This is kind of hilarious. I followed Corey Robin on FB because I like to see what other people think (a good thing), and sometimes I politely commented. I just got unfriended after this exchange:
That’s just sad and funny on so many levels. And I didn’t change my initial remarks- I initially assumed he was smart enough to go from point a to point b. He wasn’t, so I extended them.
I’ve seen this over and over again with these guys. Zaid Jilani, Freddie de Boer, that Bruenig fellow.
Sad!
In all honesty, what did I say or do that was so offensive here?
Big R
At least you didn’t give this one the keys to the joint.
Robin’s normally a smart feller; race does funny things to people.
wonkie
YOu showed him up in public. He sees his page as a forum for his wisdom which is supposed to accepted, not contested.
bobbo
He is in “I know you are, but what am I?” territory.
Mary G
Somebody needs a nap, and for once, it’s not you, John.
Roger Moore
You pointed out that he was being a privileged jerk. There is no worse sin.
philpm
Funny that actual logic has driven so many people around the bend this election.
msdc
The bigger the troll, the thinner the skin.
Felonius Monk
Relax, John. Some idiots get offended when you tell them they are full of shit, even if you do it in a gentle and subtle way. So, fuck him.
Dolly Llama
Whenever you refer to this guy, I always think Christopher Robin of 100-Acre Wood fame.
BruceFromOhio
You used logic to make a point. This is anathema to the Republican mind, worthy of excommunication from the herd.
ETA: Or unfriending. QED.
@philpm: Precisely.
Corner Stone
I have read that exchange more than 5 times now. I keep looking for which shell the little ball is hiding under.
RaflW
I didn’t even know who he was till about 7 minutes ago, but in the 39 seconds I spent at Jacobin, I can see he is a pompous fool.
Be glad to see the backside of him and enjoy your evening, John.
kdaug
You said nothing wrong. Still a carefully Coleibrated asshole, but it’s your nature.
redshirt
Face the facts Cole: You’re a troll.
David ?▶️?Blue Wall?▶️? Koch
translation: he/she grew up wealthy in chappaqua and hates his/her parents/family and is now projecting that hate on to the clintons and everyone else can go fuck themselves because he/she is white, privileged, and financial insulated from cluster-fuck Trump.
Alt-Left-Firebagger
Peale
Nope. Not gonna buy it that liberals are hypocrites unless they sell their belongings and live in caves.
Anyway, I can’t find the tweet. But Jill Stein saying that African Americans shouldn’t concern themselves if Trump won because they had experienced far worse in their history…yeah, um that’s pretty much weapons grade white privilege there.
scav
He’s not making a lot of sense even in post one and wanders off mid-point to get in some attempt at an an insult / justification before hitting send. (Evidently the locution pattern is catching). His carpet rebuttal against third-party candidates is only Stein and the Greens, not even the biggest third-parties we’ve got percolating right now. It’s utterly unclear why someone presumably pushing the KKK-annointed king of living in gilt penthouses is now throwing stones at living in Chappaqua NY as unimaginable expressions of white privilege, moreover a white privilege he probably denies having himself. How many bends are there in Trumplandish rivers? They’ve clearly explored well-past all of them.
AnotherBruce
@BruceFromOhio: I don’t think he’s a republican. But man, what a thin skin. You can disagree with someone’s idea with out slamming the door in their face. Sheesh, I don’t think part of being an academic is that you don’t listen to other peoples thoughts if they hurt your feelings.
Baud
I have yet to find this a fruitful endeavour.
lollipopguild
John-You MUST agree with them on everything that they feel is important because they are always right even when they know that they are not. Certain people and Trump is one of them CANNOT be wrong on anything no matter what.
Schlemazel
The guy is a charlatan. He pretends to be an intellectual but the moment he runs into disagreement instead of looking at his argument and the counter argument, he turns his tiny brain off and blocks you. He is afraid to examine his beliefs because they might be incorrect so he hides from the challenge.
Mary G
WaPo is taking down the firewall tomorrow. I recommend Jennifer Rubin. No, really. Except for the mad crush on McMullen, it’s primo Trump and Republican bashing all the time. Okay, a bit of “Hillary needs to turn right,” but the whupping she’s given James Comey is awesome.
RaflW
@Peale: Awwww, Black folk. You’ve suffered before, so you’re well equipped to suffer again!
That’s some seriously fresh Stein bilge right there. Jeepers.
raven
Oh yea, I give a fuck what this dude says:
SiubhanDuinne
You did nothing offensive, John.
He is a yellow-bellied lily-livered spineless poltroon.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Fuck ‘im.
raven
@Schlemazel: You don’t block people on Facebook, you just unfriend them. I’m good at it and you would be too!
FlipYrWhig
Corey Robin is a ridiculous person, and a reliable index of how many of your Facebook friends are ridiculous is how many follow Corey Robin.
In this case, though, I know what he means. It’s OH YEAH WELL HILLARY CLINTON IS THE MOST WHITE PRIVILEGE HERP DERP
Jim, Foolish Literalist
DIdn’t DougJ attempt a book club with Robin’s work on conservatism and it all fell apart? I know I bought the book and gave up on it, but I can’t remember if that was because of the book or my life.
Marc
If you’ve gotten enough bad-faith readings then you get hypersensitive, and Robin gets piled on from the right and the extreme left pretty often. I’d chalk it up to no more than that.
RaflW
@Mary G: The “Hillary needs to turn right” fantasy novels from lots of folks are being written tonight and this week.
I hope she laughs in their faces. She’s seen what Obama got for his tries at bipartisanship.
FlipYrWhig
@scav: You’ve diagnosed him incorrectly — he’s a leftier-than-thou academic faux-radical poseur favored by Freddie DeBoer types and other frustrated academics who are so super radical they’re into theorists you probably wouldn’t know.
msdc
@raven: Robin studies American conservatism and neoconservatism from a leftist perspective. He wrote a well-respected book about it (The Reactionary Mind) a while back; I think it might even have been the subject of a Balloon Juice discussion group?
He’s also a Jacobin contributor, a stealth firebagger, and a thin-skinned purity troll who can’t take a portion of the criticism he dishes out. (But I repeat myself.)
RaflW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’ll take a wild stab, after reading just one Jacobin post by him. It was the book.
Maybe some people enjoy tiresome deBoer-ish prats, but I don’t.
SiubhanDuinne
@Dolly Llama:
gus
To be fair, he never explicitly said what you suggested he did, but if that wasn’t his meaning, I can’t make heads or tails of his post.
raven
@msdc: “Doesn’t mean shit to a tree” as Grace said.
Turgidson
How can his initial comment up top be construed as meaning anything but:
“Voting third party can’t be an expression of white privilege because the Clintons live in a wealthy area” – which is of course a total nonsequitur, but whatever.
Yet he spins into a frothing rage when someone points this out. What am I missing.
FlipYrWhig
@gus: He means there are many ways to express white privilege, as for instance living in a posh locale, so voting for a third party doesn’t rise to the level of “ultimate” display of white privilege, neener neener.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
@msdc:
Sounds deplorable to me.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne:
Eskimo Blue Day
Sun cuts loose… from the frozen
Until it joins with the African sea
In moving it changes it’s cold and it’s name
The reason I come and go is the same
Animal game for me
You call it rain
But the human name
Doesn’t mean shit to a tree
And if you don’t mind heat in your river
and forked tongue talking from me
Swim like an eel fantastic snake
You can take my love when it’s free
Electric feel with me
You call it loud
But the human crowd
Doesn’t mean shit to a tree
Change the strings and notes slide
Change the bridge and string shift down
Shift the notes and bride sings
Fire eating people
Rising toys of the sun
Energy dies without body warm
Icicles ruin your gun
Water my roots…the natural thing
Natural spring to the sea
Sulphur springs make my body float
Like a ship made of logs from a tree
Ah, Redwoods talk to me
Say it plainly
The human name
Doesn’t mean shit to a tree
Snow called water…going violent
Dam the end of the stream
Too much cold in one place breaks
That’s why…you might know what I mean
Consider how small you are
Compared to your scream
The human dream
Doesn’t mean shit to a tree
FlipYrWhig
@Turgidson: You’re not missing anything. He’s an asshole.
scav
@FlipYrWhig: Well, OK for the Trumpism, but if that’s what passes for holier than thou academic leftism, they’ve exploring a similar riverine landscape. That paragraph has not only explored past several bends, it’s pure stream of conscious (a braided one, to get technical). I can almost make the case that the last two sentences are his attempting to use his former residence at Chappaqua as the ultimate expression of white privilege which, having established he posses it himself, is then immediately used to tell everyone else to piss off.
Seriously, what is the single take-away, logically-developed point from the pseudo-paragraph. Fuck off, is clearly the takeaway, but the accompanying verbiage?
FlipYrWhig
@scav: In its simplest form it’s this: voting for a third party isn’t the “ultimate” display of white privilege because living among fancy white people is even more white privilege-y than that, checkmate!
Roger Moore
@Turgidson:
You didn’t get it quite right. It’s not that voting third party isn’t an expression of white privilege, it’s that it’s less extreme privilege than living in a rich, white neighborhood. I think Cole nailed it, though; that’s really about the privilege of wealth.
Chip Daniels
I read Corey Robin over at Crooked Timber and usually find his posts to be thoughtful and especially like his dissection of conservatism as being about the maintenance of private male privilege.
What is going on in this Facebook exchange, I haven’t a clue.
But maybe even thoughtful serious people get cranky and irritable sometimes.
Frankensteinbeck
I’m not sure what you did, John, but he blatantly was not interested in a good faith argument. You asked for clarification of a vague statement (I wondered if he just meant white privilege can get even more insane than you’d imagine) and he got snotty and refused to give it, then banned you when you tried to lay out where you came from. At no point did he make any argument at all, aside from the original cryptic sentence, and he was the one raising the ‘aggressive and insulting’ stakes. Whatever bug is up his ass, you are totally clear in this one.
@Peale:
Jesus fuck. That is Republican-grade callous.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
@Roger Moore:
Corey’s wrong even on his terms. Voting third party in the context of this election is a far worse display of white privilege than just about anything else.
philpm
@Turgidson:
Just a lot of well-disguised butthurt.
David ?▶️?Blue Wall?▶️? Koch
yeah know, Franklin Roosevelt grew up rich.
And for that crime the Alt-Left freaks would spit at him today
Barbara
@Big R: I like Corey Robin’s work. For the record, my daughter, the Bernie supporter, has been appealing on her FB page for a while now exactly what you tweeted — that before you vote you think about who stands to lose the most if Trump is elected. It’s not a subtle point even if Corey Robin would prefer to take a stand that is unadulterated by worry over the consequences for other people who don’t look like him and who, by the way, also don’t have tenure.
FlipYrWhig
@Chip Daniels: He’s a dick who can’t admit someone else might have a point and is convinced he’s the expert on everything he decides to think about, that’s what’s going on. DeBoer, Greenwald, and Robin are peas in a pod.
Bobby Thomson
Never heard of this dickhead before, but he’s a dickhead.
Omnes Omnibus
@David ?▶️?Blue Wall?▶️? Koch: He was also a Wall Street lawyer.
Chip Daniels
@RaflW:
One thing I admire about Hillary is her toughness and shrewdness. She has been embattled since the day she entered the public stage, and doesn’t strike me as having any sort of naivete.
Comrade Scrutinizer
I’ve read his post three or four times. I don’t think that he said what you say he said, but on the other hand, what he said doesn’t make much sense. What I’m reading is “some people say that third-party voting is white privilege. I have not encouraged third-party votes. This sentiment (which sentiment? Third-party voting ==white privilege?) is idiotic and is on social media. I grew up in a rich white community. That (living there?) is the ultimate in white privilege. Neener, neener, FOAD.” I don’t get anything but whinging out of that.
John Cole
@Marc:
Could be, but I don’t see how this was a bad faith reading. His post made no sense.
@Chip Daniels:
Generally been my experience, as well. Maybe he just got out of a shitty faculty meeting and hasn’t had a drink yet. Those things can make you want to kill someone.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Watching the white male left melt down over Clinton is as entertaining as watching the white male right melt down over Clinton. Some day we’re going to have a national discussion about the intersectionality of class, race and gender. Oh wait, that’s tomorrow.
Chip Daniels
@FlipYrWhig:
Kind of like the whole “Can I admire Wagner’s music even though he was an anti-Semite” thing, I can admire someone’s work even if they are a dick in their personal life.
Mnemosyne
@msdc:
If a person studying American conservatism is unable to coherently discuss race and white privilege, how is anything else that person says a valuable insight into American conservatism?
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore:
Problem being that on the Venn diagram the wealth circles and the race circles have got some serious correlations going on.
Lawrence Rocke
@RaflW: Corey Robin wrote the very excellent The Reactionary Mind. Essential reading for these times. He blogs at Crooked Timber and they are always well worth reading. Don’t let this tempest in a twitter cup give you the wrong idea; this election just wears on folks
Shana
@FlipYrWhig: Oh, so he’s the political equivalent of John Cusak’s characher in High Fidelity. I movie I dearly love BTW.
jenn
@Frankensteinbeck: Honestly, a lot of these folks have had a Tsunami of Awful directed at them for quite some time. After you’ve had a few too many posts and tweets about Pepe, ovens, and lampshades directed your way, I’d imagine that you’re a little more primed to be pessimistic about a comment’s intent, and the temptation increases to pull the plug on conversations. Most of the time that’s probably a good choice – but other times that means you’ve misread the situation and good faith conversations are cut short.
Schlemazel
@raven:
Oh, I know how its done but mostly I don’t friend people I know are assholes. The couple I have blocked have refused to accept that I won’t allow racist, sexist or misogynistic crap to appear on my wall.
One of my friends, who remains steadfastly apolitical posted something interesting last week. “Say nothing negative about the other candidate. Tell my why you support your candidate” I wrote a long history of Hillary’s experience and her successes. SOmeone else (a dairy farmer from upstate NY) wrote about how he was prepared to dislike her when she became his senator then he met her & she listened to his problems & offered to work with him on getting necessary changes. A third person wrote about personal experience with her and her humanity. By the end of the week there were 8 pro-Hillz comments and zero Trumpers. That made me happy
Shana
@Turgidson: You’re not missing anything. Got it first time.
Mike J
Argh. My next door neighbors are getting a new roof and it sounds like Addie Bundren has taken a turn for the worse.
different-church-lady
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I just took a look at the schedule and it says “TUES NOV 8: TOPIC – CLINTON EMAILS”
Frankensteinbeck
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Tomorrow is the slap in the face. The conversation may start Wednesday, but I’m holding open that it will probably start with years of whining.
Litlebritdifrnt
I am guessing that one of The Boss’s songs tonight will be “We Take Care of Our Own” what are your guesses.
scav
@FlipYrWhig: That’s a search for “the” ultimate expression of white privilege? Choice of neighbors is further down in the circle of hell than abetting handing over the nation to an racist incompetent whose reign will very probably have actual impacts upon the lives of not only to Americans but people globally, the economy, the planet, blah blah blah. That’s a Through the Looking Glass standard chess-board there (there’s a boat in that as well, go figure). It’s not your actions and motivations that define you, it’s the demographic profile of your zip-code.
ETA: Seriously, Are ZIP codes the countertop based analyses of this tribe of intellectuals?
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
His argument was basically, Al Gore says he’s so concerned about global warming, but he still rides in airplanes. A nonsequitur designed to dodge the underlying question.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Litlebritdifrnt: Land of Hope and Dreams, Born to Run
laura
I’ve usually appreciated Corey Robin’s opinion at Crooked Timber, and agree with Cole that he took foolish exception in this instance. It’s not just Corey Robin sadly. . . I’m a huge fan of Naked Capitalism but am waiting out the vote Trump and JohnStein 3rd party “no more lesser evil for me” focus.
I just can’t anymore.
Is it Taco Tuesday yet?
TF79
Robin is way more insightful than GG or DeBore on average, though similarly thin-skinned, bomb-throwers (“F off with your cheap moral drama…” clearly being a call for civilized and thoughtful debate re: privilege)
mainsailset
My niece just informed me that I keep missing the point because, ‘Thinking ruins common sense’. I believe that’s what you just encountered John.
hellslittlestangel
@John Cole: I’ve noticed over the past few months a strong drift toward contrarianism at Crooked Timber. It’s like an unfunny parody of doctrinaire academic leftism. I used to find it an interesting blog — now I only give it a glance when I’m surfing aimlessly and see the link in Eschaton’s blogroll.
Roger Moore
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
We aren’t going to have a national discussion of it until our media gatekeepers are diverse enough to welcome that kind of discussion.
Pete
Twitter is for flouncing; but if you keep doing that, whom are you addressing?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Propane Jane is my guide through all of this shit show of an election, and she nailed it a couple of days ago –
What we’re witnessing in real time, in all its aspects, is inchoate rage and confusion from white males who either aren’t woke, or think they’re woke but aren’t, around that fact.
different-church-lady
So, now that we’ve established that living in a rich white community is the ultimate form of white privilege, how does voting third party help non-whites exactly?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Roger Moore:
Ok, not a discussion, but more of a referendum. There will be a lot of mischaracterization of the meaning of it, for sure, from cable news mostly white/male panels.
msdc
@Mnemosyne: Oh, he can discuss race and white privilege very coherently. He just doesn’t think we should discuss them in relation to him.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@mainsailset:
Sigh. Sounds like most of the students in any intro physics class I ever taught.
Steeplejack
I doubt if Jill Stein’s countertops—or even Gary Johnson’s—could stand up to an inspection for white privilege. Egg McMuffin? Maybe.
Redleg
I can’t see how Cole’s comments were inappropriate or even inaccurate regarding what Robin wrote. At Crooked Timber Robin normally seems like a reasonable fellow. Perhaps he was having a bad day. Or perhaps on blog posts he takes more time to read, think, and reply while on the Twitter he just fires away like Donald Trump at the slightest provocation.
Barry
@msdc: “He’s also a Jacobin contributor, a stealth firebagger, and a thin-skinned purity troll who can’t take a portion of the criticism he dishes out. (But I repeat myself.)”
The book is IMHO very good, and his central thesis (for the right , it’s never about freedom, but rather hierarchy) is great.
But he is a thin-skinned guy.
If you want more, go to Crooked Timber, where he’s a front-pager.
scav
@mainsailset: ‘Thinking ruins common sense’. ? Is that like “Sentence structure ruins real communication”? And then, isn’t that just a smidge elitist to assume that all those hypothesized possessors of common sense are necessarily incapable of thought?
Mary G
@RaflW: Yeah, she may pay lip service to bipartisanship, but she’s known the right up close and personal for decades. No way will she be as naive as President Obama. I suspect a Maggie Thatcher Iron Lady is going to be the model.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@different-church-lady:
That’s the last question any third party voter asks themselves, because their vote is a special snowflake vote. Which is all you need to know about third party voters.
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
Not in a way that really affects this. The circle of real wealth is a lot smaller than the circle of whiteness, even if wealthy is mostly inside white. But I suspect that, say, Oprah Winfrey would have a much easier time getting acceptance in a place like Chappaqua than Joe Sixpack would. Meanwhile I suspect that Oprah is going to be a lot less prone to vote third party than Joe Sixpack is.
Matt McIrvin
@hellslittlestangel: It’s been a long time since I read Crooked Timber regularly, but there’s always been a prevailing opinion there that conventional US party politics is stupid and useless as a way to ever make anything better, and advocacy for Democrats is something most of the headliners there find distasteful, done only as an alternative to some greater catastrophe and maybe not even then.
I remember dsquared in particular having a contrarian urge to advocate not voting, whenever the subject came up. It was the first time I saw the argument for voting for a candidate you don’t particularly love, lest a far worse candidate get in, described as “extortion”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G:
I don’t think that Obama was naive. I think that he felt that he had to seen as making the effort – that he could not behave in a way that the GOP and MSM were going characterize as “Angry Black Man.” I know they did it anyway, but, if he hadn’t done the playacting, it would have been worse.
Mnemosyne
@msdc:
Ah. Sadly, that’s a common blind spot for my people. I would probably have an even bigger one than I do if I hadn’t had it (figuratively!) beaten out of me by very patient people of color, some of them on this very blog.
Chip Daniels
Like Cole, I am a relatively recent convert to liberalism.
One of the things I have noticed is that, even when well meaning, the most dominant voices on the left are pretty much white, male and educated.
Don’t know why this should be such a surprise, since the same forces of privilege and in-group clubbiness would reward white men of all political persuasions.
But the thing about being white and male and educated I have learned, is that its not enough to think of ourselves as “enlightened” or “sensitive” even if we have read all the right books and nod along.
We can’t possibly speak about things we haven’t experienced, and the difference between a white male speaking and a black female speaking about race and sexism is the difference between anthropology and testimony.
Comrade Scrutinizer
White privilege? Having a color background with your blog post.
Bobby Thomson
SEPTA strike settled!
AnotherBruce
@different-church-lady: I’m glad you stressed the word ultimate I think that ultimately, the word ultimate was pissing Robin off. Just a theory, but I think that he might have agreed if John had said “Third party voting is an expression of white privilege.”
msdc
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I’m not into masochism as the pathway to political enlightenment, or bullying as the way to get people there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus: and the whole “getting things passed by the Senate outside of that two month window when Dems had a supermajority”
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That too.
chopper
the guy had no point whatsoever. you pointed it out, and it pissed him off.
RaflW
@Lawrence Rocke: OK, I will try to be less crispy myself. But I think he really misconstrues what white privilege is in that Chappaqua crack.
He’s an academic, I can’t imagine he doesn’t understand white privilege in terms of 1. access to voting power, 2. access to things like not driving while black (which a white cracker in Alabama gets even if he’d be too poor to have lunch at a Chappaqua’s most down-at-heel lunch joint). Robin just seems to willfully throw up the place-based, class-based crap when the issue is freedom from race-based consequences in daily life. It seems highly bullshitty.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Chip Daniels:
Good for you for traveling the path to being awake to your unearned status. It’s very difficult for white men to see outside of the white supremacist patriarchal paradigm that privileges them in every way it’s possible to be privileged. It’s like trying to explain water to fish. But, once seen, it cannot be unseen, or denied. That’s what the struggle is that we’re seeing now everywhere breaking out – the struggle to keep the white male supremacist lid on a changing country that sees it, and wants it gone. Obama’s very existence was the crack in it, and Hillary is the smashing of it.
BruceFromOhio
@AnotherBruce: No shit. See also Loomis, Erik. That dude puts himself out there, way out there, not only tolerates it but engages it. This guy? Sheesh.
See also: what @raven said.
eemom
who IS that guy? Am I supposed to know?
Mnemosyne
@msdc:
Unfortunately, when a white girl straight from the suburbs (like me) says something really, really stupid about race, it is painful to hear that I just said something really, really stupid regardless of how kindly the other person lets me know. It’s not bullying for someone to speak up and let you know that you just said something hurtful.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
Those gatekeepers have made it plain they will let the gate burn down before they share. Sound like any political movements you know?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Roger Moore:
Maybe Oprah because of her exceptionally high visibility, but any rich black person in a rich white neighborhood will trigger police calls – ask Morgan Freeman or Chris Rock, or Henry Louis Gates.
different-church-lady
@AnotherBruce:
Fair enough. But I do believe we’re seeing an good example of why when someone says a stupid thing, saying a counter-stupid thing is not really the answer.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Tim Scott, I don’t like the guy but I give him props for speaking up the way he did
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Frankensteinbeck:
The most under-reported, unacknowledged memory hole story of this election cycle is the one day story of Hillary identifying Bannon and the white supremacist alt-right’s takeover of the Trump campaign. All of the media are beneficiaries of that system. It was the dog that didn’t bark. It’s all you need to know about what’s going on.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah, so, why is he a Republican?
debbie
I hate social media. I just blocked and unfriended my asshole nephew and need to figure out how to avoid Thanksgiving.
BruceFromOhio
@Schlemazel:
This is how it is supposed to work. This is how shit gets done. Too many in DC have forgotten this. Democracy in general, and America specifically, has generated a splendid civilization based on this simple arrangement.
JJ
I wonder what he makes of Bill’s Harlem office.
msdc
@Mnemosyne: I understand. I just don’t start from the assumption that those conversations should only flow one way (if they do, then they aren’t conversations) or that they require the performance of abjection and self-deprecation to proceed in a healthy direction.
To put it another way, Robin’s problem isn’t that he hasn’t had his blind spots “beaten out of him,” it’s that he refuses to discuss them at all – and he blocks people like John when they do.
BruceFromOhio
@debbie: Watch football and drink beer.
Always worked for me…
BruceFromOhio
@msdc:
Holy crow, you just described a specific incident that occurred over the weekend, and it ended with fairly big decision to end a long-running business relationship. Nice to see it caught in a single sentence.
trnc
@debbie:
Head on, because you’ll be the one in a position to gloat. Tell him he should hang onto his “Hillary for Prison” shirt because it will be way more valuable as a collectors’ item when she finishes her second term.
Dolly Llama
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you so much. Sorry I was so late getting back to you, I was waylaid, but thank you sincerely.
JJ
@Schlemazel: She called that her “Listening Tour.” She went to every county in NYS and listened. What a lot of stamina she has, I thought at the time.
Gus diZerega
@Big R: Robin has little interest in respecting informed disagreement. I have had my own experience with him. Very thin skin.
YellowDog
Robin reminds me of some of the lefties I knew in graduate school. They epitomized white privilege, and fancied themselves the vanguard of the proletariat. They were also stoned most of the time, so nothing happened.
gus
@FlipYrWhig: Right, what I gathered as well, but when you have to say “he means” it means his post was horribly written. Maybe he intended to leave himself an out for Cole’s argument, which he must have suspected would happen.
debbie
@BruceFromOhio:
Not sure there’s enough beer for that to work. It’s a very long day.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Vodka?
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’d pass out by 2 pm. Maybe that’s the ticket!
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Always happy to help.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I’m simultaneously thrilled (because of the importance) and petrified (having seen how these things usually go) at the prospect of this.
msdc
@BruceFromOhio: Wow. I hope the decision turns out well – that can’t have been easy.
sherparick
@SiubhanDuinne: I enjoyed reading “the Reactionary Mind.” But like a lot of left intellectuals he basically likes being agreed with and take any argument or challenge as a personal insult. He also, like all the special snowflakes voting for Jill Stein or just not voting because Hillary is so “Third Way” (she’s not, far from it), he is a little thin skin on having it pointed out to him that rich white academics like himself or not likely to feel the heel of the state and its actors likes millions of Black, Brown, white working people, and women of all colors will if Trump is elected.
mainsailset
@scav: Yup, pretty much.
NW Phil
That’s why I love this site. Y’all are braver than me about reading other websites/ watching cable TV news and will report back on what the loonies are saying.
Doug!
I think maybe his post made even less sense than you think it did and that’s why he didn’t understand your critique.
Diana
@Lawrence Rocke: I agree. I read his earlier work when it came out during the Bush administration and it was exactly what I needed; no-one else was explaining so clearly exactly why the right wingers needed their war. I think it’s just the election driving everyone crazy, because I really can recommend the Reactionary Mind.
Diana
@eemom: He’s a scholar of politics. I think of him as the guy who reads Edmund Burke so I don’t have to. His work is very thorough.
aimai
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I love propane jane.
Diana
@Mnemosyne: Because there’s more to conservatism than race. Edmund Burke didn’t write about race.
Nick
@hellslittlestangel:
I agree — something happened to Crooked Timber this election cycle, it stopped being interesting and relevant. A lot of posts and arguments seemed to assume certain facts to be well understood, when an outsider couldn’t even figure out what the point was.
eemom
@Diana:
Thank you!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@aimai:
She’s so on point. For me, she provides the unified field theory of politics/intersectionality – the key to understanding everything about our political and media landscape. She should be on TV with Joy Reid.
RK
Robin’s taking issue with third party voting as “the ultimate expression of white privilege.” He dismisses that claim and cites his own example but offers no argument for his position making his post kind of pointless.
catbirdman
You called him out on his misdirection — a la, Al Gore flies in airplanes and is fat, so he can’t make any valid arguments about climate change. They don’t like that.
JimV
CR’s point (barring some other context from other posts that I don’t have) is that calling a third-party vote the ultimate in white privilege is way overblown, and in his view, comes off as sanctimonious. For some unknown reason (again, barring other context) he decided to state this in an obnoxious and intentionally offensive way.
I think he may have a semantic point. That is, I tend to agree that people who vote for a 3rd-party candidate for President might do so because they honestly think that candidate is the best choice and that both DT and HRC are bad choices. I think they would be wrong, but being wrong and exercising white privilege aren’t necessarily the same thing. In fact, for a clear counterexample, there are a (very) few Blacks and Latinos who will vote for third-party candidates (or even Trump), making your blanket statement wrong.
If that is what he meant, which seems to me a plausible if perhaps charitable reading, then your reply is off point. A better tact might have been just asking him for clarification, without making and stating an assumed position to argue against preemptively.
What do I know? Not much, but you did ask what we thought. You’re welcome. (I have to admit, playing the privilege card seems like a mean tactic to me. Why not make an argument, such as HRC is not the demon that she has been painted, Trump is, and the 3rd-party candidates are unqualified?)
Tim in SF
Here’s the link to the exchange, in case you’re curious. It doesn’t seem like his other friends gave him much of a pass.
Marc
Rawk on, Mr Cole.
Jan Glynis
@JimV: This is exactly what he meant, and Cole was the ONLY person in the thread who failed to understand that.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: The tear she went on about Why We Can’t Have Nice Socialism (Spoiler: because of racism) was one of the most epic and best reads of this election cycle.
Constance Reader
What you said that was so offensive was “vote your values and principles” instead of “ERMAGERD Republicans you have to vote big D or we are all doomed, I tell you, DOOOOMED.”