Where do we go from here?

[Paine]

I was not familiar with this publication until you posted some of their articles and I still have not delved into what exactly it is. It does not appear to be an academic publication, which is fine, but they do, I believe, need to support some of their claims. For instance:
"Numerous studies show that Latinos and Asians are less likely to identify with either the Democratic or Republican Party compared to white and black voters." They need to cite these specific studies so I can know how they were conducted, within what groups were these studies done, and what exactly are the numbers they are talking about. Without that information, it is hard for me to take their conclusions as other than just mere speculation.

Yes, they provide a lot of anecdotal evidence based on interacting with a specific immigrant group in Hawaii. I do not mean that their conclusions are all invalid. However, their conclusions also may be jumps based on minimal actual data.

For one, Hawaii, as they mention, is unique. Getting some goods to Hawaii is more difficult then other states. How does that factor into all of this?
Surely it is not a surprise that immigrants from this community who consume their news from Fox, Newsmax, etc. are more predisposed to support Trump? Also, surely it is not a surprise that immigrants who are deeply involved in evangelical churches are more likely to be conservative?

I get what this is saying or trying to say - there are more factors than just racism and sexism. OK, yes, but when a group is consuming media from places that clearly have the demonization of others as part of their rasion d'etre, how minimal is the racism and sexism? What about the churches these evangelical immigrants attend? Are they being bombarded from the pulpit and the pew with how evil certain politicians are? How anti-Christian some politicians are?

I do not think only racism and sexism were the reason for some of these votes. Obviously, economic concerns played a significant role. Maybe even the most significant.

Union members in this piece skewed Democratic. No surprise there either. But here's the thing if we are talking about going forward: conservatives have spent decades denigrating unions, equating them with communism, with a lack of freedom, with corruption, etc. Unions do not have the power they once had. In the south, they are basically non existent. Personally, I am very pro union. But how do we bring them back, make them stronger after so much denigration?

What realistic alternatives do we have to evangelical churches? I don't know.

Jacobin is a socialist magazine that has pieces from a ton of different authors. The author of this piece specifically is a sociologist at Grinnell College who has written about and researched immigrant diaspora communities. Don’t think it’s fair to call her data anecdotal.

Home | Sharon M. Quinsaat, PhD

I wish I had the answers to your questions. I think the piece did a good job of laying out the tension we’ve been discussing here.

 

[altmin]

For one, Hawaii, as they mention, is unique. Getting some goods to Hawaii is more difficult then other states. How does that factor into all of this?
Surely it is not a surprise that immigrants from this community who consume their news from Fox, Newsmax, etc. are more predisposed to support Trump? Also, surely it is not a surprise that immigrants who are deeply involved in evangelical churches are more likely to be conservative?

Also Hawaii is probably the most integrated state in the union background wise, with a crazy high cost of living (goods shipped in like you said, but also crazy high housing cost), and the majority of the jobs being pure service industry with low wages, and a super-gigantic gap between a large amount of people living in poverty and the upper class. The federal government is also a huge employer via the military and other things like National Park service etc.

It is very hard to blow a Hawaiian data point up to scale for the rest of the country.

 

[Paine]

The Age of Class Dealignment

Over the course of decades, social democracy abandoned workers. Then workers abandoned social democracy.

jacobin.com

Here’s another Jacobin article on the topic by their editor. More in depth than some of the others I’ve posted here. Just trying to get people to incorporate a genuinely leftist perspective into their news diet.

 

[LeoBloom]

Jacobin is a socialist magazine that has pieces from a ton of different authors. The author of this piece specifically is a sociologist at Grinnell College who has written about and researched immigrant diaspora communities. Don’t think it’s fair to call her data anecdotal.

Home | Sharon M. Quinsaat, PhD

I wish I had the answers to your questions. I think the piece did a good job of laying out the tension we’ve been discussing here.

Perhaps in other articles she provides data. In this article it is anecdotal. That’s the presentation here.

 

[LeoBloom]

Also Hawaii is probably the most integrated state in the union background wise, with a crazy high cost of living (goods shipped in like you said, but also crazy high housing cost), and the majority of the jobs being pure service industry with low wages, and a super-gigantic gap between a large amount of people living in poverty and the upper class. The federal government is also a huge employer via the military and other things like National Park service etc.

It is very hard to blow a Hawaiian data point up to scale for the rest of the country.

Excellent points.

 

[Paine]

Also Hawaii is probably the most integrated state in the union background wise, with a crazy high cost of living (goods shipped in like you said, but also crazy high housing cost), and the majority of the jobs being pure service industry with low wages, and a super-gigantic gap between a large amount of people living in poverty and the upper class. The federal government is also a huge employer via the military and other things like National Park service etc.

It is very hard to blow a Hawaiian data point up to scale for the rest of the country.

I don’t think the author of the piece is trying to blow a data point up to scale for the rest of the country, and she says numerous times in the article that she’s not trying to do that due to Hawaii’s unique nature.

She’s simply taking her expertise and offering a perspective of why and how people from immigrant backgrounds could turn to such a xenophobe as Trump, something many posters here have asked since 11/5.

 

[finesse]

The Age of Class Dealignment

Over the course of decades, social democracy abandoned workers. Then workers abandoned social democracy.

jacobin.com

Here’s another Jacobin article on the topic by their editor. More in depth than some of the others I’ve posted here. Just trying to get people to incorporate a genuinely leftist perspective into their news diet.

I have a lot of trouble when so much of this seems to be about the philosophy of politics while it seems to ignore the cause and effect of world events. I didn't put a lot of thought or careful reading into this because this ignores the base elements of humanity that drives so many of these problems. They frequently don't have anything to do with left or right but more with prejudice, fear and greed which doesn't actually have a side.

 

[Paine]

I have a lot of trouble when so much of this seems to be about the philosophy of politics while it seems to ignore the cause and effect of world events. I didn't put a lot of thought or careful reading into this because this ignores the base elements of humanity that drives so many of these problems. They frequently don't have anything to do with left or right but more with prejudice, fear and greed which doesn't actually have a side.

The “theory of politics”, as far as left wingers like Sunkara are concerned, is directly tied into base elements of humanity. I really don’t know how you could read that whole article and come away with that he’s just talking about left vs right.

 

[superrific]

I was not familiar with this publication until you posted some of their articles and I still have not delved into what exactly it is. It does not appear to be an academic publication, which is fine, but they do, I believe, need to support some of their claims. For instance:
"Numerous studies show that Latinos and Asians are less likely to identify with either the Democratic or Republican Party compared to white and black voters." They need to cite these specific studies so I can know how they were conducted, within what groups were these studies done, and what exactly are the numbers they are talking about. Without that information, it is hard for me to take their conclusions as other than just mere speculation.

Yes, they provide a lot of anecdotal evidence based on interacting with a specific immigrant group in Hawaii. I do not mean that their conclusions are all invalid. However, their conclusions also may be jumps based on minimal actual data.

For one, Hawaii, as they mention, is unique. Getting some goods to Hawaii is more difficult then other states. How does that factor into all of this?
Surely it is not a surprise that immigrants from this community who consume their news from Fox, Newsmax, etc. are more predisposed to support Trump? Also, surely it is not a surprise that immigrants who are deeply involved in evangelical churches are more likely to be conservative?

1. If you're familiar with the old public intellectual journal Dissent, you might think of Jacobin as a 21st century, new media version. Dissent used to come out four times a year, and usually had one lead piece and then three or four 5-10 page essays (sometimes commenting on that story) plus other stuff. I think. It's been a long time. Anyway, Jacobin has shorter pieces (like everyone these days), and it comes out more frequently.

Dissent was not an academic journal, but most of its contributors were academics. That appears to be roughly true of Jacobin, but maybe less concentration of academics. I do think Dissent was a bigger deal in its heyday, which is more a comment about our media world in general than Jacobin in particular. Dissent would pull in bigger names and more prominent people, but again, comparing a quarterly print journal from the 80s to an on-line new media thing is unfair.

2. It seems to be that the author of this piece is conducting an ethnographic study, and if so, you're both right!

Ethnography is a well-respected, fully accepted mode of research with a very long pedigree in sociology and anthropology. Ethnography was how Levi Strauss got started, and Margaret Mead was an ethnographer. In the old days -- that is, until the mid 90s -- the researcher would embed him/herself in the community for a while (a year, two years, something like that), become friends with or at least friendly with the people in the area, and then the ethnographer writes observations. That might still be the method, but a) I haven't read an ethnography since the 90s so I don't know; and b) I have seen wisps of commentary over the years that suggested to me that the basic embedding idea was being reconsidered, but the key word there is wisps.

Anyway, ethnography is not supposed to stand on its own. Well, in the 1920s-1940s, it was; ethnographers would defend their disciplines from encroachment by the statistical analysts. Not a super hard defense to make in the 1920s, but in the 1950s, ethnography and statistical analysis began to be viewed as complements. Without statistics, ethnography isn't necessarily connected to the world; without ethnography, stats are sterile and miss rich detail. That's how I see them. I read a fantastic book about 25 years ago by an academic named Phillippe Bourgeouis, who lived in El Barrio for two years hanging out with drug dealers. I can't remember the title right now, but it was his book from the mid to late 90s and it shouldn't be hard to find.

There are research methods associated with ethnography. It's not just "hang out and then make things up." I can't speak to any of them as I never have been a sociologist or anthropologist.

3. Nothing about that piece strikes me as inherently suspect. The author surely recognizes that Hawaii is not the mainland (I believe she says that explicitly, though it scarcely needs to be said), but I don't think the patterns she identifies would be limited to Hawaii. It's not exactly ground-breaking to suggest that people's views of the world depend on how they get their information, but the argument here is a bit more subtle than that and anyway, we need scientific confirmation of intuitions lest some things we assume to be true turn out not to be.

It is worth mentioning that Duterte in Philippines was one of the first right-wing autocrats (along with his minions) to weaponize social media as mass disinformation. So it's possible the Filipino population was/is especially prone to misinformation. That said, Filipinos in America are often conservative. George Conway is Filipino. David Lat is Filipino (when I found out he worshipped Clarence Thomas, I was floored). There are a couple of Filipinos who right-wingers have put on the bench and they are conservative IIRC.

 

[finesse]

The “theory of politics”, as far as left wingers like Sunkara are concerned, is directly tied into base elements of humanity. I really don’t know how you could read that whole article and come away with that he’s just talking about left vs right.

Thought I made it clear that he couldn't hold my attention. When he started to discuss things like oil shortages, spending cuts on this or that without discussing why that happened, he lost me. The idea of politics as theory instead of an exercise in pragmatism is not a path I can follow.

 

[superrific]

Perhaps in other articles she provides data. In this article it is anecdotal. That’s the presentation here.

See my longer post. It's almost surely ethnographic in approach, which is both anecdotal and highly respected as useful and often illuminating. It's not perfect, and it's hard to replicate. Just as historians delve into an archive and other historians either have to a) spend months or longer in the archives themselves or b) implicitly accept the claim about the historical data and/or its characterization. Thus does history often become a duel of apples and oranges. One historian says, "based on my research of slave journals in Alabama in 1850, it seems like the economy of the south was X Y Z"; another says, "No, based on my research among small landowners in the South Carolina low country, the economy of the south was not Y at all." So too with ethnographies. Nothing is perfect.

I'm not expressing much of an opinion about the specific claims in the article, but I think your well-meaning criticism of the methodology here -- criticism that is valid 90%+ of the time -- doesn't really apply here. That's my sense, at least, from the description of her research as part of a larger research project (probably funded by a donor and involving a collaboration among many researchers).

 

[Carolina Fever]

Seems like politics these days is a lot like sports fandom. I know many people are fans of a team due to some personal connection (you went to that school or you're from the city where the team is based or you moved there, whatever). Unfortunately there are only two teams in this sport and the other side is the most hated rival. This isn't everybody, to be sure, but I think it's a lot more than anybody wants to admit. It's not about policy or messaging or any of that, it's just you live around lots of people that are fans of one of the teams and so you're a fan of that team. I think this applies to Maga more than dems or traditional repubs. They probably won't even care if Trump's policies cause their team to lose, they'll still be a fan of their team, just like sports fans don't stop being fans of their teams every time they lose, the reactions of some fans on message boards every time their team loses notwithstanding...

Some people are just fans of trashy reality TV and see Trump as the same way. I do think education, or lack of, racism, and bigotry is what makes up the majority of MAGA, though.

 

[Paine]

Thought I made it clear that he couldn't hold my attention. When he started to discuss things like oil shortages, spending cuts on this or that without discussing why that happened, he lost me. The idea of politics as theory instead of an exercise in pragmatism is not a path I can follow.

He talks about the explicitly about why those things happened. If you can’t be bothered to pay attention to the article, it’s okay to not respond and move on.

 

[superrific]

The “theory of politics”, as far as left wingers like Sunkara are concerned, is directly tied into base elements of humanity. I really don’t know how you could read that whole article and come away with that he’s just talking about left vs right.

It's abstruse. To people like you and me who are both used to academic writing and are conversant in this discipline, it isn't a difficult piece. But I can see how many of our posters would struggle with it, which isn't a criticism of them at all. Or the author. Finesse and others just aren't really the target audience and that's OK.

 

[Paine]

It's abstruse. To people like you and me who are both used to academic writing and are conversant in this discipline, it isn't a difficult piece. But I can see how many of our posters would struggle with it, which isn't a criticism of them at all. Or the author. Finesse and others just aren't really the target audience and that's OK.

Fair enough, I suppose. One of my major blind spots is not realizing what people do and don’t know. I guess there is a fair amount of requisite knowledge of left-wing thought in order to read the piece the way Sunkara intended.

 

[superrific]

Thought I made it clear that he couldn't hold my attention. When he started to discuss things like oil shortages, spending cuts on this or that without discussing why that happened, he lost me. The idea of politics as theory instead of an exercise in pragmatism is not a path I can follow.

I don't think there's anything wrong with this, except maybe that you're demanding a lot from a magazine piece. People have written whole monographs about oil shortages. Seriously, there was a whole school of thought among historians (this was a while ago; I'm not sure anyone still did it) whose methodology went something like this:

1. Identify historical trend you'd like to write about.
2. Collect weather and climate information for 500 years prior. Sea temperatures where available are good too.
3. Study patterns of commerce as they are affected by and affect the weather and climate. The scope of this sweep should be hundreds of years.
4. Collect as much demographic data as possible, including migration patterns which are often caused by weather/climate.
5. Based on this data, analyze your historical event or trend.

I mean, it's hard to argue with this approach on a conceptual level. Climate and migration are in fact drivers of historical events. The Middle Ages and Renaissance absolutely were shaped by the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age that followed. The problem is that it's boring as all fuck, and I say that as someone who has at times read German philosophy in my spare time.

 

[superrific]

Fair enough, I suppose. One of my major blind spots is not realizing what people do and don’t know. I guess there is a fair amount of requisite knowledge of left-wing thought in order to read the piece the way Sunkara intended.

1. That's tacit knowledge that can only be learned from experience. When you're in school, nobody talks about tacit knowledge, but it's super important. For instance, I'd say the majority of the skill of most litigators consists of tacit knowledge that is hard to communicate.

Which means elders are useful for something. Great source of tacit knowledge. Now, I'm not volunteering myself on this particular issue. I'm not the guy for that inquiry.

2. Please keep this in mind. You know how people talk about the young activists who come out of college with big progressive ideas and then alienate the regular folks they don't really connect with? I think you've complained about them, IIRC, although it's not important.

Well, that's you, to some degree. And it's not your fault. And it's not necessarily bad. Your issue isn't race/gender so much as class, but the overall dynamic is not that different. And obviously I don't know you in real life, so maybe you have better social skills with your peeps (you grew up rural, right? I thought that's what you said) than many other activists from more privileged backgrounds.

But look at this conversation. Finesse is, I believe, a life-long tradesman. He's exactly the guy we've built coalitions around. He's exactly the type of guy you want to be the center of our coalition. And you're talking to him, and he says he doesn't know or care what you're talking about . . . and there's maybe a lesson there. Again, I'm not criticizing you. As far as I can tell,

3. I've been happy with our discussions recently. We've had some tensions, and as we've both noted, we carry baggage of previous experiences into the conversation. But I do think we've made progress and we're more in agreement than, say, three weeks ago. This is, in some measure, what this message board is for. And it's odd because there are so many types of people here. It skews older, and it skews lawyer, but there are people from lots of backgrounds with different interests and skills. I'm an academic, first by nature and then by trade (until I realized I couldn't teach law any more, not in the age of Trump where nothing seems to matter). You're an academic, or at least close to the academic world. On the flip side, we have different professionals, some non-professionals, and even some types of professions I didn't even know existed. On the old ZZL, there was a poster who I first knew as a military veteran (as that's what he posted about), but who later came out as a medical entomologist. I didn't know "medical" was a branch of that field, and I confess that I've never met an entomologist before.

So I think we get a fairly syncretic view of the world, albeit one that is tinted liberal (which these days might be tantamount to saying that it's based in knowledge and not horror movies). And for those of you who see words like syncretic and your eyes glaze over, that's my point! It takes all types.

I know there are people here who find me off-putting, and that's fine. I'm not really here to make friends, per se. I don't try to be obnoxious or anything, but I've learned that I come across as prickly (though I often don't understand why or how). But we're trying to build a big tent, yes!? I think we need me in the tent. We need Paine in our tent. And finesse. And CFord and lawtig. And pretty much everyone else who wants to be or is even just curious.

 

[Paine]

1. That's tacit knowledge that can only be learned from experience. When you're in school, nobody talks about tacit knowledge, but it's super important. For instance, I'd say the majority of the skill of most litigators consists of tacit knowledge that is hard to communicate.

Which means elders are useful for something. Great source of tacit knowledge. Now, I'm not volunteering myself on this particular issue. I'm not the guy for that inquiry.

2. Please keep this in mind. You know how people talk about the young activists who come out of college with big progressive ideas and then alienate the regular folks they don't really connect with? I think you've complained about them, IIRC, although it's not important.

Well, that's you, to some degree. And it's not your fault. And it's not necessarily bad. Your issue isn't race/gender so much as class, but the overall dynamic is not that different. And obviously I don't know you in real life, so maybe you have better social skills with your peeps (you grew up rural, right? I thought that's what you said) than many other activists from more privileged backgrounds.

But look at this conversation. Finesse is, I believe, a life-long tradesman. He's exactly the guy we've built coalitions around. He's exactly the type of guy you want to be the center of our coalition. And you're talking to him, and he says he doesn't know or care what you're talking about . . . and there's maybe a lesson there. Again, I'm not criticizing you. As far as I can tell,

3. I've been happy with our discussions recently. We've had some tensions, and as we've both noted, we carry baggage of previous experiences into the conversation. But I do think we've made progress and we're more in agreement than, say, three weeks ago. This is, in some measure, what this message board is for. And it's odd because there are so many types of people here. It skews older, and it skews lawyer, but there are people from lots of backgrounds with different interests and skills. I'm an academic, first by nature and then by trade (until I realized I couldn't teach law any more, not in the age of Trump where nothing seems to matter). You're an academic, or at least close to the academic world. On the flip side, we have different professionals, some non-professionals, and even some types of professions I didn't even know existed. On the old ZZL, there was a poster who I first knew as a military veteran (as that's what he posted about), but who later came out as a medical entomologist. I didn't know "medical" was a branch of that field, and I confess that I've never met an entomologist before.

So I think we get a fairly syncretic view of the world, albeit one that is tinted liberal (which these days might be tantamount to saying that it's based in knowledge and not horror movies). And for those of you who see words like syncretic and your eyes glaze over, that's my point! It takes all types.

I know there are people here who find me off-putting, and that's fine. I'm not really here to make friends, per se. I don't try to be obnoxious or anything, but I've learned that I come across as prickly (though I often don't understand why or how). But we're trying to build a big tent, yes!? I think we need me in the tent. We need Paine in our tent. And finesse. And CFord and lawtig. And pretty much everyone else who wants to be or is even just curious.

Thanks for that and I mostly agree with the sentiment.

Other than: I don’t think people trying to organize a working class political movement should send Jacobin articles like that to folks they’re trying to organize. I wouldn’t even expect some people close to me to *get* that particular article.

Just thought it would be of help to some people here to hear from one of leading thinkers on modern left, at least in terms of media strategy.

My politics are driven by a basic human decency at the end of the day, but the political theory is there to help as a framework of understanding. I came to leftism as a 16 year-old living in rural eastern NC. This was initially driven by these sorts of base instincts about the experiences I had growing up. Learning about political theory and history as I’ve gotten older has just strengthened my belief.

All that to say, we should organize around this basic instinct towards humanity. This is at the core of it, and I think at the core of how our theories of the case can (and have) operate(d) together.

 

[finesse]

I guess because I lack discipline and depth of study I'm stuck with some unconventional viewpoints. When I look at the last 70 years, so much of this is that we might be living in the teething pains of the most transitional period in history. We are fighting the ending of colonialism and imperialism, the rise of technology and the growth of the information age and everybody is scared as hell.

Most of the world's trouble spots are caused by either the abuses of colonialism ,how it ended or both. The way the countries were divided had horrific consequences and the way the colonies were never prepared to govern themselves maybe worse.

The current social unrest seems like the same tactics of the pitting the disadvantaged elements of society against each other in times of great income and power disparities which is kind of a recurring theme. It's riding the back of the civil rights, women's rights, LBGT rights movements. There are real problems for the working class but the one I haven't seen discussed much is that there is a lessening need for them. The jobs that you can make a living in with a high school education alone are rapidly decreasing. You, at least, have to be able to learn how to operate some sort of equipment. The 50s aren't coming back even if women and blacks are excluded from competition again.

I think it's more about fear and insecurity than anything else and how you handle it. We seem to have those that, throughout my life, tried to limit the whole concept of equality of opportunity and influence on our nation in every way possible, with little regard to tradition or means. We have others who think the more we know, the more sources we look at, and the more opinions we get, the better chance we have of doing the right thing. Hell, we might even get to 50/50. I think the type person you are is formed before you are even aware of politics in any real sense.

 

[superrific]

All that to say, we should organize around this basic instinct towards humanity. This is at the core of it, and I think at the core of how our theories of the case can (and have) operate(d) together.

Agree. In my view, this is the essence of liberalism and most other left-of-center perspectives. As I say, we're not liberal because it's easy; we're liberal because we are empathetic, and the politics of empathy are inherently difficult. And this is what we must always remember. I mean, it's not true for Stalinists or Maoists but those are like 0.01% of the population at this point. There are also certain race warriors who I'm skeptical of in this respect, but again, 99% of the white straight liberals are here for the same reason.

And this, by the way, is one reason that I react as I do to the careless tossing around of words like "neoliberal." It's a disparaging term, designed to alienate or marginalize a wing of our coalition. Maybe that wing is too powerful and needs to be taken down. Maybe the policies described (which are usually Pub policies opposed by the so-called "neoliberal" Dems) are not wise.

But we must remember that most of the "neoliberals" on the Dem/liberal side (if it is actually bipartisan) share our same instinct toward humanity. They are good people. They need to be part of our coalition too. I used to work for a lawyer who was fairly close to Bill Clinton. He said that both Clintons were really caring people, who sometimes made themselves appear less good when publicly triangulating. He told me a story from Bill's trip to Africa, which was a HUGE deal. Remember those crowds Obama got in Europe? Bill got bigger ones in Africa.

Anyway, at one event in Uganda I think, Bill took the stage and the crowd surged forward. As happens too often, the people in the very front started to get trampled a little bit. Bill jumped down from his podium down to the front of the stage to help people, and was about to go into the crowd before Secret Service basically tackled him and pulled him away. That's Bill's instinct. At bottom, he wants to help people. That's why he's a Dem. Note that my boss did not address any of the sexual stuff and I didn't ask. It was an acceptable omission given the context, but obviously it does at least qualify the "Bill is a good guy" thesis, though it's never been clear just what % of the accusations were grounded in, well, anything.