As I cut ties with the progressive establishment to launch The Ivy Exile, I wondered how much hate mail to expect. But, gratifyingly, real humans not consumed in social media pissing matches have been mostly generous and kind, even when detailing all the ways I’m so wrong, wrong, wrong!
"The Right was a bad-faith actor that had to be destroyed"....
I get this a lot too from my friends in the NYT/NPR/MSNBC bubble and I continue to be shocked by how deranged it sounds, and how people who I know are "educated" get so hopped up on media-generated exterminationist rage that they don't even stop to think through the consequences of their statements.
If we define the "Right" as anyone of a conservative bent, from the religious to the social to the economic, then add country folk who are more temperamentally inclined to conservatism for various reasons, and then add some of the rest of us who've had an allergic reaction to the Resistance™ and the Social Justice era, doesn't this mean "destroying" somewhere around half the country?
Also, the conservative/liberal dichotomy or dialectic or yin/yang is a natural part of humanity, I'm sure we all cross back and forth over it in various ways over various issues at various times of our lives: to think you can just eliminate one half of this very human proclivity, is like thinking you can slice away one hemisphere of your brain and still function.
Also have any of our educated cosmopolitan elite read even a single history book? Haven't they learned what disasters happen once half a country declares war on the other half? It doesn't take a PHd to realize that this path can only lead to hatred and destruction.
Thanks for fighting the good fight, compromise is always the best solution, in almost any situation.
It's the rare human who can even see, never mind step outside of, their Jungian shadow, which I think means trying to understand how much of what you claim to hate or oppose you also manifest.
I think this has become even harder in the social media age, where most brains seem to have been re-engineered to exist in an eternal present of constant outrage.
So many times I see someone online who says both "I am compassionate and tolerant" and "We need to destroy everyone who disagrees with me", and they are completely blind to the contradiction.
Arguing in bad faith. In other words, not buying your bullshit.
I hear this from both sides, and it seems to slip the minds of most cuture warriors that people do not necessaraly start with your priors or share your shibboleths, and when they don't they will be quite quick to cut them down to size, at least in their own minds. I am sure that this seems like they approach coversations like a bad actor, when in reality they are moving their own ideas and points to the fore. Which is entirely human. When someone starts off thinking that the other person is acting in bad faith, then there is very little room for landing an agreement, which, to your point, is needed to carry over any true sweeping policy.
One thing that often gets ignored is that half the country is more conservative than the other half. And while that is a truism, it needs to be looked at more often. The simple matter is that Republican and Democrat are just names we place on the political wing for the two halves of American politics, and no matter what policy wins you have, no matter if you completely vanquish the other party, it still remains that half the country is more conservative than the other half. In a democratic or republican system of goverance, you still need to deal with that other half and their wants and needs.
Exile, for a man whose "idealism has been shattered by decades of conservative political hegemony", you sound surprisingly optimistic about the prospect of improving American life. A man who would write The Ivy Exile Substack is not keeping his head down in any sort of "defensive crouch". He is saying what he thinks even at the risk of annoying his colleagues. If you "no longer believe the governing class has a critical mass of sufficiently honest, rigorous, and nuanced public servants to achieve the benevolent technocracy they promise", I can offer evidence to support your conclusion. I wonder, during the year DadofDraco served Americorps, did he ever read the Inspector General's report on Americorps's finances?
I quote the 2020 report: "For FYs 2017‐2019, CLA (consultants Clifton Allen Larson LLP) issued disclaimers on the financial statements audits of AmeriCorps and the National Service Trust, because AmeriCorps could not demonstrate the accuracy and completeness of its public financial reports. The prior audit reports identified numerous material weaknesses that remained uncorrected."
Dad of Draco thinks our political problem is his political opponents, to whom he would like to deliver "a body blow." He is clearly ignorant about how badly our rulers manage our government, including the program he worked in.
To be more precise, the Bible says it is the love of money which is the root of all evil. Like energy, money in itself is morally neutral. The good or evil lies in how one uses it.
So you'd rather most people live in poverty and half of child die before they reach their teens simply because you find that world more aesthetic, which you probably wouldn't if you actually had to live in it.
Aristocracy in decline makes for the most interesting culture. If that went above your head, which I am almost certain it did, then you have never read Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.
Nope I make under the poverty line, and my parents were hippy artists and I grew up in a house trailer. You sure are good at getting things wrong and making jack ass assumptions, lol!
Clinton's triangulation at least brought prosperity. Unfortunately, it was mere triangulation and he was still a leftist so the prosperity couldn't last. Thus eventually the left would need clients who could be bought off more cheaply.
One mistake that even many here in the comments seem to be making is to confuse party legislators/media figures with the “common folk” they represent. It’s gotten more fuzzy in today’s world of social media, way more fuzzy. But I think the statement that the other side has to be destroyed is usually assumed to be referring to Mitch McConnell (for example) rather than the entire state of Kentucky. Not excusing the genocidal language, but this is all part of another confusion everyone has had between beliefs and strategy, as Freddie DeBoer has been writing about a lot recently.
With social media, it may seem like we’re all pundits and movement leaders, but we’re really not. I appreciate Ivy Exile trying to bring this to the fore.
That is a critical point, Noah! (Nice avatar by the way) I often say the most slippery word in politics and policy is "we"-- as in "we need to do this to pursue a general policy goal." As with the old joke about Tonto and the Lone Ranger, "who do you mean 'we,' kemosabe?" Any policy agenda is unavoidably enacted by specific humans making up specific institutions, all of whom have their own agendas, priorities, idiosyncrasies and flaws. Declaring that "we" should do something is so vague and amorphous as to be meaningless: who specifically should do it? how exactly should those specific people do it? what are the specific benchmarks of succcess or failure from those specific policies? are the specific humans in charge qualified and competent to enact those specific policies? And so on. Unfortunately, the primary purpose of political language is not to inform but to obfuscate, casting dauntingly complex chronic issues as headaches that can be solved with one weird trick.
What you're doing is really important and I'm sure you're reaching far more people than is obvious. Your approach will resonate with many people watching from the sidelines. My guess is that's how a lot of persuasion happens.
I'm a traveler from the fiscally conservative side of the political spectrum. Over the past seven years, I've become increasingly skeptical of the fiscal agenda and fiscal competence of the Republican party. I believe our system of capitalism needs some brakes and further believe that we have become a much more corrupt society at the top.
Perhaps we'll meet in the middle or perhaps we've already passed each other. A political algebra problem!
A political algebra problem -- I like that! Hopefully more Americans can break away from brittle tribal ideologies and embrace what I call "the flux," taking on irreducibly ambiguous issues on which intelligent people disagree in a spirit of empathy and generosity. I truly believe that's how most of us feel and what most of us want, but it's not what our institutions are geared to encourage. Because you're right, many Republican officeholders don't care about fiscal responsibility any more than many of their Democratic peers care about securing the southern border.
> I'm a traveler from the fiscally conservative side of the political spectrum. Over the past seven years, I've become increasingly skeptical of the fiscal agenda and fiscal competence of the Republican party. I believe our system of capitalism needs some brakes and further believe that we have become a much more corrupt society at the top.
The problem there is the government and the administrative state, not capitalism.
What it boils down to for me is that progressives pretend they are “oppressed” or speaking on behalf of the oppressed but in fact they are the new establishment, using McCarthyite tactics of black lists to impose censorship and job loss. They are in desperate need of their own “have you no sense of decency sir.” speech to disgrace their authoritarian rule. I always fight for the underdog and in our current society the underdog is the person with views that were ordinary 10 years ago, which are now considered woke heresy.
It's deeply sad that progressives learned nothing from the trail of reputational harm and ruined lives from the black list era except to copy that horrible tactic.
Recently stumbled on your work and slowly working through it. Lots of chew on.
Personally:
I hold a foundational belief that competency, expertise, and results should be rewarded & promoted. I want smart people in charge making good decisions on behalf of society. Unfortunately, the never ending stream of those above failing to live up to that ideal is destabilizing - both economically and politically.
I haven't yet figured out how to resolve the tensions between:
1. My strong belief that Ezra Klein stye, wonk-y policy would result in better outcomes for everything and everyone.
2. My belief that over time bureaucracy will seek only to expand and enrich itself, losing any genuine urge to keep those being served as first priority.
3. The knowledge that most people don’t like being told what to do and it is some degree of hubris to believe I (or insert other commentator) “knows best”
You articulate these tensions well and I'm excited to continue reading along.
"So when I suggest that the left and right need one another, it’s to be canaries in each other’s coal mines, and to call out each other’s blind spots and bullshit."
Left and right need each other for the same reason that sports rivals need each other or there is no game, for the same reason that you can make a perfectly bankable Batman movie without Robin but you take away The Joker and there's no movie.
Not only that, but rivals are needed to keep the left and right coalitions together, as otherwise the factions making up those respective coalitions would quickly break up in an argument over spoils, and would in fact, discovered that they not only don't have all that much in common and don't even like each other all that much.
Exile, I look forward to your post on the profession of social work. What sort of people go into that line of work and what do they conclude from the experience?
"The Right was a bad-faith actor that had to be destroyed"....
I get this a lot too from my friends in the NYT/NPR/MSNBC bubble and I continue to be shocked by how deranged it sounds, and how people who I know are "educated" get so hopped up on media-generated exterminationist rage that they don't even stop to think through the consequences of their statements.
If we define the "Right" as anyone of a conservative bent, from the religious to the social to the economic, then add country folk who are more temperamentally inclined to conservatism for various reasons, and then add some of the rest of us who've had an allergic reaction to the Resistance™ and the Social Justice era, doesn't this mean "destroying" somewhere around half the country?
Also, the conservative/liberal dichotomy or dialectic or yin/yang is a natural part of humanity, I'm sure we all cross back and forth over it in various ways over various issues at various times of our lives: to think you can just eliminate one half of this very human proclivity, is like thinking you can slice away one hemisphere of your brain and still function.
Also have any of our educated cosmopolitan elite read even a single history book? Haven't they learned what disasters happen once half a country declares war on the other half? It doesn't take a PHd to realize that this path can only lead to hatred and destruction.
Thanks for fighting the good fight, compromise is always the best solution, in almost any situation.
Cheers!
> "The Right was a bad-faith actor that had to be destroyed"....
Seems to me like they're projecting their own bad faith on to their opponents.
It's the rare human who can even see, never mind step outside of, their Jungian shadow, which I think means trying to understand how much of what you claim to hate or oppose you also manifest.
I think this has become even harder in the social media age, where most brains seem to have been re-engineered to exist in an eternal present of constant outrage.
So many times I see someone online who says both "I am compassionate and tolerant" and "We need to destroy everyone who disagrees with me", and they are completely blind to the contradiction.
Arguing in bad faith. In other words, not buying your bullshit.
I hear this from both sides, and it seems to slip the minds of most cuture warriors that people do not necessaraly start with your priors or share your shibboleths, and when they don't they will be quite quick to cut them down to size, at least in their own minds. I am sure that this seems like they approach coversations like a bad actor, when in reality they are moving their own ideas and points to the fore. Which is entirely human. When someone starts off thinking that the other person is acting in bad faith, then there is very little room for landing an agreement, which, to your point, is needed to carry over any true sweeping policy.
One thing that often gets ignored is that half the country is more conservative than the other half. And while that is a truism, it needs to be looked at more often. The simple matter is that Republican and Democrat are just names we place on the political wing for the two halves of American politics, and no matter what policy wins you have, no matter if you completely vanquish the other party, it still remains that half the country is more conservative than the other half. In a democratic or republican system of goverance, you still need to deal with that other half and their wants and needs.
Exile, for a man whose "idealism has been shattered by decades of conservative political hegemony", you sound surprisingly optimistic about the prospect of improving American life. A man who would write The Ivy Exile Substack is not keeping his head down in any sort of "defensive crouch". He is saying what he thinks even at the risk of annoying his colleagues. If you "no longer believe the governing class has a critical mass of sufficiently honest, rigorous, and nuanced public servants to achieve the benevolent technocracy they promise", I can offer evidence to support your conclusion. I wonder, during the year DadofDraco served Americorps, did he ever read the Inspector General's report on Americorps's finances?
I quote the 2020 report: "For FYs 2017‐2019, CLA (consultants Clifton Allen Larson LLP) issued disclaimers on the financial statements audits of AmeriCorps and the National Service Trust, because AmeriCorps could not demonstrate the accuracy and completeness of its public financial reports. The prior audit reports identified numerous material weaknesses that remained uncorrected."
Dad of Draco thinks our political problem is his political opponents, to whom he would like to deliver "a body blow." He is clearly ignorant about how badly our rulers manage our government, including the program he worked in.
> I wonder, during the year DadofDraco served Americorps, did he ever read the Inspector General's report on Americorps's finances?
Dad of Draco strikes me as the kind of upper class scion who has the aristocrat's disdain for dealing with something as vulgar as money.
Money is vulgar though. Whether it’s Nietzsche’s mediocrity of the marketplace, or the bible saying it is the root of all sin.
To be more precise, the Bible says it is the love of money which is the root of all evil. Like energy, money in itself is morally neutral. The good or evil lies in how one uses it.
And if you look at the original, it says love of money is the root of all *kinds* of evils.
The commonly quoted version is ridiculous, Hitler and Stalin didn't do what they did because they thought it was a good way to get rich.
I did’t say it was the only way to be a bad person just that it is a direct route to greed, which guess what is one of the 7 deadly sins.
Retired financial planner, no bias there about the role of money in society, LOL! Yes I am laughing at YOU!
How fortunate you are, to be so easily amused.
Admittedly addressing "people" like you at all is a trifle, that much is true.
This is like saying technology is neutral, but many thinkers from Jacques Ellul. Ivan Illich to Heidegger and Uncle Ted have shown is fully false.
So you'd rather most people live in poverty and half of child die before they reach their teens simply because you find that world more aesthetic, which you probably wouldn't if you actually had to live in it.
Begone, death cultist.
LOL, have fun living in the pod and eating ze bugs, with a 666 chip in your forehead to be scanned by Sauron Inc., moron.
No, money itself is the symbolic representation of the process by which the garden in the old testament was turned into LA.
And that is the attitude that leads great families to fall back to poverty, and great nations to fall to ruin.
Aristocracy in decline makes for the most interesting culture. If that went above your head, which I am almost certain it did, then you have never read Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.
Seems my description of Dan of Draco applies to you as well.
Nope I make under the poverty line, and my parents were hippy artists and I grew up in a house trailer. You sure are good at getting things wrong and making jack ass assumptions, lol!
What changed during the Obama administration is that the Democrats stopped even pretending to care about the working class.
Hey you finally got one right good job, but I would go back further to Bill Clinton and his “triangulation” strategy.
Clinton's triangulation at least brought prosperity. Unfortunately, it was mere triangulation and he was still a leftist so the prosperity couldn't last. Thus eventually the left would need clients who could be bought off more cheaply.
One mistake that even many here in the comments seem to be making is to confuse party legislators/media figures with the “common folk” they represent. It’s gotten more fuzzy in today’s world of social media, way more fuzzy. But I think the statement that the other side has to be destroyed is usually assumed to be referring to Mitch McConnell (for example) rather than the entire state of Kentucky. Not excusing the genocidal language, but this is all part of another confusion everyone has had between beliefs and strategy, as Freddie DeBoer has been writing about a lot recently.
With social media, it may seem like we’re all pundits and movement leaders, but we’re really not. I appreciate Ivy Exile trying to bring this to the fore.
That is a critical point, Noah! (Nice avatar by the way) I often say the most slippery word in politics and policy is "we"-- as in "we need to do this to pursue a general policy goal." As with the old joke about Tonto and the Lone Ranger, "who do you mean 'we,' kemosabe?" Any policy agenda is unavoidably enacted by specific humans making up specific institutions, all of whom have their own agendas, priorities, idiosyncrasies and flaws. Declaring that "we" should do something is so vague and amorphous as to be meaningless: who specifically should do it? how exactly should those specific people do it? what are the specific benchmarks of succcess or failure from those specific policies? are the specific humans in charge qualified and competent to enact those specific policies? And so on. Unfortunately, the primary purpose of political language is not to inform but to obfuscate, casting dauntingly complex chronic issues as headaches that can be solved with one weird trick.
What you're doing is really important and I'm sure you're reaching far more people than is obvious. Your approach will resonate with many people watching from the sidelines. My guess is that's how a lot of persuasion happens.
I'm a traveler from the fiscally conservative side of the political spectrum. Over the past seven years, I've become increasingly skeptical of the fiscal agenda and fiscal competence of the Republican party. I believe our system of capitalism needs some brakes and further believe that we have become a much more corrupt society at the top.
Perhaps we'll meet in the middle or perhaps we've already passed each other. A political algebra problem!
A political algebra problem -- I like that! Hopefully more Americans can break away from brittle tribal ideologies and embrace what I call "the flux," taking on irreducibly ambiguous issues on which intelligent people disagree in a spirit of empathy and generosity. I truly believe that's how most of us feel and what most of us want, but it's not what our institutions are geared to encourage. Because you're right, many Republican officeholders don't care about fiscal responsibility any more than many of their Democratic peers care about securing the southern border.
> I'm a traveler from the fiscally conservative side of the political spectrum. Over the past seven years, I've become increasingly skeptical of the fiscal agenda and fiscal competence of the Republican party. I believe our system of capitalism needs some brakes and further believe that we have become a much more corrupt society at the top.
The problem there is the government and the administrative state, not capitalism.
What it boils down to for me is that progressives pretend they are “oppressed” or speaking on behalf of the oppressed but in fact they are the new establishment, using McCarthyite tactics of black lists to impose censorship and job loss. They are in desperate need of their own “have you no sense of decency sir.” speech to disgrace their authoritarian rule. I always fight for the underdog and in our current society the underdog is the person with views that were ordinary 10 years ago, which are now considered woke heresy.
It's deeply sad that progressives learned nothing from the trail of reputational harm and ruined lives from the black list era except to copy that horrible tactic.
Recently stumbled on your work and slowly working through it. Lots of chew on.
Personally:
I hold a foundational belief that competency, expertise, and results should be rewarded & promoted. I want smart people in charge making good decisions on behalf of society. Unfortunately, the never ending stream of those above failing to live up to that ideal is destabilizing - both economically and politically.
I haven't yet figured out how to resolve the tensions between:
1. My strong belief that Ezra Klein stye, wonk-y policy would result in better outcomes for everything and everyone.
2. My belief that over time bureaucracy will seek only to expand and enrich itself, losing any genuine urge to keep those being served as first priority.
3. The knowledge that most people don’t like being told what to do and it is some degree of hubris to believe I (or insert other commentator) “knows best”
You articulate these tensions well and I'm excited to continue reading along.
"So when I suggest that the left and right need one another, it’s to be canaries in each other’s coal mines, and to call out each other’s blind spots and bullshit."
Left and right need each other for the same reason that sports rivals need each other or there is no game, for the same reason that you can make a perfectly bankable Batman movie without Robin but you take away The Joker and there's no movie.
Not only that, but rivals are needed to keep the left and right coalitions together, as otherwise the factions making up those respective coalitions would quickly break up in an argument over spoils, and would in fact, discovered that they not only don't have all that much in common and don't even like each other all that much.
Nothing like mutual antipathy to keep the troops' morale just high enough to trudge on!
Exile, I look forward to your post on the profession of social work. What sort of people go into that line of work and what do they conclude from the experience?
Absolutely love it. The art of diplomacy in the age of Aquarius. The hippy dippies steal the show.
Exactly!