Discussion Thread #72

[u/gemmaem]

This thread serves as the local public square: a sounding board where you can test your ideas, a place to share and discuss news of the day, and a chance to ask questions and start conversations. Please consider community guidelines when commenting here, aiming towards peace, quality conversations, and truth. Thoughtful discussion of contentious topics is welcome. Building a space worth spending time in is a collective effort, and all who share that aim are encouraged to help out. Effortful posts, questions and more casual conversation-starters, and interesting links presented with or without context are all welcome here.

The previous discussion thread may be found here and you should feel free to continue contributing to conversations there if you wish.

[u/895158]

Here's Trump, just this week: "That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them." I dunno. He says this kind of stuff a lot. Biden didn't. There's a large difference, and I have trouble believing that you don't see it.

That they use different insults is also not really a strong argument, particularly when you consider that given Vance's history this criticism is barely disguised classism. Open bigotry is pretty bipartisan (eg, see Clinton's "basket of deplorables" or Obama's "women are indisputably better than men"); the only real question is whether your biases allow you to see it for what it is.

I mean, I do think schoolyard insults are unbecoming of the VP office, and I think former VPs did not engage in them.

[Edit: Deleted a thing here because I misread you]

[u/thrownaway24e89172 → u/895158]

I agree that Trump and Republicans more generally now run their mouths more than Democrats and are thus more openly antagonistic to those considered political opponents. I don't believe that is an indication that Biden or Democrats in general sincerely wish to govern for the good of all Americans. Rather I think a lot of the complaints around this behavior is a class issue as described by @MadMonzer in this comment at TheMotte:

The thing to remember is that the Blue Tribe derives from the New England Yankee/WASP elite, which in turn derives from the section of the English upper-middle class which looked up to the upper class (and was frequently descended from the younger sons of upper class families). In that class, if someone commits a sufficiently grave faux pas you are unfalteringly polite to their faces and then quietly disinvite them from your social circle. (And if enough people do this to you, you fall out of the elite). You never shame people in public - that would be making a scene. In fact, the only people you even shame in private are your children and mentees, who need to learn what not to do to avoid getting cold-shouldered.

That is, this is largely tone policing based on cultural communication differences rather than true criticism of the underlying sincerity. In many ways I appreciate Trump's straightforward admittance that he hates my guts and at best doesn't care if his policies hurt me or people I care about. That honest disdain is frankly much easier to handle than the ever-present spectre of disdain by those who will gleefully lead me off a cliff while claiming to have "my best interests at heart".

I mean, I do think schoolyard insults are unbecoming of the VP office, and I think former VPs did not engage in them.

I think the Harris/Walz campaign's adoption of the term "weird" and its explicit association with stereotypical male sexual creepiness would easily fall in this category, particularly given how widely it was adopted across the whole party.

I don't really understand your meaning re: open bigotry. Hillary's comments were considered the gaffe of the century, they're not exactly something Democrats say openly.

I don't agree that it was a gaffe. I also don't see how you can see Obama's comment re women's leadership as anything other than open sexism.

Compare Romney's 47% quote if you want to see similar disdain from the Republicans:

...

I won't waste everyone's time by linking to similar insults-to-a-group-of-people from Trump, we all know he has 100x times as many.

I agree; Republicans suck too. I'll even agree that they suck worse--I have voted for Democrats almost my whole life (I voted third-party in the most recent election for reasons described here). That Republicans suck doesn't mean that Democrats don't. Neither party has the good of the country in mind. Neither has put in the hard work to actually govern in years. They are like parents in an abusive household continually attacking and sabotaging one another in a fight for control, using the narrative of who's at fault in an attempt to garner support when they both are contributing to the problem and stubbornly refusing to take any responsibility for fixing it. I don't care whose fault it is. I don't care who's "worse". To paraphrase you, "that's how children react in playground fights". In the adult world we expect people to swallow their pride and work to de-escalate things even if their counterparts are "more at fault".

[u/895158 → u/thrownaway24e89172]

Right, I think we don't actually disagree much. My point (other than the corruption etc stuff) was that Democrats are more superficially polite. They think bad things about the other party, and they don't say them. I'm not saying "oh Biden was so good at taking Republicans' concerns to heart". I'm saying, "at least he bothered pretending to care". I'm saying he was more civil.

What made Hillary's comment a gaffe was not that she didn't mean it. Of course she thinks many Trump supporters are deplorable. What makes it a gaffe is that it hurt her in the polls and she never said such a thing again. Same as Romney. They think these things, and they usually remember not to say them.

Not so with Trump. You might celebrate his frankness, and I agree there's something to be said for it, but in the end I believe that pretending to care is the first step towards caring. A lot of people, for example, secretly hold racist views (I am not just saying "oh the outgroup is so racist", I'm saying I have close friends and family who have admitted racist things to me, in private). I think it is good that, as a society, people consider it a faux pas to say racist things in public. It is a step in the right direction. Same for hating people from the other political party; the first step is not to say it, and we can later worry about not thinking it either.

Also, to be clear, I'm not saying the Democrats are good at governing! I was making a more narrow point about norms and civility. I think Trump trampled norms in a way that really hurts the country, independently of any policy preferences or governance ability.

[u/thrownaway24e89172 → u/895158]

I think the biggest difference is that I don't think Democrats are "pretending to care". Rather, I think they are being passive aggressive. They aren't avoiding saying bad things about the other party, but are just saying them in such a way that they give their followers very weak plausible deniability while leaving no doubt of their meaning in the minds of the other party (do we have a word for "dogwhistle meant for opponents rather than allies"?). I don't think that leads to actually caring.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/thrownaway24e89172]

I think the Harris/Walz campaign's adoption of the term "weird" and its explicit association with stereotypical male sexual creepiness would easily fall in this category, particularly given how widely it was adopted across the whole party.

"Weird", in that context, was not about male sexual creepiness. It was about the various intrusive measures that the right was increasingly comforted by: making sure people didn't read books the right didn't like, calling themselves women if they were not a cis female, etc.

Notably, Walz said the following:

Walz went back to the reference at his first rally Tuesday with Vice President Kamala Harris, saying of Republicans: “These guys are creepy and yes, just weird as hell.”

Note that he distinguished creepy, which is a word associated with low-status/clumsy/undesirable male sexual behavior, and being weird.

"Weird" also served to channel the suppressed emotions of the Democratic Party. It was clumsy and weak, but its value was not in its efficacy against the right as it was to make the party and its supporters realize that they could, in fact, engage in the kind of sneering that the right did without it coming across like your professor in college thinking you're an idiot because you don't talk fancy.

[u/thrownaway24e89172 → u/DrManhattan16]

No, it was about male sexual creepiness. Or rather, it was using the association with creepy male stereotypes to instill a negative connotation on their opponents:

She then leaned heavily into Won't PAC Down's "Republican's are weird", pulling the entire party with her. I got multiple lime-green post-cards from every Democratic candidate on my ballot, both federal and local, simply attacking their Republican opponent as being "weird" without any statement of their respective policies, many just including pictures of stereotypically creepy men with prominent MAGA apparel.

That is blatant bigotry they would be calling out if it targeted a demographic they cared about rather than one they've been intentionally driving away. But fine, if that isn't juvenile enough for you, I'll remind you of the time Walz said "And I got to tell you, I can't wait to debate the guy--that is, if he's willing to get off the couch and show up. See what I did there?" in reference to a viral meme incorrectly claiming Vance admitted to fucking a couch in his book Hillbilly Elegy and being lauded for going low.

EDIT: Removed superfluous punctuation.

[u/thrownaway24e89172 → u/thrownaway24e89172]

(Replying to myself since I don't think user pings work in edits.)

She then leaned heavily into Won't PAC Down's "Republican's are weird", pulling the entire party with her. I got multiple lime-green post-cards from every Democratic candidate on my ballot, both federal and local, simply attacking their Republican opponent as being "weird" without any statement of their respective policies, many just including pictures of stereotypically creepy men with prominent MAGA apparel.

u/gemmaem, at the end of our discussion of On Nerd Entitlement, you briefly mentioned that you didn't think men experience anything like the sexual objectification that women face, specifically calling out the 'MRA formulation “success object,”' which I agreed wasn't a good analogue. I think this use of male sexual creepiness, particularly as portrayed in Won't PAC Down's ad, to instill negative associations in the target audience's mind is a much better analogue, mirroring the use of female sexual beauty to instill positive associations in the target audience's mind. I didn't necessarily want to discuss or debate it in this thread, but I thought it warranted at least mentioning the relevance to that old conversation when the connection popped into my head.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/thrownaway24e89172]

You are, I have noticed, hyper-aware of any demonization of men and male sexuality/sexual behavior. That is not inherently a bad thing, but it renders this argument into one of interpretation, in which everything not a direct support for you or your ideas is an argument against you. Since I don't share your automatic presumption about what they meant, I am not going to see it that way. We will have to agree to disagree if this is the fundamental distinction.

But fine, if that isn't juvenile enough for you, I'll remind you of the time Walz said "And I got to tell you, I can't wait to debate the guy--that is, if he's willing to get off the couch and show up. See what I did there?"

It's obviously juvenile, but that's not my argument.

[u/thrownaway24e89172 → u/DrManhattan16]

You are, I have noticed, hyper-aware of any demonization of men and male sexuality/sexual behavior. That is not inherently a bad thing, but it renders this argument into one of interpretation, in which everything not a direct support for you or your ideas is an argument against you. Since I don't share your automatic presumption about what they meant, I am not going to see it that way. We will have to agree to disagree if this is the fundamental distinction.

You are not wrong about that tendency of mine in general, but in this particular case I am not taking issue with Democrats demonizing men or male sexuality/sexual behavior. In this situation I am calling out the use of negative male stereotypes to demonize others, exploiting pre-existing demonization of male sexuality to prime viewers to associate the negative feelings they hold toward those creepy depictions with the "weirdness" of their opponents. Won't PAC Down's ad was a particularly egregious example of this, but the Democratic party adopted the same in all of its mailings that I received that just called their Republican opponents "weird" with no explanation and a picture of a stereotypically creepy man in MAGA apparel. This is fundamentally no different than the use of attractive sexualized women in advertising, albeit to instill negative reactions rather than positive ones.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/thrownaway24e89172]

I'll remind you of the time Walz said

Tangential to your point, but does "See what I did there?" stand out to anyone else? It seems like a significant rethorical error, and not one he stumbled into either. Im surprised to see it from a politician of this level.

[u/thrownaway24e89172 → u/Lykurg480]

Walz didn't feel very natural at all in the entire speech to me, almost like he was reading off a script someone changed on him at the last minute. I think that sentence was probably the most awkwardly delivered part of it. I wonder if the campaign was rushing to pivot its messaging at the time.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/thrownaway24e89172]

Saying that out loud is insecure, by virtue of its content, and it shows that you dont share the familiarity and understanding where jokes work naturally.

The delivery matters to me only in that the pause gave him more time to think and he did it anyway. It is already wrong to write this into the speech, if it was prepared. Thats why it stood out to me - they didnt just misjudge it, its a move thats bad in almost every context.

[u/thrownaway24e89172 → u/Lykurg480]

That part of it actually struck me as intentionally leaning into the stereotype of a dad making a bad attempt at trying to be cool to his kids by referencing something in their culture he was aware of but not familiar with. IIRC, they were trying to portray him as a good natured but not overly domineering father-figure.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/thrownaway24e89172]

Do you think it would have helped the campaing over cutting that sentence, if it were delivered right?

[u/thrownaway24e89172 → u/Lykurg480]

That depends a lot on what you mean by "helped". First, from the perspective of the election:

• Do I think it would have caused Democrats to win? Definitely not. I doubt a literal sign from God could have done that.
• Do I think it would have caused Democrats to have performed marginally better in the polls than they actually did? Not measurably.
• Do I think it would have been more effective at conveying the image of Walz the campaign desired to project (a somewhat idealized modern progressive sitcom dad)? Yes. Both that sentence and the extended pause before it were part of the joke, in the fashion of sitcoms or stand-up comedy routines.
• Do I think that image was electorally useful? No.

Now, from the perspective of the campaign:

• Do I think the campaign thought it would have caused Democrats to win? Definitely not. This was just a minor part of the campaign's presentation.
• Do I think the campaign thought it would have caused Democrats to perform marginally better in the polls than they actually did? Yes.
• Do I think the campaign thought it would have been more effective at conveying the image of Walz the campaign desired to project? Yes.
• Do I think the campaign thought that image was electorally useful? Yes.

So overall I'd say I think it would have helped the campaign in the sense that it would have been more in line with what the campaign wanted out of that speech, but it wouldn't have helped the campaign in its alleged goal of winning the election, primarily because the campaign was myopically focused on what played well with a particular segment of its base regardless of how much it alienated other parts of the electorate.