Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

T R E 4 5 O N

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

You cannot shame the shameless.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

You are here: Home / Another junkie plan, pushing dope for the man

Another junkie plan, pushing dope for the man

by | 146 Comments

This post is in: 

This is my shocked face:

In the interest of compete fairness, All Points Books purports to publish an “ideologically eclectic mix of titles”, but in the article I link the two “liberal” books are ones by a guy at Reason and a No Labels type Democrat. The biggest hit for All Points was a book by Laura Ingraham.

I regret every having that guy post here, but I feel good about this

Reader Interactions

146Comments

  2. 2.

    efgoldman

    It will be boring, unreadable, and tell women and minorities thare dewing it RONNG!

    ETA: And it will use 100 words in every paragraph to do what 10 would have done.

  4. 4.

    HumboldtBlue

    I guess all this time I have been taking crazy pills. Sweet Jesus beating a cripple with the arm of a leper, the stupid keeps getting deeper and deeper.

  11. 11.

    Tom Levenson

    I’m getting very, very tired of pale males who are deeply not expert in the range of fields needed to have anything useful to say about evolution and human behavior getting all But Da Scienz! in my face.

    Very short form of my pique: genetics is not the universal explanation its most devoted followers have persuaded themselves it is.

  12. 12.

    germy

    Every time you say “IQ” and “race” in the same sentence Andrew Sullivan bursts through the wall like the Kool-Aid man.— Matt Christman (@cushbomb) March 30, 2018

  14. 14.

    Baud

    I too am writing a book on race science. It will consist of polls showing how the different races voted in the 2016 election.

  15. 15.

    germy

    I regret every having that guy post here

    What were you thinking? It must have been a corker.

  17. 17.

    germy

    If Andrew Sullivan wants to keep writing his race science shit, it's worth noting (as an intern of his in 2013): At a private meeting, his entire staff challenged him on it until he asked, exasperated, "well, why didn't Africa conquer Europe, then?"— Brendan James (@deep_beige) March 30, 2018

  19. 19.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    Oh I thought Race Science, it was about NASCAR vs Indy vs Formula One cars. Professor Stephen Hawking’s funeral was today, fitting that his ashes will rest with Newton and Darwin at Westminster Abbey.

  20. 20.

    Bex

    Laura Ingraham’s taking a week off, no doubt to contemplate her sins. Maybe she’ll start a new “book” for All Points.

  21. 21.

    Brachiator

    @germy:

    So! Race Science. Freddie’s for it, or against it?

    He might not even know, himself.

    He was an odd front pager. Relentlessly wrong, and insistent on defending the most coherent parts of his own arguments.

    His later success as an op-ed columnist puzzled me a bit, but I guess confirmed many media companies’ preference for white male mediocrities.

  22. 22.

    HinTN

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Sweet Jesus beating a cripple with the arm of a leper, the stupid keeps getting deeper and deeper.

    You’ve been taking lessons from Mrs Cracker. Well said.

    ETA: Especially on this Easter weekend, which I keep forgetting as we are in the middle of an excursion through the wilds of Utah.

  23. 23.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: I thought he retired to deal with his mental illness.

    sounds like this book proposal is a cry for help

    I regret every having that guy post here, but I feel good about this

    that was you? I thought that was a Cole troll

  24. 24.

    Elizabelle

    @schrodingers_cat: Doubt it. Too longwinded.

    But he could end up on the FTF NY Vichy Times’ op ed page. Although David Bobo Brooks already paddles in the same stream. (Science! Reasonable man, etc etc etc.)

  25. 25.

    matt

    Funny, how scummy people turn out to be like other scummy people in the end. One happy family of scum I guess.

  26. 26.

    germy

    Blurb from groucho:

    From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.

  27. 27.

    Schlemazel

    I sort of enjoy it when people go ahead and confirm my initial impressions of them. Freddy can go straight to hell, neither passing go nor collecting $200.

  30. 30.

    Schlemazel

    @schrodingers_cat:
    I assume our host did not want us to fall into the trap the right has fallen for, reinforcing ones point of view no matter how wrong leads to disaster.

    But I see doug! seems to be taking the blame. I am not against having counter-arguments on the front page but the proponent has to be willing to take the hit & be intellectually honest. Freddie was neither

  31. 31.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Kind of on topic

    jelani [email protected] jelani9
    It’s spring. The weather is breaking. Baseball has returned. And @ sullydish is back to his reluctant white supremacist schtick.

    “race science” does seem to be popping up like weeds this spring

  36. 36.

    eemom

    @Baud:

    I thought he retired to deal with his mental illness.

    Yeah. I saw a sad piece he wrote about it awhile back. I guess racism is the new electroshock therapy.

  38. 38.

    Brachiator

    oh good, Freddie Deboer is contracted to write a book about race and IQ.

    This topic has been dormant in American culture for a while, apart from its persistence among white supremacists and their right wing enablers.

    But I guess that Little Freddie is hot to boldly go where no one really needs to go.

  39. 39.

    RSA

    @Elizabelle:

    Although David Bobo Brooks already paddles in the same stream. (Science! Reasonable man, etc etc etc.)

    Here’s what Freddie has on his Web site:

    I am writing a book about education, genetics, human potential, and the poverty of the concept of equality of opportunity. I am attempting to rescue discussion of human genetics from the pseudoscientific racism and gender essentialism with which they are frequently associated, and to demonstrate that modern genetic science offers the strongest possible argument for socialism. The book is under contract with All Points Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

    It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

  40. 40.

    FlipYrWhig

    I’m not sure which is worse, the extent of his terribleness as a writer or the extent of his terribleness as a person.

  41. 41.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @RSA:
    Sounds like he’s saying non-white people are too stupid to compete and need socialism.

  42. 42.

    Baud

    @Schlemazel: You know what you never see? Someone who says, “We need more ideological diversity. Let’s hire a mainstream liberal Dem who voted for Hillary.”

    Because apparently our voices are all over the media already. Somewhere.

  43. 43.

    FlipYrWhig

    @RSA: No, it sounds like a smug asshole being a smug asshole, as does everything that stupid fucker ever writes.

  44. 44.

    FlipYrWhig

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Hunch: he is going to be saying that human nature as defined by evo-psych is cooperative and hence something something socialism. He’s horrible and I don’t know why anyone would pay him for any service whatsoever, especially the intellectual kind.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @Tom Levenson:

    Very short form of my pique: genetics is not the universal explanation its most devoted followers have persuaded themselves it is.

    This. Disentangling nature and nurture is so hard that nobody has a convincing way of doing it. Anyone scientist who says they do should be treated with profound skepticism, and any non-scientist who acts as if science has solved the problem should be summarily dismissed.

  46. 46.

    Schlemazel

    @Baud:
    WHAT!? There are all kinds of liberal voices in the media, from the far left Books to the middle of the road Cal Thomas & CHuckie Kraphammer

  47. 47.

    trollhattan

    My kid’s high school classmate could be Freddy’s research assistant, having stirred up national attention with his science project presentation demonstrating the mental prowess superiority of Caucasians and northeast Asians to all the other losing losers. He even earned us an op-ed in the local paper by Virgin Ben, tut-tutting liberal snowflakes for getting in the way of important shit, or whatever he was saying, I couldn’t finish it.

    Amazes me there’s an unlimited pool of money for knuckleheads like Deboer. Can he at least write about de Boer War for larfs?

  49. 49.

    Brachiator

    @RSA:

    and to demonstrate that modern genetic science offers the strongest possible argument for socialism.

    This is just sad.

  50. 50.

    germy

    @Schlemazel:

    WHAT!? There are all kinds of liberal voices in the media, from the far left Books to the middle of the road Cal Thomas & CHuckie Kraphammer

    And we got all kinds of music here: Country and Western.

  51. 51.

    Mary G

    He didn’t even study science, AFAIK. Tom Nicols can be a sexist, stuffy jerk, but he did point out the problem with the right’s disdain of knowledge and expertise.

  52. 52.

    Washburn

    We should get all of his books in pile and BURN THEM !!!! Even the one’s he’s not yet written. Burn them all.

  53. 53.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Tom Levenson: PZ Meyers at his blog pharyngula periodically posts about the latest ignorant stupidity about race. He is especially vehement about Sam Harris’ defence of Murray and the latter’s defence of his work The Bell Curve.

  54. 54.

    Redshift

    @Schlemazel: Speaking of which, can anyone recommend any good writers who are likely to challenge my opinions on politics with reasonable arguments? (I would say conservative writers, but that may be a lost cause at this point.) I was reading a good article about confirmation bias, which made a strong case that it’s important in beliefs (as it is in science) to engage with and be able to counter contrary evidence, not just look for evidence and arguments that support your beliefs.

    The last recommendation I had for a “reasonable conservative” was James Wallner (I think I’m remembering that right.) I eventually found him infuriating because he would defend literally anything conservatives were doing, just in a reasonable-sounding tone. (Example: he argued that they ought to be threatening *more* government shutdowns to get their way, and that’s not unreasonable because shutdowns have happened before, ignoring the fact that they happened about once a decade, not as a routine tactic.)

    So, any suggestions for writers with challenging opinions backed by real arguments?

  55. 55.

    Bobby Thomson

    All about VOx.

    Oh, wait, this is warmed over Charles Murray bullshit from another Berniebro here to chide us about how the Democratic Party is too elitist? SSDD

  56. 56.

    Amir Khalid

    @RSA:

    I am attempting to rescue discussion of human genetics from the pseudoscientific racism and gender essentialism with which they are frequently associated, and to demonstrate that modern genetic science offers the strongest possible argument for socialism.

    Freddie sounds like one of those cranks whose ideas dmsilev likes to share in these threads.

  57. 57.

    Cacti

    @Washburn:

    We should get all of his books in pile and BURN THEM !!!! Even the one’s he’s not yet written. Burn them all.

    Look everyone! It’s trying to be ironic.

  59. 59.

    PJ

    @eemom: being a thin-skinned vindictive self-important blowhard contrarian is now a mental illness? Maybe there’s hope for right-wing pundits across the country.

  62. 62.

    Washburn

    @Redshift:

    That is a good question. Off hand, I can’t even think of a “conservative” book that has been published recently that even attempts to make a thoughtful argument. There are lots of craptacular works like “Liberal Facism” and so forth but nothing that is even on the same plane as, say, Between the World and Me.

  63. 63.

    Chyron HR

    @Washburn:

    Remember when you guys sent a bunch of death threats to John Lewis because he didn’t endorse His Berniness? Good times.

  64. 64.

    Cacti

    When you consider that real scientists consider “race” a pseudo-scientific designation in the first place, and “race science” is a pseudoscience about a pseudo-scientific concept…

    It’s a real mystery why books on said topics are written by non-scientists like Freddie the Bore.

  65. 65.

    Schlemazel

    @Redshift:
    No, and I consider that a real problem. There are no honest conservatives left any more as far as I can tell. I have basically given up trying to read any political / economic thought because I am finding I either see their point or they are insane. That might be closure or it might be my range is not far enough but yours is a very fair question & it would be good to hear answers from people.

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @Redshift: Given the state of our current political discourse, I’m afraid your choices are between the BJ morning thread and the BJ evening thread.

  70. 70.

    Schlemazel

    @Cacti:
    “It’s a real mystery why books on said topics are written by >white< non-scientists like Freddie the Bore."

  74. 74.

    MomSense

    I didn’t know I was a jackal when DeBoer was posting here. I can’t imagine that he wasn’t thoroughly dragged in the comments.

  75. 75.

    Cacti

    @Chyron HR:

    Remember when you guys sent a bunch of death threats to John Lewis because he didn’t endorse His Berniness? Good times.

    I particularly enjoyed their brown shirt Las Vegas riot when they couldn’t cheat their way to getting extra delegates for the anointed one.

  77. 77.

    Another Scott

    @RSA: Thanks for giving him a click so I didn’t have to, and for posting that excerpt.

    … education, genetics, human potential, and the poverty of the concept of equality of opportunity. I am attempting to rescue discussion of human genetics from the pseudoscientific racism and gender essentialism … modern genetic science offers the strongest possible argument for socialism.

    He isn’t shy about taking on a lot of big subjects all at once, is he. Kinda like the tome History of the World that I see in my bookcase….

    Each one of those terms in the excerpt have a variety of slanted and non-slanted definitions, of course.

    And then there’s the term “race”, also too…

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (“Who doesn’t plan on buying Freddie’s book.”)

  78. 78.

    Schlemazel

    @schrodingers_cat:
    I do wish we could have someone on the front that could challenge our opinions in an intellectually honest way. It would be good for us to have to defend our opinions and make them stronger or correct mistakes we are all prone to make.

  79. 79.

    E

    Did anybody catch the massive plagiarism in deboer’s preceding blog post? He wrote,
    “Consider a randomised trial in which vitamins are given to some primary schoolchildren and placebos are given to others. Do the vitamins work? That all depends on what we mean by “work”. The researchers could look at the children’s height, weight, prevalence of tooth decay, classroom behaviour, test scores, even (after waiting) prison record or earnings at the age of 25.”

    Which is directly lifted from this Financial Times article: https://www.ft.com/content/21a6e7d8-b479-11e3-a09a-00144feabdc0

    Or maybe he just forgot the quotes and the attribution? Reading it over, that is a charitable possibility.

  81. 81.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: I used read the ClownHall when W became President in 2000. Until last year I read NRO and the catholic wingnut Thinking Housewife. I have given them a chance, read them and find most conservatives to be without much intellectual merit. And since we can get RWNJ views broadcast from WH and echoed by the MSM these days, there is no need to seek them out.

  82. 82.

    Schlemazel

    @MomSense:
    He was a wimp. He would refuse to respond or respond in snide, off-topic, ways When he got his ass handed to him he would pout & run away

  83. 83.

    Cacti

    @MomSense:

    I didn’t know I was a jackal when DeBoer was posting here. I can’t imagine that he wasn’t thoroughly dragged in the comments.

    Freddie the Bore was routinely called on his bullshit, and cried like a toddler with a skinned knee every time it happened.

  84. 84.

    Baud

    @schrodingers_cat: I also transitioned away from bothering with conservatives during W. By the time Obama was elected, it was pretty clear to me that they had nothing to offer except platitudes.

  85. 85.

    germy

    @Schlemazel:

    I do wish we could have someone on the front that could challenge our opinions in an intellectually honest way.

    We could start them on the 3rd shift here.

    If they can handle the night crew, they’ll be ready for anything.

  86. 86.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Amir Khalid: Amir, been meaning to recommend the album How The West Was Won, Live Led Zepplin at their prime. Some amazing guitar work throughout and made me think of you last week. Hope your new passion continues apace.

  89. 89.

    germy

    @Baud:

    By the time Obama was elected, it was pretty clear to me that they had nothing to offer except platitudes.

    And vitriol.

  90. 90.

    PJ

    Maybe now he can get his first book published, too: Feminism: 200 Years of Women Getting It Wrong, by Freddie deBoer

  91. 91.

    Cacti

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I used read the ClownHall when W became President in 2000. Until last year I read NRO and the catholic wingnut Thinking Housewife. I have given them a chance, read them and find most conservatives to be without much intellectual merit. And since we can get RWNJ views broadcast from WH and echoed by the MSM these days, there is no need to seek them out.

    If I had to put my finger on an exact moment, I would say Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” was the time when the American right fully embraced being an anti-intellectual movement. Since that time, a “thoughtful conservative” is anyone who can articulate nonsense in complete sentences.

  93. 93.

    Roger Moore

    @Redshift:
    I’m going to agree with the people saying you can look within the broad liberal movement to find people you disagree with. It really is a big tent, and you’re far more likely to find people who are willing to disagree with you using sound arguments here than you are by looking to conservatives or libertarians. I know my political views have evolved a lot since coming to Balloon-Juice, and it’s because people here have opened my eyes to a lot I was missing before.

  94. 94.

    RSA

    @Redshift:

    Speaking of which, can anyone recommend any good writers who are likely to challenge my opinions on politics with reasonable arguments?

    Maybe Richard Posner? I’m guessing that (as you observe) generalist political writing is not going to be too compelling, given the obvious failures of the Republican Party and U.S. conservatism in recent years, but maybe a more specialized area like law or economics (or ethics, or religion) might have some points to make.

  95. 95.

    Mary G

    At WaPo, the invaluable Margaret Sullivan points out that the emperor is not wearing clothes:

    Whatever the reason, James B. Comey is about to be the focus of a full-on media swoonfest as the fired FBI director embarks on a 10-city tour to promote his memoir, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership” which publishes April 17.

    You have not seen anything like the coming overkill since the mainstream press discovered “Girls” star Lena Dunham. It is going to be embarrassing, if you happen to think media coverage should include a healthy dose of critical distance.

    “April is officially Comey month,” observed CNN’s Manu Raju. That is probably an understatement.

    He screwed Hillary over, but because Twitler fired him and got a special counsel for his trouble, they love him, because clicks.

  98. 98.

    eemom

    Might be worth digging up some De Boob Greatest Hits threads for laughs.

    OTOH I continue to be sort of interested in the mental illness issue. Normally I have all the empathy in the world for anyone who suffers from that….and the little fellow did sound like an actual human being for once in the piece he wrote about it.

  100. 100.

    Redshift

    Thanks for the suggestions. One that I have to pass along is the Economic Policy Institute, which had recently had articles arguing against the ideas that robots are likely to make all our jobs obsolete and that Trump’s tariffs are going to cause significant job losses.

  101. 101.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:

    You are one of them.

    I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that. I often feel as if I’m just going along with the crowd rather than adding anything but snark.

  102. 102.

    eemom

    @Cacti:

    I would say Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” was the time when the American right fully embraced being an anti-intellectual movement.

    I take it you’re too young to remember the Reagan years?

  103. 103.

    Brachiator

    @Mary G:

    He screwed Hillary over, but because Twitler fired him and got a special counsel for his trouble, they love him, because clicks.

    If Comey is useful in damaging Trump, I will be okay with that for now.

  104. 104.

    Redshift

    @Mary G:

    He screwed Hillary over, but because Twitler fired him and got a special counsel for his trouble, they love him, because clicks.

    They loved him when he was screwing Hillary over.

  105. 105.

    Ruckus

    @Schlemazel:
    To be honest I can not recall a conservative writer from any time that wasn’t writing that everything is about the haves and the have nots and keeping it that way or making it more so.
    I think this is why conservatism always fails at some point. It is basically an extremely selfish concept for a society. One can and should debate the level of society that works but if all you are discussing is how to hold on to all the power and money then you aren’t discussing a rational society, you are discussing how to steal everything. The only differences over the ages has been how destructive people are willing to go to make their conservative societies reality and how fast they are trying to implement it.

  107. 107.

    eemom

    @Redshift:

    I was reading a good article about confirmation bias, which made a strong case that it’s important in beliefs (as it is in science) to engage with and be able to counter contrary evidence, not just look for evidence and arguments that support your beliefs.

    I certainly trust your opinion that it was a good article, but that kind of argument is constantly being made by Both Sider twats.

    In any event, the key word is “evidence.” What kind of bias do the facts have, again….?

  108. 108.

    Cacti

    @eemom:

    I take it you’re too young to remember the Reagan years?

    There were still some Rockefeller-ish elements of the Republican Party around then. The Contract on America was when the purge began in earnest, IMO.

  109. 109.

    James E. Powell

    @Tom Levenson:

    genetics is not the universal explanation its most devoted followers have persuaded themselves it is.

    They are persuaded by it because they really need to be. One gets the impression that if genetics were eliminated from consideration they’d come up with something else that they would claim to be objective.

  110. 110.

    Roger Moore

    @Ruckus:
    Pretty much. At its most basic, conservatism is intellectually sterile because it’s about rationalizing a foreordained conclusion rather than starting with premises and working out their implications. The only time conservatives do anything that’s at all interesting is when it’s obvious the liberals are going to win, and the most they can do is offer counter-proposals that might be less disruptive. A good example is with things like dealing with pollution with cap-and-trade rather than more traditional top-down approaches.

  111. 111.

    Ruckus

    @Cacti:

    The Contract on America was when the purge began in earnest, IMO.

    It was around a lot longer than that. It just wasn’t as obvious. So I would say not that the purge began in earnest but in the open. Up until the 1950s liberalism was not really in vogue or much in practice. What we are seeing now is conservatism coming to a head and that started openly about the time of The Contract. But @eemom: had a real point, the destruction of liberalism was not started with The Contract.

  112. 112.

    JR

    There ain’t no room
    For the hopeless sinner
    Who would hurt all mankind
    Just to save his own

  113. 113.

    eemom

    I seem to be alone in this, but the use of the word “conservative” to describe people whose professed beliefs are in reality off the charts, mouth foaming radicalism continues to bug the shit out of me.

  114. 114.

    Kristine

    @Tom Levenson:

    Very short form of my pique: genetics is not the universal explanation its most devoted followers have persuaded themselves it is.

    Oh, but they want it to be. Because then we are all born in cages we can’t break out of and theirs is the very very best.

  115. 115.

    Roger Moore

    @Ruckus:
    I would say that the Contract With America was a sign that the purge was complete, rather than beginning. Up until that time, there had been a real, if waning, influence from Rockefeller Republicans. The triumph of Gingrich and company was a sign that the sensible Republicans had been purged or so marginalized that the party no longer had to cater to them in any meaningful way.

  116. 116.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:

    conservatism is intellectually sterile

    You are a lot nicer than I am. Of course I describe it from the other direction.
    A nicer way would be to say it’s intellectually empty. It has no logic, no reality, no place for anyone who isn’t a member in good standing, conservatism is going along to get along.
    Conservatism is the mob, with a thesaurus and very slightly less violence.

  117. 117.

    Redshift

    @Ruckus: Yeah, when I was younger I read George Will’s column (along with most of the editorial page.) I still remember when I realized that nearly every one of his columns contained an obvious flaw that undermined his entire argument. For a while I read them for the entertainment of finding it, but that got boring pretty quick, too.

  119. 119.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:
    I think it meant that the PTB in the conservative movement felt free to be open about taking back everything, the power, the rights, the money, the government itself. I don’t think they had been successful up to then or that they are even now, but they have come a long way towards their concept of total domination/theft of everything. I think they have found out that they can’t win by just ending things piecemeal, that gets noticed but they can destroy everything by total ineptitude. That they are doing a good job of.

  120. 120.

    MomSense

    @eemom:

    Same for me but I think we have lost this battle.

    @Ruckus:

    You only have to ask two or three follow up questions to reveal just how intellectually empty it is. Republicans are a toxic mix of birch society types, racist mobs, misogynists, anti -LGBT bigots, gun nuts, arrested development Laffer believing money lovers who want it all without paying taxes, and false Christians.

  121. 121.

    raven

    @DougJ: Um, you think I don’t know the difference between Pusherman and Freddie’s Dead? Do you have the movie? Do you have Superfly Two? Didn’t think so.

  122. 122.

    Doug R

    @Tom Levenson:

    Very short form of my pique: genetics is not the universal explanation its most devoted followers have persuaded themselves it is.

    Turns out a lot of gene expression occurs through epigenetics, which itself is partly affected by the environment and stressors on the mother.

  126. 126.

    Steve in the ATL

    @eemom:

    I seem to be alone in this, but the use of the word “conservative” to describe people whose professed beliefs are in reality off the charts, mouth foaming radicalism continues to bug the shit out of me.

    You are not alone.

  127. 127.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    The problem is that they took over the conservative movement from the inside, so they’re basically shambling around wearing its skin and claiming to totally be the same thing.

    I know I’m not the only one to trace the rot back to the pseudointellectual William Buckley Jr, who used “conservatism” to shore up his own racism.

  128. 128.

    Caravelle

    @Mary G:

    He screwed Hillary over, but because Twitler fired him and got a special counsel for his trouble, they love him, because clicks.

    “but”?

  130. 130.

    Another Scott

    @Doug R: Unpossible!!1

    Too many people use “genetics” as a replacement for “evil spirits” or “demonic possession”. It’s lazy and it’s dangerous.

    It’s not “Nature vs. Nurture” – it’s clearly both.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  131. 131.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Mnemosyne: you are not alone. Buckley and my stepfather were classmates at Yale. Stepfather said Buckley was widely despised at the time, and even more so when he started the stuff you reference.

  132. 132.

    Caravelle

    @Redshift: I saw this article linked in a Matt Yglesias twitter thread where he was asking what the evidence is that echo chambers actually are bad:

    http://economics.mit.edu/files/13561

    I just read the abstract, but it’s a study where they found that when people read about a political subject, those who chose the news source they read it on ended up changing their mind more and having less extreme views than those who read articles from random news sources. The rationale they propose is that people learn more from news sources that they are familiar with and whose biases they know to account for.

    I don’t know enough social science to know how interesting this result is; a single study, especially one as apparently recent as this one, should never be taken as proof of anything. The sample sizes seem decent for social science (352 people) but I don’t know how to interpret the effect sizes (17% less polarization in one group than the other they say is statistically significant, but is it meaningful?), and the fact they did it all via an app must bias the results somehow; they’re almost certainly not getting a representative demographic sample. The app seems pretty cool though!

    (ah, yes:

    s. As expected for typical app users, the sample is
    younger (31 years) than the South Korean population (41 years) on average. It is also more
    liberal, less likely to watch TV news (56% in my sample vs. 83% for the population), and
    slightly more likely to use the Internet for news consumption (85% vs. 74%). All population
    figures are from the Korea Press Foundation (2016). One should be careful in generalizing the
    results of this paper to a wider population or to other nations.

    )

  133. 133.

    RSA

    @Another Scott: Thanks for the heads-up! And the link to the article.

    I like Redshift’s challenge, because I’m prone to having my thinking fall into a rut.

  134. 134.

    MattF

    @Redshift: One name that comes to mind is Hannah Arendt. She stood somewhat outside the conventional political spectrum and regarded herself as a philosopher. Also, she was Heidigger’s girlfriend, which is just irresistible.

  135. 135.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @eemom: @MomSense: @Steve in the ATL: Agreed with all of you. The word “conservatism” at one point referred to a scepticism of ideology itself and of change for its own sake, but it was rooted in empiricism. At least, that was the ideal. I don’t know if we ever got many who actually lived up to it in this country, but I always point to Benjamin Disraeli as a counterpoint; he argued that society had an obligation to care for the less fortunate, and that it was even beneficial for the upper class to do so as this guaranteed social stability. Despite this, he considered himself a conservative, and by the traditional definition of the term, he was.

    Modern Republicans are rigidly ideological; they want to undo every Democratic accomplishment back to the New Deal out of sheer spite; and they reject empiricism. They are not conservatives. They are right-wing extremists, authoritarians, and reactionaries, and in some cases, also outright fascists. They don’t deserve the label “conservative”, which properly refers to a stance rooted in caution. There is nothing cautious about the Republicans’ approach. Among major party leaders, there arguably hasn’t been since at least Eisenhower.

  136. 136.

    Barry

    @Baud: “I thought he retired to deal with his mental illness.”

    ‘Monetization’ is ‘dealing with’.

  137. 137.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    They didn’t steal the conservative movement. The conservative movement has been about the same things since humans have walked upright. There was less liberalism to balance them out for a large piece of history. Far less. Mostly it was conservatives battling conservatives for the same small piece of pie. That’s what they were trying to conserve and steal in the first place. It’s only since industrialization that the pie has gotten a lot bigger, and that far more people are able to be liberalized in the first place, because they aren’t spending every waking moment just trying to stay alive. And we had 2 world wars and a depression since industrialization has had much in the way of strength. It’s been since the end of WWII that the big pieces of liberalism have even been tried. We are fairly new at this side of things, conservatives are old hat. The only thing close to new on the conservative side is getting a lot of people to work the angles who really aren’t gaining much of anything from it. And that’s the Contract for America. Getting a large segment of a population to fuck themselves in the name of something that does them actual harm.

  138. 138.

    Barry

    “Freddie will be at the Daily Caller within five years.”

    HAHAHAHA! Another liberal intellectual can’t spell ‘months’ :)

    Or ‘weeks’, more likely.

  139. 139.

    Ruckus

    @(((CassandraLeo))):
    That conservative caution was to protect the status quo. And the status quo was, for most of human history what I call conservative today, protect/get power and money. For most of human history there really wasn’t any other practical political side because there was only hard labor to live or enough power to steal so constant physical work wasn’t required. It’s only been in the last 100-150 yrs that started to change. It’s only been in the last 75 or so that there is real work that doesn’t require a lot of physical labor. People are now able to live and survive without nearly as much physical labor. Yes there are still people who do physical labor to survive, especially in lessor economies, but it’s that ability to be educated and to be productive without physical labor which has changed and which changes politics. The only people who didn’t do physical labor before were rich people. And they only got rich in one of two ways, inheritance or theft of labor. And they could only inherit after someone sometime had stolen the fruits of the labor of others. Notice anything similar about rich conservatives today?

  140. 140.

    schrodingers_cat

    @(((CassandraLeo))):Your counterpoint was one of the architects of the British debacle in Afghanistan. Conservatives are kind to their kind. The 19th century Victorians including your conservative icon enabled great transfer of wealth from India and other places back to Her Majesty Vicky’s coffers.
    @Ruckus: Indeed. They have always been like this. I am so stealing your mob with a Thesaurus, line.

  141. 141.

    PJ

    @Another Scott: Posner used to view everything through his “law and economics”/Chicago viewfinder – essentially, whoever wants to spend the most on something (i.e., the rich guy) should win, regardless of the other guy’s rights.

  142. 142.

    J R in WV

    @(((CassandraLeo))):

    I wish you commented here more often. I agree totally with this particular comment regarding “conservatives” of today, who can’t elucidate the dictionary definition of conserve with regard to their social and political beliefs, because there is no conserving in their philosophy whatsoever.

    Theft is their ground rule, and keeping others in their place, below the conservative thieves who intend to own everything, if they aren’t stopped. Fascist is a word I used to have to look up to spell correctly… not any more, my fingers know it too well from constant overuse to describe current political reality.

  143. 143.

    jl

    Bell Curve was a conceptual, and statistical, hot mess. Anyone who took it seriously didn’t know much about them numbers, or how to formulate, research and argue coherent scientific theory. The book was very not peer reviewed, and boy, did it show. So, I expect something in the same grand tradition.

    Will this book have any peer review by people who know what they are doing? From internet search, looks like publisher just launched. I see books coming out by O’Keefe and Ingraham. So, Deboer is the liberal balance, or what?

  145. 145.

    Fredrik B deBoer

    It’s actually an anti-race science book. That’s just what some dude on Twitter said; he made it up.

    https://fredrikdeboer.com/2018/03/30/my-book-is-in-fact-an-anti-race-science-book/

    Do you get how dishonest it is to not look at my actual statements on the matter? Or – follow with me here – did you just want it to be true so you didn’t bother to check?

    Oh, and Zephyr Teachout is publishing with AllPoints as well as some progressives I won’t name.

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