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Continuing our liberal bubble-bursting exercise, the core foursome address more directly the question of how philosophy is supposed to shape one’s political views and actions. Is there a non-partisan way of describing “the public good” that we can use as a touchstone to communicate with and maybe convince political opponents? What’s a philosophically responsible way to use political rhetoric in the face of an apathetic and/or ignorant public? Is one better off hiding in a cave until the bad administration goes away?
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End song: “Better Days” from The Getaway Drivers’ Bellatopia; check out Mark’s interview with singer/songwriter Bob Manor on Nakedly Examined Music ep. 11.
Transcript
0:00 Mark: So I'm hoping I can redirect us a little bit from consideration of these specific things that are going on in politics, although we can still keep bringing those up. Back to the issue of how has studying philosophy, studying political philosophy prepared us in any way to make these sort of analysis that we've been making to make more intelligent political decisions, to act as citizens in any way? One of the points we made in our very first episode was it seems like philosophers who study ethics aren't necessarily more ethical. Well, does studying politics make us more rational in our political assessments or anything like that?
0:39 Dylan: Well, that's not the way I took your question mark.
0:42 Mark: Maybe your take is more interesting.
0:43 Dylan: Well, I don't know if that's true, but I would say that having studied political philosophy infuses the way I think about politics and the way I think about thinking about political questions. Structure of government and what governments are for and what the relationship between individuals are and communities are, or the ways in which those relationships play out and how they are managed and what kind of structures help manage them well, and whether those structures ought to be for the good of anything or whether they should be merely to prevent people from annihilating one another.
And that's sort of the minimal good, Whether we should have any kind of aspirations for our relations between each other and the kinds of government structures and cultural structures we build or try to build. So for me, all that stuff is part of it, which is why in the first part, I was talking about something like a public good. I think that orientation isn't merely topical, but is born out of both thinking about how government works and ought to work and the kinds of structures that we have in our government as American aspiration, or at least my interpretation of that.
To preserve minority voices while having a government that functions for the good of the whole. And things that are maybe specific and topical, like traditions in government organization, but that are also the habits and mores of our governmental institutions. The thing I was going to respond to about what Seth was talking about was to agree with some of that diagnosis. You know, I would point to. Maybe Seth had this in mind. You know, the gerrymandering of districts in Wisconsin, which has some similarities to what was done in North Carolina.
And taking that as. Yeah, I'm sure we can point to that as a particular problem. I read that as an indicator of two things. One, there's a crass preservation of an individual party. But that has. I want to call it a theoretical consequence, but that's not exactly what I mean. It has a consequence of subverting a notion of the idea of a government as being for the people that are being governed. And when those very structures that balance one another and that subvert the ebb and flow of power. I agree. That's when it becomes really at its most disturbing, because it doesn't allow for the activity of the society to flourish and make itself heard.
Its very manifestation doesn't reflect the society. Now, that, to me, goes to the question of how government ought to be structured. So I think it's a combination of theoretical questions and particular questions.
3:35 Wes: So I think, though, Dylan, you're bringing up the question of the public good as sort of a standard for evaluating some of these questions is a good start because it sort of gets at a fundamental divide philosophically and how we approach some of these questions. So it's possible that that points to a sort of utilitarian conception of evaluating political claims by asking about the happiness or utility for the largest number of citizens, let's say. Although, I mean, I acknowledge it could mean other things as well. But the point is that whatever conception of that public goods you have, the public good is at tension with concept of rights.
So that's one of the basic dilemmas. And we see in specific cases this problem comes up time and time again. And so for some philosophers, the public good can seem like public enemy number one. So, for instance, de Beauvoir talks about the ways in which the good of the collective can sort of become a tyrannical justification for violating the rights of people, or de Tocqueville's talk of a tyranny of the majority and things like that. So all I'm pointing to, I'm not disagreeing with the importance of that concept. What I'm saying is it immediately leads us into these thorny philosophical problems about the way we evaluate political claims.
The public good can't be the only criterion.
4:58 Dylan: I didn't mean to imply that. The reason I bring it up is because it feels like that notion of what brings us together seems sorely missing. And I think it's obviously true. And it's one of the brilliant things about the conversations around the founding is that balance of trying to figure out a way to walk through that tension between rights and public good. You know, the things that bring us together, but that also allow us to be individuals. You know, that tension between being a community and being individual citizens and having different parts of Our community that are not always in agreement with one another. Yet we need to have a way of being a community. It is and can be very fragile. And I think either one of those can walk across the other.
5:48 Wes: The conception in Sandel's terms, we talked about it with the Sandel episode, is how thick or thin that conception of the good is. The good that's implemented at the level of the state. So at its most minimal right, it could just be a sort of framework that guarantees the rights of different groups in society to exercise their thick conception of the good, which may include religion and other things like that, as long as they don't violate anyone else's rights. It could be that sort of kind of libertarian ideal, or we might think that a state has to do more than that, that they have to guarantee something to do with community or something to do with identity and so on.
6:29 Dylan: You know, maybe I'm actually thinking about public good and something a little bit differently than this. And I want to use the instance of gerrymandering to bring this up right is I would say, look, maybe this is more of a Rawlsian point of view. Like if I didn't know where I was going to end up in the lottery of life and the structure of society, what would I want to have that society to be structured like? And so if I'm going to have a representative government based upon districts that have certain amounts of population, it would seem to me that some kind of pretty naive balancing on a combination of natural and city boundaries would be the way you would do it, where you would be looking to make sure you have a mix of people and that it would be a virtue of that, that you would have district after district in which political seats were competitive.
And that would be in fact a desirable outcome that would lead to a government and laws that would be on average better for everybody because you would not be concentrating power. And one of the. Another effect of this gerrymandering is in fact you accentuate the infighting in individual parties. So I firmly believe that, you know, all the hyper conservatism and the people accusing each other of being RINOs and stuff like that and tests of purity, they go hand in hand with the kind of gerrymandering of districts that happens where you have people fighting over on whether or not they're the pure representation of their individual parties.
And I think that that's bad. That's not good for decisions, for laws, for things that are. And that's what I mean by the public good, not the sense of public good, of that crass utilitarian notion, or even what's going to. I'm going to. How to force somebody to be good. I mean, creating conditions that allow people to flourish with their own individual ambitions as much as possible, and also things that allow for basically good decision making to be made, that represent as many people as possible, putting aside whether or not it's good for them, but just getting as much decision making in as possible, that kind of public good.
8:48 Wes: To me, it's a very difficult question. It's one of the things that makes politics very difficult is, again, how thick or thin to make that conception. I mean, there are things we can all agree on about procedural things. And, you know, gerrymandering is bad and bribery is bad and things that sort of fundamentally interfere with the machinery, you know, of democracy and of a republic. But then there, even when that machinery is functioning well, we still have some very difficult problems because there are some issues on which you. Obviously, you can't satisfy everyone. I mean, if a certain segment of the population thinks abortion is murder and the other segment thinks it's prohibiting abortion is really a profound violation of the rights of women, then you have a serious moral dilemma.
9:31 Seth: That.
9:32 Wes: And it's always going to be a problem. And then the nature, you know, the philosophical nature of that, it means there's no good answer, right? There is no answer. When does a fetus become a person? When does something that starts out as a clump of cells, There is no firm dividing line when you step over into personhood. And so the philosophical unanswerability of that question lends itself to the political inevitable chronic political dispute. So things like that, and then again, the conflicts between rights and the public good, things that you have to do, you know, the kinds of things we saw in Nozick with libertarianism.
Well, a libertarian might want to say, no, you don't have the right to tax me and take my money for the sake of alleviating the plight of the poor. Something like that. That would be the extreme position. They would see that as a violation of rights. In many cases, trying to foster the public good is at tension with the most kind of radical conception of one's rights.
10:26 Mark: I want to bring Seth back into the conversation. When you were talking about this before, Seth, about the North Carolina, The Republican Party just disliking women. It's not just the way you were characterizing their stance. It's not just pro life, it's actively disliking women. And to me, that kind of rhetoric, even if it's true. I guess to me, that's the kind of analysis that I might give of an individual. Right. Hey, individual, you're making this argument, but I can see from your body language that this is actually how you feel, but as applied to groups.
So this is sort of one of the upshots of trying to think philosophically about politics. Like I was saying about Wes's analysis of. Of the psychology of the mass. I'm very suspicious of that. It ends up turning into a skepticism. So methodologically, I feel like when I am trying to characterize the other side's position on something, even if I want to say that it is fundamentally mistaken or ignorant or something, I would kind of go out of my way not to characterize it, if possible, as being unpleasant or something. Like, talk to me about how your rhetoric and your philosophy go together.
11:35 Seth: Okay, so we mentioned that we were doing punditry, right? And I told you guys already that I recognize that I'm very much inside of a certain bubble. And the rhetoric in defense of women, the way that I employed it in that little rant is definitely. It comes from that place. Now, if I instead try to say, okay, well, what could be informing this? What is the philosophical position? Let's not call it philosophical. What's the ideological position where you maintain that a fetus in development is a thing with rights? First of all, where does that come from? Where does the sanctity of life come from? So that's the first question I would ask. Is it a religious thing?
12:17 Mark: Of course.
12:18 Seth: Right? Is it a religious thing? Well, it's not a political thing. It's not something that comes from the founding of the. It's not from the Constitution. It's not something that comes from humanism. It comes from somewhere, and it comes from a particular religious background. So at the very first level, we can say, all right, do we know that all religions or just. There's just certain religions that prohibit abortion? And even within those religions, is it every single sect in that religion that does that? No, it's a certain brand. There are certain branches, certain denominations and others that don't.
If you're doing that, you're coming from a place of wanting to assert a religious position through the mechanism of the state. That's the first thing. If you believe that, in fact, it's the case that these fetuses have rights in the political sense or in the legal sense, based on your moral justification or your ethical justification. Religious justification, I should say, then you should just be absolutely. For banning abortion, which Some of the worst people are. So these laws where they're incrementally trying to outlaw it at certain stages and the fetal heartbeat and all that is just crass maneuvering to try to manipulate inside of the legal system.
13:32 Mark: Sure.
13:33 Seth: But my point is I could go on and on and on, going all the way down the line. Let's say, oh well, you know, if you get raped then the rapist has rights over the child in 38 states. That kind of stuff clearly to me is an indication that the people who drafted those laws, maybe hate's not the right word. Maybe they just think women are property, maybe they think women are second class citizens. Maybe they think it's their right or their religious duty to manifest these laws. Let's just say this. They clearly don't show as much care and concern and compassion for the women as they do for the fetus or the males involved or the state or whatever.
So I feel to a certain extent this is my irrationality coming out. This is where I'm not rational, I suppose, or where I'm not a reasonable self interested person. Because this is not my self interest. Right. In a certain sense it's not in my self interest to be concerned about these things. But it strikes me as just a crass maneuver to bring religion into the state and just shows so little compassion. And that's what makes me the most angry, is that I just feel like there's very little compassion and an attempt to try to resolve whatever issues might be like why is this happening in the first place?
Like if women are getting pregnant and they don't want to be pregnant, why don't we just help them not get pregnant? That's a rational way to solve the problem. But that's not what's happening.
14:55 Wes: That's a good pragmatic argument which is in a different category than the other arguments which characterize people as being bad people or something like that. Yes. When you think about is misogyny, overall motive and the idea of women, sexual purity and the kind of horror of that, the impurity reflected in a pregnancy that would be terminated because the sex wasn't for the sake of procreation. Those sorts of ideas are there in some cases, but you have to get inside of the head of the opposition and then you can see that it's. They're not just that their position isn't completely implausible.
We have tremendously protective instincts towards infants. And at some point a fetus starts to look like an infant and of course most of us would recoil in horror at infanticide. But the idea that abortion is allowed 10 minutes before while it's in the womb is less offensive to a lot of us. And it's that kind of conflict. So for, even for those of us who are pro choice, I think you can recognize that the position of the opposition, it's not completely irrational, it's not completely evil. And then they would accuse you of many of the same things that you're accusing them of.
Like it'll. They would say, I can't believe the lack of, of empathy of someone who would let women kill babies just because they didn't want to take a pregnancy to term. Not that I, you know, want to have this conversation about abortion, but the larger idea that I'm expressing is that I think it helps to. In, in any case, where we get into this mode of discourse where the other side is just, they're motivated by bad. Even if we think they're mistaken, we have to try and get into their heads. They think they have that self righteous feeling too.
Right. So we have to keep that in, in mind. And then we're also this epistemological predicament where, well, the feeling of self righteousness isn't evidence for anything because they have that too. They have that in spades just as much as we do. So we can't ever appeal to that feeling. We have to be on guard against saying, well, my level of moral outrage is somehow evidence for something when it's very clearly it's not. So that's just the larger point I wanted to.
16:59 Seth: Right. And here's the difference. The difference is I accept the fact that you can level that accusation against me and I'm ready to have a conversation about the justification and the argument. What I have not done is used legal and political levers to mandate that abortion be legal in every single state and maneuver the system in such a way that I make it impossible for there to be any repercussions or for there to be any discussion around this. And that again, comes back to what I was saying is I realize where you guys are trying to go with this and I don't want to walk down this path too much further, but that if I come with an open mind and an open heart to try to have a reasoned discussion.
Do you think, looking at the political landscape as it is now or as it has been for a long time, that goodwill for the purposes of compromise, for better governing the country has been the aim of either side, but specifically the side that has been politically dominant for the better half of, I don't know, two decades now.
18:06 Wes: I think the larger question there is, you seem to be asking whether or not we should try to engage in sort of persuasive, rational discourse as a political means when the whole landscape is so irrational. Is that the question you just asked
18:19 Seth: me to try to understand the position of the other side? The only purpose for doing that, of one of two things. One is to try to find a way to subvert it, or the other is to come into rational contact, rational discussion around it, because you need to create the conditions for having a productive discourse by empathizing with and understanding the opposite side.
18:41 Wes: Well, I think there are two things. Yeah, it could be for subversion purposes, but for one thing, it makes politics less distressing. If you think people are just motivated by something evil, let's say that's a very distressing idea that makes it hard to act politically except to sort of use force of some kind, I think, to suppress them. Yes, the landscape is always very irrational and people are very irrational. But I think actual persuasion, actual attempts at persuasive discourse are far more effective than I think most people give them credit for.
In fact, I think it would have in this election. I think it would have been more effective, for instance, if Clinton, instead of just focusing on Trump, is this Trump, is that Trump, is this. Just focus on offering those arguments, which I know a lot of people thought she did, and that voters weren't really interested in that. But there's an art to persuasion as well that involves kind of a mix of rationality and emotion. So I think not only is it the ethical thing to do, but I also think it's the politically, it's the effective thing to do. And I think it's really.
It's kind of a necessary component for a healthy, politically healthy society, is people who take the discourse seriously and are willing to engage in persuasion even when the other side is misbehaving like hell, taking that higher ground, and not as a form of self sacrifice. And so, for instance, here's an example. I have very conservative relatives that were very anti gay marriage. They're very religious. And you would think that they're completely unmovable on this subject. Well, they are unmovable because most people, you know, in the typical scenarios where most people just simply call them bigots for having that position.
And this was actually years ago, before it was such a, you know, so even Obama was some sense, again against gay marriage. And I don't know how I ended up in the email thread, but I made a very Kind of philosophical appeal to their conscience and their sense of empathy and didn't call them names. And you'd be shocked at how responsive people are to that, even people who have very rigid, religiously based opinions.
20:48 Seth: Okay, so let me say that with the exception of this discussion that we're having right now, when I speak publicly, I talk about empathy and compassion. And I try to encourage people to be open minded. And I do all those things. And when I'm having conversations with regular other people and individuals, that is the approach I take. And I even write letters here in Texas to Senator Ted Cruz and I say, please consider that when you pass these laws, you are denying the rights of women, that I ask you to think carefully about making these things. And he sends me a nice letter back that says, I'm very committed to protecting the rights of the unborn, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But what I'm telling you is that, and this is what I think you're absolutely right as far as the election was concerned. Well, first of all, I'm not even sure I don't know that Clinton, how redeemable Clinton could possibly have been in having discussions post election with other people. I was unaware immediately after the election, I went on this vacation that I go to every year with some guy friends here we go to the ranch out, you know, in the West Texas. And there were three Clinton voters and three Trump voters. And we had quite a few conversations that I struggled with while we were out there.
But that conversation and in following conversations, the amount of antipathy towards Hillary Clinton was way underestimated by me. But she certainly would have done much better by focusing on the issues that were concerned and trying to talk to the voters that Obama successfully spoke to. For sure, Donald Trump is, he's a bully and he's a baiter. That's what he does. He baits you into coming after him and you can't win that game with him. So that was just a fail. She failed on many, many counts during this election. So I completely agree with that.
But I would like to have the discourse with other people who are of. I guess I am struggling with finding a way to think that the politicians who are employing these tactics and have this agenda and work inside of the machine are of the same goodwill as your conservative relatives who you can approach in that way.
22:56 Wes: I think it's about persuading people around you and about persuading voters ultimately, if you have a position to talk to them. Most of us don't, but so I don't see politicians as really the targets of those persuasive efforts myself, unfortunately. So they're going to be representing some pre established position. The whole point is just get them out of power.
23:17 Mark: Well, yeah, I felt like when I put my foot last year in the whole social justice thing and why we're not covering more women that our attempt in this format, you know, we have people who are willing to sit and listen to us for two hours and I thought that would be something, that you could then make an argument and express something and try to like be reasonable. And so even if people disagree with you, then like, okay, well I see where you're coming from. And it would require more than simply listening to us in a one way conversation, you know, voice some kind of argument that's not particularly well thought out, that was devised on the spot, et cetera.
The trends are what they are, the opinions are what they are out there in terms of. If you're in a position like that, it's so much easier to gauge the pulse of what people actually already think and at least start from that point of view, even if you want to nudge them in some direction, than to actually try to express in a reasoned way why you disagree with some prominent trend.
24:18 Wes: So yeah, I think I disagree with this. I think persuasion is not tried very often actually. And if you look at most so called political essays online, you'll see that there's not even a thought of persuasion, there's just a thought of giving meat to your own side. Yes, most people are quite irrational and they're not that susceptible. Or at least if you measure that by the comment sections of some of these articles, you're really not targeting those people. The unmovables. There are a certain number of movable people and people who are interested in hearing different ideas and interested possibly in being persuaded.
I think that actually is more common than we think. It's just a hunch, regardless of sort of an ecosystem or environmental concern. Like you don't want to be putting toxins into the environment. And that's really what most political discourse is. It's your evil, your positions are unacceptable, you're a bigot, you're anti American, whatever you want to call it. And that sort of rhetoric ultimately is directed towards one place, which is violence. So you know, ideally, even if you think almost no one is really susceptible to persuasion, you model that behavior, you model a better sort of political discourse because it's cleaner, it's biodegradable, it's not toxic to the political environment.
That's the way I think of this.
25:38 Seth: I accept that. I appreciate you saying that. I just point out that if the political system has become simply moving pieces that are immovable, intractable in their position, then the notion that politics is the art of compromise, it becomes a numbers game. And the way that you get your numbers is essentially through violent means, which is to say you manipulate the legal and the political system and all that just to get more numbers on the board. Because it's not really about who those people are, because you're not trying to get individuals and personalities, you're just getting some placeholders for an ideology.
26:16 Dylan: Not to grind a saw. But this is where I want to bring up again, this idea of a public good, where it's the good of the system, the good of the institutions. Right? Where you understand that those institutions form a free frame in which there is a lot of disagreement, but the institutions protect the form of that disagreement from becoming pure animus and descending into violence. And what I dislike very deeply about recent trends, gerrymandering is one, but is a contempt for the idea of government, a contempt for the idea that there is a structure in which to have the space for these kinds of conversations and representatives to talk about what we ought to be doing in our government to make it work for the members of our society, and that that structure is worth preserving.
And the thing is, we don't have laws for the most part about that structure. A lot of that structure has to do with the values that we have within our government and what we think that government ought to look like and be doing and am more disheartened than not. When I think about what just a contempt for the idea of government that seems to be often, maybe it's there on the left too, but I feel like it's part and parcel to the rhetorical term for limited government really just means I don't like government. Government is a four letter word. And that I think just infects the whole notion that we can live together and that there's such a thing as living together well, and that there are institutions and structures worth preserving so as to make that happen.
28:04 Wes: If we think of the worst actors on the other side and their worst sorts of motivations. And yeah, we, we can always think of that person who, whatever sort of political grain of truth that it came out of for them, it's just become a paranoid, like, you know, I hate government or government is evil or something like that, that happens. And we all know, you know that we all know there are lots of People like that. But I don't think that should dissuade us from seizing on whatever grain of truth that paranoid or irrational state of mind comes from, which is just the fact that there's a debate to be had about the extent and size of government and what its roles and responsibilities are and how minimal or how maximal it should be.
That sort of question. So you can always backtrack from the irrational, infuriating, irrational bit back to something that should legitimately be talked about. And that's what I think we're better off ultimately doing that.
28:55 Mark: Discussing the rhetoric of this. I mean, you were discussing the difference before between writing something in an email thread to convince some specific people, you know, your relatives of some political position, versus speaking openly to the world and trying to make the world a better place by convincing more people of this thing. Like, I'm comfortable in this format where really I'm talking to you guys about something and there's always the thought of the invisible extra person in the room, that is the audience. But that's quite different from speaking out to the open air in the manner of a pundit that is really trying to sort of convince the wider world of something.
And I guess I do believe that rational persuasion at least is something that's worth trying with an individual that you have some other reason to care about that you can't just flee from. So you want to reach some accord. But accord with the masses is simply not possible.
29:55 Dylan: But punditry isn't the same thing as being a politician or even being a champion of a cause and trying to persuade a group of people or enough people to agree with you. I mean, I don't think that the Federalist Papers by and large were punditry. They were persuasive, they were making an argument. They were trying to convince the public, or at least the people who would be making decision about the structure of the Constitution to vote and understand it in a certain way. But they're intended to be persuasive. And I think that maybe this goes more to fuel the fire of the idea that in some deep way the left failed in this by not engaging in their side of the argument properly.
But like in Wisconsin, right, when Scott Walker was elected, and particularly early on, right away in his government, first, you know, three or six months, he made this just full on assault on public unions in Wisconsin, which ultimately ended in, in them being legislated out. And there was a big recall against him on this basis. And one of the huge problems with that recall effort was it really focused on. He's making this attack on unions. Right. And collective bargaining and stuff like that, without making an argument about all the good reasons why we should have unions, why they have them, and also admitting and talking about the problem that unions have had since their glory days as they get older and older and they exhibit some of the same deficiencies of old institutions that are merely preserving themselves rather than acting in accord and in line with the reasons they were developed in the first place, or talking about public institutions and rather than saying the response on the right often for the failure of governmental organizations is they're not enough like a business and they're not, you know, we're going to solve that with privatization and we're going to bring in people and they're going to make deals and stuff like that, when really the problem is that they're not being run and acting in accord with a mission to do the activity they're supposed to be doing.
And typically that mission is not one that is in align with profit and privatization. It's a different motive. Right. And the left hasn't made that argument. He hasn't made the forceful claim that the goods of the private sector aren't aligned with the goods of public institutions and there are differences between them. There are good reasons not to have private prisons. Right?
32:36 Wes: Yeah, yeah. And like Seth's pragmatic talk about abortion, look, you know, you could argue with abortion opponent say if you really want to reduce abortion, let's cooperate and we can cooperate on birth control and other things. I know there are obstacles to that, but there are pragmatic arguments to be made where you actually persuade people. And I think what did politicians or anyone who wanted power study in the time of Plato or St. Augustine? They studied rhetoric. And rhetoric involves both strong appeals to emotion but also strong appeals to reason.
And I think we forget that that actually works like that combination is actually really, really formidable. What we think of now as persuasion, I think some people do think when they write those web articles that they're being persuasive. But I think our model of persuasion is manipulation. We think it works almost like advertising. And we're not concerned when we write one of these political articles with the opposition. We don't imagine that the opposition is persuadable in the first place. We just think we're going to rally up our own base.
We're going to find free floating particles that don't have any polarities yet, and we'll give them their polarity if they happen upon our piece of writing. But I think there is a larger place for real persuasion, real rhetoric in the classic positive sense of rhetoric in political society. And people who discover that sort of thing, I think they would discover how powerful it is. So I'm not advocating this kind of Pollyannish idea of let's pretend people are more rational than they are more persuadable. Ultimately, if you're going to do politics, you have to have the idea that some people are persuadable and can be reasoned with.
34:11 Mark: Well, there's also the difficulty of the degree to which political rhetoric relies just to connect this to something we discussed before upon expertise, upon judgment calls. So one thing that I was always very uncomfortable with in hearing the debates and things is these assessments of foreign policy and how we've been doing. Like if I didn't know in advance the political persuasion of someone and they are saying, well, you know, Obama was really weak here, he's so weak. And what a bad deal we got in this area. Like I don't have maybe again, this is just a matter that I don't read enough of the relevant articles to sort through the opinions and feel comfortable in this arena in the way that I do feel in some other arenas I'm better read in.
I very much feel like this is where you might get the whole, well, it depends where you get your facts from, or it's a post fact society or something because it's these people's diagnoses of whether it's in foreign policy or why is there so much crime around. You know what, in the debates when Trump was just bitching about just all the obvious problems, there are just there's the inner cities are doing poorly. You would have to get very wonky, I would say, to present an actual argument for these assessments. And the political arena in some ways is not amenable to that sort of detail and precision in argument.
So it leaves people, which group do I believe in? Whose word will I take for it? Which group of authorities am I willing to sign on with? So it just makes me especially frustrated about this kind of communication.
35:51 Wes: Yeah, this is where I disagree again, because when we think of the wonkiness of that and how boring it can be, and some people associate that with Clinton, that's because you sever the emotional appeal from the appeal to some sort of fact or statistic or argument, something like that. But those two things need to go together. Reason has to be made palatable. There has to be some kind of emotional element to it. And I actually do think you could get a lot I mean, I'm actually astounded by these debates, how bad they are. I mean, you gotta. If you look at English political debates, you'll see how much more talented people can be when they're having debates.
Yes, you can introduce a lot more wonky kind of data stuff. They can always question the source. And, you know, of course, today you can always point them to a source. You can always just say, look it up on the Web or whatever. But I think ultimately there's a question of credibility that comes from rhetorical talent, appeals to emotion, and other sorts of rhetorical appeals that make people interested in your facts.
36:55 Mark: It's easy to point out that things are less than perfect. But for Clinton to have responded to these blanket denunciations of how bad things are in urban areas, you'd have to say, well, actually, the reasons for. Or how bad things are off for people losing their jobs to mechanizations, you have to. Then instead of just saying it, sounds like the response should be, no, actually, things are good. Well, but if people are hurting, they're not going to buy that. So you can't say that.
37:20 Wes: No, you always acknowledge the grain of truth in the other person's position. That's rhetorical jiu jitsu, and it's what's so powerful if you know what you're
37:28 Mark: doing and say, but the reasons for this problem are systemic and complex and start, you know, laying them out. And yeah, and it didn't actually matter who is the president, whether jobs are being mechanized or the forces of globalization or just giving some more actual background about this. It's just the particular forums would this be covered? It seems like there's just no place for that kind of discussion.
37:54 Wes: It can be done in an interesting, compelling way. I mean, I really do think it can. And also the other part of this, even if people are confused about how to evaluate your arguments and where you're getting your facts from, from, what you're doing in those situations is you're modeling a state of mind, you're modeling a state of emotions. So instead of reacting and calling the other person's names on the one hand, or instead of going to kind of a reason extreme and saying, but no, you're wrong because of X, Y, Z and blah, blah, blah. Even in the most outrageous hyperbole or metaphor, if you grab onto the grain of truth and you illustrate that you understand the point of view of the people who already associate themselves with Trump, and then you gradually walk them towards a different point of view, even if they think that's all bs.
They can't deny the state of mind that you're modeling. And I think that's part of what rhetoric is about. They can't deny your integrity. Now, there's a lot of people who deny that. I mean, look at Obama. Yes. You know, he sort of is a model of this in some ways, although I think like any American politician, he could be way, way, way better at it. We think Obama is great just by our own standards, but he's a model of a reasonable, really reasonable person, but who can appeal to audiences. And yet he got so much vitriolic resistance. On the other hand, he won two elections.
He was good at that.
39:15 Mark: Just an example. There was a speech in particular within the last year where he responded to the point of, why don't I use the term Islamic extremism? Is that Islamic terrorism?
39:27 Unknown speaker: Why?
39:27 Mark: I don't call it that. And I think his delivery of that meets all the criteria. It hit the emotional points. It's. Of course, we don't want them to own the rhetoric and for us to declare jihad back to them, essentially, we want to deny them the dignity of their own description of their struggle because they really don't represent all of Islam, etc. You know, it's not a very difficult case to make. But yet did him making that case and really, again and again, did that alter one iota how the other side would respond to it, the fact that they kept and are still making that same accusation as if it had never been answered. This is what is depressing about the whole thing.
40:11 Wes: There's a certain segment of the other side. Yeah. That actually is unpersuadable or will not
40:16 Mark: be reached, will not listen, will not have witnessed that speech. As you said, these people are not keeping up with politics. They're certainly not watching the latest Obama speech. So it doesn't really matter what you say because they're not going to listen to you in the first place. Right.
40:31 Wes: But I'm just saying there are people who do matter and are persuadable. And Obama's record with elections, correlations and causation, but it's undeniable. He won two elections with his style, with his very rational style.
40:46 Mark: As a way of starting to wrap up, at least from my end, I came into this asking in general, what are the kind of questions that we've been asking these political episodes? And I came across three basic kinds of questions. So then trying to relate those questions with the immediate, you know, what do I do as a citizen? What should I actually do? This whole episode Was inspired as a sort of a. Well, what good is it to study philosophy? You know, one of these. What's the practical upshot? I mean, I find all these topics that we've studied, even if it's just umpteen variations of the social contract theory in history, just interesting in themselves.
Like. And if that was all there was to it and there was no practical application, that would be fine with me. But just to stop every once in a while and explicitly ask the question of what is the practical application? So the first question, you know, what kind of world do we want to live in? What would be our utopia? This, I thought, was, you know, in reading the Republic as my first piece of political philosophy in high school, I thought was the primary thing. On the other hand, when you try to then relate that to your life, well, you can think about these things.
What does that mean for your action? I mean, I'd like to live. You listen to our new work episode where people are slaves to labor for their lives. Well, so what am I supposed to do about that? I could do some limited amount of preaching of that, but I've expressed my frustration in this episode, in this discussion of part of that, of trying to be a spokesperson for that view for a few months. I created the YouTube channel for Frithjof. I did a bunch of interviews. I went on some different forums and tried to pitch this and just found it quite frustrating such that that sort of trying to convince masses of people of this thing, that to me seems sort of obvious is a fundamentally unappetizing thing for me to do, of course, because I have this recognition of the kind of.
It has a lot to do with what kind of life I want to live. So that has immediate consequences for, you know, what kind of work structure I've arranged for myself and et cetera. Anyway, so there's all that kind of question. Do you end up being a protester? Do you end up being. What do you end up doing? The second group was these social contract theorists, which just the practical upshot just seems to be like, when we talk to other people about what kind of crap do we legitimately feel like we should have to take from government? A lot of this has just been the people who consider themselves philosophical that actually appear on the stage of political life are people like Rand Paul who have these, I think, mistaken philosophies.
You know, the people that are on my side are less ideological. They're more, let's build some general consensus and work toward the general good and be sort of pragmatic about that and not get too hung up on the particulars of whether rights are natural or only socially agreed upon. Like, most of that doesn't matter for the kind of stuff that we actually want to have happen. So it's studying philosophy, political philosophy becomes a matter of refuting people that then arm themselves with a philosophy. Like, this is the thing, you know, we had the same thing about stoics.
The sort of distaste that I sometimes have for people who just like, feel like they have this recipe that they've figured out for how life works and walk around feeling superior to everybody else. And then the third type was these group psychology, sociology, economics, political science discussions, episodes. When does democracy break down, all that kind of stuff. And of course, those analyses are interesting in themselves and can have some indirect effects on how I would actually act. But for the most part, it's a matter of like we've been doing today.
Like, how am I supposed to make sense of what has just happened? That doesn't necessarily affect my action, but it might affect how grumpy I'm going to be about it anyway. So that was my agenda. Anybody want to respond to any of those individual points or just give your own closings or whatever?
44:32 Seth: So this conversation went about the way I was expecting. And that doesn't mean I'm pleased with myself by any stretch of the imagination. You know, in trying to get a sense of. Of what philosophy means for political discourse, I think the readings that we had done recently, they gave me a framework for having a conversation. We have categories, we have terms that we learn from philosophy about political economy. That makes sense. But I fear that just in the same way that Wes points out that rhetoric. If you wanted to become a politician, you study rhetoric and the historical tension between rhetoric and philosophy in the political sphere, rhetoric wins.
I also don't turn to philosophy for solace in this space because I don't think it helps me understand it. I know that I'm full of shit, and I know that I'm speaking irrationally and from an emotional place. But I also recognize that I'm on the side of compassion. And I'm not blindly supporting blue versus Red or Democrats versus Republicans. I genuinely despise what I see Republicans do. And I am disappointed that even though Democrats are supposed to share my ideology, I didn't feel like they. I don't feel like they know how to fight anymore for that.
But I also recognize that I don't really know what I'm talking about in this space. Without a text, I'm as ill informed and as adrift as anybody else. So if you want to get after me after this podcast, if you want to come after us, then if you can come in with the same attitude that you're just as full of shit as me, and we can have an attempt to persuade each other and treat each other with some level of dignity and courtesy, then I'm all for it.
46:11 Mark: But I thought you were gonna say a shit storm.
46:14 Seth: But for my part, I'm not gonna turn to philosophy. I'm turning to history. I think I don't need the solace of theory, I need the solace of analysis of the empirical past. So that's where I'm headed right now. And politically, I think I'm just gonna start spending my time supporting lost causes. Not lost causes. Sorry. It doesn't make sense for me to have arguments about abstract principles or grand political gestures. I think it's time for more action and it's time for me to just start learning about and acting on behalf of people who don't have power or people who are marginalized. That's kind of where I'm at in all this.
46:58 Wes: So I think philosophy is actually enormously useful, you know, and I think if people were better educated in philosophy, the public discourse would be better and I think we'd all be better off for it. I think one of the fundamental things I take away is the importance of what I would call Socratic ignorance. I think that's sort of the fundamental philosophical political lesson is that we all ought to be a lot more agnostic than we are. And that includes an agnosticism about other people's motivations, about whether or not we want to characterize those motivations as evil or good.
That includes an agnosticism about, you know, what is good and what is right. And it even includes possibility of sort of a methodological agnosticism even about what's obviously good and bad. You know, the ability to suspend your instinctive feeling that murder is wrong, for instance, just to do that at the level of thought, to think terrible things, to think dangerously is in a way, I think, actually morally necessary. And this is what I think Nietzsche meant by living dangerously. You have to actually allow yourself to have terrible thoughts for the sake of intellectual freedom and intellectual honesty.
And that the unwillingness to do that actually leads to more problems than not. Sticking to sort of a rigid moralistic framework is in a way dishonest. And so this kind of relates Socrates and Nietzsche to Freud. We often, we don't really, when we think we're operating in the realm of compassion, for instance, I think we are deceived. I think often we're operating with aggression and vengeful feelings, for instance, when we think we're operating compassionately.
48:45 Seth: So are you talking about me?
48:46 Wes: No, I'm not. This isn't meant as a criticism you. Because I would have said the same thing. I'm just saying this is self critique because this is the way we all think. But I think in general, I try not to assume that I actually have such great motives. Do you guys get the general idea? Sort of a agnosticism about one's political views and about one's motivations. So when I talk about persuasion and genuine persuasion and kind of use of rhetoric in the positive sense in a way that means something therapeutic, that means trying to, let's say, sublimate recognizing that there are a lot of dark impulses involved, even when I think it's when my position is just about the good or what's right, that there actually is a lot of dark impulses that feed into that and then trying to sublimate that so that I actually live up to the more ideal standard to better impulses, as hard as that is.
And then and never to be certain that I'm actually succeeding at doing that. There's a lot to not acting, there's a lot to inaction and there's a lot to impotent navel gazing. You know, it's a very kind of self satisfying sort of account I'm giving here. Right. Because it lends itself to the sorts of things that I like to do instead of going out and actually doing things that make a difference. But yeah, so that's a plea for the role of open mindedness and the way philosophy can help us with that and the possibility that that actually could have profound practical effects on our politics.
50:15 Mark: So Wes, I think you just thought of a good title for your spinoff podcast, Impotent Navel Gazing.
50:21 Wes: Thanks, Mark.
50:22 Seth: Thanks.
50:23 Mark: Impotent Navel Gazing with Wes Alwan, you call it ing. Dylan, do you have anything else like
50:28 Dylan: Wes I think that thinking through political questions and how we structure our governments and the ways in which individuals are related to each other and the communities that we're in and what kinds of things are intentioned there, and different ways in which they get resolved and thinking through the explicit cases of how those different structures work and what habits and mores and laws they foster and encourage and which ones the characters of us as individuals and communities those structures dissuade, that all is partly Political philosophy, it's partly sociology and psychology, and it all gets wrapped up together.
And I think it does go a long way to informing us about how to think about politics and political life and what to say about it and what we should do next about it. I would underline the way we talk to one another matters, and also the way we listen to one another matters, and I'm not sure exactly what to do about it, because that aspect of things is really. It's really cultural, and it's born of habits of interaction, and it's the kind of structure that you don't build by writing a constitution or legislating it. It's a structure that you build by living with it and participating in it and insisting that we maintain those unspoken rules and habits and defending them and arguing for them or arguing for revision of them, as the case may be.
I guess, like a lot of people, I don't know that we're doing a very good job of that. And I'm as guilty as anybody, I
52:12 Mark: think, well, you are a measured and generous thinker and speaker, and we could all be doing that with each other and giving the other side the benefit of the doubt. But we're in the bubble, or talking to people in the bubble. I'm grateful for when our conservative fans do speak out and try to explain what we've got wrong about some particular point, or the fact that we can take certain things like Burke's conservatism and be quite sympathetic, you know, give a pretty sympathetic overall treatment, as opposed to Nozick, who's simply making a mistake, and Ayn Rand, who's worse than terrible.
I feel comfortable with the way that. The generosity that we extend, even though we're flipping sometimes, and our own habits and our own ambivalence in the way Seth was talking about. And now I'm just talking shit because that's the mode I'm in. But then I can back off and be critical and, you know, this is all presenting a fine model. But it's difficult not to feel frustrated in light of events like what has just happened, that all that talk didn't produce the outcome that we wanted and seems to never do so because most people don't talk and don't listen.
53:22 Wes: By the way, I'm the worst offender in those early podcasts, whenever someone says, I'm not listening to you anymore because of this. I mean, it's usually, almost always something I said. So I have learned, because you said
53:35 Mark: that Rand Paul was named after Ayn Rand, and he. He's not. He wasn't.
53:40 Wes: I don't know about that. But anyway, I really regret that. Actually, I have learned my lesson about that. It's unproductive. And I used to be one of these people. I mean, I used to put so much Republicans racist crap on Facebook. I mean, I got unfriended by people. There's nothing constructive about that.
53:58 Seth: I agree. And here's the thing. I know that this is all being reinforced by the stuff I get fed when I'm looking for news. I don't even know what to trust. I don't know where I can go. I would love to make a rational, reasoned judgment based on facts. I don't know where to find them. I have no idea what news sources to even look at. I have no idea what I'm seeing is real or fake. And that's maybe the most unanchoring and terrifying thing of all.
54:22 Mark: Really. You don't think that major accredited news sources are generally going to be more accurate, even if occasionally some horrible spin creeps in over time that it sounds like you've bought into the false equivalence of the liberal media and the conservative media and it's all bankrupt. There are journalists that actually do research and there are those that do not.
54:44 Seth: I know there are some and I know there are places that manufacture news. But as Wes said, every time you open an article, the slant is so heavy it's hard to tell whether what's being presented to you is op ed or fact. In a lot of, in a lot of ways. I mean, I don't know. I don't believe that I can trust and I don't mean in terms of like truth and falsity and you know, manufacturing, but just I don't know that I can trust any even major media outlet to be presenting me with stuff that's originally researched and fact checked versus not necessarily manufactured, but just, you know, shared and syndicated. Based on the. As part of the news cycle, where do you go to get somebody to say, here's what actually happened, here's our analysis of it, or here are the facts that we're able to discern and here's our analysis of it.
55:31 Mark: All right, well that's going to be our role in 2017 and we've given it a good start here. Everything that's been said on here, 100% factual. It's not op ed.
55:41 Wes: There will be no fact checks at pel. That's nor are we fair and balanced.
55:49 Mark: Well, thank you guys all for doing this, especially Seth, who had a cold and emerged from his sorrow about the election to have some things to say.
55:58 Seth: I'm sorry I inflicted it on everybody.
56:00 Mark: Nothing to apologize for.
56:02 Seth: If anything, this is a validation of all of the work we've done in the last seven years or whatever, how we're able to sublimate all this stuff and be generous and honest and faithful readers of texts.
56:14 Mark: All right, folks, should go to partiallyexaminelife.com, go to our Facebook page, respond to this. Not just being picky about some stupid thing that one of us said here, but just, is this the kind of episode I'm sure all our international fans are just like, oh, more American politics. I don't give a shit about this, but get back to talking about Montaigne somebody. Yes, we'll do some more of that later. Yeah, I think we can do one of these every once in a while. We've been talking about in 2017, doing some more popular culture stuff, kicking a lot of ideas around. But as always, those ideas compete with lots more ideas that have been vying for a place for three or four years now.
56:56 Wes: So seems like any change, survival of the ideaist.
57:02 Mark: Any change is always slight and maybe even momentary. I was determined that I was going to record a new song to reflect this most personal of episodes, but it did not happen. So I will pull again on one of my interviewees for Nakedly Examined Music, Bob Manor from the Madison, Wisconsin band the Getaway Drivers. This is a song called Better days from their 2015 album Bellatopia. I think his approach toward roots music and toward life presents a good model toward bridging the divide between our various political factions. The operative word, of course, being compassion. I hope you'll check out my interview with Bob on nakedly examined music number 11@nakedlyexaminedmusic.com thanks, everybody.
57:44 Unknown speaker: Good night.
57:44 Dylan: Good night.
57:45 Wes: Good night.
57:45 Seth: Good night.
57:46 Unknown speaker: Rolling down old Sycamore after stepping in out this jailer's door I'm heading out of this old town Nothing's gonna get me down no more, no more and I'm sucking in the nicotine
58:17 Wes: Flicking ashes
58:18 Unknown speaker: up into the street I'm filling up the tank again I got my ticket to the end of the world as it begins no, I had enough of the same old roughed up and know there's better days in it Just up this road. Gonna say goodbye to all the streets Cuz you never cared that much for me now the ravens Knowing my best friends See me through it Till the end until the end Till the end no I've had enough of the same old ruffed up and oh, there's better the days in the gist of this road. I'm hauling the country miles Sleeping under star skies Where I'm headed I don't know But I got my ticket to the show and when it ends I'll begin When it ends I'll begin Though
1:00:33 Mark: I've had enough
1:00:36 Unknown speaker: the same all roughed up and oh, there's better days in the gist of this road. And oh, I've had enough the same old rough dub and oh, there's better days in me Just up this road.
I disagree with the generalization of the other side as hating women. The whole rhetorical strategy of “you say this is what you’re concerned about, but in reality this is what’s going on” is just unproductive, and it’s something that both sides do all the time. It is an attempt to “out-narrate” them. To use a contrasting example, I have a moral objection to my tax dollars being used by police to murder unarmed black men. I have a right as a citizen to object to this and call for certain reforms. However, when I bring up these objections, many of my friends on the right will say that “You just hate cops. You’re just a spiteful cop hater. You don’t appreciate the difficult work that they do for you. So on and so on.” In reality, I don’t hate cops at all. I recognize they have a very difficult job, but I don’t want them using unjustified lethal force. Their characterization of “hating cops” is a ridiculous misrepresentation of my concerns. It just reeks of dismissive superiority.
I honestly don’t see how the rhetoric of the Left concerning abortion is any different: “Get out of my vagina. Stop trying controlling women’s bodies. You just hate women.” It is a ridiculous misrepresentation of their concerns that seems to indicate that we were never even interested in hearing their concerns.
Ultimately, giving a universal account of “personhood” seems to be impossible. I think the best course of action is to ask people to embody their politics. In other words, if you have a moral convictions that abortion is wrong well then how many babies have you adopted? The use of individualistic rights language can sometimes actually add to the oppression of women. If the woman has exclusive right to determine what is to happen to a fetus, then men as men will often exercise their implied equivalent right to have nothing to do with the child bearing or the child. The woman is therefore left with the sole responsibility for the impossibly enormous task of raising a child. This may be why it does not always feel as if all women who decide to have an abortion are doing so because they are exercising their right to choose. Quite the opposite, it seems often that women have abortions because they feel as if they have no other choice. There are plenty of situations where a woman may have actually wanted to have the child but simply feel as if she has no choice given her situation. It is exactly because of men and the surrounding community exercising their implied right in relation to women’s right to the fetus that women are sometimes robbed of the opportunity to make a truly “free” choice. One thing that both sides of this debate can agree on, which is often ignored, is our incredible failure to be the type of people who can provide women the communal support necessary to be making truly free choices about whether or not to have a child. If there is any common ground at all, any place where meaningful dialogue can begin at all (although I doubt that there is), then it may be here. Developing organizations, communities, families, and Churches alike that can provide meaningful support to a 14 year old to make a more nearly free choice is something both parties should be interested in. Neither those who are concerned about the life of the fetus, nor those who are concerned with the freedom of woman can simply say, “It’s your problem deal with it.”
Okay, listening longer I now regret posting that long-winded thing about abortion. In the beginning I thought the whole discussion was about abortion. I would have edited it, but I guess editing isn’t possible. This discussion is more about how best to participate in public discourse than it is specifically about abortion. In that case, here is a David Foster Wallace quote that I have tried to take to heart throughout this election season.
“A Democratic Spirit is one that combines rigor and humility, i.e., passionate conviction plus a sedulous respect for the convictions of others. As any American knows, this is a difficult spirit to cultivate and maintain, particularly when it comes to issues you feel strongly about. Equally tough is a Democratic Spirit’s criterion of 100 percent intellectual integrity – you have to be willing to look honestly at yourself and at your motives for believing what you believe, and to do it more or less continually.
This kind of stuff is advanced US citizenship. A true Democratic Spirit is up there with religious faith and emotional maturity and all those other top-of-the-Maslow-Pyramid-type qualities that people spend their whole lives working on. A Democratic Spirit’s constituent rigor and humility and self-honesty are, in fact, so hard to maintain on certain issues that it’s almost irresistibly tempting to fall in with some established dogmatic camp and to follow that camp’s line on the issue and to let your position harden within the camp and become inflexible and to believe that the other camps are either evil or insane and spend all your time and energy trying to shout over them. I submit, then, that is indisputably easier to be Dogmatic than Democratic, especially about issues that are both vexed and highly charged.”
Couple of distinctions I think important.
The one Seth and Wes danced around about different audiences: talking to our friends vs political operatives. How we speak is shaped by the audience. I think blogs can be useful.
The other is talking about vs doing. Implicit in Seth’s comment about where he was going with his politics. Much of social activism now is issue focused (divesting from fossil fuels, housing, minimum income and so one; it isn’t political party focused) and locally focused (farmers markets, civic rather than federal or even state); which makes the avoidance of untrustworthy media easier – if you see what is happening locally you can more easily tell how much bull is being talked by government.
Focusing locally is often the way to build cross-party coalitions. When both Democrat and Republican families need food (housing/ jobs/ healthcare) ideology is more easily set aside.
“Much of social activism now is issue focused (divesting from fossil fuels, housing, minimum income and so on; it isn’t political party focused)”
I wonder about this. Politically, I understand how a Bernie Sanders supporter could vote for Hillary Clinton (or a Ted Cruz supporter for Donald Trump), We trust polling *enough* to recognize that a vote for Faith Spotted Eagle is an exercise in expression while a vote R or D is an exercise in (binary) choice.
However, I cannot see a pattern (besides party focus) in *which* issues of injustice provoke a riot. Even the most parochial social activists don’t riot (yet) over drone strikes or private prisons, despite ostensible opposition to these practices.
Wes’s admonishment for the left to dialogue is naive. For the past 25 years, the American left has generally tried to conduct rational discourse while the right has viciously attacked them. The left has made policy arguments and appeals to reason while the right attacks and scapegoats the left. Whenever the left questioned W., the response was that they were unpatriotic if they did not get in line behind the president. When Obama tried to engage the right, the strategy was to obstruct at every turn. While the left tried to engage in discourse, the right has systematically attacked the institutional power of the left: euthanizing the last remnants of organized labor, killing community organizations like ACORN through bogus videos, and even obstructing voting rights.
Some on the left are still trying to “talk it out” even while their opponents are going for the jugular.
On another issue raised… what’s the role of philosophy for thinkers under Trump? I’m reading Arendt(fantastic) and Popper (meh), and contemplating Boethius’s take on the remnants of a great civilization subjected to the whims of a barbarian tyrant posing as an emperor.
The role for philosophy (in my view): analysing the problems, formulating better ways forward.
For me the big issue is re-doing enlightenment individuality: a vision of the self that is both ecological and social (“situated”). This can lead to different institutions and forms of organising.
A book I like that is very readable and sketches the issues is Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head.
While some on the right definitely have done that (especially the populist right and the blogs/media that services them) I don’t think it’s fair to say the right doesn’t engage. The right often notes that the left doesn’t engage on many issues as well – often again in populist movements. Without getting into a pointless discussion of who does it worse (or what that question could even possibly mean) I think it’s fair to say we’d be better off if we’d engage the strongest arguments from each side. That often just doesn’t happen. Instead many on both sides prefer to attack the weakest arguments – especially if they can then tar the whole movement.
It seems the intellectual right (as opposed to the populist right, which Trump is appealing to) have some fairly well staked out claims that just rarely get engaged with. (I’d add that at least in America the far left gets ignored even more by the center left – at least the center left engages somewhat with conservatives)
There is a difference between fact and value (even if they are inseparably related). The arguments to be productive need to be based on a shared premise.
My suggestion is human flourishing (and that this has social and ecological dimensions).
Wes is naive? Another person somewhere commented about how they were annoyed with Wes’s liberal partisan comments so I’m convinced we all listened to a different podcast. But seriously – it is some kind of blind spot not to see how both sides are generally completely unreasonable most of the time. There is no place for a moderate. And by moderate I mean someone who doesn’t use the most extreme examples of each party to represent them.
Yes! In this vein, I enthusiastically cosign Wes’s critique of Seth’s characterisation of abortion opponents. Seth’s claim that it’s all about misogyny breaks down when you look at polls finding that the antiabortion position is more prevalent among women than among men. In particular, large numbers of married women who have had children are viscerally and emotionally horrified by the idea of abortion.
This is compounded by the fact that the pro-choice side is generally so uncompromising that as Wes said, they want to inflexibly defend the right to abortion 10 minutes before birth. I have advocated for a policy that not only allows early term abortion but guarantees women have proximity to clinics and financial help if needed. But later abortion would only be allowed if a judge ordered it because of special circumstances.
Every time I have floated this idea, it is the pro-choice side that has most histrionically screamed for my scalp. Even though most abortions already occur within the first half of pregnancy, and every pregnant woman goes through that first half, to hear them tell it I am as atavistic and misogynistic as it gets, obviously looking to put all women in chains. Which is a great example of what they were discussing in Part One about how the left can also be guilty of catastrophizing and spinning wildly overblown predictions that ignore all nuance.
The end result, as Jennifer says, is that anyone with moderate or center-left positions gets discouraged from taking part in public dialogue on Twitter or elsewhere because the blowback is so fierce. Which just further purifies the extremism of those progressives who do participate, and keeps them from even being exposed to moderate positions. Therefore any moderate position just looks to them like an extreme right position, because they are not confronted with moderation often enough to recognize it for what it is, or to learn any factual/logical/rhetorical counterarguments. So instead they just trot out the talking points they use against extreme right-wingers.
The activists probably yell the most because at least a significant number of them hold to a “life begins at conception” ontology. Yet if you look at polls that view is the minority one. From what I can tell most in the pro-life movement favor a position pretty close to what you outline. i.e. restricting abortion to the first trimester, and then limiting abortions in the 2cd or 3rd trimester with some sense of due process. (A common complaint among the pro-life movement is that allowing doctors to decide is akin opening a floodgate similar to how some doctors prescribe opioids knowing they are being abused)
From what I can tell the fact so many in the pro-life movement are open to first trimester abortion but oppose 2cd/3rd trimester suggests much more openness than discussions suggest. And of course there are many strong pro-life figures who simply don’t hold the the more Thomist conception of life/personhood beginning at conception. (Mormons being an obvious example)
I think a silent majority of Americans overall support that position, although I don’t know if it qualifies as “pro-life” exactly.
As I heard (filtered) it, the admonishment was against ineffective arguments.
Outrage, moral conviction, and intellectual certainty are not distinctive characteristics of your position, because your opponent perceives those characteristics in his own position.
It is natural that you would use such arguments to dispute an admonishment against them.
This episode doesn’t seem to be showing up in the podcast feed. I deleted the feed and readded to my podcast player and only episode 1 is showing up (along with all the prior episodes) Is this a bug in the rss?
We just noticed that today and are debugging. Thanks.
Wes thinks “everyone can agree” that gerrymandering is bad. I don’t agree! Democrats actually need to engage in some serious gerrymandering ourselves. If we have computers design districts that are compact and use logical county or city boundaries, it’s advantage GOP. That’s because Democrats tend to cluster strongly into cities, so nice compact districts will be 90% Democratic in urban areas and leave a lot of votes wasted.
So any time Democrats can get control of state legislatures, they need to gerrymander the hell out of congressional districts. The simplest way to do this is to take a metropolitan area, and the rural areas surrounding it, and draw districts that are like pie wedges. You get enough strong Democratic votes from the pointy tip of the wedge that they slightly outnumber the rural and exurban Republicans in the fat part of the triangle.
Wes is right about rhetoric, but it’s hard to know what rhetorical strategy to use when everybody has a different media diet in the modern, balkanized media landscape. That and the Great Sort are deteriorating any sense of common understanding.
Rhetoric is about knowing the audience too.
As to topics – affordable housing, decently paid work.
As to strategies, tell stories about individuals that illustrate the policy choices.
Most citizens aren’t complete ideologues.
The bigger picture. Start recruiting people in ways to meet immediate needs (child care, food, work). This will usually involve people from various kinds of politics; from there it will be possible to begin working together for a desired future. It is (kind of) beginning by avoiding politics – and in another sense practising a politics of building a world where all can benefit.
http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2017/01/what-happens-to-democracy-when-experts.html
I will put my partisanship up front as a student of rhetoric, and I appreciate hearing some philosophy folks showing an appreciation for our discipline. Perhaps age-old divides can be bridged 🙂
Parts of the funeral oration of Pericles feel very relevant right now. He talked about the glory of Athens and how it didn’t rely on mass deportations of people or secret weapons but “the courage and loyalty” of its people. If you’re looking for solace, that’s not a bad place to go.
As a repeat critic of Wes on the topic of god (lower case “g” intended) and religion, I would just like to say that he was in my opinion the clear star of the show in these two episodes on politics. He spoke wonderfully well throughout and I came away with a desire to be generally less judgmental and more open minded. I will probably struggle most when it comes to the idea of a god but I will at least attempt to be more charitable to “the other” when it comes to their belief.
Maybe Wes could extend the same courtesy he espouses in general to the specific cases of Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett and he might also like to read “The Fallacy Of Fine-Tuning” to disabuse himself of the notion that the “the world being very finely tuned on several physical parameters” is non-controversial. But now I’m off and running on religion again!
Congratulations to all the regulars on these two episodes. I still think the best episodes are those without guests. Everyone spoke well but it was Wes at his best who took away the MVP.
Yeah, Wes is generally the PELer I agree with most often, so I am always surprised and disconcerted when he throws in a little dig at Sam Harris, who is the public intellectual I agree with most often. I’d be curious to hear him elaborate, or better yet to hear the two of them debate.
We’ve asked Sam Harris repeatedly (and recently) to come on the podcast, and he refuses to answer my emails despite our getting a reference from Very Bad Wizards (which he did appear on). So either he’s a busy guy deluged with emails, we’re too small potatoes for him, and/or he’s aware of Wes’s dissing and unwilling to engage us.
Maybe he is worried how his appearance on PEL would affect his “brand.” That is the world in which we find ourselves today…
Huh! Well, good on you for trying. I wouldn’t think it’s the dissing, though, because he has had people on (especially in the past year or so) who were very critical of him, and I don’t think they are any bigger potatoes than you (at least, not all of them). Have you tried hitting him up on Twitter?
On his most recent podcast, coincidentally, he had a guy on with whom he argued for two hours about the definition of “truth”. (I did think in this case Sam should have dropped it and moved on.) In the process, Sam described having taken all of Rorty’s classes at Stanford, arguing strenuously with his professor every step of the way. My reaction was “oops, Rorty sounds awfully familiar…yup, he was the subject of some recent PEL episodes I skipped!” (I immediately went back and listened to them.)
Come to think of it, after that podcast Sam asked listeners to go to the Sam Harris subforum on Reddit to advise him on how he could have handled that logjam better. So Reddit would appear to be his haunt (along with Twitter as I mentioned above). Maybe if you go there and get enough people to upvote an invitation, that would work. Worth a try anyhow. That would absolutely be my favorite thing ever.
Just listened to that Waking Up podcast. I can’t believe how intransigent the guest was in the face of, what I thought at least, what were very persuasive arguments presented by Harris. He just went out of his way to stick to his position even when backed into a ridiculous corner. I don’t think he’s alone either as there has been more than one episode on PEL where the boys have tied themselves in knots using “true” in various ways. I just don’t get it when someone wants to say it’s “true for you” because it’s generally about a belief but the belief is ABOUT SOMETHING and it’s the something that is either true or false, not the belief. For example, they might say that a belief in god is “true for me” if it helps them overcome their fear of death, when all they really mean is that it is USEFUL for them. Nobody can determine whether the god exists but there is a fact of the matter – her either does or doesn’t. It’s just a bastardisation of the meaning of the word true to say that it is “true for you”.
I’m in complete sympathy with your objection to the idea of something being “true for you” or “true for me.” But it seems to me you’ve gotten the details backwards. Beliefs (or sentences, or propositions) are what’s capable of being true or false, not things. Is the coffee cup on my desk true? The question doesn’t make sense; it’s a category mistake. The coffee cup just is. My belief that there’s a coffee cup on the desk is true (if, in fact, there’s a coffee cup on my desk.) In standard correspondence theories of truth, being true is a property of beliefs that correspond to facts, or states of affairs, or what-have-you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthmaker
http://www.iep.utm.edu/truth-ma/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truthmakers/
Extremes breed extremes .And the pendulum naturally swings back and forth….our problem would be with the tyranny of those who would prevent that movement,
..I was a lifelong liberal democrat..grew up on the south side of Chicago,we were the last white family to move from the neighborhood where I seen King march…,the riots,the tensions and poverty I came to know well.
Beans ,rice and cornbread and government cheese after my father fourth heart attack..So I would say I came to be highly attuned to ferreting out the contradictions in social justice policies from the democratic party and its application and how it cashed out in the street…economically,culturally and politically,..in Chicago
I am the plumber tradesman (who has listened to the vast bulk of every podcast here ,and thank you I have enjoyed them)
Was it Seth or Dylan….Ill take a second and dispel the idea that plumbers and doctors are in the same income bracket..(ill give you the benefit of metaphor as well lol)..
Though I got where you were going with it….The working people who yes have been severely put upon in large by globalization and its dynamics.. they are compelled by all the same motivations and needs..and have a thirst for an equality of more than an income bracket they may share with a more educated fellow citizen…..and therefore yes there may be a bend to their view..but more precisely the bend these days would seem to come from a marginalization not from the doctor or academic but from the medias depiction and marginalization of their being a people on their way out..and are somehow morally corrupt historically speaking based upon things they neither participated in or neither condone but guilty by virtue of their whiteness…and when they are working white also struggling….check to check.. the narrative is just an attack on their mental wellbeing….
It is a sad fact, that the dynamics of a working class living make’s you so much more prone to external forces ..we wish (some of us) to be more internally directed,though as the necessities and vicissitudes at times seem to eat us alive… making people in general…(and people,even more predisposed in particular)..,less likely to seek out truths and vet sources……..and ,more likely to give the nod of legitimacy to sources that have the loudest most resource laden voices..
No wonder the people…..working class and educated alike (whose socializations bends their take a well) ….think they are getting.. by and large.. an authentic look at the facts…..minus nuance of course and thru 60 second sound bites..lol
(when, what is it …it is ONLY 6 corporations that own 90 percent of all you see,hear and read..Gore Vidal and many around the globe seen that alone as unhealthy and a testimony to whats wrong with our worldview here in the colonies.in between two great oceans)
And although most of the tradesman I know would probably rightly be characterized as being of the popular culture,not all share a dogmatic approach to their political sentiments..Like most people they have varied positions that a two party system ,fails to represent
For instance,..I believe in climate change and a woman’s right to choose..though also believe in keeping the thin line of deterrence to tyranny… gun rights..And am dismayed by the lefts strict and even tyrannical assertion of an extreme brand of political correctness..One where I can make the same argument as Wes in regard to truth and the good… Where do I go?
In fact( an essentially) two party system..and the interest political and private who want to keep it that way.. seems to fail most Americans in that respect ,I became assured of that when I compared notes with my republican friends…And now as an independent( not just an sentiment anymore) I voted for policy of greater goods and lesser evils ,(not personality or the hyperbole…..)where they could be known,with an expectation that the evils would probably be realized and the goods tainted…And it didnt just come from my strong beliefs about (a) or (B)….My socialization and experiential knowledge tells me a different story in regards to how power works out there economically,culturally..If you have ever been on the losing side of a power struggle with real time consequences then you start to call things out by their more authentic name……too your sense anyways..
.As the years passed I became disenchanted with the democratic rhetoric (and actions) concerning social justice when on the other hand its behaviour was equally inline with republican behaviour in regards to economics……the way it panned out… and the smoke and mirrors of a systemically corrupt system seems to feed either one set of wealthy or another…..
While,.creating a welfare state for the wealthy on one side…and then an equally powerful left oligarchic extreme….Whose emphasis and effect ,psychically,culturally,legally etc is ,just scapegoating and marginalizing white working people Trumps base..(seemingly as a central element of their sense of equality……). as they worked their supposed social justice equation………transferring injustice from one color of working people to another color who also, many are just trying to make ends meet doesn’t qualify as serving justice.. All this while technology and automation and this brand of globalization were thrust upon us with a rapidity that serves the wealthy mightily but has destabilized the industrialized nations…and wrecked havoc on the poor…..our poor are dying in many ways..I see it everyday…
And all this profiteering thru globalization.. All this while fostering a sort of extreme interpretation of the goods that we achieved from progressivism….making these goods work to bind us,instead of do the work of good works…
While as throughout history, branding all value as coming from the same people,who have always claimed that they know better though always seem to lead us in the direction of so called free trade instead of fair trade for instance (their ends and our servitude)..these are the same people who know that powerful interest are served powerfully and weaker interest accordingly.and they create a moral narrative that’s reinforced by a now 24/7 mouthpiece that’s too say the least scary..
And it is a few Seth who benefit from globalization ….because a 400 big screen tv is nice,but losing a 22 hr job,trading it in for a 10 dollar an hour job…….Well all the working American can say is keep the tv..(ill pay the 800 bucks)….and the banks and things like the great mortgage fraud defeat us…the people who own the banking and wall street the same guys who supported Hillary and participated in abolishing glass steagall are feasting…To the working man Bill Clinton was a trader….so now hence a Trump..
These few….(,for the tyranny is not just of the many)…seem to work on the same premise as Dylan that their is an inherrent superiority on one hand …but the academics and such who also benefit disproportinately than the working class populace……dont like it much when that false premise is thrust upon them.as with the ivy league supreme court justices.
And I would remind Dylan that as Jefferson and others pointed out (and our constitutional design designates)that the common citizen should be serving…it does not take a rocket scientist to be a public servant,….And expert knowledge is a double edge sword..as money and human nature clouds everything..science and technology in the service of the people,not subjugating their authentic interest under the guise of we know whats good for you..because we have the experts..your entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts..
.Neither are the qualifications a sincere desire to acquire great influence ,foreknowledge and an opportunity to later feed at the trough of corporate lobbyist ..and those lobbyist are supporting interest that work against the public’s interest for both red and blue…
.Maybe its time to yes ( to even teach in our public school system along with emotional competencies) …learn and try to truly dialogue and stop letting the loudest,most extreme voices dominate..but again we go back to human nature and powerful interest and ignorance..,which btw is equally distributed on both sides my friends..thanks all you guys are terrific..
Huh. Speaking of debugging, I read a comment from Daniel Flack via email notification, and clicked “Reply” within the email. It brought me here, and right above this text box it says “Leave a Reply to Daniel Flack”…but Daniel’s comment is nowhere to be seen. What gives?
Uh, you just replied to it. http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2017/01/23/ep156-2-philosophy-politics/#comment-2794671.
Ohhh…hang on, I just realized what happened. My Chrome extension “Trump filter” hid it. D’oh! Now I’ve turned it off (temporarily). Can you please delete that comment and its children?
Daniel:
Sprinkled amongst your verbiage are a couple fair points–particularly about the “extreme brand of political correctness” that has taken hold on college campuses and on progressive Twitter. But mostly, this is just whiny BS, with a whiff of racism (“their supposed social justice equation………transferring injustice from one color of working people to another color”).
The past quarter century has seen the greatest transformation toward “the good” for the greatest number of people in human history, by far. Hundreds of millions have been lifted out of starvation-level poverty. Hundreds of millions more families have risen from basic subsistence to a middle class existence, complete with smartphones and education for their children. (And yes, we’ve also created too many billionaires for my taste–but despite your claim that both sides are the same, it is Democrats who push for more progressive taxation on the wealthy–Hillary Clinton was explicit about this–while Republicans continue to push their discredited “Laffer Curve” in pursuit of ever-decreasing taxation on the one percent.)
There is really only one demographic group in the world that can even make a claim to having lost ground without it being immediately dismissed as laughable: straight white men without college degrees. But even there, the vast majority have in an absolute sense gained ground or at least held steady. But the rest of the world has gotten more well off, so they have lost position only in a *relative* sense. Cry me a frickin’ river.
There are of course a certain number who have indeed lost ground in an absolute sense, in places like the Rust Belt. But even if “standing athwart history and yelling STOP!” were to reestablish everything as it was (a tragically naive notion), what kind of justice would that be? Restore a couple million blue collar white guys, 0.05% of the world’s population, to their former glory, at the cost of throwing BILLIONS back into subsistence poverty or starvation?
And by the way, it is far more than the big screen TV that is made much more affordable by reducing global barriers to trade (even aside from the many jobs that are preserved). Nearly everything you buy, from food to furniture to automobiles, would be drastically more expensive under a protectionist economic scheme. Which cuts the number of people helped by a return to such policies to an even tinier sliver of the pie, and hurts vastly more people. It’s all basically an incoherent reactionary tantrum, one which the chattering class has given far more consideration than it deserves.
The claim is usually that the very poor have been lifted above subsistence level, not that they have made it to the middle class.
The claim that people have been lifted above extreme poverty can be consistent with the hollowing out of the middle.
Whatever is the “usual” claim, perhaps by people proceeding from their conclusions of a hollowed out middle class, I cannot say. I can however offer this 2016 article from the highly respected Pew organization and written by a leading figure with the also highly respected and left-leaning Brookings think tank:
http://magazine.pewtrusts.org/en/archive/trend-summer-2016/how-a-growing-global-middle-class-could-save-the-worlds-economy
——–
To put today’s speed of growth of the global middle class into perspective, consider its trajectory. In 1820, after the Napoleonic War in Europe, there were probably no more than 2.5 million people out of a worldwide population of 1 billion who were in the middle class. By the beginning of the 20th century, the global middle class was around 90 million strong. By 1975, 150 years after starting its growth phase, the middle class had reached 1 billion people. By 2006, another 1 billion had joined the middle class, and now less than a decade later, we are at 3 billion. The middle class could surpass 4 billion by 2021, making it a majority of the world’s population.
Do you think that a growing gap between the rich and poor is a concern?
It is definitely a concern, although not nearly as much of one if it were actually the case that “the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer” (as is the common maxim), instead of “almost everyone is getting richer or staying at the same level of purchasing power, but the rich are doing so exponentially faster”.
I refer you to my OP, in which I wrote:
“And yes, we’ve also created too many billionaires for my taste–but despite your claim that both sides are the same, it is Democrats who push for more progressive taxation on the wealthy–Hillary Clinton was explicit about this–while Republicans continue to push their discredited ‘Laffer Curve’ in pursuit of ever-decreasing taxation on the one percent.”
Do you have the sense that the state has played a role in the expansion of the middle class?
Yes, of course the state has played a role. What are you getting at?
Well you choose not to answer a lot of points regarding this brand of globalization,including so called free trade verse fair trade,the plight of inner city workers and their families,crime rate’s after the loss of manufacturing etc,the loss of one third of the middle class because of guys like Clinton and Reuben from wall street abolishing glass stegal…,suffering you yourself MAYBE have little experience with…maybe they are crybabies as well…though Ill bet you have never suffered the degree of hardship ,intense labor etc that the working experience..and its funny thinking like yours always calls these people whiners while those doing the name calling..are sitting back feeding off of their labors..And when it all comes down to it,it’s the power to enforce the existing paradigm that makes it all possible..What did Bastiat say about Plunder,the law and morality..
.Though maybe it’s thinking such as yours and personal interest that have you reframing this as a moral deficient on the part of the very guys,who created the wealth and change thru their efforts….(labor non union and otherwise)..unless you have a smattering of elitist sentiment in your worldview in regards to those who produce the value via labor.(So No I am not talking about the people who had access to fractional lending either or the one’s who got us off the gold standard and into a fiat currency)…The value of labor..its usually denigrated by those who dont know the blood,sweat and tears who strictly see it as something to be managed and exploited…While taking credit for all the good that comes out of it…….I was in Afghanistan three times and worked with the defense industry as they fed off the treasury and they acted on a mentality that would rather have the troops living in a 130f tent when the A/C broke )and ,until they could maximize their profit from the situation…in fact..they would admonish me not to cannibalize part’s from other non working units,even if it meant troops coming back from patrol might be able to suffer less……(i kept taking care of the troops first,lets just say that)..so lets be real..
.I have seen enough suffering in my life,please do not play the role of caring about the plight of those around the world when ,you are negating and diminishing those in your own nation….your thinking reminds me of that
I find it interesting that your profiling me Alan….I am actually part latino and Indigenous Indian,my best friend is a black man and my family is pretty representative of the nation lol.
Let me add when I speak of experiential knowledge it doesn’t surprize me.(.and Ill profile your thinking here) that college educated white guys who didn’t grow up having the knockout game practiced on him as a ten year old while growing up in englewood on the south side of Chicago during the height of the race riots couldnt relate and whats more wouldnt attempt to…..but they will characterize your experience….
Further,It appears its you crying the river,..,in fact you want to cry a river for everyone but hard working white men… (and its obviously not just white men,but the working class………,its just that non affluent whiteness is dismissed outright)….,your mentality is symptomatic of (if there such a thing) a reverse racism..one where any injustice visited upon working white people is irrelative and focused on framing them as portraying the victim and a selfish one at that…,afterall, we prefer our families to the rest of the world…..And what were really talking about here concerning globalization in general are the working poor and all others living meager paycheck to paycheck (not just white ness lol) as those other’s who feast and do so arrogantly, and do so thru leverage, as opposed to the authentic earning of a thing…..sounds like gamesmanship. your defending
,So my point as too using the term whiteness (as I have seen racism coming at me from all races and in the street, out in the world of working in the ghettos for the last 26 years… black gangs,extreme racist sentiment from non white,and even skin heads and covert white racism lol,..my life experience has seen all the sides)…
My point was,any who have not achieved a political currency within the politically correct len’s …..(as being put upon,by white privilege)…according to their lens. is not …,does not… have legitimate concerns regarding marginalization and scapegoating or ,regarding economic injustice and ..the very thinking that you are exhibiting..
.The irony in regards to a transference of injustice is in large part it’s the same people doing the leveraging…and the sad thing is the poor of all colors are kept divided as they fight for the scraps…..One must have the actual experience and lived the life of those you are boo-hooing..
We are not victims,in fact we are the value makers of the nation and like in a plane where the oxygen mask drop,our working people must put theirs on first and foremost…but you want to squeeze the hose and put the whole ball of wax deeper into the hands of the globally vested under the pretense that ,its ok if we destroy our great good, and the possible good of our working class,,as long as the extreme wealthy,their proxies and minions (who maintain a similar value structure). get theirs……
..The manipulation is that this brand of globalization… (like Clinton cooperating with Rubin from wall street to abolish glass steagall…and the access it created for the wall street etc….,at the expense of one third of the middle class,who never came back (u.s counties only 7 % really recovered)……..that Hillarys ten dollar an hour jobs wouldn’t even begin to fill)……) and its direct and most extreme beneficiaries maintain a so called free trade instead of fair trade as a necessary ingredient….. and that all the other fall out such as …. ,loss of national sovereignty issues…. and all that comes with creating the monsters of such great economic proportions and their power structure………and most importantly to me this keeping the wealth distribution in such a way where many of all colors etc get the shaft.
.
You can frame this paradigm as lifting up the world…when in reality its more about promoting the interest, a particular value system and its adherents benefit from……the power structure and its beneficiaries… and further if we as a people must. smile and nod our agreement with an equation where 20 % of the populace own 80% of the wealth and so on with the .1 percent needing two graphs on the cbo charts……….and further to in time erase our national identity and sovereignty effectively..and lose our constitutional guarantees to fit this paradigm and their great good and mischief…..well extremes have bred extremes and its time to look to national interest that do not serve globally vested interest and its beneficiaries here first and foremost…but instead our good first…..do not kill the golden goose..
I would like to see a world where good prevails for as many as can have it based on their efforts and their having an opportunity to have an opportunity,the sanctity of life and due process for all…but I see a nation where 80 percent of our population owns only 20 percent of the wealth and a world where,400 families own half the wealth…I see homelessness,drug addiction,joblessness,crime,families damaged children and broken men..Everyone of working status gets it..,injustice at the hands of a more powerful class is a necessary ingredient in life ..Who was it Hume maybe/ Who said “All the evil that was ,is and ever will be is necessary for all the good that can be”.but a lot of these working poor etc get whose zooming who…
.Really Alan projecting ones selfishness as Our selfishness sounds like one of those dark impulses Wes was talking about..
Not so much proofreading this time, eh?
“suffering you yourself MAYBE have little experience with”
At least here you added a caveat (“MAYBE”), whereas in the rest of your rant you just full on made the assumption that I’m privileged. And I am privileged by global standards (kind of my point). By U.S. standards? Not so much. Some facts about me, FYI:
–I don’t have a college degree.
–I’ve never earned more than ten bucks an hour at any job.
–I went without health insurance from 1996 to 2015, and I still have only a barebones HDHP with a HSA.
–My kids have only had health insurance all their lives because of Medicaid, thanks in part to Hillary Clinton, whom I admire greatly. Medicaid is also what paid for all four of my kids’ births, from my ex-wife and current wife.
–My family spent time on food stamps (“SNAP”), and though we no longer qualify for that, we do still receive WIC benefits which help reduce the strain on our grocery budget.
–Another thing that helps enormously is the several thousand we get from the government every year via the EITC.
All of these elements of the safety net that we depend on are now in jeopardy.
So MAYBE I’m not quite what you pictured, eh?
“you want to squeeze the hose and put the whole ball of wax deeper into the hands of the globally vested under the pretense that ,its ok if we destroy our great good, and the possible good of our working class,,as long as the extreme wealthy,their proxies and minions (who maintain a similar value structure). get theirs……”
Congratulations for creating the most egregious straw man of all time. I certainly did not say anything remotely resembling this.
So really Alan bottom line your fear mongering propaganda comes down to everything would be more expensive.. the cost of living would go up…..Yeah it is naive to think any one class with the power to dominate another using all its resources and enforcement capabilities would allow us to return to a time where we had good jobs and our national sovereignty and constitutional guarantees …..where we were not in danger of losing our national identity etc from the dynamics involved with globalization and its extreme profiteers..and their great thrust to acquire power…much like the b.s. about spreading democracy around the world..lol..
Let me say this I grew up in the warring ghetto in transition from poor working and middle class white to black, seen King march,spent three years in a war zone,and…have been to all the dark places that make men poop their pants….have labored with blood,sweat and tears and worked the ghetto for over 26 years ….,you my friend are the whiny crybaby..whining to ensure you maintain a paradigm where the people who own the interest ….that serve you.. and the interest of your like….. are served at the expense of all others ..you whine to keep that in power and do so by citing economic dynamics that came about as a result of their great greed in the first place ,and then you have the audacity to dress it up as serving mankind..while you demean and negate your people here in our nation
Well take our good jobs and a lesser statured wealthy,our constitutional guarantees not to be diminished by the arrival of outside interest serving themselves at the expense of our goods..well take our national sovereignty…and then maybe we can start to call things as they are instead of how a select few would skew them to serve their self interest….btw your failure to comprehend a thing isn’t automatically turned into my inability to express it…..
Yes Alan worked 12 hours that day 12 hours today.I work for myself I ask nothing from government ,not because I don’t believe in a safety net..but because coming up in extreme poverty I cant bring myself to be there psychologically .And yes when I reply to this thread I am tired..I put down incomplete thoughts and my grammar is terrible at times..
So what..
..I do not appreciate cherry picking and intellectual arrogance from anyone….but if you got the point…then whats the point……..
The pretense thought that I didn’t finish was about wall street,the NEW democratic party and the same families in banking etc who have shoved globalization down our throats in a way that they dress up as serving our interest as a nation,when in fact it serves some few extremely well ,a portion of our people, though it has disenfranchised many more….and look at the residential mortgage fraud..we lost a third of mthe middle class and hillary who i far from admire brought us what the wealthy throughout history have always brought first to the table TRINKETS…Like they did the indigenous…
The poor for instance ,in the last eight years have become so much more impoverished and their wellbeing so much more undone…No wonder such strong resentment and defeatism exist ,its a sad friggin thing that I see and experience thru a number of those around me and myself at times…
….there’s the part that poverty must work on itself………and then there’s the great greed of this paradigm that is essentially destroying our brothers and sisters.blood and water…..and even if I might fight with them on some things… I care for them because I get it..
…So no I do not support the removal of a safety net because if we really want to reduce spending and save then we should disassemble the corporate welfare system..And the pittance for food and shelter is money well spent…especially when 20% of the pop. own 80% of the money…
Trump will bring a lot of things to the table that I will not like…..The truth is .neither party serves the people……,powerful interest are served powerfully and weaker interest accordingly….
.Infrastructure,some measure of protectionism (and that word is flavored,like many words used on television) Jobs and the right to dissent from the herd and especially diminishing where possible the banks and wall street and the same wealthy shareholders pulling the media strings……..And striking back against placing the truth of a thing as secondary to propriety..the fear of offense ..the tethering of truth to propriety and such..this is what we want from this guy…..All must be subject to criticism that includes minorities whether they are acting as a black interest or the minority of wealthy as they truly act as a wealthy interest…all men,cultures,interest,ideas must be subject to criticism..All…..
I am not a trumpster and dam sure am not a clintonite and an independent,we should abolish the party names on run on policy statement but that’s not how people vote and sure wouldnt benefit the fat guys in their nice homes in manhattan laughing at us little people lol
Since this great rush to globalize and essentially the takeover of the democratic party by the same people who run wall street,the banks,the media etc..(so much for objective broadcasting and media,thats a joke to think anything that powerful could remain objective…and the one good thing about the media being so clearly on one side is they have fronted themselves off to the nation and we can see very clearly that THEY ARE AN INTEREST UNTO THEMSELVES…the people who are the ownership who also commissioned Hillary and Bill and Barrack…hillary senate seat )..since this brand of globalization has sunk its teeth into our juglar our poor are deginerating and dying…even with a half black man at the helm…things got exponentially worse…
… The the silk roads early globalization ,I agree it was all inevitable…but its the way we do a thing that counts..Just as you can have all kinds of democracies capitalism as king, tyrannical,paternal…there are myriad ways to go about global trade….
those with the fcc licenses they are crafting a brand of globalization that will make kings and pawns only…Just Their tool media creates many false,though received beliefs…beliefs that do not serve our authentic interest as a nation or a people….We have and all nation ever will have more to fear from internal tyrants,then from 3rd nation terrorist…Hell cigarettes kill many more people than terrorim ever has,..yet when the government fed and states had these guys by the short hairs,they took the money and the false credit of doing something….but never had them take out the carcinogens or addictive agents…that may have saved some jobs..and value to the economy,but it really tells us all we really need to know about man in general and gov. in particular
You assumed I support taking the safety net away from people who need it,even if its a temporary thing or even if they are
So no offense partner keep fighting the good fight
“The poor for instance ,in the last eight years have become so much more impoverished and their wellbeing so much more undone”
Cite? As the saying goes, you are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts. Or are these “alternative facts”?
The last line before take care ..was a line I thought i deleted…was going to say I support the safety net even for people who may not deserve it…for a short time…and then I would expect them to grow merit…. or for society to get something back in return like roadwork or something else where they got to give back……..mandatorily give back,if they are working it….its the takers (who strictly take),….in all their myriad form, that our the species problem..not just the nation..
I am one of those poor my friend…. and I live and work amongst those poor, and my family half of them anyways have remained in that class And personally,except for the times I have achieved a measure of greater earnings and more security…
And most of this poverty does not have the experience of making six figures in their life ,nor the skills or wherewithal to make the kind of money I do at TIMES..as in Chicago even with good word of mouth the competition is fierce,the companies I compete with are way better capitalized and personally I have no cushion in the way of family or help from any entities like a wife or family or the benefits that so many take for granted from family friends of family etc..I am alone.
And although I make decently at times my craft hvac is seasonal (like I said I am that plumber tradesman person) And being in business for yourself lends to poverty often especially in an impoverished environment and when competing in a better demographic,where the social proofs and other forms of demonstrating legitimacy to unknown prospective customers becomes more difficult when you bring a less resourced business to the table..
Anyways the experience of living in and amongst as well as the benefit of others experiences ,the general environment as seen and demonstrated by the murder rate for instance and comparing it to the condition of poverty since I was a child…the drugs,the gangs,the people all become much more desperate and dog eat dog..it is worse than I have ever seen it..
That is way better a barometer than the media and their bullshit.. figures lie and liars figure…come bye Ill be glad to take you on a tour of the south and west sides o0f Chicago and then well go north and contrast..
Further do the deduction..loss of manufacturing jobs,murder rates,loss of income that would of come from a robust middle class and the great gobbling up wealth and lack of investment in our nation’s infrastructure etc etc etc…globalization and its few winner’s.automation etc..and thinking like the kind your expressing..(no offense)…so things things have presently been correlated with crime and all the other conditions of poverty and it didn’t take a genius to see that all these years..(that since the exponential growth of globalization on the wealthy’s terms alone) but were just now hearing about it on the tv and radio..lol..duh to those people in the bubble is what poverty might verbalize if it could and then if it could effectively,it would say,its a mechanistic ,cause and effect economy and social structure…were dying here…..
Gee kind of like the three times I was in Afghanistan ,just ask the Afghan workers on base where;s bin laden ,they all say hes in pakistan..lol…couple years later they find the guy…same mentality.
.if a person or a geographic area is in a bubble ..or they are just not self aware…then I could understand this not knowing..
though otherwise I would have to say ,the argument of saying that the poor are not worse off,is just an attempt to make the argument absurd and discredit the fact’s of the matter..to fit ones ideology..and isnt it funny the roles have reversed here the dem saying all is well and the ex dem saying hey the rep. are the ones with a plan to help..look at what this brand of left thinking has done ,it disenfranchised us for the abstract and for their self interest..and the academics abandoned us for what the dragon could do for them as well..and for their children…as I said about demonstrating the proclivities of man in general and gov in particular when it comes to self and class interest…
“figures lie and liars figure”
This is Gingrich style “truthiness”. If you won’t even respect statistics from the most authoritative sources, there’s no point even trying to discuss this with you. You have your conclusions, go ahead and proceed from them, knock yourself out. I’m done trying to reason with you. (I wonder what Wes would suggest one should do in this kind of situation?)
And it is dubious that the rep plan will be implemented in the way we need,but it is something at least …and…..
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and correction…(if a person or a geographic area is in a bubble ..or they are just not self aware…then I could understand this not knowing..)
I meant to say if the person or people in that geographic area are in a bubble…….then I could understand this not knowing…but there’s another reason,besides denial for those in the other class’es …and poverty just trying to keep up the hope and avoid pure defeatism etc..
….there is what they are being told by a media…A media that has become like another branch of government,like a family member,like the priest or neighbor…another aspect of this is the herd mentality and the pain that comes with dissent from that mentality…..and the desire to avoid the conflict that is the price of dissent …their is a social coercion that comes with that herd mentality ,when the television is telling us what our neighbor think’s…..its seems to be the Authority..it is not,it is an interest which serves other associated interest..of course it is..it would be childlike to believe that great power would allow true objectivity,that kind of thinking is for children..
Your idea of the most authoritative is so heavily influenced by your ideology that you fail to look for the most objective sources..And the bend of a media or any other sources that fail to quantify and qualify objectively as possible, is the issue regarding ascertaining the fact’s.They highlight and diminish to suit,..use flavored terms and phrases they have cultivated and massage the message…all this is very old old stuff in history…it is childlike to pretend ,because you need to be right,that many, in fact, most sources are not to one degree or another touched by money or their own interest in regards to the presentation of a thing….God even the politics at work or within your peer group is more heavily flavored than that and there’s not 64 trillion dollars.in that marketplace..Freud-“Man is wolf to Man”..dont buy into any of this ,then your of course playing a role..get over it pal..
It is clear historically and when we look at the human condition (which from your commentary you seem to have little experience with or your being disingenuous and fronting..ea. never made more then 10.00 an hour.plus I attempted to be polite and engaging..and you are still acting out.)
that powerful interest are served powerfully and leverage all ……..information as the perception of a thing,the received truths that Americans embrace are the hearts and minds,… the narrative that they want to maneuver you into buying…and they is anyone searching to further his interest to survive and thrive..and for the upper class and its workers ,its more about a similar value system than some sort of conspiracy…though in a sense its byproducts are similar and of course collusion is a norm as well..
Look around the world ,read your history,open your mind and interact with everyone
.I was not only a member of occupy I was a speaker and was arrested for my beliefs..what have you done?
You want to promote a belief system that resembles disneyland when the rest of the world still lives on planet earth regarding power,politics and human nature…Go off the reservation my friend and claiming that you have some street cred in order to be credible in relation to this conversation is pathetic,if your circumstances are as you described,then your thinking and ideology go against your authentic interest…the opportunity to have an opportunity, a great influx of investment (imperfect as it is),and a rebuilding of the middle class into a more robust class with more leverage…and the benefit the ripple effect for the poor..
.If you say I am mistaken about the state of poverty,your either isolated and in some sort of a bubble and/or full of it,you so badly want to be right…That desire serves one thing alone…And your inability to be moved is a child of that same making..
10.00 an hour and you fail to relate to the truth of the matter and admit poverty is worse off and exponentially so?!!…..then your dishonesty betrays your reasoning as well..
later Ill keep it civil
BTW mr 10 an hour and I get snap benefits..you wouldn’t make it in my world..so making fun of it just makes you a pretender..Id love to give you a tour of Chicago you wouldn’t forget..lol…Guess this is how u act when u get handed your behind ..Now your not worth responding too..
Hi Alan. Thanks for your reply below.
“I’m in complete sympathy with your objection to the idea of something being “true for you” or “true for me.” But it seems to me you’ve gotten the details backwards. Beliefs (or sentences, or propositions) are what’s capable of being true or false, not things. Is the coffee cup on my desk true? The question doesn’t make sense; it’s a category mistake. The coffee cup just is. My belief that there’s a coffee cup on the desk is true (if, in fact, there’s a coffee cup on my desk.) In standard correspondence theories of truth, being true is a property of beliefs that correspond to facts, or states of affairs, or what-have-you.”
Point taken. All I really meant, let’s say in the case of “God exists” or “There is a coffee cup on my desk”, is that each statement is either true or it isn’t, completely independent of the belief. It’s silly to say that two individuals who have an opposing view can each each have a belief that is “true” by saying it’s “true for me”. That kind of thinking waters down the notion of “truth” to the point of it having no real meaning at all. Just say that it suits you to believe something or that it is useful to believe it.
Fascinating discussion and a masterclass from Wes this time round (see also the Burke episode, where he grappled fairly head-on with the issues and made Seth’s jeering interventions sound embarrassing).
It could have been better to have some sort of openly conservative philosophical voice on the podcast, as it all got too wrapped up in awkward Democrat lamentations that on many key issues just missed the point.
A couple of belated thoughts from England. I listened to this episode and the first part today (May 2018).
First, it’s all very well saying that the tone of political discourse needs to be ‘persuasive’ and not divisive. But look at the frenzied identity politics bullying by SJWs in so many universities and the drastic lack of conservative voices now in so many universities and media outlets. The fact that the Democrats ‘own’ this behaviour when it suits them is bound to alienate anyone wanting to listen and discuss issues thoughtfully.
Second, part of being persuasive is being open to persuasion yourself. On what core philosophical or policy issues are you PEL folks prepared to concede significant ground to Republicans if they concede significant ground to you? I didn’t hear many examples.
Third, it was odd that at various points you seemed wistfully to want institutions and practices that somehow were ideologically neutral. There are only two issues in politics. Who decides? And who decides who decides?
Once the Supreme Court nominations divide sharply on party lines, the whole legal system is getting polarised around specific ideological interpretations of law. No doubt you can find plenty of examples of Republicans pushing hard and dirty in that direction. But the soaring dishonesty of E Kennedy in opposing Robert Bork set a towering bad standard here.
Likewise ‘gerrymandering’. Does it not strike you as noteworthy that many big US cities that have fallen into decrepitude have been run by Democrats for decades, using leverage with public sector unions to cling to power? Isn’t that a form of gerrymandering too?
One reform not discussed that would help produce electoral churn and political responsiveness would be term-limits for all senior political jobs. If the President gets only two terms, why does anyone else get indefinite tenure and the manipulative power to create the US equivalent of rotten boroughs: stagnant one-party fiefdoms in all directions? Might limiting political power in this way not be a philosophically sound way to proceed?
Both Republicans and Democrats show dizzying levels of corruption when it comes to spending public money and running up debts. The unwillingness of Washington to cut programmes is a serious strategic threat to US stability. Not mentioned.
Calling Republicans irredeemably ‘anti-women’ sounds a bit like left/liberal mansplaining. And it fails at the first hurdle of persuasiveness. Millions of women vote Republican. Millions of women would be happy to see a notably tighter regime on abortion.
Finally, rhetoric. The many absurd lies told by H Clinton might not compete with the bravura lies of D Trump, but they were lies nonetheless. Her smirking vanity in appearing at elite Wall Street banquets to denounce many of her fellow citizens as ‘deplorables’ helped bring her down. Isn’t that to some degree a good thing as a market signal to politicians everywhere not to insult voters?
Oh, and as for the bizarre opening Seth claim that America was heading towards something like Russia-style dictatorship now that Trump had won, maybe he ought to live in Russia for a while.
Conclusion?
A good if often lugubrious discussion. But maybe you’d have benefited from a more searching look at why exactly so many Americans voted for the Trump phenomenon, and why many Democrat attitudes and policies and rhetorical tone really helped make that happen