What are some forms of information that undermine the simple 'oppressor vs oppressed' western narrative

[DemonTree]

@Wesley_Clark

Look at Israel and Palestine if you want an example of what happens when two groups in close proximity have totally different moral frameworks. It leads to mass hatred and violence. In some areas they just break off into different countries and avoid each other, but in the Israel/Palestine issue that isn’t an option either as both sides want the same land.

They were supposed to have two separate countries, but thanks to the actions of both sides, that seems increasingly unlikely. But yes, that’s an extreme example of how it would be completely impossible to create a country both sides would be happy to live in.

@Wesley_Clark

So while tribalism is a part of human nature, most tribes manage to integrate more or less while black people in the US haven’t. A century ago the Irish, French, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, etc faced a ton of prejudice. They are pretty well integrated now. LGBT have made major strides in integration in the last few decades, but anti-black prejudice is still heavily built into society since it has been intentionally built and stoked by the ruling class to keep the working class divided along racial lines so they wouldn’t unite behind economic lines.

Wouldn’t it have been even more effective to keep the working class split along all those different ethnic lines? Then they would be really fragmented. Whereas, especially before 1965, the white working class really did form a majority who were able to unionise, pass various social security measures, and raised the top rate of income tax to 90%. Seems like the ruling class screwed up there.

@Wesley_Clark

The issue is that regarding groups like MAGA their values are basically their privilege that comes from being the ruling class and the default demographic.

I don’t think they see themselves that way. They see ‘coastal elites’ as the ruling class, and themselves as a marginalised majority. Notwithstanding the fact the US system gives them outsize political power, I believe they do lack cultural power: they don’t see their values or concerns reflected in the ‘msm’ or many institutions, and they feel alienated as a consequence.

They have their own media now, though, telling them everything they want to hear. To disastrous result.

I don’t know how different it is from what’s happening in Europe. A lot of it is just that people don’t like change, and if so, why should they have change forced on them?

The conservative view is that our society is pretty good and we should try to preserve it - not destabilise it with massive changes, never considering the consequences. Mass immigration is exactly such a change, and has usually been justified by saying it worked out well in the US in the last century. It sure doesn’t seem to be working well in Europe.

@Wesley_Clark

Its not just social security either. Social security was designed to exclude black people by excluding agricultural workers and domestic workers (which made up about 2/3 of black jobs in the south). I believe in the 1950s, social security benefits were given to these jobs.

I think the default is not to have social security. Who wants to give their hard-earned money away to someone else? It only works if the people with money identify with the people who don’t have money, and think “that could have been me” or “that could be me, or my kids, or my friends some day”. If the people without money are noticeably different, that identification is much less likely to happen.

There are libertarians on Twitter who support immigration exactly because it stops people voting for social security, which they believe is bad for the economy. They think the lack of social safety nets is why the US is richer than Europe. I don’t even know what to think about this.

But according to you, this wasn’t the result of immigration at all, but ultimately a result of slavery.

[DemonTree]

@Spice_Weasel

I dunno about hate, but the tribe I feel most alienated from and infuriated by are Trump voters, and it probably won’t surprise you that I have a hard time with rich people. Not every rich person I know is without redeeming qualities, and some I love very dearly, but I’m inherently suspicious of people with lavish lifestyles.

Yeah, that’s pretty much what I expected. A lot of people don’t seem to recognise that political tribalism is still tribalism, though.

Someone I follow on Twitter pointed out that billionaires are one of the few groups that it’s totally acceptable to attack as a group, blame for society’s problems, and for politicians to speak out against and target with laws. Sometimes this even leads to murder.

And just because you hate some group irrationally doesn’t mean they aren’t bad: it was pretty reasonable to hate the Germans and Japanese during WWII. But it still led to dehumanisation, especially of the latter.

[crowmanyclouds]

@DemonTree

Wouldn’t it have been even more effective to keep the working class split along all those different ethnic lines?

That ship sailed with powerful Democratic Party political machines that dominated city politics for over a century, from the late 1700s to the mid-1900s, like Tammany Hall. Add in that civil service jobs like police, fire and sanitation were not prized jobs but they made for great sources of political patronage.

Immigrant support

During its domination by the Albany Regency, the Society also began to accept immigrants as members. DeWitt Clinton had gained political support by appointing immigrants to patronage positions, while Tammany had originally been dedicated to representing “pure” Americans. For many years, this meant that the Society dismissed or marginalized Irish and German New Yorkers. On April 24, 1817, immigrant discontent led to a huge riot during a Tammany general committee session. Following the 1821 voting reforms, however, acceptance became a political necessity. Tammany eventually came to depend on Irish immigration as its source of viability.

In the 1840s, over 130,000 Irish immigrants arrived in New York City to escape the Great Famine, arriving in poverty and joining scores of thousands of their fellow countrymen who had arrived over the prior decades. By 1855, 34 percent of the city’s voter population was composed of Irish immigrants. By providing these new arrivals with patronage employment, job referrals, legal aid, food, shelter, employment insurance, and other extralegal services, including citizenship and naturalization services, Tammany secured the lifelong support of the large and growing Irish population, which would form the majority of its electoral base for the next century. In exchange for these services, the Tammany political machine harvested Irish immigrant votes.

By 1854, the support Tammany Hall received from immigrants would firmly establish the organization as the leader of New York City’s political scene.

Legacy

Like other urban political machines, Tammany served as a rudimentary public welfare system in the era before the New Deal by providing poor and immigrant New Yorkers with extralegal services. According to one legendary claim, during the course of a single day, Tammany figure George Washington Plunkitt assisted the victims of a house fire, secured the release of six drunks, paid the rent of a poor family and gave them money for food, secured employment for four individuals, attended the funerals of two constituents, attended a Bar Mitzvah, and attended the wedding of a Jewish couple from his ward.

Tammany Hall also served as a social integrator for immigrants by familiarizing them with American society and its political institutions and by assisting them in becoming naturalized citizens. One example was the naturalization process organized by William M. Tweed. Under Tweed’s regime, “naturalization committees” were established, made up primarily of Tammany politicians and employees. Their duties consisted of filling out paperwork, providing witnesses, and lending immigrants money for the fees required to become citizens. Judges and other city officials were bribed and otherwise compelled to go along with the workings of these committees. In exchange for all these benefits, immigrants assured Tammany Hall they would vote for their candidates.

You can find this pattern, immigrants with little political power but large population numbers, being seen by politicians as the means to their political power ends in many American cities.

[DemonTree]

@crowmanyclouds

That ship sailed with powerful Democratic Party political machines that dominated city politics for over a century, from the late 1700s to the mid-1900s, like Tammany Hall. Add in that civil service jobs like police, fire and sanitation were not prized jobs but they made for great sources of political patronage.

That’s interesting. Reading about it now.

[crowmanyclouds]

If you want to get a fictionalized overview of NY City during “Boss” Tweed’s reign over Tammany Hall watch Gangs of New York.

[Spice_Weasel]

@DemonTree

It’s an extremely stupid reason, and I might be totally off base here, but my impression is that some of the backlash among the young is the result of establishment adoption of social justice ideas.

I’m open to the possibility that Gen Z managed to alienate itself from itself, and I imagine a lot of it falls along class lines. But the tech bro Libertarian thing was big with Millennial men, and studies indicated Millennial men have more sexist attitudes than GenX. The reason (I believe) is they don’t want to change the traditional arrangement of gender norms when it comes to the distribution of household labor, whereas women are very much tired of that shit. So you’ve got the tech Bros who believe capitalism will save the world, you’ve got the crypto scammers and “effective altruism” from the likes of Sam Bankman Fried, you’ve got the incels, the productivity and minimalist gurus, and this sort of burgeoning dissatisfaction with the status quo embodied in the popularity of men like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson. This is all being facilitated by Millennial men.

And I want to be clear, I think there is something to their grievances, and the way shifts in social norms have made their jobs less satisfying, how their status is tied to their earning power in a system that has been suppressing wages for decades, and how marriage and children are harder now that both parents usually have to work, and men lagging in education, and increased suicide rates, and so on and so forth, but I don’t think these pseudo intellectuals have the solution. They’re just grifting off male disillusionment.

I wish they understood that women are also disillusioned because the system itself is designed to make a few people money at the expense of everyone else. But they’ve been directed to view women as the problem.

These grifters are very slippery. I was active on productivity and minimalist YouTube and podcasts for a while - and I still dabble. There’s a whole cottage industry of guys giving other guys advice (the manosphere.) Well I happen to be interested it self-improvement stuff so I’ve seen a lot of it firsthand, and there’s a lot that’s not hateful at all. I was watching this guy the algorithm served me one day and he was giving general advice about how to be more self-confident, and I thought it was pretty good advice. I was watching the second video where he was talking to an audience full of men, and he singled this guy out and started hammering him with questions about his personal beliefs, the ostensible point was to provoke some kind of insight, but it was also clearly bullying and manipulation and these guys were hanging on every word, including the one being bullied. So I looked the guy up and sure enough it’s Andrew fucking Tate, alleged sex trafficker and serial woman sexual assaulter. That’s the pipeline from trying to improve your life to full-throated misogyny. And I see now that Tate does it by making those men feel like they aren’t shit without him.

[Zoobi]

@DemonTree

I don’t think they see themselves that way. They see ‘coastal elites’ as the ruling class, and themselves as a marginalised majority. Notwithstanding the fact the US system gives them outsize political power, I believe they do lack cultural power: they don’t see their values or concerns reflected in the ‘msm’ or many institutions, and they feel alienated as a consequence.

What values would that be? Keep in mind these must be values that are exclusive to MAGA that aren’t portrayed in any Hollywood movie or television show.

[DemonTree]

@Spice_Weasel

But the tech bro Libertarian thing was big with Millennial men, and studies indicated Millennial men have more sexist attitudes than GenX. The reason (I believe) is they don’t want to change the traditional arrangement of gender norms when it comes to the distribution of household labor, whereas women are very much tired of that shit.

I’m not wedded to the idea it’s Gen Z. It was merely my impression that this stuff was most popular with men somewhat younger than myself, but TBF, that includes a lot of millennials.

And I can understand why many men feel like they’re getting a raw deal from the last few decades of social and economic changes. Part of that is rectifying the raw deal women had been getting for so much longer, but other changes are maybe less clearly beneficial.

@Spice_Weasel

And I want to be clear, I think there is something to their grievances,

That’s refreshing to hear.

@Spice_Weasel

I wish they understood that women are also disillusioned because the system itself is designed to make a few people money at the expense of everyone else. But they’ve been directed to view women as the problem.

The feminist, ‘social justice’ view tends to direct women to see men as the problem. Men need to pull their weight in the home and share the mental load, and stop objectifying women and asking them out in inappropriate situations (anywhere other than a dating app), and stop mansplaining and ignoring women in meetings, and so on and so forth.

All of those complaints are based on genuine problems, but neither side has encouraged the idea that we’re all in this together.

@Spice_Weasel

Well I happen to be interested it self-improvement stuff so I’ve seen a lot of it firsthand, and there’s a lot that’s not hateful at all. I was watching this guy the algorithm served me one day and he was giving general advice about how to be more self-confident, and I thought it was pretty good advice.

@Spice_Weasel

So I looked the guy up and sure enough it’s Andrew fucking Tate, alleged sex trafficker and serial woman sexual assaulter. That’s the pipeline from trying to improve your life to full-throated misogyny. And I see now that Tate does it by making those men feel like they aren’t shit without him.

That’s scary, that it’s so easy to get directed to these men. And there are so many men looking for advice online these days.

I’ve encountered manosphere believers, and they’re basically lost in so much bullshit that it’s impossible to get through to them. There’s usually a core of truth in their beliefs, but they build so much nonsense on top of it that it no longer resembles reality.

They tend to blame feminism for all their woes, but the biggest culprit seems to be increasing isolation driven by technological changes, combined with loss of earning power and job stability for those lower in the distribution. Feminism merely exacerbated the effects of these larger trends on men.

[DemonTree]

@Zoobi

What values would that be?

Ones you would disapprove of, obviously. That’s how values work. If two people have different ideas of what’s moral, and both act on their beliefs, they are each highly likely to think the other is immoral.

[Spice_Weasel]

There are lots of conservative shows and movies, though. There is no shortage of military, cop-worshipping, patriotic hyper masculine entertainment. I can’t speak as much about what’s entertaining for women because by and large I don’t care for film/TV that is meant to appeal to women. I don’t like most romantic comedies, or romantic dramas. Never watched Sex and the City or Gilmore Girls or whatever the conservative equivalent is.

But boy have I read my share of romance novels, and there is a huge industry of Christian romance (much of which I’ve read thanks to my grandmother having nothing else to read.) There are also some weirdly specific subgenres like Christian biker gang romances. And some of the biggest names in romance cater to a very traditional view of gender roles - Harlequin last I knew still has rules for what jobs women and men are and aren’t allowed to have in any book they publish. I’m not knocking it. I can have a fantastically good time with gender role fantasy. I’m just saying it’s available to anyone who wants it.

[Zoobi]

List them, this should be easy for you

[DemonTree]

@Spice_Weasel

There are lots of conservative shows and movies, though. There is no shortage of military, cop-worshipping, patriotic hyper masculine entertainment. I can’t speak as much about what’s entertaining for women because by and large I don’t care for film/TV that is meant to appeal to women. I don’t like most romantic comedies, or romantic dramas. Never watched Sex and the City or Gilmore Girls or whatever the conservative equivalent is.

I did think of cop shows as an exception when I wrote that. They are generally pro-police, and mostly depict them in a positive light. But the truth is, I don’t watch much TV, and I was mostly thinking of news media. Maybe there is no mainstream news media in the US any more? You have left-wing media (biased) and right-wing media (even more biased). It’s pretty noticeable how the former depicts left-wing policy wins and causes as good, and right-wing ones as bad, even if it aims to be objective. And there’s very little right-wing media that even attempts objectivity.

The other thing centre-left media sometimes does is send reporters off to some rural town to interview Republican voters in a diner and find out what their concerns are, and while I’m sure their intentions are good, it really points up the fact that reporters from prestige media do not come from those places, don’t live in them, know anyone from them, or understand their lives and values. They may as well be from different tribes.

(And the right doesn’t even bother doing this, because they (mostly wrongly) think they already understand what left-wingers, or ‘liberal elites’ believe and care about.)

@Spice_Weasel

But boy have I read my share of romance novels, and there is a huge industry of Christian romance (much of which I’ve read thanks to my grandmother having nothing else to read.) There are also some weirdly specific subgenres like Christian biker gang romances.

That is weirdly specific, and two kind of contradictory tropes.

@Spice_Weasel

And some of the biggest names in romance cater to a very traditional view of gender roles - Harlequin last I knew still has rules for what jobs women and men are and aren’t allowed to have in any book they publish. I’m not knocking it. I can have a fantastically good time with gender role fantasy. I’m just saying it’s available to anyone who wants it.

Huh, I had no idea. I’m trying to remember what jobs the characters had in the romance novels I read as a teen, but it was a sadly long time ago. What I do recall is that it was very much wish-fulfilment: the heroes were tall, strong, handsome, had high status jobs and a decent amount of money, and were ‘alpha male’ types who would sweep the heroine off her feet. The heroines had a range of jobs, appearances, and personalities but were always attractive, even if they didn’t realise it at first. Probably the most consistent thing about those books was that true love invariably meant great sex, right from the first time, even if the female character was a virgin.

And thinking about it, I enjoyed those books at the time, but now that I have more choices, I almost only read het when it’s not traditional gender roles.

Re the Christian romances, do they follow the ‘no sex before marriage’ rule? And end at the bedroom door? And are the main characters usually committed Christians already, or do the books often feature one or the other ‘finding God’?

[Spice_Weasel]

It varies whether someone gets converted or not, but yeah, no sex before marriage. The most you’re getting out of that is a passionate kiss. There was one particularly ill advised Christian romance that featured a Christian SS Officer converting a Jewish woman in the concentration camp where they meet.

There are certain things I like about traditional gender roles, I’m amused by certain chivalrous things and don’t mind one bit in a romance when manly men are being manly. But I like to poke at what’s underneath that, or contextualize it, or illustrate its limitations. I think a lot of romance novels don’t go deep enough into character.

For my first book the female main character is sexually inexperienced but that came naturally from her history. She was raped at 16 and is only 23 in the present. She coped with her trauma by holding men at arms’ length. I couldn’t really figure out a way to tell the story I wanted to tell without going there. In the second book, though, the (different) heroine is twice that age, she’s seen and done it all, but she’s rusty after a long stint as a single mother who figured the solution to avoiding abusive relationships was to avoid relationships altogether.

People are complicated.

@DemonTree

You have left-wing media (biased) and right-wing media (even more biased). It’s pretty noticeable how the former depicts left-wing policy wins and causes as good, and right-wing ones as bad, even if it aims to be objective.

I don’t watch news TV for basically that reason. I can feel the pandering.

I recently subscribed to the New York Times and the Economist. The Times clearly hates Trump (for compelling reasons), yet it’s solidly pro-capitalist, pro-business and a little soft on Israel. It’s hard for me to consider it left wing. The Economist is probably as close to right-wing as my news is going to get. It seems to be international in scope, and I find many of the articles inscrutable because I know absolutely nothing about economics, but it’s fun trying to figure it all out. Based on my admittedly limited experience I would say the Times is good journalism and the Economist is great journalism.

I followed some guys on Substack for a while who were pariahs kicked out of their journalism jobs for saying the wrong thing on a liberal news site. Their posts were interesting but their followers were biased toward the extreme right-wing and after so much right-wing apologism I could take it no more. It’s just as well. Substack has been thoroughly enshittified at this point.

[DemonTree]

@Spice_Weasel

It varies whether someone gets converted or not, but yeah, no sex before marriage. The most you’re getting out of that is a passionate kiss.

Disappointing.

@Spice_Weasel

There was one particularly ill advised Christian romance that featured a Christian SS Officer converting a Jewish woman in the concentration camp where they meet.

I have no words.

@Spice_Weasel

There are certain things I like about traditional gender roles, I’m amused by certain chivalrous things and don’t mind one bit in a romance when manly men are being manly. But I like to poke at what’s underneath that, or contextualize it, or illustrate its limitations. I think a lot of romance novels don’t go deep enough into character.

For my first book the female main character is sexually inexperienced but that came naturally from her history. She was raped at 16 and is only 23 in the present. She coped with her trauma by holding men at arms’ length. I couldn’t really figure out a way to tell the story I wanted to tell without going there. In the second book, though, the (different) heroine is twice that age, she’s seen and done it all, but she’s rusty after a long stint as a single mother who figured the solution to avoiding abusive relationships was to avoid relationships altogether.

People are complicated.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying reading about traditional gender roles, or having a character who’s a virgin. The romance novels I read as a teen had quite a variety of female characters, presumably so different women could find one they identify with. But ultimately they were intended as escapism and wish-fulfilment. They didn’t totally avoid serious themes, but they didn’t go into them deeply, because the focus was supposed to stay on the romance, and the predictability was part of the point. It sounds like your book does engage with these issues more seriously; it’s not going to be a standard easy read that doesn’t require much engagement.

@Spice_Weasel

I recently subscribed to the New York Times and the Economist. The Times clearly hates Trump (for compelling reasons), yet it’s solidly pro-capitalist, pro-business and a little soft on Israel. It’s hard for me to consider it left wing. The Economist is probably as close to right-wing as my news is going to get. It seems to be international in scope, and I find many of the articles inscrutable because I know absolutely nothing about economics, but it’s fun trying to figure it all out. Based on my admittedly limited experience I would say the Times is good journalism and the Economist is great journalism.

This is the “politics isn’t a spectrum, it’s multidimensional” thing. You’ve got a left-right split on economics, and also a left-right split on social issues. The former was more important for most of the 20th century, and left-wing parties primarily represented the working class. But since the collapse of communism and rise of neoliberalism, that has been gradually changing. There is still disagreement on economic issues, but there is far more of a consensus on what works, and the main axis distinguishing the left and right has switched to social issues. The NYT definitely does not support the economic left. But it does usually agree with the left on social issues (AFAIK almost unavoidably so, due to the demographics of its reporters).

As for the Economist, in general it’s more common for smart and well educated people to be economically conservative (which benefits then) than socially conservative (which doesn’t), so economically conservative media tends to be better quality than socially conservative media. It’s not just the journalists, it’s the audience.

@Spice_Weasel

I followed some guys on Substack for a while who were pariahs kicked out of their journalism jobs for saying the wrong thing on a liberal news site. Their posts were interesting but their followers were biased toward the extreme right-wing and after so much right-wing apologism I could take it no more. It’s just as well. Substack has been thoroughly enshittified at this point.

Not sure what you mean by Substack being enshittified, but I’ve seen plenty of audience capture of former liberals (and a few who avoided it). The Substacks I read most often are Matt Yglesias’ and Scott Alexander’s; I think the former left his journalism job (at the outlet he co-founded) voluntarily, but it was due to professional/ideological disagreements. His subscribers average centre-right IMO, while he is centre left, but the comments are usually interesting and informative. Scott Alexander just isn’t on the usual left-right spectrum, I think.

Audience capture seems difficult to avoid, unfortunately, especially on Twitter. People seem to get addicted to the likes and retweets and follows, and that’s reinforcement to keep doing whatever produces them. Since Elon monetised engagement, things have got even worse.

[Spice_Weasel]

@DemonTree

Not sure what you mean by Substack being enshittified,

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that term, so here, the original article by Corey Doctorow:

The Enshittification of TikTok

When I first started using Substack, it seemed to be focused mainly on professionals - journalists and writers in particular. The last time I used the app it had inserted an algorithm pushing a lot of not very thoughtful content, making it no different than other kinds of social media and therefore off limits. It now seems to be squeezing writers for everything that they are worth and forcing them to be slaves to the metrics, and algorithm-driven revenue models generally don’t care about user experience and degenerate to extremism and polarization - which is what happened. I started following this lady who writes about happiness and somehow ended up reading rants by angry feminists.

I cannot responsibly use social media, which may be idiosyncratic to my particular neurons, but I’m very anti-algorithm to begin with. The fact that it’s been inundated with low-effort, polarizing/high-emotion crap made it a massive waste of my time that also made me feel depressed and anxious.

I recognize I could just read the emails, which is what my husband does with Your Local Epidemiologist, it’s just, it’s just too close to social media temptation for my comfort.

For some reason the only social media where I don’t have this problem is YouTube. I guess you can only get so extreme with cross stitch tutorials.