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Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

robkhenderson.com

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Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#381

Post by philwelch »

littlestymaar wrote: post #375
philwelch wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Defund the police” means to reduce funding to law enforcement and reallocate that funding to social programs. In the limit case, you eliminate law enforcement directly. Some people in this thread were denying this or claiming that this idea was only advocated on “Twitter and at the fringes of academia”. This claim was false because the idea was actually published by the New York Times. Whatever particular hair you’r…

The one building strawman is then accusing others of intellectual dishonesty, the poor man's argument playbook has been followed till the end and we can now stop this conversation. Thanks for making everyone lose their time.

The strawman was constructed by yourself. Your strawman is:

> someone who takes the argument as in “literally remove the police directly and let the chaos begin”

I clicked the “parent” links to read every comment in this chain about defunding the police and none of the people in this discussion match the strawman you describe. My characterization of “defund/abolish the police”, in which funding for law enforcement is reallocated to social programs, is completely consistent with how automatic6131 and cmcaleer were characterizing the slogan, contra yourself and gizmo. The first reference to abolition was automatic’s here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38083132):

> I mean, you don't need to delve very far into academia or lefty twitter to find extremist people saying exactly this, that defund does actually mean abolish, or is the first step to it.

Indeed you do not. This is exactly what the NYT piece I linked to says, in so many words. And you’ve admitted as much yourself.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#382

Post by philwelch »

catlover76 wrote: post #338
philwelch wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David French doesn’t count.

Why not?

David French is a compulsive contrarian and has ended up in a position where virtually all of his writing consists of attacks against conservatives written for liberal audiences. He’s not nearly as bad as Bill Kristol or Max Boot in this regard but he’s not taken seriously by other conservatives anymore.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#383

Post by boxed »

lupire wrote: post #215
fieldcny wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two are not mutually exclusive. The fact is worrying and getting angry about things like cultural appropriation is something one can only do if they have the time and energy to. Most laborers are too concerned about being able to pay their bills, provide for their dependents and too tired from difficult labor to get that upset about a Chinese Basketball player wearing dreads.

And yet they have energy to freak out about homosexuality.

You are a part of the problem. You see the entire world as two camps: crazy woke and racist/imperialist. This is wrong.

I don't freak out over homosexuals. I see how "cultural appropriation" is bs. You can have those two ideas in your head at once. In fact, the vast majority do! Because it's the only sane position.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#384

Post by boxed »

boppo1 wrote: post #181
JanSt wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cultural appropriation As a european, I just can't wrap my head around this. How is it racist if I like a food of an other culture so much I cook it? Or I like a hairstyle of different culture so I also want to wear it. Or clothes. Or making music. Or.... I mean, I admire all that stuff so much that I want it to be part of my life. How is this racist?

>cultural appropriation As I remember it, this really took off in popular culture after native americans got sick of dude-bros/girls wearing war bonnets to music festivals. Around 2012-2014 it was a hugely popular piece. When 'cultural appropriation' came up then I mildly agreed with the sentiment because the look was pretty openly disrespectful. And then it expanded like kudzu until digital hairstyles became off-lim…

"Indians" were renamed "native americans" by white people against their will. Another act of imperialism by the "woke". Cultural appropriation is exactly the same.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#385

Post by cutty_wise »

littlestymaar wrote: post #380
junofan wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff, and as soon as they do, it’ll become unfashionable, and we’ll move on to the next thing.

> I dunno, I read it apolitically Then you've been duped by the author faking a neutral tone. This post is definitely not apolitical.

[dead]

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#386

Post by cutty_wise »

leoedin wrote: post #260
boppo1 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a millennial, racism was taught to me in k-12 as being perhaps one of the fundamental forces of evil in the world; kind of an analog to what Christian students learn about Satan. As a result, people in my generation have moral codes that revolve around it, sometimes in twisted ways. Someone gets hit by a car but hey were racist? Had it coming.

This really hit it on the head. Racism was presented as the worst transgression anyone could make. Is it a surprise that when the generation raised in that environment reached adulthood - and realised that racism wasn't quite as dead as they thought, some of them would take their internalised morality to the extreme.

[dead]

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#387

Post by NotHowStatsWork »

isleyaardvark wrote: post #298
junofan wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I read it apolitically. Normal working-class people don’t give a shit about any of this stuff, and as soon as they do, it’ll become unfashionable, and we’ll move on to the next thing.

Neither do the rich. It’s wild that this whole piece is based on one response on one question in a poll. The income bracket breakdown on that question is 22%/23%/32%. Which is significant but isn’t “they’re all top hat wearing elites just trying to impress each other”. “Defund the police” isn’t even the majority opinion of that income bracket. This whole article is just an attempt to smear liberals. Even if you care…

It becomes even more obvious when you look at the rest of the chart.

While the income breakdown is 22%/23%/32%, the urban breakdown is 30%/25%/28%/12%. With the largest difference between City and Rural.

This is not commented on by the author, as it would undercut their implicit point.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#388

Post by suoduandao3 »

indigo945 wrote: post #270
steveBK123 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you deflected by immediately discounting the author as being predictably, in your estimation, anti- feminist / anti- anti-racist. Is this so different? It's saying the thing without saying it.

My problem with the argument is not that it's anti-feminist, it is that it's a broad-swath argument that could be levied against any number of beliefs, and the author deliberately chose to wield it only and exclusively against feminist and anti-racist positions. I made that quite clear in my original comment by suggesting several conservative "luxury beliefs" that I believe the author would have to criticize on the s…

Do you have a theory why left-wing authors don't discuss luxury beliefs?

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#389

Post by suoduandao3 »

catlover76 wrote: post #349
lom888 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, here's something written by Trump supporter and Cal State Fresno prof. Victor Davis Hanson discussing the effect of immigration on a community where he has lived since 1970: https://www.hoover.org/research/diversity-illegal-immigratio...

That is a valuable perspective and all, and I don't discredit it (or concern for curbing illegal immigration as a top policy priority in general), but I'm not sure it's that persuasive for the point you are trying to make. Let me put it this way: pointing to one cogent article by a non-representative Trump supporter (you won't find many of them in academia, and the college-educated skew liberal/Dem) doesn't really ma…

Couldn't your personal experience be a function of what Trump supporters make it through your filter bubble? We tend to see mostly the stupidest exemplars of our political opponents.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#390

Post by suoduandao3 »

JanSt wrote: post #211
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cultural appropriation is related to colonialism and post-colonialism, its relation to racism as a concept is really a function of how racism relates to the other two fields. Of course many terms mutate in meaning.

I have a university degree and I know all the words but I don't understand what you are trying to say. I'd say colonialism - at least from a european perspective - has a lot more to do with subjugating the identity of the colonized. That's the opposite of "cultural appropriation".

I think Colonialism is more of a neologism for 'imperialism' since the US empire has a pretty different form from the old European empires. In US Parlance it seems to refer to a wealth pump moving resources from the undernourished colonies to a corpulent administrative center. Cultural artefacts could be an example, though of course this doesn't refer to physical artefacts that the original owners lose. It's a bit weird to me as well, though I can see how stealing a cultural artefact to put in a museum and copying a hairstyle could feel similar to someone living with inherited trauma.
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