Oh christ he’s serious.
The question I think we all should be asking ourselves is: at this time in America when there's so much evidence that our political system is broken – that both parties at the extreme are not representing the silent majority of the American people – isn't there a better way? pic.twitter.com/Gy1wf1cf8F
— Howard Schultz (@HowardSchultz) January 28, 2019
What an idiot. We don’t need another one of those. The fucking silent majority for god’s sake? That Nixonian relic?
And he emphasizes “extreme” in that empty little word-porridge. “Both parties at the extreme” – the extreme of what? It’s ludicrous to pretend the Democrats are at the extreme left in the same sense that the Republicans are at the extreme right. Nearly all Democrats avoid the real left as if it were Ebola.
Yes, of course there’s a better way, but no I don’t think the former CEO of Starbucks knows what it is or how to get us there. Not for a second.
Comments
16 responses to “Poisoning pigeons in the park”
Polls consistently show that most voters agree with the positions of Democrats on the vast majority of issues. Democrats mainly have a labeling/image problem, not a substantive one. (If anything, the public is to the “left” of many Democrats on issues such as taxing the rich, where AOC’s proposal fares quite well.)
I can’t remember the source of this, but one political operative has told the story of how, when they tried to test focus groups on economic policy, the test subjects refused to believe that the Republican position was actually what Republicans supported; they insisted that the group leaders were misrepresenting GOP policy.
But sure, yeah, “both sides” are too extreme. That reminds me of the journalistic equivalent: “I get attacked from both the right and the left, so that proves that I am fair and balanced and accurate!” Only in politics is that believed to be true. “Both teams screamed at me for making bad calls, so I must have refereed a great game!” “Prosecutors and defense attorneys both say I’m terrible, so I must be an awesome judge!”
Yeah, the word moderate seems to have developed some sort of magical quality, with everyone wanting to claim that golden mean, no matter where they actually are. The Democrats are barely left enough to be considered moderate either in other countries of the world or in this country in my childhood. But yeah, we’ve gotta have “both sides”. Because we’re tolerant and moderate, right?
So now it is extreme to think that (1) women are people; (2) non-white citizens deserve the same rights and opportunities as white citizens; (3) children should be raised with kindness and not beaten half to death for childish transgressions; and (4) everyone deserves decent health care. Plus, of course, a number of other “extreme” beliefs regarding freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from intrusive assholes in our bedrooms with no oversight of boardrooms, and all the other things that reasonable people believe.
GOP: Let’s put refugee children in cages
DEMS: Let’s not
Thoughtful Moderate Centrist: Let’s put SOME refugee children in cages
Screechy, zero children in cages is technically an extreme… OH MY GOD THAT GUY IS RIGHT!!
Holms, that’s true. That’s why I insist on countering people with “sometimes the right answer will be at the extreme”. Zero children in cages? Extreme, but good.
It’s also a demonstration of the Overton Window: if you expand the universe of proposals, the definition of “extreme” moves and so does the “moderate” position.
(Obviously, in the case of “children in cages,” you have to broaden the question — we can’t have a negative number of children in cages, but we can advocate being “extremely humane” in treatment of refugees and hope we can at least drag the public to a “moderately humane, i.e. no cages” position.)
Of course, in honor of the post’s title, perhaps I should have chosen a different example:
Nazis: We want to kill a lot of Londoners.
Allies: We want no Londoners killed.
Reasonable, moderate, sensible Wernher von Braun: Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department.
Our Overton window only ever moves in one direction.
People are attracted to extremes because it makes their positions appear more reasonable. It’s no secret that I’m a bit of an old lefty, but every time I see my dad he accuses me of believing that all property is theft. Despite the fact that I own a house and he does not. I think its because I once said – maybe 20 years ago – that that the continued inheritance of vast swathes of the country by aristocrats is kind of obscene. He seems genuinely unable to comprehend that my argument just might be a bit more nuanced than “all property is theft”.
With modern outrage culture it’s becoming easier all the time to accuse anyone of an extreme belief by tenuous association then standing back and letting the inevitable dog-piling commence. At the same time allowing people saying and doing genuinely shitty stuff to get away with it for years, then complaining that things have “gone too far” when they eventually face (usually minor) consequences.
latsot, maybe your dad needs a shot of the insights of Alf Garnett, as found at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3p8U6Bt6io
That’s the same practice used by the trans-activists. Claiming that TERFs deny the very existence of trans-women, and that they want to deny them all rights, is the exact same trick.
Just like calling a woman who says “Uh, women are people, too, right?” a Feminazi. (I once challenged a boss who used that word about me, and to his credit, he apologized, and said I wasn’t a Feminazi, but…he still insisted such a term was valid when applied to some women).
Quite. And they’re not alone. It’s hard to know how we got here but here we definitely are. I’m sure a lot of it comes from the genuine desire to do good, however misguided. At least some of even the gamergate types really did seem to be pushing back at what they (idiotically) thought of as injustice and some of the wokier-than-thou trans activist people are doing the same thing, I’m sure.
The mystery is why they seem to see only the injustices they’re told to and ignore the others right up in their grills. Why some injustice can and (and must!) be safely ignored or resisted while others MUST NOT BE QUESTIONED.
Well, it’s a rhetorical question because the (shallow) answer is this: shallow, uncomplicated thinking and bias toward existing prejudice. And the complicated answer is… more of the same but with longer words.
Say it isn’t so! Next you’ll be suggesting that they dishonestly misinterprete, distort and exaggerate what people say just to be able to demonize them, safe in the knowledge that their misrepresentations will be taken as fact by their supporters.
One that is seen a lot is when somebody mentions physiological differences between the sexes by pointing out that babies are not usually assigned their sex but rather their sex is confirmed according to whether ther are physically female or male. This common-sense approach is almost inevitably twisted into accusations of an unhealthy interest in genitalia (sometimes specifically those of children, an unspoken but overt accusation of possible paedophilia if ever I saw one) rather than accepting it as a basic satatement of fact. As a bonus, the woke then use this as a springboard to crow about their moral superiority with statements along the lines of “I don’t spend 99% of my time thinking about the genitals of everyone I see”, or “Nice to know that you reduce women to things you can stick your dick into”, none of which is at all relevant to or even remotely in the context of what was initially said, but as long as it suits their narrative and gets them some super-woke brownie points, that’s all that matters.
So, we should only change baby diapers with our eyes closed, so we don’t accidentally see any genitalia. Got it.
iknklast, that wouldn’t have been pleasant in the days of terry nappies and sharp pins!
I’m actually intrigued as to how PZ knows that his eldest grandchild is a boy and the younger a girl. I mean, it’s not as though the kids’ genitalia could be an indication.
@15, gulp, did PZ or his kids assign a child a sex at birth?! Those criminals.