To quote from a recent Beau of the Fifth Column video,
“It’s like lead in water, the only acceptable level of fascists is none.”
An education that imparts critical-thinking skills to young people* is the greatest enemy of the GOP and its Libertarian allies.
Teach kids how to spot fallacious or groundless arguments and (for example) they’re less likely to unquestionably accept the existence of a vaguely or sloppily defined “problem” that’s presented as something for liberals and progressives to be concerned about as a result of their own supposed overzealousness.
[* “Natural rulers”, i.e. privileged white males, excepted]
the denial of social acceptance is a more urgent crisis than the rise of fascism.
While I appreciate and agree with Shaub’s point, I’m less bewildered than he is. This is a newspaper that regularly publishes softball “fascists, they’re just like us!” pieces and then bends over backwards to defend the articles when the backlash arrives.
Sophisticated dapper Nazis.
AND they want to replace it with white supremacist, christian-centric (well, their kind of Christianity, at least) “education” that indoctrinates kids into their bigoted, stunted, ignorant world-view.
I just don’t buy that having wealth means you’re automatically ignorant of the real world… or that the real world only means poverty and struggle. There is a strong lack of empathy in the upper classes, for sure, but even that’s not universal. I say, we judge people on what they do… of course, much of the NYT comes up lacking.
Which is why they were willing to explicitly come out against it (at least until they were widely ridiculed for it)…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html
Though given the definition of critical thinking in the article, “Critical thinking consists of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth”, conservatives are going to have a hard time engaging in it in the first place…
Not so much “an education” as “childhood propaganda,” really. (The GOP education platform in the Washington Post article emphasizes instilling loyalty and “patriotism” - which are put in opposition to “multiculturalism” - as the point of education.)
The depressing part is they’ve been winning for a while - getting to dictate national textbook content, for instance…
Right, hence the scare quotes. They likely believe that this is education, though.
Honestly, not even sure about that:
The Alabama House of Representatives on Thursday approved a bill that would ban the teaching of “divisive concepts” in K-12 history after a debate in which Democrats accused Republicans of trying to erase history.
The bill, HB 312, passed 65 to 32, in a majority partisan vote. Four Republicans joined House Democrats in voting against the bill.
https://maohoube.com/alabama-house-approves-ban-of-divisive-concepts-in-k-12-history-class/
Yep, we’re now at the stage where the Republicans are banning… concepts. But that’s totally the same as when people think Louis CK is a creep… So damn tired…
in this instance, i define the real world as the one the vast majority of americans live in.
it’s not about poverty or struggle per se, it’s that wealth is so unevenly distributed and that it has such huge effects here ( because of the cost of housing, healthcare, education, childcare, etc ) that people who are insulated from those cost by and large don’t understand what life is like for their fellow americans
i haven’t looked but im certain that the nyt editors are all likely in the top 10% or even 5% of income earners
their understanding of what life is like for everyone else - 90 or 95% of america - is necessarily skewed. it’d be on them to prove different, and their track record is not good
Top 20%, more likely*: making large $100k+ salaries which are immediately sucked up by the various costs of living a “civilised” life in the tri-state area. They’re highly educated, upper middle class, mostly white; they’re also operating under crushing debt, are only lightly shielded from the usual financial disaster resulting from a major illness, and have paltry savings.
So they’re an affluent but anxious intelligentsia who think they understand (but really don’t) the precarity that other, less privileged Americans face. I believe others here have mentioned the infamous NYT Style section article in which someone (no doubt a friend of an editor or reporter, as is common in that section) described what a “struggle” it was for their family to live on $300k+ a year.
From there, it’s a relatively short leap to believing they can also connect with the cultural concerns of those truly left behind by late-stage capitalism. Combine that with their own fear that they’re on the verge of losing their non-economic privilege (esp. including the right of a white person to say whatever they want without consequences) and you get this pile of mush editorial
[* Richard Reeves has called this socio-economic tranche the “dream hoarders”. While his conclusion that they (rather than the top 1% or 0.1% in terms of earnings) are the real problem of American inequality is highly questionable, his analysis of the group’s composition and concerns is worth reading.]
I remember college in the late 1900s and hearing many of the same arguments against political correctness from the right, and right-leaning moderates.
Of course, all these arguments were in papers like the NYT, WaPo, WSJ etc. with traditional gatekeepers on discourse. We now have media without the same gatekeepers who can no longer stifle the basic calls for tolerance and respect at the core of “political correctness”
I use this analogy sometimes. If my name is William and some people insist on calling me Billy despite me asking politely at first and more strenuously later to be called Will or William. At some point, if it is my power, I am going to ignore anyone calling me ‘Billy’.
That’s not cancel culture — it’s refusing to put up with people denying a basic aspect of my identity.
I agree with you, but want to add that it’s not the money itself but whether or not one grew up with all the comforts and privileges money can buy.
Another common feature of most senior NYT editors and columnists.
That’s more than fair. But I’d argue it’s about the lack of empathy that is cultivated by our social and economic systems. I suspect you don’t disagree with that, though.
But I’ll note that I find the language of “real” life and something else to be taken straight from the right wing playbook that seeks to dehumanize certain people… I think we might need to move past such language if we’re going to deal with our collective issues…
David Brooks comes to mind…
It was bullshit then, too.
I think that’s a lot of it, yeah. And if one still has connections to people who aren’t as well off…
If you can get a job at the NYT, you’ve got connections, most likely.
definitely. id generalize, in that i think it’s often hard for humans to sympathize with people of different lived experiences. and yeah, our system makes the experiences very different depending on wealth ( race, gender, … )
i’ll think on that some.
i feel a little like, people insulated from what most people have to deal with - who are therefore largely insulated from the consequences of their speech - have to take the extra effort. it’s not me or everyone else who has to work to meet them where they are
but i agree that empathy is important. that individuals are different from their social economic group. that allies shouldn’t be dismissed just because they’re rich or have different backgrounds
maybe, probably, there is better language than “the real world” to express that
on a less serious (?) note, i just saw this on twitter ( hat tip to xeni )
I agree with that, for sure…
I think so, though I’m not gonna claim that i know what it is…
I’ll have a steaming hot cup of diarrhea with my shit sandwich please.
What they actually mean is that the progressive movement is going to eat itself with a series of purity tests that no one can survive. At some point this will result is a smaller and smaller cohort that no longer can exert it’s will because the majority has been ostracized.
They want this only to be applied to “good” people. The right wing conservatives are still fair game.
Wait, telling Nazis that they’re full of shit is a purity test? One that Nazis can’t “survive”?
What kind of bizarre fantasy world are you phoning in from?
