lol.
There’s this idea that being trans means you have to get surgery, but that’s not true. Being trans is about someone’s gender identity—it’s who they know they are—not what medical steps they’ve taken. Transitioning is really personal and different for everyone. Some trans people might pursue surgery, some might take hormones, and some might not make any physical changes at all. None of that changes whether someone is trans.
Now, when it comes to gender-affirming surgery being medically necessary, the truth is that not all trans people want or need surgery, but for those who do, it can be life-changing and even life-saving. Major medical organizations like the AMA recognize that, for many, this care is necessary to their mental and physical health. It’s not about surgery being required to “prove” someone is trans—it’s about providing the healthcare that specific individuals need to thrive.
And about the cost—health insurance exists to cover medically necessary treatments, whether it’s a heart bypass, mental health care, or hormone therapy. Gender-affirming care falls under that same umbrella for those who need it. Expecting trans people to pay out of pocket is like saying, “Your health isn’t as important as everyone else’s,” which isn’t fair. It’s about making sure everyone gets the care they need, not gatekeeping it based on who they are.
Also, the cost of gender-affirming surgeries are extremely small in the larger scheme of things. It's like, 0.01% of insurer budgets, or $0.06 per member per month.
, "bad eyesight" can be genetic, meaning that if your parents have vision problems, you are more likely to inherit similar issues due to genes passed down from them; however, environmental factors like lifestyle and exposure to screens can also significantly impact eyesight, so genetics aren't the sole determinant of vision quality.
Agree that death of monoculture played a large part. Simply said, mainstream media and entertainment industries - which had vastly different opinions and political preferences than the median voter - no longer have so much influence as before.
I don't know, my family wasn't watching Will and Grace or any of those shows with gay people in them. I think representation can affect some people, but representation in media is often a result of shifting attitudes rather than the cause. I don't see any reason that media representation would work worse today than before, so the fact that it doesn't seem to be helping much is probably evidence that it was never the thing that moved the needle before. Rather I think it just depends on what arguments are being made. 64% of people today support laws that protect the rights of trans people, and only 10% oppose that (25% don't care). But only 38% of people think that gender can be different than sex assigned at birth (and the number has gone down since 2017). So if you are simply arguing that trans people should have their rights protected and be allowed to pursue happiness, that's a winning argument. If you are asking people to let their daughters compete against trans women...that's probably not going to work.
I think the skeleton key is that this approach works very well in intra-left conversations due to progressive deference norms. It's only been recently that the pendulum has swung the other way.
Look at all the discourse about "white women" or "white feminism" that arouse during the first Trump term. It doesn't make sense to talk like that if you're trying to get people to vote for you, but it does work if you want to browbeat people.
someone who was at least a little hostile to the left said that the left learns activism from conflicts on college campuses, where if you can convince the RA or administrators that the other side is racist, sexists, or homophobic, then you automatically win.
Again, not too charitable, but I think they had a point
I think an aspect of this that is uncomfortable but obvious - at least to me, as a woman and mother of girls - is that women are particularly vulnerable to submitting to shaming by other women, and that has been catastrophic for professional and political communities that tend to attract a lot of women.
No one wants to say this out loud but James "Preachy Females" Carville, but a lot of problems on the left are toxic femininity.
It's notable that the famous essay "Tyranny of Structurelessness" talked about a similar dynamic on women's spaces fifty years ago. ( https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm)
I do think this tactic really centers on trying pressure women with mainstream Dem opinions further left, and it worked for a time.
The thing is, if you are a typical coastal-urban leftist, almost all your conversations are intra-left conversations. So you get used to the idea that everybody-- or everybody who matters-- shares your basic moral premises and worldview already. And in that environment, yes, scolding and shunning dissenters works. So people learn instinctively to use it all the time, and then when a nationwide plurality or even majority composed of people they never talk to, and whose lives they know nothing about, backlash against it, it's easy to say "oh that's just a bunch of dumb bigots". It's the old Pauline Kael "how could Nixon have gotten elected? I don't know a single person who voted for him!" problem writ large.
That's more true of the right than it is of the left, but somehow nobody thinks it's a handicap the right needs to overcome.As it turns out, making people conform to your worldview is more effective politicking than conforming yourself to them. In reality, scolding and ostracizing works -both on internal and external dissenters (those aren't really separate cases, they're just on a spectrum). that's why the right, which is deeply siloed, and viciously intolerant of external and internal dissent, is succeeding.
Leftists and center left liberals no longer have the intellectual high ground they once had to argue from.
1) A lot of policies touted by “smart” Democrats turned out poorly.
2) Joe Biden has been a senile fool as president and his successor couldn’t find it in herself to explain how she was going to be different from the unpopular policies of the Biden administration.
A lot of the policies touted as 'smart' were triangulations away from the left towards the right. Of course they failed- they prioritized political positioning over effectiveness.
We see this best in Obamacare, when what is actually cheap and leads to good outcomes is free-at-point-of-use, like NHS or places with mandatory nationalized insurance plans.
Browbeating people is how you get them to vote for you - or to give up voting against you, but those are just part of a spectrum. This is why trump succeeded with latinos while romney and mccain failed. Same kind of rhetoric you're suggesting is counterproductive.
“I think the skeleton key is that this approach works very well in intra-left conversations due to progressive deference norms. It's only been recently that the pendulum has swung the other way.”
I agree 100% with your first sentence.
What evidence do you have for your 2nd sentence? That *some* on the “moderate” wing on the left are finally speaking up about it in the few weeks after the election loss?
The pendulum may have stopped moving more extreme, but the idea that it has actually swung the other way is merely hope on the part of those “moderate” Dems that remain voting for the party that didn’t choose the highly popular somewhat moderate governor of the most important swing state as the VP, but instead allowed the Orwellian “Genocide Josh” campaign to not only succeed but go unchallenged.
Or did I miss the part where the supposedly adult Dem party politicians and leaders in the room stood up and denounced it?
The easiest possible “Sister Souljah” moment handed to them on a platter, and the Dems refused to take it.
The leftists in the Dem coalition believe they merely lost a close election, that not only their views but their tactics are correct; they just weren’t deployed aggressively enough by the “moderate Kamala” campaign.
"orwellian genocide josh campaign" is apparently something that was very important in your silo, but normal people were scarcely aware of any controversy, so trying to sister souljah it would have just streisand effected it.
Doesn't make the author's point (did you actually read the article, or are you just taking it as a jump-off for anti-left stuff?). And if your point is the left hasn't changed recently that's hardly something i disagree with. But thanks for making one of my points by being performatively outraged over a form of discourse directed at you which is routinely directed at the left without objection from the respectability scolds. Just a reminder of how hypocritical and phoney respectability politics are. And yes, sister souljah was famous before clinton scolded her - not long before, of course. She became a public scandal and then clinton condemned her - he didn't add fuel to the fire by making famous a scandal that otherwise could have passed with barely a ripple. In contrast there's apparently some speculation that the harris campaign passed on shapiro for fear of an antisemitic reaction from the left, but that never drew the notice of normies, so bringing it to their attention would have been political malpractice. Had it become a bigger campaign moment then a sister souljah moment would have been in order.
Sure, sure. Sister Souljah was known by everyone, Josh Shapiro by no one. Got it.
And the malpractice would be to say publicly you’re against antisemitic smears, rather than to not pick for the VP slot the popular moderate who would give you the best chance to win, or the other two less leftist, more accomplished, more well spoken choices, but instead pick the one guy demonstrably even less qualified than (and as much and possibly more leftist than) Harris.
Point 1: is your reading comprehension actually this bad, or are you being obtuse to avoid losing a debate point?
Point 2: This is all just more performative nonsense from you. You don't really think selecting one disposable vp candidate instead of another would have actually given the campaign a better chance to win (nobody votes for potus based on vp candidates anyway), you're just throwing stuff against the wall to avoid conceding. Typically intellectually dishonest discourse. To address the one kernel that's on topic, yes, it's often wrong to publically deny potential scandals, thereby giving those scandals more credence, because (thanks to the backfire effect) most people will take denials as evidence of guilt. Saying "i condemn antisemitism" is a great way to convince a lot of people that you are an antisemite (because otherwise why would you have to say it?). You only say that when it's clear the critical mass is going to think of you as an antisemite if you don't say anything.
I think this has led to a generational gap too. I was a college student during the Bush-era political nadir of gay marriage, and the feeling of being surrounded on all sides by reactionaries, while watching tons of gay friends struggle, had a big impact on me. The sense of cultural liberalism being on the defensive is a very familiar feeling for people my age, and e.g. Obama equivocating on gay marriage to appeal to moderates seemed totally normal and understandable (though still frustrating!). But if you came of age politically a few years later, when the slope of the line of public opinion was really steep, the vibe was totally different. You saw the armies of justice unfurling their banners and charging across the field in broad daylight while their enemies scattered before them, and it was hard to see the point of political caution. When I see a smart, younger progressive like Molly White getting genuinely furious at Jonathan Chait's well-to-my-right-but-only-mildly-conservative-in-the-scheme-of-things columns on trans activism, it makes me think that the generational vibe difference is responsible.
But is the divide simply “generational” or the result of mal-educated wokeness?
Because if anything on the margin younger people are more willing to think for themselves and not just “do as they’re told” as snowflake Millenials do on average.
In other words, why has the “generational vibe” affected only the harder-core leftists of the generation, while larger numbers than in decades of the same generation are voting against Dems as young voters?
Because the Religious Right has been out of power. We’ve been living in a liberal social era since around 2008, these people haven’t been exposed to the shortcomings and failures of a socially conservative culture.
This is also why I don’t think Democrats can do much but just let the fire burn out. That AND leadership is lazy.
I think you and I are largely agreeing (on the behavior, if likely *not* on the cause).
My point is that in fact it is NOT an entire *generation* “vibe”, as the “vibe” he describes is only/primarily affecting leftist young people (who are mostly college miseducated).
If anything, young non-leftists are MORE willing to question authority / “the narrative” than the Millenial generation that preceded them.
“When I see a smart, younger progressive like Molly White getting genuinely furious at Jonathan Chait's well-to-my-right-but-only-mildly-conservative-in-the-scheme-of-things columns on trans activism, it makes me think that the generational vibe difference is responsible.”
Ah, you don’t actually mean an overall generational vibe difference (or you live in a bubble and know only woke college goers in the generation), you just mean the mal-educated-midwit-leftists-of-the-generation vibe difference.
You’re probably correct about that.
You should just be careful not to assume said vibe affects all of the generation, as the election demonstrates that it does not.
"You might think that you shouldn’t have to communicate empathetically with bigots, or compromise with people who have stupid ideas, or tolerate people whose politics you strongly dislike"
How about this: people who disagree with you are not presumptively "bigots" and do not "have stupid ideas"; perhaps they, unlike you, are aware of tradeoffs--which makes them smarter than you. You are in some ways ignorant.
Also, if you can't "tolerate people whose politics you strongly dislike", I guess that makes you both ignorant and intolerant.
I think you're misunderstanding the statement that was made. Some people ARE bigots. Jeremiah didn't say that everyone who isn't a progressive is a bigot; he said that to make progress, you do have to sometimes deal with bigots. Big difference.
Also, it's hilarious that you open with a condemnation of name-calling and end with name-calling.
I'm not misunderstanding at all. His advice to "you" (You might think...) is spoken to a progressive who thinks people who disagree with him/her are bigots, and have stupid ideas. My point is to indict that imaginary person as being intolerant and ignorant, not let them off the hook as Jeremiah does.
I think it's much more hilarious that you think adjectives are "names". Do you need these words defined?
Ignorant: lacking knowledge or awareness in general (in this case ignorant of tradeoffs)
Intolerant: not tolerant of views, beliefs, or behavior that differ from one's own (in this case intolerant of people with disliked politics)
Of course these words can be used to insult, but I wasn't insulting, I was describing. And really, the imaginary person Jeremiah addresses IS a bigot ("a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group"), but I left that unsaid.
I wonder if even as many as 1 person in 4 whose views are left of center and read your previous comment realizes you were referring to them (well, at least to the hard leftists the author was speaking about).
I’m sure the number is somewhere between 1 in 20 and about 2 in 5, and you’d think the folks reading these comments would skew somewhat lesser hard left, but damned if I could tell you where in the range it’d be…
What happened was the March of Dimes effect. The left DID win the culture war, in 2015, just as the March of Dimes won the battle over polio and NATO won the cold war. Did any of them demobilize after the war? The March of Dimes shifted to birth defects (we'll never get rid of those meaning they will go on forever). Did NATO disband after it no longer had a purpose? Nope, it's still around. Did the HRC and other leftists groups stand down? Nope, they immediately took up transgenderism and started a whole new culture war. So it goes.
I think it's accurate to say that social movements often don't really disband after they have won and that leads to acvitist creep. But NATO isn't exactly the best example given that Putin has invaded more countries than the USSR ever did. It's more relevant today than it was then.
But don’t you think if NATO had disbanded following the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, the European nations would have created their own alliance when Russia first began to revive? Because NATO continued to exist they felt they could continue to skimp on defense spending because of their alliance with the US. So look what has happened. Russia, a second-tier power has managed to tie up the military power of the entire West, leaving China a free hand. An alliance with China has advantages for both sides. Russia has a large amount of natural resources that China needs, China has the most powerful industrial plant in the world and can outproduce the rest of the world combined, which would be available to Russia in a future war with NATO, much as the (then) vast US manufacturing capacity was available to the Allies in WW II.
With the election of Donald Trump, Putin may have already achieved the eclipse of US power in the Old World, allowing him to recover the lost territories of the Russian Empire, which appears to be something he wants to do.
That does seem plausible, but it's worth noting that Ukraine's military spending per GDP was just as low as most NATO countries and it went DOWN after Russia invaded Crimea in 2008. Lack of NATO membership didn't convince them to take the threat of Russia seriously until the orcs were in their backyard. Germans didn't just fail to build enough tanks, they also came to rely on Russian energy even though we warned them not to. I think it's more about a failure of imagination than faith in American military might.
Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, not 2008. In the five years before 2014 (2009-2013) Ukrainian defense expenditures averaged 1.71% of GDP. From 2014 through 2021 expenditures averaged 3.16% of GDP, an 85% increase.
Thanks, my mistake. 3% is a lot more than 1.71% but that's what the US spends when we are not at war with anyone. It took them literally being invaded to get up to 3%. Not belonging to NATO doesn't seem to have encouraged Ukraine to spend more on defense than any other country that borders Russia.
I would point out that, while attitudes toward gay marriage did change quickly, the legal change only happened quickly because of the Supreme Court ruling. If the Court had not done so, gay marriage would still be illegal in half the states in the country, and we would still be fighting about it.
True, but because it is now an issue where the liberal position is popular in most states, Democrats would actually benefit from making this a political fight. Similar to how Dobbs benefited Democrats by forcing political battles over an issue that favors Democrats.
Not to be too tipping point about it but one reason gay marriage attitudes changed so quickly was that people already strongly believed that you should be able to be with the person you love - so once the opposition to gay marriage dropped this strong positive emotion could drive the change quickly. This is not typical of every topic - as we’ve seen the trans debate has got bogged down and lost momentum as it is not perceived to fit with the growing “soft feminist” attitudes of the average person.
What you are describing is the libertarian argument for acceptance of homosexuality and it is definitely what I believe is so different about the gay marriage battle vs the transgender battle we are having today. They didn't argue back then that pastors should be forced to marry gay people or anything that imposes on the lives of other people. A transgender activism that just focuses on letting people live their lives the way they want is going to remain very popular. But when it's all about shaming people who disagree or imposing rules on non-transgender people then it's going to be very unpopular.
Your still thinking gay marriage was costless is a symptom of you missing the main point.
The problem isn’t that the left has now become the ‘moral scolds’, the problem is that, just as the Religious Right warned, the left’s destruction of traditional functional social norms had bad long term consequences. Complaining about ‘moral scolds’ is a cop-out to avoid having to talk about what morals should be.
The right was ‘morally scolding’ people not to touch the hot stove, the left is now ‘morally scolding` people not to complain that burns are painful.
The author says that gay marriage was costless, and then practically in the same breath says that no position on an issue is without its tradeoffs. So which is it?
When gay marriage was made the law of the land, the imprimatur included the use of government force against anyone who disagreed (e.g. Masterpiece Cakes). Now you (speaking to the author and his fellow-travelers here) may think that those people are bigots whose views are unworthy of consideration, so the costs are still zero… *to you*. You just ignore the costs imposed on people with whom you disagree and dismiss.
And like Eugene pointed out, we’re just now starting to understand that the legalization gay marriage *wasn’t* in fact costless in ways that matter beyond the free expression of opposing views. Maybe those costs are worth paying. But they exist, and pointing out their existence doesn’t turn the pointer into a bigot.
Masterpiece Cakes won that argument, the court sided with them (and as a Christian, the idea that you would refuse to make a cake because the receivers are sinful is a deeply weird position to take). Can you explain the costs that are imposed on others?
In Masterpiece Cakes case, the ability to operate a going concern without being subject to compelled speech.
“Deeply weird” is a subjective description, and I interpret it as a way to shut down the argument based on appearances without addressing its substance. That case was never about refusing to sell a cake to be used to celebrate a gay wedding, but on refusing to personalize such a cake. I may disagree with the specifics of the beliefs of the appellant, but not with his right to speak, or not speak, as his conscience dictates.
The Masterpiece Cakes case prefigured mandatory pronoun use in the sense that in both cases, certain speech is compelled. Regardless of the content of the speech (excepting clear cases of libel/slander), I find that to be anathema
You have very narrow perspective. If you look at the leftist movements around the world, you'll see that this is common behavior. Leftists become maximalists whenever they have enough power in a country or an institution. The maximalist attitude is used to get rid of the enemies. There is no need to persuade your enemies, you can just destroy them.
I agree with most of this, but you think the Republicans are more accepting of internal disagreements? They throw you out of the party if you have a single bad word for their Dear Leader. Some *really* Republican Republicans have been slung out. The Cheneys for Pete's sake!
Nobody on the Right likes the Cheneys anymore. They are neocon warmongers who sent thousands to their deaths to enrich the mil industrial complex.
Get a clue. JFC. I remember being a leftist and hating Dick Cheney. I evolved into a Rightist and I still hate Dick Cheney. The fact that leftists love Dock Cheney now is the real fucking mind boggling conondrum. How about addressing that little tidbit? Why are you leftists suddenly in love with the deep state and the mil industrial complex?
People who live in the liberal media bubble don't understand that the Democrats are the home of neocon foreign policy now. They weren't welcome on the right, but all they had to do was say 'Trump is bad' and the left is convinced they are heroes.
It's also a measure of how out of touch the Democrats are that anyone thought Kamala touting the Cheneys' support in the last week of the election was a good idea. What an appalling unforced error.
Yes, they are. Tulsi Gabbard is pro-choice, was a member of the LGBTQ+ equality caucus (back before everybody was), and supported UBI. But her signature issue is opposing neocons (like the Cheneys), and for that she was driven out of the Democratic party (where all the neocons are now) on a wave of slander, but she's welcomed on Fox news and by Trump because the only home in Washington for those who oppose neocons is the populist right.
Gabbard was the sort of Democrat we desperately need more of, but Hillary called her a Russian asset (and if you think that wasn't payback for endorsing Bernie in 2016, there's no help for you). The liberal media bubble knew who was going to win that fight and rushed to convince everyone she's a traitor. Now she's a Republican and an object lesson for any Democrat who thinks of opposing neocon foreign policy.
To be fair, in an era of extremely low interest rates (as existed in the 2010s) a lot of deficit spending was truly low- or no-cost. This is a point Matt Yglesias harps on a lot--it really did used to be the case that you could cut taxes and raise spending! Austerity was really just totally irrational in the 2010s, and Sanders-ite focus on taxing the rich was somewhat misplaced. That has become dramatically less true. I think this is also relevant in the spoiling of democratic activism.
From my piece The Paradox of The Paradox of tolerance “Why has the progressive movement lost so many progressive people without college degrees? I’ve spent a lot of time with them and they are my friends. If you engage with them in a confrontational manner, taking offense at their perceived microaggressions (what they call talking) you are going to lose them. If you attack their position because of their identify (I get the irony, I’m a cis-gendered white male) you will get a reactionary response, not a conciliatory one.
You’re going to have to talk to, and find common political ground, with people that are backward in their thinking and believe that the world is changing too fast. They don’t understand it. Think in decades, not election cycles.”
I think a lot of us are trying to figure out how to convince the inflexible wing of progressivism that they need to be ready to talk to people, listen, self-reflect, and compromise.
Can I just say I like the title. As an adorer of Popper I am persistently annoyed by people who cherrypick this from his philosophy whilst themselves having very little sentimentality to the liberal democratic institutions he was referring to with "tolerance" and falling for exactly the Hegelian historicist thinking trap that he cautioned.
Largely agree, but I'd also point to shifts in the media landscape as a result of technology, namely the rise of the Internet and social media. Gay marriage sorta slipped in there at the last minute before the legacy media and its grip on the culture really started to fall apart. As time has gone on this trend has only intensified, with the left now correctly recognizing and lamenting that Joe Rogan and Elon Musk hold more cultural sway than CNN and MSNBC.
You're underselling the importance of persuasion in the fight for gay marriage. Yes, morality was on our side, but it absolutely wasn't won by lecturing, but rather by appealing to the moral sensibilities of our opponents to actually convince them it was the right thing to do. See Andrew Sullivan's pioneering writing on this from back in the day. I myself changed a lot of minds on this simply by being decent towards (and even friends with) many conservative Christians, allowing them to accept me on their own terms. "Lecturing" was rather the tactic of the right in that fight, and it only hurt their position.
I think this all has more to do with misattributing the success of gay marriage, rather than just wrong lessons learned. The "lecturing left" has been around for at least the past 60 years, and from their home base in academia, they take credit for civil rights successes, and their students believe them. But look closer at those successes, and it's generally the "normie" folks doing the patient work of persuasion that actually win the day. We learn the wrong lessons because we're listening to the wrong teachers.
Will and Grace and Modern Family probably were a huge factor in building support for Gay Marriage.
Came here to say this. To the degree that there was lecturing and hectoring in favor of gay marriage, it likely harmed the cause on the margin. We were just lucky that the issue itself, with the help of the enormous amounts of persuasion that many of us were out there doing, was strong enough to succeed fantastically in spite of that.
Hard not to listen to the people who write the magazine articles and the history books about their amazing accomplishments 😏
Addendum re gay marriage - gay politics in the 70s and early 80s was crazy. Conservatives didn't pull "they want to destroy the traditional family" or "feminists want women to become lesbians" out of nowhere - they just listened to the lunatic fringe. NAMBLA had to be barred from Pride in the 80s. It took a lot of refinement of arguments to get to the point of a cause as easy as marriage. 2010s progressives thought you could just go straight in with the craziest ideas (defund the police) without the road test.
The gay marriage fight was very much won as an appeal to normality. Lots of imagery of gay nuclear families doing normal wholesome American activities together.
appeals to normality only work after extremism pushes the overton window out to what used to look bizarre apprear normal in contrast. the former depends on the latter. the gay rights movement depended on wacky pride parades and "we're here, we're queer, get used to it".
RuPaul's Drag Race was (is) a popular show, drag queens are basically cartoon characters as far as children understand, and they were willing to volunteer their time to entertain kids so parents who were Drag Race fans could indulge in a thing they enjoyed with their kids in a family-friendly way.
That's how you get Drag Queen Story Hour.
“Freaks”? Seriously?
Nobody is obligated to behave like a network TV normie for your comfort.
Don't go to one then. No one is forcing you to go.
What do you have against pride parades?
Drag Queens aren't the same as gay marriage. Also don't like DQSH? Don't go.
I think there's another aspect of the gay marriage argument too- the media and representation. You can start to trace the rise in gay marriage acceptance with shows like Ellen and Will & Grace breaking through to normies. Then the 2000s saw a lot of gay characters and gay storylines in various TV shows, Brokeback Mountain was a huge movie moment in 2005, there was the later 2000s rise in bisexuality in pop music (Gaga, Katy Perry) and TV (Tila Tequila's show being the first reality dating show to have male and female contestants, IIRC), etc. And it makes sense- there was a feedback loop where more gay people being represented in the media led to more gay people feeling comfortable enough to risk coming out, which then led to other closeted gay people seeing more gay people in daily life and feeling comfortable with coming out themselves, while people opposed to gay rights were being forced to reconcile those beliefs with having gay friends or family members.
There was this idea within activism that the more the media represented various people, the more normies would empathize with them and normalize them. We saw this start to play out with trans people too, the early 2010s had Orange is the New Black and Transparent and the Danish Girl and Drag Race, and I think that's why I look back to 2015 and remember people mostly thinking "that's weird, but whatever" when Caitlyn Jenner first came out and why North Carolina's bathroom bill was pushed back against so hard. Similarly to how the greater representation of gay people in the media led to more gay people coming out, more trans representation led to more trans people coming out.
That just doesn't seem to work anymore. With the death of the Monoculture in the mid-late 2010s into the pandemic as the internet allowed everyone to silo off their media diet, there aren't the same kind of tentpole shows that EVERYONE watched, music that EVERYONE listens to. Not only that, but with an effort to increase diversity in casting also rose a right-wing cottage industry of angry loser nerds throwing a fit and whipping people up over "forced diversity" in pop culture that primes people to see this kind of normalizing representation in a negative light.
Like, I saw someone on Reddit cite Nick Fury as a character that proved people were okay with diversity in casting, but that they hated race-swapping characters just for the sake of diversity. *Nick Fury*. A white guy in the mainline Marvel universe. If Nick Fury played by Samuel L Jackson were introduced to the MCU today- and not in 2008- there would be a million YT videos bitching about race-swapping a "beloved" character none of them had heard of before and it would be a culture war moment.
The nerds would argue that when Nick Fury became Samuel Jackson, the character was a C-list, nobody made a big deal out of his blackness and Samuel Jackson is just naturally cool and it's his coolness, not his blackness, what made him an A list character. But Disney or whoever misunderstood the message. The character isn't cool because he is black. He is cool first and black is second. A lot of the trans/DIE/whatever you call it stuff would go down better if the character was a character first, and a whatever second. And speaking of Lady Gaga, her whole song was about being Born this Way and how God doesn't make mistakes. Suddenly, God does make mistakes by sticking souls in wrong bodies, and only science can fix this mistake? I'm not even Christian, but we've swung from gays are natural to maybe some gays are actually women and require more than $10,000+ to be fixed. If you need to pay big bucks to be yourself, how real is this self you bought? Like, these people are using credit cards to be "their true selves"? How is this not peak capitalist dystopia? (Which is funny because online, they seem so left.)
Lady Gaga never denied rumors that she had a penis because she didn't want kids to think there was anything wrong with that.
And trans people getting surgeries isn't an example of peak capitalist dystopia. Let's apply your argument to people who need glasses. "If god doesn't make mistakes, why would anyone need to change their eyes? And now you've got people spending hundreds of dollars on glasses or thousands of dollars to shoot laser beams into their eyeballs to make them a shape that can see better? Peak capitalist dystopia."
Being trans is natural - there have been trans people throughout all of history and there will be trans people for the rest of humanity's run. Some people are just trans. People can be mad about it, but they'll be on their deathbed angry about the existence of trans people because they're simply not going away.
My take is that we're in a transitionary period (no pun intended lol) where trans stuff is just starting to get more visibility, and there's a big backlash because of that visibility. But trans people's existence threatens to upturn the gender norms of society and that's very scary to people, so it'll take time to get more accepted.
Having bad eyesight is genetic, feeling your soul is trapped in the wrong body is religion. That's the difference. You need to believe in souls to make the whole trans work. If your religion requires surgery, that's on you, and you pay for it with your own money.
Also, Lady Gaga, I love her but I can't believe anyone takes popstars seriously. She does what she does for money and attention. She told you what you wanted to hear so you would give her money and loyalty. If society suddenly decided that dressing like an astronaut is cool, shed dress like an astronaut and support space exploration. And her statement worked! Here you are, 10 years later, still being a loyal Stan. You never considered she only said it because her brand is edge and wants money? Really?
Trans does not require the concept of a soul, It’s about the lived experience of gender. So if that’s your hangup, that’s great because it’s not real. Some people might use the concept of a soul to talk about how they feel about gender, but it’s not required by any means. Trans people have been around forever and they’ll be around until your dying days. You can’t argue it out of people, and not understanding it won’t change people.
I don't really like Lady Gaga's music and I never have. You’re assuming a lot of things out of what seems like cynicism or trolling. It’s not an edgy money grab to *not* deny rumors and then address that passivity years later. It’s not edgy to be trans. Some people are just trans. It’s not a choice folks are making, it’s an innate feeling.
"It's an innate feeling"? So you don't even have the dignity of physical reality, it's all about feelings. In fact, it's about being in a fad. Like a goth. An emo. A hipster.
So it's a subculture but also a condition that requires medical intervention but also doesn't require medical intervention because it doesn't really exists in physical reality, but actually exists in physical reality because requires medical intervention, but doesn't actually require medical intervention but healthcare should cover it, even though it's more like a feeling that doesn't require intervention.
Gotcha.
If you declare yourself an emo, but there's no Hot Topic to buy a band T-shirt, are you really an emo? Why, it seems to be a subculture that can only exist if you are consumer that shows off his identity via shopping. It's like a capitalist dystopia or something. Huh.
yes, being trans is in innate feeling... that you act upon with things like behavioral modifications, voice training, apparel, hair styling, skincare, nails, and yes - the surgeries to physically change the body that you *just* expressed disdain for. I'd be curious what your core philosophies for life are because you seem like an inconsistent troll. Maybe not though, some people are just weirdos lol.
Happy to discuss more, at length :)
There’s this idea that being trans means you have to get surgery, but that’s not true. Being trans is about someone’s gender identity—it’s who they know they are—not what medical steps they’ve taken. Transitioning is really personal and different for everyone. Some trans people might pursue surgery, some might take hormones, and some might not make any physical changes at all. None of that changes whether someone is trans.
Now, when it comes to gender-affirming surgery being medically necessary, the truth is that not all trans people want or need surgery, but for those who do, it can be life-changing and even life-saving. Major medical organizations like the AMA recognize that, for many, this care is necessary to their mental and physical health. It’s not about surgery being required to “prove” someone is trans—it’s about providing the healthcare that specific individuals need to thrive.
And about the cost—health insurance exists to cover medically necessary treatments, whether it’s a heart bypass, mental health care, or hormone therapy. Gender-affirming care falls under that same umbrella for those who need it. Expecting trans people to pay out of pocket is like saying, “Your health isn’t as important as everyone else’s,” which isn’t fair. It’s about making sure everyone gets the care they need, not gatekeeping it based on who they are.
Also, the cost of gender-affirming surgeries are extremely small in the larger scheme of things. It's like, 0.01% of insurer budgets, or $0.06 per member per month.
, "bad eyesight" can be genetic, meaning that if your parents have vision problems, you are more likely to inherit similar issues due to genes passed down from them; however, environmental factors like lifestyle and exposure to screens can also significantly impact eyesight, so genetics aren't the sole determinant of vision quality.
I mean, transness is partially genetic as well.
Agree that death of monoculture played a large part. Simply said, mainstream media and entertainment industries - which had vastly different opinions and political preferences than the median voter - no longer have so much influence as before.
I don't know, my family wasn't watching Will and Grace or any of those shows with gay people in them. I think representation can affect some people, but representation in media is often a result of shifting attitudes rather than the cause. I don't see any reason that media representation would work worse today than before, so the fact that it doesn't seem to be helping much is probably evidence that it was never the thing that moved the needle before. Rather I think it just depends on what arguments are being made. 64% of people today support laws that protect the rights of trans people, and only 10% oppose that (25% don't care). But only 38% of people think that gender can be different than sex assigned at birth (and the number has gone down since 2017). So if you are simply arguing that trans people should have their rights protected and be allowed to pursue happiness, that's a winning argument. If you are asking people to let their daughters compete against trans women...that's probably not going to work.
I disagree.
I think the skeleton key is that this approach works very well in intra-left conversations due to progressive deference norms. It's only been recently that the pendulum has swung the other way.
Look at all the discourse about "white women" or "white feminism" that arouse during the first Trump term. It doesn't make sense to talk like that if you're trying to get people to vote for you, but it does work if you want to browbeat people.
This is almost certainly a factor as well
someone who was at least a little hostile to the left said that the left learns activism from conflicts on college campuses, where if you can convince the RA or administrators that the other side is racist, sexists, or homophobic, then you automatically win.
Again, not too charitable, but I think they had a point
I think an aspect of this that is uncomfortable but obvious - at least to me, as a woman and mother of girls - is that women are particularly vulnerable to submitting to shaming by other women, and that has been catastrophic for professional and political communities that tend to attract a lot of women.
No one wants to say this out loud but James "Preachy Females" Carville, but a lot of problems on the left are toxic femininity.
It's notable that the famous essay "Tyranny of Structurelessness" talked about a similar dynamic on women's spaces fifty years ago. ( https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm)
I do think this tactic really centers on trying pressure women with mainstream Dem opinions further left, and it worked for a time.
Remember "carceral feminism"?
As I recently learned, toxic masculinity is just immaturity. Same holds true here. We are in the age of the perennial child who never grows up.
I am *dying* for toxic femininity to become a recognized concept.
The thing is, if you are a typical coastal-urban leftist, almost all your conversations are intra-left conversations. So you get used to the idea that everybody-- or everybody who matters-- shares your basic moral premises and worldview already. And in that environment, yes, scolding and shunning dissenters works. So people learn instinctively to use it all the time, and then when a nationwide plurality or even majority composed of people they never talk to, and whose lives they know nothing about, backlash against it, it's easy to say "oh that's just a bunch of dumb bigots". It's the old Pauline Kael "how could Nixon have gotten elected? I don't know a single person who voted for him!" problem writ large.
That's more true of the right than it is of the left, but somehow nobody thinks it's a handicap the right needs to overcome.As it turns out, making people conform to your worldview is more effective politicking than conforming yourself to them. In reality, scolding and ostracizing works -both on internal and external dissenters (those aren't really separate cases, they're just on a spectrum). that's why the right, which is deeply siloed, and viciously intolerant of external and internal dissent, is succeeding.
Leftists and center left liberals no longer have the intellectual high ground they once had to argue from.
1) A lot of policies touted by “smart” Democrats turned out poorly.
2) Joe Biden has been a senile fool as president and his successor couldn’t find it in herself to explain how she was going to be different from the unpopular policies of the Biden administration.
A lot of the policies touted as 'smart' were triangulations away from the left towards the right. Of course they failed- they prioritized political positioning over effectiveness.
We see this best in Obamacare, when what is actually cheap and leads to good outcomes is free-at-point-of-use, like NHS or places with mandatory nationalized insurance plans.
Browbeating people is how you get them to vote for you - or to give up voting against you, but those are just part of a spectrum. This is why trump succeeded with latinos while romney and mccain failed. Same kind of rhetoric you're suggesting is counterproductive.
“I think the skeleton key is that this approach works very well in intra-left conversations due to progressive deference norms. It's only been recently that the pendulum has swung the other way.”
I agree 100% with your first sentence.
What evidence do you have for your 2nd sentence? That *some* on the “moderate” wing on the left are finally speaking up about it in the few weeks after the election loss?
The pendulum may have stopped moving more extreme, but the idea that it has actually swung the other way is merely hope on the part of those “moderate” Dems that remain voting for the party that didn’t choose the highly popular somewhat moderate governor of the most important swing state as the VP, but instead allowed the Orwellian “Genocide Josh” campaign to not only succeed but go unchallenged.
Or did I miss the part where the supposedly adult Dem party politicians and leaders in the room stood up and denounced it?
The easiest possible “Sister Souljah” moment handed to them on a platter, and the Dems refused to take it.
The leftists in the Dem coalition believe they merely lost a close election, that not only their views but their tactics are correct; they just weren’t deployed aggressively enough by the “moderate Kamala” campaign.
"orwellian genocide josh campaign" is apparently something that was very important in your silo, but normal people were scarcely aware of any controversy, so trying to sister souljah it would have just streisand effected it.
Yes, mine is a “silo”. 🙄
Thanks for helping make my point.
And the author’s, too.
(Because so many “normies” in the ‘90s knew who Sister Souljah was before Clinton had his ‘moment’, huh…)
Doesn't make the author's point (did you actually read the article, or are you just taking it as a jump-off for anti-left stuff?). And if your point is the left hasn't changed recently that's hardly something i disagree with. But thanks for making one of my points by being performatively outraged over a form of discourse directed at you which is routinely directed at the left without objection from the respectability scolds. Just a reminder of how hypocritical and phoney respectability politics are. And yes, sister souljah was famous before clinton scolded her - not long before, of course. She became a public scandal and then clinton condemned her - he didn't add fuel to the fire by making famous a scandal that otherwise could have passed with barely a ripple. In contrast there's apparently some speculation that the harris campaign passed on shapiro for fear of an antisemitic reaction from the left, but that never drew the notice of normies, so bringing it to their attention would have been political malpractice. Had it become a bigger campaign moment then a sister souljah moment would have been in order.
Sure, sure. Sister Souljah was known by everyone, Josh Shapiro by no one. Got it.
And the malpractice would be to say publicly you’re against antisemitic smears, rather than to not pick for the VP slot the popular moderate who would give you the best chance to win, or the other two less leftist, more accomplished, more well spoken choices, but instead pick the one guy demonstrably even less qualified than (and as much and possibly more leftist than) Harris.
🙄
Point 1: is your reading comprehension actually this bad, or are you being obtuse to avoid losing a debate point?
Point 2: This is all just more performative nonsense from you. You don't really think selecting one disposable vp candidate instead of another would have actually given the campaign a better chance to win (nobody votes for potus based on vp candidates anyway), you're just throwing stuff against the wall to avoid conceding. Typically intellectually dishonest discourse. To address the one kernel that's on topic, yes, it's often wrong to publically deny potential scandals, thereby giving those scandals more credence, because (thanks to the backfire effect) most people will take denials as evidence of guilt. Saying "i condemn antisemitism" is a great way to convince a lot of people that you are an antisemite (because otherwise why would you have to say it?). You only say that when it's clear the critical mass is going to think of you as an antisemite if you don't say anything.
I think this has led to a generational gap too. I was a college student during the Bush-era political nadir of gay marriage, and the feeling of being surrounded on all sides by reactionaries, while watching tons of gay friends struggle, had a big impact on me. The sense of cultural liberalism being on the defensive is a very familiar feeling for people my age, and e.g. Obama equivocating on gay marriage to appeal to moderates seemed totally normal and understandable (though still frustrating!). But if you came of age politically a few years later, when the slope of the line of public opinion was really steep, the vibe was totally different. You saw the armies of justice unfurling their banners and charging across the field in broad daylight while their enemies scattered before them, and it was hard to see the point of political caution. When I see a smart, younger progressive like Molly White getting genuinely furious at Jonathan Chait's well-to-my-right-but-only-mildly-conservative-in-the-scheme-of-things columns on trans activism, it makes me think that the generational vibe difference is responsible.
But is the divide simply “generational” or the result of mal-educated wokeness?
Because if anything on the margin younger people are more willing to think for themselves and not just “do as they’re told” as snowflake Millenials do on average.
In other words, why has the “generational vibe” affected only the harder-core leftists of the generation, while larger numbers than in decades of the same generation are voting against Dems as young voters?
Because the Religious Right has been out of power. We’ve been living in a liberal social era since around 2008, these people haven’t been exposed to the shortcomings and failures of a socially conservative culture.
This is also why I don’t think Democrats can do much but just let the fire burn out. That AND leadership is lazy.
I think you and I are largely agreeing (on the behavior, if likely *not* on the cause).
My point is that in fact it is NOT an entire *generation* “vibe”, as the “vibe” he describes is only/primarily affecting leftist young people (who are mostly college miseducated).
If anything, young non-leftists are MORE willing to question authority / “the narrative” than the Millenial generation that preceded them.
I am a cringe millennial and I 100% agree. Gen Z > millennials in most ways
“When I see a smart, younger progressive like Molly White getting genuinely furious at Jonathan Chait's well-to-my-right-but-only-mildly-conservative-in-the-scheme-of-things columns on trans activism, it makes me think that the generational vibe difference is responsible.”
Ah, you don’t actually mean an overall generational vibe difference (or you live in a bubble and know only woke college goers in the generation), you just mean the mal-educated-midwit-leftists-of-the-generation vibe difference.
You’re probably correct about that.
You should just be careful not to assume said vibe affects all of the generation, as the election demonstrates that it does not.
"You might think that you shouldn’t have to communicate empathetically with bigots, or compromise with people who have stupid ideas, or tolerate people whose politics you strongly dislike"
How about this: people who disagree with you are not presumptively "bigots" and do not "have stupid ideas"; perhaps they, unlike you, are aware of tradeoffs--which makes them smarter than you. You are in some ways ignorant.
Also, if you can't "tolerate people whose politics you strongly dislike", I guess that makes you both ignorant and intolerant.
I think you're misunderstanding the statement that was made. Some people ARE bigots. Jeremiah didn't say that everyone who isn't a progressive is a bigot; he said that to make progress, you do have to sometimes deal with bigots. Big difference.
Also, it's hilarious that you open with a condemnation of name-calling and end with name-calling.
I'm not misunderstanding at all. His advice to "you" (You might think...) is spoken to a progressive who thinks people who disagree with him/her are bigots, and have stupid ideas. My point is to indict that imaginary person as being intolerant and ignorant, not let them off the hook as Jeremiah does.
I think it's much more hilarious that you think adjectives are "names". Do you need these words defined?
Ignorant: lacking knowledge or awareness in general (in this case ignorant of tradeoffs)
Intolerant: not tolerant of views, beliefs, or behavior that differ from one's own (in this case intolerant of people with disliked politics)
Of course these words can be used to insult, but I wasn't insulting, I was describing. And really, the imaginary person Jeremiah addresses IS a bigot ("a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group"), but I left that unsaid.
I wonder if even as many as 1 person in 4 whose views are left of center and read your previous comment realizes you were referring to them (well, at least to the hard leftists the author was speaking about).
I’m sure the number is somewhere between 1 in 20 and about 2 in 5, and you’d think the folks reading these comments would skew somewhat lesser hard left, but damned if I could tell you where in the range it’d be…
“everyone who disagrees with me is a bigot” is the progressive mantra, and ironically it’s the most bigoted stance ever.
> “everyone who disagrees with me is a bigot” is the progressive mantra
Strawman
> and ironically it’s the most bigoted stance ever
Hyperbole built on a strawman
Would you say there exist any non bigoted arguments against gay marriage, or any progressive positions for that matter? And what are they?
What happened was the March of Dimes effect. The left DID win the culture war, in 2015, just as the March of Dimes won the battle over polio and NATO won the cold war. Did any of them demobilize after the war? The March of Dimes shifted to birth defects (we'll never get rid of those meaning they will go on forever). Did NATO disband after it no longer had a purpose? Nope, it's still around. Did the HRC and other leftists groups stand down? Nope, they immediately took up transgenderism and started a whole new culture war. So it goes.
I think it's accurate to say that social movements often don't really disband after they have won and that leads to acvitist creep. But NATO isn't exactly the best example given that Putin has invaded more countries than the USSR ever did. It's more relevant today than it was then.
But don’t you think if NATO had disbanded following the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, the European nations would have created their own alliance when Russia first began to revive? Because NATO continued to exist they felt they could continue to skimp on defense spending because of their alliance with the US. So look what has happened. Russia, a second-tier power has managed to tie up the military power of the entire West, leaving China a free hand. An alliance with China has advantages for both sides. Russia has a large amount of natural resources that China needs, China has the most powerful industrial plant in the world and can outproduce the rest of the world combined, which would be available to Russia in a future war with NATO, much as the (then) vast US manufacturing capacity was available to the Allies in WW II.
With the election of Donald Trump, Putin may have already achieved the eclipse of US power in the Old World, allowing him to recover the lost territories of the Russian Empire, which appears to be something he wants to do.
That does seem plausible, but it's worth noting that Ukraine's military spending per GDP was just as low as most NATO countries and it went DOWN after Russia invaded Crimea in 2008. Lack of NATO membership didn't convince them to take the threat of Russia seriously until the orcs were in their backyard. Germans didn't just fail to build enough tanks, they also came to rely on Russian energy even though we warned them not to. I think it's more about a failure of imagination than faith in American military might.
Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, not 2008. In the five years before 2014 (2009-2013) Ukrainian defense expenditures averaged 1.71% of GDP. From 2014 through 2021 expenditures averaged 3.16% of GDP, an 85% increase.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ukr/ukraine/military-spending-defense-budget
Thanks, my mistake. 3% is a lot more than 1.71% but that's what the US spends when we are not at war with anyone. It took them literally being invaded to get up to 3%. Not belonging to NATO doesn't seem to have encouraged Ukraine to spend more on defense than any other country that borders Russia.
I would point out that, while attitudes toward gay marriage did change quickly, the legal change only happened quickly because of the Supreme Court ruling. If the Court had not done so, gay marriage would still be illegal in half the states in the country, and we would still be fighting about it.
We’ll be there again in May or June, but there will be plenty of bigger issues to focus about prior to then.
True, but because it is now an issue where the liberal position is popular in most states, Democrats would actually benefit from making this a political fight. Similar to how Dobbs benefited Democrats by forcing political battles over an issue that favors Democrats.
Not to be too tipping point about it but one reason gay marriage attitudes changed so quickly was that people already strongly believed that you should be able to be with the person you love - so once the opposition to gay marriage dropped this strong positive emotion could drive the change quickly. This is not typical of every topic - as we’ve seen the trans debate has got bogged down and lost momentum as it is not perceived to fit with the growing “soft feminist” attitudes of the average person.
What you are describing is the libertarian argument for acceptance of homosexuality and it is definitely what I believe is so different about the gay marriage battle vs the transgender battle we are having today. They didn't argue back then that pastors should be forced to marry gay people or anything that imposes on the lives of other people. A transgender activism that just focuses on letting people live their lives the way they want is going to remain very popular. But when it's all about shaming people who disagree or imposing rules on non-transgender people then it's going to be very unpopular.
Your still thinking gay marriage was costless is a symptom of you missing the main point.
The problem isn’t that the left has now become the ‘moral scolds’, the problem is that, just as the Religious Right warned, the left’s destruction of traditional functional social norms had bad long term consequences. Complaining about ‘moral scolds’ is a cop-out to avoid having to talk about what morals should be.
The right was ‘morally scolding’ people not to touch the hot stove, the left is now ‘morally scolding` people not to complain that burns are painful.
I came here to say almost exactly this.
The author says that gay marriage was costless, and then practically in the same breath says that no position on an issue is without its tradeoffs. So which is it?
When gay marriage was made the law of the land, the imprimatur included the use of government force against anyone who disagreed (e.g. Masterpiece Cakes). Now you (speaking to the author and his fellow-travelers here) may think that those people are bigots whose views are unworthy of consideration, so the costs are still zero… *to you*. You just ignore the costs imposed on people with whom you disagree and dismiss.
And like Eugene pointed out, we’re just now starting to understand that the legalization gay marriage *wasn’t* in fact costless in ways that matter beyond the free expression of opposing views. Maybe those costs are worth paying. But they exist, and pointing out their existence doesn’t turn the pointer into a bigot.
Masterpiece Cakes won that argument, the court sided with them (and as a Christian, the idea that you would refuse to make a cake because the receivers are sinful is a deeply weird position to take). Can you explain the costs that are imposed on others?
In Masterpiece Cakes case, the ability to operate a going concern without being subject to compelled speech.
“Deeply weird” is a subjective description, and I interpret it as a way to shut down the argument based on appearances without addressing its substance. That case was never about refusing to sell a cake to be used to celebrate a gay wedding, but on refusing to personalize such a cake. I may disagree with the specifics of the beliefs of the appellant, but not with his right to speak, or not speak, as his conscience dictates.
The Masterpiece Cakes case prefigured mandatory pronoun use in the sense that in both cases, certain speech is compelled. Regardless of the content of the speech (excepting clear cases of libel/slander), I find that to be anathema
You have very narrow perspective. If you look at the leftist movements around the world, you'll see that this is common behavior. Leftists become maximalists whenever they have enough power in a country or an institution. The maximalist attitude is used to get rid of the enemies. There is no need to persuade your enemies, you can just destroy them.
I agree with most of this, but you think the Republicans are more accepting of internal disagreements? They throw you out of the party if you have a single bad word for their Dear Leader. Some *really* Republican Republicans have been slung out. The Cheneys for Pete's sake!
Nobody on the Right likes the Cheneys anymore. They are neocon warmongers who sent thousands to their deaths to enrich the mil industrial complex.
Get a clue. JFC. I remember being a leftist and hating Dick Cheney. I evolved into a Rightist and I still hate Dick Cheney. The fact that leftists love Dock Cheney now is the real fucking mind boggling conondrum. How about addressing that little tidbit? Why are you leftists suddenly in love with the deep state and the mil industrial complex?
People who live in the liberal media bubble don't understand that the Democrats are the home of neocon foreign policy now. They weren't welcome on the right, but all they had to do was say 'Trump is bad' and the left is convinced they are heroes.
It's also a measure of how out of touch the Democrats are that anyone thought Kamala touting the Cheneys' support in the last week of the election was a good idea. What an appalling unforced error.
“I remember being a leftist and hating Dick Cheney. I evolved into a Rightist and I still hate Dick Cheney.”
Here, here! Tbh, I don’t even recall the Cheney being popular among the right back in the bush years, they were sort of just there lol.
Yes, they are. Tulsi Gabbard is pro-choice, was a member of the LGBTQ+ equality caucus (back before everybody was), and supported UBI. But her signature issue is opposing neocons (like the Cheneys), and for that she was driven out of the Democratic party (where all the neocons are now) on a wave of slander, but she's welcomed on Fox news and by Trump because the only home in Washington for those who oppose neocons is the populist right.
Gabbard was the sort of Democrat we desperately need more of, but Hillary called her a Russian asset (and if you think that wasn't payback for endorsing Bernie in 2016, there's no help for you). The liberal media bubble knew who was going to win that fight and rushed to convince everyone she's a traitor. Now she's a Republican and an object lesson for any Democrat who thinks of opposing neocon foreign policy.
To be fair, in an era of extremely low interest rates (as existed in the 2010s) a lot of deficit spending was truly low- or no-cost. This is a point Matt Yglesias harps on a lot--it really did used to be the case that you could cut taxes and raise spending! Austerity was really just totally irrational in the 2010s, and Sanders-ite focus on taxing the rich was somewhat misplaced. That has become dramatically less true. I think this is also relevant in the spoiling of democratic activism.
From my piece The Paradox of The Paradox of tolerance “Why has the progressive movement lost so many progressive people without college degrees? I’ve spent a lot of time with them and they are my friends. If you engage with them in a confrontational manner, taking offense at their perceived microaggressions (what they call talking) you are going to lose them. If you attack their position because of their identify (I get the irony, I’m a cis-gendered white male) you will get a reactionary response, not a conciliatory one.
You’re going to have to talk to, and find common political ground, with people that are backward in their thinking and believe that the world is changing too fast. They don’t understand it. Think in decades, not election cycles.”
I think a lot of us are trying to figure out how to convince the inflexible wing of progressivism that they need to be ready to talk to people, listen, self-reflect, and compromise.
Can I just say I like the title. As an adorer of Popper I am persistently annoyed by people who cherrypick this from his philosophy whilst themselves having very little sentimentality to the liberal democratic institutions he was referring to with "tolerance" and falling for exactly the Hegelian historicist thinking trap that he cautioned.
In other words, nobody likes weirdos.
Largely agree, but I'd also point to shifts in the media landscape as a result of technology, namely the rise of the Internet and social media. Gay marriage sorta slipped in there at the last minute before the legacy media and its grip on the culture really started to fall apart. As time has gone on this trend has only intensified, with the left now correctly recognizing and lamenting that Joe Rogan and Elon Musk hold more cultural sway than CNN and MSNBC.