Nominations?We need a better typology of white nonsense (says the white lady approaching 50).
Krikorian's snideness does not look to me like "the black guy took my job" anger from people who are down on their luck. Pulling from another of today's posts, it isn't from someone who's white and poor, or white and afraid of being poor.
Instead, it's from the libertarian smart-aleck corner. The key point is "The people in charge are irrational and I'm going to show you how they're stupid." The same people, with the same tone, will show up to oppose tax increases, price controls, government subsidies, minimum wage,tobacco limitations, and every effort to make public education work.
The people involved think that they're the smartest folks around, and they're mad that folks don't elect them to run everything. If you remember a kid in middle school who felt that way, imagine that guy grown up. Also, remember that the kid didn't have many friends or convince many people with his obsessively detailed but always odd little explanations--and the grown-up versions are not very successful even among conservatives.
Nevertheless, they appear often enough on affirmative action to be annoying. Often, they are beside themselves with glee because they've thought of the witty idea of using the phrase "the content of their character" in a sentence.
I'm not saying it isn't garbage. I am, though, saying it's a particular subset of garbage, and it's worth knowing which kind. This isn't working class rage. It's a geeky nerdy guy trying to get attention by showing how smart he is--and never understanding why hardly anyone is ever impressed.
I want a name for this particular variety, but the best I've come up with is "snuppity," to capture the combination of snark and self-promotion. Doesn't quite work,but I don't have a better name yet.
« Great, great race humor | Main | I guess it's commenters day » So, what shall we call them?27 Sep 2008 01:08 pm
Commenter Sporcupine offers a response to my post on diversity and WAMU:
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Just name them after their leader Steve Sailer and go with "Sailerites." The downside is that he probably would consider it a tribute.
Other possibilities - Helmsmen or Klansters or just plain shitbirds.
Reason Magazine employees?
Obviously those are the best of the breed, so perhaps Rejected Reason Applicants.
Douchebags.
Bell Curve Dicks
The link below is kinda related.....
Evidence-based scapegoating: It's the new black.
http://www.evidencesoup.com/canopener/2008/08/evidence-base-1.html
So great. Sporcupine, do you have a blog?
Q-berts?
There was a spectacularly nerdy white guy in my class in college who wrote a poem in the voice of a searing black nationalist and submitted it to the literary magazine, which selected it for publication. It was pretty competitive to get poetry published there, so that was in its own way a fairly impressive feat. Was there some racism involved in doing what this white Q-bert did? I don't think so. The kid wasn't a good ol' boy; he was a serious social loser, though respected in a strange way for the uncompromising nature of his weird nerditude. I think he was someone whose underdeveloped social skills were reflected in an over-reliance on logic as a way of thinking about political issues. I mean, what he saw when he looked at someone making a claim to being oppressed was simply a person engaging in a particular form of speech, and he found it at some level ridiculous, because anyone can engage in that form of speech regardless of who they are or what's actually happened to them. He showed that by effectively mimicking the form, or at least mimicking it well enough to pass among the overwhelmingly white kids on the literary magazine, which proved its own kind of point. And in the context of an argument over the legitimate place of a narrative of black oppression at a ridiculously overprivileged university, his stunt was pretty harmless, and you might even argue, at that place at that time, deserved. But in a different context, it would have been extremely racist. A white person who had written a convincing "up from slavery" narrative in the 1850s with the aim of impugning the integrity of actual slave narratives would have been doing something despicable, regardless of whether he was a Q-bert or a bubba.
So I guess I just think a lot of it is about context.
This argument wherein the failure of the financial system was caused by too many Negroes and Mexicans getting mortgages is rampant among rightwingers. It's total bullshit, but indicative of the lengths douchebags will go to divert attention from their douchiness. Of course, it ends up just becoming an even more exaggerated example of same.
I thought the term for people like this was psuedo-intellectuals, but douchebag has a nobler ring to it. ;)
Let me just say that I basically consider myself a libertarian smart-aleck even though I completely do not agree Kirkiorian (who is NOT a libertarian in almost any sense of the word). That said, a lot of the libertarian schtick is contrarianism, some pull it off (Gorge Will, Megan McArdle) others look like asshats (a bunch of my friends). Not many yes-men become libertarians, we are usually people still feeding our inner teenager, trying to bring down the man while all the while wearing a suit and working on K or Wall Street. The humor aspect is important though, which is why I think the best word to describe us would be snarktrarian.
On second thought maybe something short and simple is the way to go. How about "freds"?
LOL. Roy Edroso, who could be considered an expert on these type of people and recently popularized douchebag, has a good one today that should win him a nomination in the diction awards this year.
buffoon n 1: a rude or vulgar fool 2: a person who amuses others by ridiculous behavior [syn: clown, merry andrew]
and buffooniverse to describe the alternate reality they live in.
You know, if her list of great ideas weren't pretty much a list of economic stupidity, I might take it a bit more seriously.
Price controls? Really? d
How about ippity--- ignorant, but overconfident in their ignorance because its a popular opinion.
I'm not saying there aren't tons of annoying libertarians, but damn, take econ 101 before you take the mote of others eyes.
Garden Variety Buckleys.
Seriously, go watch a Youtube of William F. They're all just desperately trying to be that guy. It helps that he ran the magazine that's now the teat at which they all suck.
Sporcupine does not appreciate the libertarian PoV, so she goes ahead and labels it smart-alecky.
"The people involved think that they're the smartest folks around, and they're mad that folks don't elect them to run everything."
Sporcupine is dead wrong here. The libertarians think people are smart enough to act for themselves, and have an inherent suspicion of gov't. Given that much of this economic crisis can be laid at the feet of Greenspan's inflation of the monetary supply while he headed the Fed, we should not simply dismiss libertarians as smart-alecks. The libertarian position is not let us control things (certainly not any more than the liberal position). Its simply that individuals can control their own lives and destinies, and the role of gov't should be to limited towards empowering individuals to do that. More moderate small l libertarians like myself might also admit there are certain market failures in specific areas of the economy (education, health care) which necessitate gov't intervention into the private market.
"It's a geeky nerdy guy trying to get attention by showing how smart he is--and never understanding why hardly anyone is ever impressed."
This is just ad hominem garbage. I mean, seriously. It just goes to push me back into libertarian land, because it demonstrates a fundamental inability by opponents of libertarianism to take their ideas seriously enough to actually try to refute them on the merits.
Kuros, you're misconstruing the criticism and confusing philosophy for sociology. It's not an argument about whether the principles of libertarianism are correct. It's an observation that libertarianism is an attractive philosophy to know-it-alls and smartasses, and that therefore the tone of libertarian argument will frequently be caustic and dicky. Spend 10 minutes on Reason's Hit & Run blog and you will note the tone.
And this comes, mind you, from a self-described libertarian who spends a lot of time on the Hit & Run comments, but takes effort to moderate his caustic, dicky tendencies.
I like "gliberatarians" but it's too close to GLBT.
Everybody loves the sound of "douchebags", but when you actually think about it, it doesn't make any sense.
Seriously, most of these folks have some sort of Asperger's Syndrome, in their complete inability to grasp the nuances of social interactions -- See Kuros above -- which includes any understanding of how things like racism, prejudice, exclusion, stereotyping have an emotional effect on people.
"Seriously, most of these folks have some sort of Asperger's Syndrome... which includes any understanding of how things like... stereotyping have an emotional effect on people."
I guess since you understand the emotional effect of stereotyping so thoroughly, you're free to use it to insult people you don't like.
"I like "gliberatarians" but it's too close to GLBT."
I guess GLBT libertarians don't exist in your world either.
I am really at a loss as to why you thought that comment was insightful enough to front-page, TNC. If you disagree with the ideas, engage them, don't think up new names to call the people that hold them.
"Seriously, most of these folks have some sort of Asperger's Syndrome, in their complete inability to grasp the nuances of social interactions -- See Kuros above -- which includes any understanding of how things like racism, prejudice, exclusion, stereotyping have an emotional effect on people."
Point to one part of my post that has anything to do with racism, prejudice, exclusion, or stereotyping.
Wait, you can't.
The nuance of social interactions? This is a comments board on the internet, not a tea party.
I guess I can appreciate sidereal's point, but once again, Tom attacks libertarians personally. Presumably because he's unable to engage the arguments.
Over on Yglesias's new blog, I asked for some evidence to support the dark-skinned-people-brought-the-economy-down theory -- and was honored by a response from none other than S. Sailer himself.
What he proffered was a newspaper article from San Diego, saying that a lot of people who got in over their heads out there were Latino immigrants. Which of course, he says, proves that Mexicans are just naturally stupid.
How about we just call Krikorian an idiot because he espoused an idiotic idea.
I know, I know, that's no fun.
But, Sporcupine equated Krikorian's article with opposition to a long list of things which she/he agreed with, most of which were pretty broad policy ideas.
Susidies good? OK, how much, for whom, for how long, and to promote what effect? Good? That depends. First, what do you define as 'Good'?
Maybe I'm taking this a little too far but it seems like Sporcupine is saying that anytime we hear a policy proposal we don't like, we shouldn't try to judge the merits of that policy or even try to understand why someone is advocating it, we should simply lump him/her in with a conveniently labeled group we don't like and keep going.
Um, no thanks.
Two words: Dwight Schrute.
I propose "schrutes". I don't know if he's a libertarian on The Office, though, but he seems to be an apt exaggeration of that personality type.
I personally love Reason and its blog, but sometimes the tone of the articles and its comments are just...ugh. It doesn't matter the merits of the argument if the messenger is a pedantic asshole; no one will want to engage with you long enough to hear why you hold your views.
I actually think libertarians and progressives have enough goals in common that they could loosely band together and institute some change, but no one wants to work with a bunch of assholes.
Libertarians seriously need a warm charismatic figure to represent them in the public sphere, stat, or else they're always going to be dismissed as snuppity schrutes 'til the end of time. Tone down the assholish tendencies and people would stop conflating Krikorian-type stupidity with other salient points of your philosophy. Not everyone bases their views on "logic" and a lot of people react with their guts and emotions. The messenger is just as important as the message even if that's not how it should be in an ideal world.
If it helps, I'm actually puzzling about a larger typology of white weirdness.
I also want a name for attempted generousity run amok. Joe Biden's moment of calling Obama "clean and articulate" and the weird stuff that Chris Matthews keeps saying about the Democratic nominee are examples. I take them to be quite delighted to see black men and women in positions of great power. Only, they imagine it as welcoming people to sit down at the table as guests, not as as members of the family that owns the table itself.
If someone hadn't already coined "soft bigotry of low expectations," I'd be hunting for that phrase, too. That subspecies of the problem shows up among my teacher-relatives on a regular basis, and it generally votes the straight Democratic ticket.
None of those do the kind of harm done by old-school explicit bigotry or the kind of fierce turf-protection by ethnicity that our esteemed-blog host described so well in another post today.
Instead, they're each odd mixtures of good will and indifference, of trying and not trying hard enough.
This is just ad hominem garbage. I mean, seriously. It just goes to push me back into libertarian land, because it demonstrates a fundamental inability by opponents of libertarianism to take their ideas seriously enough to actually try to refute them on the merits.
There are no merits. Libertarian ideas have been tried, and when they have been, they've universally failed. There's a reason that virtually every other industrialized democracy in the world is a social democracy: libertarianism doesn't work.
Arguments with libertarians invariably involve one of three things: confusing moral arguments with practical ones, elaborate causal chains that utterly violate Occam's Razor, or asserting that libertarian failures are the result of too little, rather than too much, libertarianism. It's just like arguing with communists: their arguments are morally perfect in the counterfactual universe they've created*.
-- ACS
* Come to think of it, it's actually worse: the basic moral outlook behind libertarianism is that private conduct never results in injustice and that there's no such thing as an economic externality.
"Libertarian ideas have been tried, and when they have been, they've universally failed."
Its hard for me to argue with this when I don't have any examples to go on. When have libertarian ideas been tried? When have they failed?
With enough sophistry, one can move the goal posts on any ideology to claim that its been implemented, and as a result of its implementation there has been a fundamental failure.
But instead we get more insults of libertarianism as a general philosophy and no discussion of it on the merits.
I would say if anything, these comments show that even those who despise libertarianism exhibit the traits Sporcupine has associated with it: snark and self-promotion.
"Come to think of it, it's actually worse: the basic moral outlook behind libertarianism is that private conduct never results in injustice and that there's no such thing as an economic externality."
I think many libertarians would say that facilitating justice after private misconduct is one of the central justifications for government. Enforcement of contract, criminal law (for non-victimless crimes), defense against foreign invasion, protection of fundamental rights, redress of torts (within reason) are things that the state was more or less made for.
And libertarians definitely believe in externalities. Libertarians LOVE to talk about externalities, and how they should be addressed with disincentives (e.g. taxes) on the behavior that creates the externality. Of course not all libertarians would agree on which behaviors actually result in an externality, but things like carbon taxes and higher gas taxes are popular in certain libertarian circles.
Before you condemn something so strongly you might want to try and understand it first. I am pretty much in awe of the various straw men for libertarianism people have constructed in this thread. It's like, "Oh look, a label, let me assign everything I dislike to it."
Of course not all libertarians would agree on which behaviors actually result in an externality, but things like carbon taxes and higher gas taxes are popular in certain libertarian circles.
That's interesting, because all I've ever seen on Reason is "global warming isn't real"/"global warming's not a problem"/"there are more cost-effective ways we could improve the world (if we didn't think taxation was morally wrong)." I'm not saying you're wrong--I guess Tyler Cowen and Megan McArdle are counterexamples--but when a lot prominent libertarians tend to ignore or minimize externalities its a pretty fair criticism.
hmmmmm....
You're asking for a label that can be used to dismiss someone's argument on the grounds of their perceived social shortcomings?
I can't think of any- but I'm sure that if you ask a middle-schooler, they can help you out.
RE: soft bigotry of low expectations -
Which do you think is more damaging, white liberals taking a slightly disproportionate delight when a minority does well e.g. Obama, or the hard bigotry of, well, bigotry, e.g. "There goes the neighborhood if Obama gets in"? We live in an imperfect world, and as we drag our country kicking and screaming towards true equality, there will be setbacks, snags, and bumps in the road, and we will experience every gradation of prejudice and second-guessing of the respective qualities of the races as we go. Fuck it. Human nature may be difficult to improve, but putting a black president in the rear-view mirror rather than over the big scary horizon in front of us seems like a rather large step in the right direction.
Actually, in asking me "when have libertarian ideas been tried?", Kuros has nailed the no-true-Scotsman problem right on the head. To answer your question: the end of the 19th and 20th century had a tremendous explosion in the power of the market.
Last century, a totally unregulated market torpedoed the entire economy. The Senate largely represented corporations and slaveholders. The Supreme Court regularly intervened to stand up for child labor and debt slavery. At the end of this tremendous buildup of private power, the whole thing exploded, sending us into a depression that took twenty years to repair.
More recently, you can look to energy market deregulation as pretty much the most radical libertarian experiment ever tried. An industry that was very, very close to being a public service was entirely deregulated. A market was allowed to take over where the underlying assumptions of a market -- consumers with rational choices -- didn't exist. And Enron happened.
But, you assert, that was pro-corporate intervention in the market! And in the case of Enron, there wasn't total deregulation! In a real libertarian society, that wouldn't happen! True. You don't stick up for pro-corporate intervention. But every time a massive concentration of private capital has existed alongside a democracy, the powerful -- no surprise -- usually end up getting more and more of what they want, until they finally think they've out-clevered the market and bring the whole goddamn thing down on their heads.
If libertarians want a seat at the big kids' table, they have to own the failures of their philosophy, just like the rest of us. I don't see that happening: too many libertarians are too busy wishing they were Howard Roark to admit any ambiguity.
-- ACS
That person's comment is the most immature ad-hominem attack ever. Instead of addressing people's particular political positions, let's use high school tactics (and admit to it!) and talk about how these people are losers (and were back then, too!). If we just make them feel uncool enough, maybe they'll be afraid to state their political views, and then we win by default! There are so many assumptions about the personalities and personal backgrounds of libertarians made in that post, that anyone who sees it as anything but immature teasing, is really too much of a Ra! Ra! Go Liberals! die-hard fan to really ever take any argument seriously.
Student -
How about this for a no ad hominem refutation of libertarianism? To wit: We live in a world with power divided between the market and the state. Both entities have an interest in stability, and would violently resist any move towards even the most tepid imaginable form of libertarianism. To judge whether the ends are worth it, look at the means. Basically, you would have to drop an A-bomb on Washington and Wall Street to have even a prayer of creating enough political and economic instability to make libertarianism possible. Most likely any sort of disruption on that scale would bring in outside intervention, as happened shortly after the Russian Revolution, when Britain and the US invaded the Kola Peninsula and the US and Japanese invaded Siberia (incidentally, enabling the rise of Stalin by making the Sov leadership so paranoid). That kind of titanic violence over what in the end are rather abstract ideas is unattractive to most people who just get up in the morning, go to work, and live their lives. While I'm not saying that libertarianism is the same as Communism, what libertarians are asking for is basically a total revolution in the way people live their lives, and until the current brand of capitalism fails a good deal more spectacularly than currently, libertarianism will represent little more than a contrarian pose.
student types: "There are so many assumptions about the personalities and personal backgrounds of libertarians made in that post, that anyone who sees it as anything but immature teasing, is really too much of a Ra! Ra! Go Liberals! die-hard fan to really ever take any argument seriously."
Wow. Since when does Sarah Palin post here?
"But every time a massive concentration of private capital has existed alongside a democracy, the powerful -- no surprise -- usually end up getting more and more of what they want, until they finally think they've out-clevered the market and bring the whole goddamn thing down on their heads."
And I would respond: every time a massive concentration of private capital has accumulated, it has done so as a result of gov't manipulation of the monetary supply.
Its not that I don't think you've made an intelligent argument. Its a good one. The problem is that you haven't met your high standard. You want to show that libertarianism itself is fundamentally flawed. But, as even you admit, it can't be convincingly done.
I think you're right that the games some libertarians might play are obnoxious. As I've said before, I'm a soft libertarian, so I believe that the gov't should enter the market (which means that private competition should be able to exist alongside; there should be no monopolies) whenever there is market failure; public education, public healthcare, etc. So, I have my issues with some of the hard libertarians as well. But I think what you describe is a problem common to all ideologies.
And I would respond: every time a massive concentration of private capital has accumulated, it has done so as a result of gov't manipulation of the monetary supply.
First, this is exactly the sort of glib nonsense that gets you ignored: a single sentence that reduces the root causes of the Gilded Age, the Great Depression, the housing bubble, and the Dutch tulip boom to "manipulation of the monetary supply."
Your basic problem is that your argument is a Russian doll of "no true Scotsmans" all the way to first principles. The root of your proposition is that "any market that results in the massive concentration of private capital is not a free market," and thus not truly libertarian.
"Market" is a description of a type of human behavior. There is no deep, underlying "state of nature" where it does not interact with the aggregate effects of human greed, or, for that matter the aggregate effects of democratic government. If market actors can gain advantage by taking actions to alter the rules of the market, they will do this.
This will effectively remain the case so long as a market exists alongside a democracy, and so long as the motives of executives are not perfectly congruent with the interests of the corporations they represent.
-- ACS