Here, I'll give it a go. Certainly the unifying mythos was there - the 1%/the 99% - and by the way this isn't preposterous. But since you say "necessarily preposterous," would you say it was in fact, not preposterous enough? Too easily subjected to rational verification/quantification?
Also there were no resources of any import seized, for redistributing. Promises of future rewards seem like they were in place however.
The "prisoner's dilemma" portion, was effectively impossible without becoming an armed mob. They wanted to convert fence-sitters through sympathy, but I guess we're saying, fear is what works? Therefore instead of sympathy for the guys & gals getting pepper-sprayed, Joe Middleclass fears being pepper-sprayed himself, and the STATE is the one triggering the loss aversion. Interesting.
An absurd dogma causes trouble makers to self-select out. The "%1/%99" trope was cheap demagoguery, and to this day reliably identifies skeptics as discreditable "liberarians," or "tea baggers," and "probably racists."
Occupy had no resources to distribute, and no ultimatum for the upper middle classes, so as a revolution it was a dud. Post-modern feminism has been a successful revolution (unless it's counter-revolutionary to say the revolution has ended already, comrade)because its resource was essentially sex, whereby male academics and administrators were convinced that being a "sensitive new age guy" would get them laid, and that critical theory was something more than gibberish.
This ushered in a generation of cultural studies programs that exist primarily to legitimize the victimization claims of groups who incorporate an anti-capitalist mandate into their demands for public money. Governments are cool with it because 1. they are non-violent demands for more revenue, and 2. government defers to those academics as "expert" policy advisers. It's a bit of a circle squirt.
BLM has the chance to be a successful revolutionary movement, much moreso than the Oregon ranch guys or some of the militias, but they haven't got the formula down yet. I don't want to help because all these movements have totalitarian aims, as from their perspective it's ok if it's a dictatorship of "good" people.
Have fun storming the castle!
1. Occupy Wall Street was about the financial crisis in '08. People were angry that the banks got bailed out and everyone else just got (arguably) left out. It went away when the economy finally improved, though there is still enough anger to fuel at least one Presidential campaign.
2. Feminism is about equal jobs and rights for women (including in politics). While I'm sure some of the men had ulterior motives, alot more of them probably just listened to what the women were actually saying and realized that they had a point. Why should half the population be treated worse than the other half? All of your other complaints about a "pro-victim" academic curriculum, or whatever you're trying to say here, are just nonsense. Academics have always been weird. The politics behind universities are also weird, but ultimately small stakes and hardly "revolutionary". People don't face down the police and the army because their college doesn't have the right sort of Women's studies program.
3. BLM is about one segment of the population being prosecuted, hurt, and killed by police more than any other group of people. "Stop shooting us" is a powerful message, especially when it's backed up by numbers and video, but it's not revolutionary. I would also add that the problem has been made worse by the Drug war and the prison-industrial complex so what's surprising is that it hasn't happened sooner and with more people backing it.
4. Trump just wants to be President. His supporters are basically the anti-Occupy Wall Street crowd. They're angry about job prospects (especially since 2008), but they blame immigrants and Democrats (+ NAFTA, GATT, etc.) rather than rich bankers. It's not something we've seen at this level since the 1900s or earlier, but it's not new and they don't really seem to want to change anything politically with the way government works.
TL;DR: your thesis doesn't seem to hold up once you examine why each movement exists and what it's trying to do. Other than ISIS, but basically they're just Saddam Hussein's old posse with some new faces.
It's 19 hours and 55 minute of work every week with a 3 year contract to do gender studies in a physics department. Do you know that the Nazis had a field for facial recognition of Jewish features on faces?
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
Are you really surprised that universities are looking for researchers researching all kinds of things? Someone I know just got a (post-doc) job researching social comparison theory and she can pretty much do whatever she wants in that field. That’s not even socially relevant, it’s merely interesting (nothing wrong with that).
Given how socially relevant this topic is (i.e. why do women decide against going into physics or even leave physics? How can we attract more women?) I’m really quite confused why you turn your nose at some poorly paid social research job looking into this for two days a week …
Social research is not luxurious. It’s badly paid, the methods at our disposal suck, the topic and subject (human brains and how they interact with each other) is fucking complex as hell, we don’t even know how to deal with it … it ain’t easy. Just so you know.
I remember the newsman's exact words to this day:
"Scientists are studying the brain of Respected Comrade Kim Jong-il, because the Respected Comrade is capable of feats of mental power beyond the ability of ordinary human beings."
The federal power creep that we've been experiencing for the last several decades has done a lot to create a system that is ripe for abuse.
The people who drafted the constitution actually pushed for a Federal government that was larger far more powerful than the previous Articles of Confederation did. And they continued set up precedents while they were in office for a larger and more unified government than many of the States likely expected. They also recognized that a modern Democracy was a bit of an experiment compared to the rest of the world and were unable/unwilling to make it too large too soon.
And most of U.S. history seems to agree with this approach and it shows that a large open government is less likely to be abused than a small government which can be captured and rigged by a few groups or even individuals. It's the separation of powers between branches of the government, more than the size and powers of the Feds vs. the States that helps to limit the chance for dictatorship.
> [The German emigre] believes that America is the country of Creative Evolution once it shakes off its middle-class complacency, its bureaucratized industry, its tentacle-like and spreading government, and sets itself innerly free.
The federal power creep is mostly about the difference between living in a place like say Pennsylvaia and South Carolina. The states refused to deal with key, important problems of the day.
No axes to grind here, hmm?
(Hint: there's a huge difference between civil rights movements -- those demanding equal respect -- and the fulminations of the privileged who think life's a zero-sum game and anyone else making up ground means that they're losing out. Alas, you don't seem to get it.)
The bullet points hint at the issue being interpreted as a zero sum game. Imagine this slide show from a different ethnic group or gender and how it might be interpreted.
[1]http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story-...
"This is not work for white folks to lead"
"We need solidarity with our asian friends and colleagues"
"Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women"
(...)
"Workers can sack employers at will, and that causes employers financial hardship, so we need employer protection laws" is a less-charged example of why it doesn't work just to straight flip such types of statement.
Additionally, if we accept that white women are underrepresented then what it's doing is saying that some underrepresentations are better than others.
The correct text should probably be:
"Workers can quit employers at will, and that causes employers financial hardship, so we need employer protection laws"
> I make an effort to insult everyone therefore if anyone is insulted they must be a zealot. It's certainly not possible for reasonable people to take offence to an insult so long as I also insult the "other side" of the debate.
I'm not entirely sure that the "social math" you're attempting to use here actually works in real life.
But to digress further, even if this "social math" worked out, statements like "Trump is popular" are not necessarily contested even by people that disagree with Trump, while statement like "feminism annexed academia" is a much more inflammatory and contested statement.
It's not my social math, it's from the book I mentioned in the original post. There is a political calculus to power, and there are some good game theory models of it. It would be hard to deny that academia has seen a sea change in political thinking in the last 20 years (unless we've always been at war with eurasia), just as against all reason and sense, Trump has managed to become a contender. Stuff changes. There are models to describe some of it. Sorry if I tipped a sacred cow. I thought this was hacker news not reddit.
> I make an effort to be sufficiently even handed that only a committed partisan could take offense
not at attacking the contents of the book that you are discussing in your original post. I have not read that book, therefore I am not on sufficient ground to debate its contents.
On the other hand, your idea that you have been "sufficiently even handed" requires more explanation. From what I've read from you in this comment thread, that appears to mean, "I've made comments that people all over the political spectrum might not like, therefore somehow upsetting someone on the 'left' and someone on the 'right' balances out to upsetting no one. Therefore, only extremely committed zealots will be upset by my comments." This is the "social math" that does not work.
> Sorry if I tipped a sacred cow. I thought this was hacker news not reddit.
I could direct the same comment at you. Making comments like this is meant to put me on the defensive. You're claiming that I'm acting like an "irrational Redditor" rather than a "intelligent HN reader." Ending all of your comments with the equivalent of, "I'm just saying the truth that no one wants to hear" gives you more in common with Trump that you may like to admit.
1. Australian right for women to vote. It took another 60 years because they didn't care about aboriginal votes. That's not equality!!! 2. An education system that went from a majority of honors students being male to 80% women earning honors in 30 years - and you call that equality? Do you argue that boys have become stupid (as is the modern myth of feminism) for such a drastic swing at almost all levels of academia.
Feminism has nothing to do with equality. The poster you responded to was totally correct. Research falling performance of boys before commenting. While you're at it, check hiring rates and incomes of younger women in the states. I hear the word pendulum swing (which means double standard hypocrite) a lot these days.
Stating that Feminism has never been about equality is an absolute statement. Even if it's true that Feminism has had little to do with equality, all you're doing here of swinging to the opposite extreme in response to it, which doesn't seem like a healthy attitude.
> 1. Australian right for women to vote. It took another 60 years because they didn't care about aboriginal votes. That's not equality!!!
That was quite a long time ago when attitudes towards race were different. It seems unfair to take this attitudes and apply them with an absolute statement like "never." Would it make sense to state that the United States has never been about equal rights and point to slavery, "separate but equal," and the KKK as my proof?
> 2. An education system that went from a majority of honors students being male to 80% women earning honors in 30 years - and you call that equality? Do you argue that boys have become stupid (as is the modern myth of feminism) for such a drastic swing at almost all levels of academia.
Unless you can directly connect Feminism to this, then you need to explain what you feel the mechanisms are that Feminism uses to indirectly influence these results. Which education system (I assume Australia)? How has Feminism affected these results?
The 60s civil rights movement was a classically liberal movement. They were demanding equal treatment under the law. "Civil rights" movements today are usually asking for special treatment. (edit: Just to clarify, I'm referring specifically to the US for this last point)
I wholeheartedly disagree with this opinion.
Seeing how he's idealized into an impossible standard for activists today, it's cool looking at the correspondence MLK Jr. got back in the day (http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/theme/4809). Here are some samples:
> Mr. Young criticizes Dr. King and the black community for their support of heavyweight champion Cassius Clay's refusal to be drafted into the military. He also expresses worry about the quality of black leadership and urges a move from a selfish focus on Negroes only to concern for all people.
> Calling Dr. King "The Trouble Maker of the United States," Mrs. Shaw criticizes Dr. King's methods in the Civil Rights Movement. She argues that a "campaign of love is in order" rather than demonstrations.
> Harl Douglass writes in disgust at the position Dr. King has taken on Vietnam War. As a once full supporter of the civil rights movement, he believes that Dr. King "is somewhat unstable and he has made millions of enemies for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference....." Douglass warns Dr. King and SCLC officials that if they continue to go down the same track they will lose support of white moderates.
If you want to see how racist america is and how you can't succeed look at how poorly the Japanese have done after interment, if it wasn't for affirmative action ivies would be all Asian.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?p...
This article even gets offended when girls aren't totally dominating by an overwhelming majority at ALL institutions. That's feminism.
It's almost as though you don't know what you're writing about.
When you see it as just part of the broader identity politics movement, it's easier to identify the resources: moral vindication and reassigned blame for their troubles, handouts from other people's pockets, and discrimination against the perceived oppressor group ("affirmative action").
If something is a political belief you do not share it is easy to call it a myth. If something is a political policy you think is wrongheaded or unfair you can always claim that someone benefits unfairly from that policy.
As such your theory really doesn’t tell you anything, or at least anything interesting. It’s just worthless. A nice story, nothing more.
The actual interesting thing happens when you engage with the content of political beliefs and policies.
And of course we should engage the content of political beliefs. But we should also seek to understand politics as a phenomenon in itself. Our understanding of the beliefs is otherwise hollow.
So “invent a necessarily preposterous myth” is out. It’s now just about some belief, doesn’t matter how it came to be or what it is. Can be true, can be false, can be anything.
If that’s the starting point then all the rest falls apart, really. It’s senseless.
You can talk about the role of signaling or whatever, but the connective tissue is missing and the entire interesting and potentially insightful part of the theory is missing.
There's substantial evidence for both of these though, which you're not going to address. And minorities were kept down by force of law until at least the 1960s; have the systems put in place to do so been fully dismantled?
You seem very sure about what I will and won't address. Why don't we find out? What is this evidence?
> And minorities were kept down by force of law until at least the 1960s; have the systems put in place to do so been fully dismantled?
I'd say yes. The right to vote is firmly protected (as for voter ID laws, I think they're very reasonable). Racial-based government policy making is prohibited. This prohibition is enforced except for in cases where the discrimination helps minorities. Private discrimination is a serious legal issue, sometimes pursued to the point of absurdity. The current shakedown of the car loan industry over racial discrimination is a good example, and many other cases pursued under the doctrine of "disparate impact". We don't hose down peaceful protesters anymore either, and even in the 60s that was appalling to people outside of the South. The contrast between Birmingham in 1963 and Ferguson in 2014 is instructive.
The War on Drugs is disproportionately hurting minorities, and I think it's a terrible policy on many counts, but I don't think you can frame it as the machinery of minority oppression.
The welfare state is definitely hurting minorities, but again, I think it's just bad policy-making, not intentional subjugation.
EDIT: Responding to fnovd here, because Hacker News is throttling me:
I happen to think that people should be free to put whatever they want into their bodies. This philosophical debate is not a racial issue. So let's assume that we decide to ban drugs, like we've banned stealing cars. If minorities are more likely to steal cars, and more likely to end up in jail because they were stealing cars, or more likely to be poor because their dad was in jail for stealing cars, or more likely to sucked into stealing cars because it's an easy source of profit in a poor neighborhood, that doesn't make banning stealing cars a racist policy.
Agreed.
> I don't think you can frame it as the machinery of minority oppression.
Erm, what? So you're saying that, while the War on Drugs disproportionately hurts minorities, it's not a machine of minority oppression? I can't wrap my head around that.
Any discussion I hear about race always takes me back to the old Atwater quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#Atwater_on_the_Sou...
Let's go for the reductio ad absurdum.
We have a choice between two policies. The first says if you're accused of being a child's parent and you can prove with a genetic test that you aren't then you don't have to pay child support. The second says if you're accused of being a child's parent then you have to pay child support even if you can prove you're not.
Suppose we know that there is a sex disparity in impact for this policy. The people falsely accused of being a child's parent are disproportionately men and single parents with custody are disproportionately women. If we let the accused parent prove the facts then it will benefit men to the detriment of women.
Therefore, by your logic, it is a sexist policy to not force people who can prove they aren't a child's parent to pay child support anyway. Which is absurd.
No, the form of my argument is that a policy can be implicitly racist without being explicitly racist. A law banning rap music from the radio won't appear racist if your only criteria for a racist policy is explicitly mentioning race. This is why I included the Atwater quote.
An explicit policy like officially-segregated schools is objectively racist. "Implicitly racist" is completely subjective.
The Atwater quote kind of makes the point. Is lowering taxes a racist policy? Nothing about the policy is different just because you can find some racist who supports it specifically because they know it will have a disparate impact. So you are implying that any policy with a disparate impact is "implicitly" racist, because a racist might support it for only that reason.
But that makes the definition of "racist" so broad that it loses all meaning. It makes the law against marijuana racist but also the law against speeding and the law against felons possessing a handgun.
"Implicitly racist" is far from being completely subjective. A law banning US citizens whose ancestors lived in Africa 500 years ago from voting isn't explicitly racist: one could argue that it's based purely on geography and that ancestry and geography are only incidentally linked. It's implicitly racist given an understanding of the context in which it is applied.
Taken out of context, the War on Drugs can presented as race-neutral. You can describe the laws as they are written and stop there. This is not an honest discussion of the War on Drugs. We're not just talking about laws, we're talking about enforcement. Look at the data. Look at the statistics. I'm not just saying that.
http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUHresultsP... 2013 Drug usage rates, by race
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/... 2014 Drug abuse violation rates, by race
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/... 2014 Drug abuse violations, by category
http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf 2010 US Census, by race
This tells me that the ratio of Whites to Blacks in the U.S. is roughly ~6:1. The ratio of drug use between Whites and Blacks is ~1:1. The ratio of drug abuse violations between Whites and Blacks is ~2:1. Do you agree that these figures are correct? If so, how do you explain the discrepancy between usage vs violations between Whites and Blacks? Looking for an honest analysis. My conclusion was that the laws and policies which constitute the War on Drugs have disproportionately affected Blacks. CMV.
Startups?
how these assholes seize power. It's through charismatic promises of future rewards
Startups.
There are great businesses out there that respond to real market needs, but a lot of tech companies only seem to exist in the window of lag between collapsing marginal cost and eventual market saturation.
But Seiji's calling attention to the similarities provides good insights.
Also the difference you list is not actually that much of a difference. Sure, politics is about control of coercive power, but so are businesses (especially the most succesful ones). Politics is also about negotiations, deals, showmanship, exchanges for mutual benefit(unless you are naive about how politics really works) - aka sales. Furthermore both radical movements and startups need to fund-raise and rally volunteers during their early days, and both do so on little more than the promise of dreams.
They are both equally unlikely to succeed. But when they do, their impact is profound (often one is profoundly good and the other is profoundly bad). I could think of more going down the tangent created by the parent.
It doesn't matter what one blares for or against; please don't do it in the first place. HN threads are for conversation, not ideological soapboxes.
So long as you can keep those resources coming to your ruling coalition of highly replaceable idiots, you are golden. Read Smith and DeMesquita's "Dictator's Handbook" for details of how this works.
It doesn't matter whether that myth is of a 3000 year reign, the supreme right of a proletariat, the divinity of leader, that my golf handicap includes 11 holes in one, the revolution, or even that my particular tribe or ethnic group is morally superior to your tribe or ethnic group. It's all the same shit.
What people don't talk about is how these assholes seize power. It's through charismatic promises of future rewards to people who think they have nothing. They appeal to the greed and impulsiveness of the poor, it's a straight short con.
The nuanced part is how you get current status quo supporters to switch sides and provide their support to the challenger. They do this with a second message that triggers the middling man's sense of loss aversion. This is just posing a credible prisoners dilemma in which if moderates and supporters defect now, they get to keep their social position, but if they hold out, they will lose everything.
Arguably, this model of political polarization shows how ISIS works, how feminism annexed academia, why Trump is popular, why Occupy failed but why BLM could grow exponentially.
Nazi's were repugnant, but history would show that being repugnant is likely more indicative of political success than failure.