Five Habits of Highly Annoying Online Liberals

Dedicated to the memory of Will Stancil.

  1. Obviously the president cannot do X, he doesn’t have the political capital/votes/the Supreme Court. Your average online liberal is very big on making excuses for why it’s just not possible for the Democrats to do anything, but very sure that more, harder voting next time will solve the problem. That this strategy hasn’t worked the last six presidential elections won’t stop them from making more excuses next time.
  2. But the parliamentarian says we cannot do this. The online liberal is very strict on rules when those rules prevent Democrats from achieving anything. Rules need to be obeyed, no matter how nonsensical and attempts to get around them are just wrong. That the president breaks not just rules, but the law on a daily basis by say supporting the genocide in Gaza somehow always escapes their attention. Rules are sacred and it would be wrong to break or ignore them, regardless the outcome. Sportsmanship is everything.
  3. But if we abolish the filibuster, we cannot use it ourselves when Trump gets into power again.. The online liberal is not so keen on trying to fix the whole broken political system, but rather worries endlessly about what the GOP might do if we change anything. The filibuster being the most well known example, but there’s also e.g. the blue slip procedure. If a senator objects to a proposed judicial candidate in their state, they can send a blue slip to the responsible committee and as a courtesy that candidate will be removed. Something the Republicans paid no attention to whatsoever when they lead these committees, but the Democrats keep adhering to.
  4. But the Supreme Court will strike it down anyway so this is pointless. The online liberal loves to capitulate before the fight. In that they resemble their leaders, who are also not keen to start anything that might require more effort than sending out fund raising emails. The filibuster is a good example of this, as this is always brought up as an example of why we can’t have nice things. But did you know that the modern filibuster consists of nothing more than some junior staffer sending an email that their boss would filibuster if a bill is brought to a vote? No effort required at all. Considering the laziness of your average senator, that Democrats do not call this bluff is inexcusable, but understandable considering the laziness of your average senator.
  5. Vote Blue no Matter Who. Or, it doesn’t matter that Biden supports genocide, Trump is worse so it’s imperative that you vote for him regardless of what he does. Don’t put pressure on Democrats to change, you don’t want the Republicans to get in, do you? Also seen in the UK, where the usual bunch of centrist muppets had spent the last half decade describing most Labour voters as antisemitic scum who should disappear, but still expect their votes. The online liberal expects the voters to adjust to their politicians, not the other way around. The online liberal therefore will always scold the voter for expecting their elected leaders to listen to their concerns.

“people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them”

The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez interview in the (ugh) New York Times is a must read:

I’ve been begging the party to let me help them for two years. That’s also the damn thing of it. I’ve been trying to help. Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help. And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they’re blaming us for their loss.

Biden may have finally won the election, but in both the House and Senate the Democrats either lost seats or won less than expected, leaving the possibility of a divided government open. This unexpected result was of course immediately blamed on “the left” and Black Lives Matter and other centrist bugaloos, but as AOC points out, the actual leftwing candidates won. And, as she also points out in the interview, a lot of the losses by more rightwing candidates were due to just plain incompetence: not spending enough money, not spending it on the right channels, just plain not running a proper campaign.

If the party believes after 94 percent of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organizers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, after so many people organized Philadelphia, the signal from the Democratic Party is the John Kasichs won us this election? I mean, I can’t even describe how dangerous that is.

What AOC is careful not to say here is that the Democratic Party’s establishment finds it less important to win than it is to keep their left in check. Medicare for all, the New Green Deal, Black Lives Matters may be vote winners but the Democratic establishment opposes these policies just as much as the GOP does. In general, they’re content to be the junior partner to the GOP in America’s political duopoly, only getting in power once the Republicans have fucked up too much and the country needs a cleanup again. Democrats winning elections with actual leftwing policies is the last thing they want.

Detroit: urban renewal or hipster experiment?

If there’s one city that should be the poster child for post-industrial collapse, it’s Detroit, the decline of the car industry there followed by a corresponding decline in population which in turn meant that huge parts of the city haven fallen into disuse, its suburbs returning to wilderness. Pictures of the city shows an urban core that looks like a set from Mad Max, combined with suburbs that are slowly returning to prairie. Things have gotten so bad you can get houses for $100 or less even, but even then rarely find buyers. The city is broke, industry has moved away and new employers are wary to move in. It’s not an unique story, plenty of industrial cities in Europe and America both suffered the same fate from the sixties onward, as their industries lost the competition with emerging industrialising nations in Asia, but Detroit was hit much harder than any other city, had further to fall. The current recession hasn’t helped either.

But as Aaron M. Renn shows in an excellent overview post on New Geography, this collapse offers opportunities as well:

But as with Youngstown, one thing this massive failure has made possible is ability to come up with radical ideas for the city, and potentially to even implement some of them. Places like Flint and Youngstown might be attracting new ideas and moving forward, but it is big cities that inspire the big, audacious dreams. And that is Detroit. Its size, scale, and powerful brand image are attracting not just the region’s but the world’s attention. It may just be that some of the most important urban innovations in 21st century America end up coming not from Portland or New York, but places like Youngstown and, yes, Detroit.

Disasters, whether slow moving ones like Detroit or much faster ones, like in New Orleans, always offer opportunities for radical change, either positive or negative. They provide an empty canvas on which a sufficiently determined government or visionaire could imprint their vision. In his post Renn contrasts two conflicting ideas for the redevelopment of this empty space. One is a topdown vision still largely vapourware because neither government nor business is strong enough and interested enough to contemplate implementing it:

One natural response is the “shrinking cities” movement. While this has gotten traction in Youngstown and Flint, as well as in places like Germany, it is Detroit that provides the most large scale canvas on which to see this play out, as well as the place where some of the most comprehensive and radical thinking is taking place. For example, the American Institute of Architects produced a study that called for Detroit to shrink back to its urban core and a selection of urban villages, surrounded by greenbelts and banked land.

The other is an already existing, bottom-up movement as people, both local and newcomers, adapt to the possibilities of all the empty spaces and realise that the city government can’t stop them. It’s a typically American vision, individualistic and libertarian:

In most cities, municipal government can’t stop drug dealing and violence, but it can keep people with creative ideas out. Not in Detroit. In Detroit, if you want to do something, you just go do it. Maybe someone will eventually get around to shutting you down, or maybe not. It’s a sort of anarchy in a good way as well as a bad one. Perhaps that overstates the case. You can’t do anything, but it is certainly easier to make things happen there than in most places because the hand of government weighs less heavily.

[…]

As the focus on agriculture and even hunting show, in Detroit people are almost literally hearkening back to the formative days of the Midwest frontier, when pioneer settlers faced horrible conditions, tough odds, and often severe deprivation, but nevertheless built the foundation of the Midwest we know, and the culture that powered the industrial age.

Neither vision really appeals to me, I must say. Both deny Detroit its identity as an industrial city, as a Black city, both ignore the actual inhabitants of the city in favour of utopian dreaming. Detroit deserves better than to be a hipster experiment or some sort of centrally planned monstrosity. True renewal needs to come from the people who actually live in the city, with their input and consideration for their wishes.

There is of course a certain libertarian appeal to d.i.y. urban renewal, but the question how much the people involved help create a true community and how much it’s just trustafarians dicking around.

Starving the beasts

The Republicans want to pass a new farm bill without food stamps, the only way millions of poor Americans can get enough food to, well, not starve:

“So, that brings me to the Farm Bill. Which the fucking Republicans want to pass without Food Stamps. A lot of very intelligent commentary has been written on how the Farm Bill has always been a compromise bill, wherein Food Stamps are traded for support for agribusiness, and how this compromise is breaking down. But you know, I don’t feel intelligent or reasoned or informative on the topic. What I feel is fury and betrayal. I know, first hand, real live personal, how utterly and vastly important being able to eat can be.

As Charles Dickens put it, over a hundred and fifty years ago

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”

“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.

“Both very busy, sir.”

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”

“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”

“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.

“You wish to be anonymous?”

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

What’s the German for schadenfreude?

On the eve of the presidential election, Der Spiegel reported on the state of the American nation

This realization became only too apparent during and after Hurricane Sandy, the monster storm that ravaged America’s East Coast last week, its effects made all the more devastating by the fact that its winds were whipping across an already weakened country. The infrastructure in New York, New Jersey and New England was already in trouble long before the storm made landfall near Atlantic City. The power lines in Brooklyn and Queens, on Long Island and in New Jersey, in one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas, are not underground, but are still installed along a fragile and confusing above-ground network supported by utility poles, the way they are in developing countries.

Ouch.

Complete article does feature cameos by Tom Friedman and Aaron Sorkin, so take with a grain of salt.