Conservative Whine Boxes.
I am a frequent watcher of bloggingheads, a link to which can be found on my blog roll, here. Over the weekend I happened on a post where a regular host, Professor Glenn Loury. featured some French native, Philosophy PhD candidate named Philippe Lemoine. This rather over-the-top conservative has gained some notoriety for a recent piece of his published over on National Review about, of all things, police brutality against blacks in America. His genius eureka of a discovery? The media exaggerates it. I call him an over-the-top conservative as I have seen his twitter feed. In a word, it is immature. He is to my mind best described as a less flamboyant Milo Yiannopoulos. And I make that comparison for three main reasons:
(1) foreign born white conservatives, and
(2) internet tough guys, who
(3) have no problem taking to the internet to talk about subjects they, for all intents and purposes, know nothing the fuck about, but for their ability to republish the same old tired bigoted conservative bullshit, that is older than dirt. (Hint. I will get back to that. Promise.)
I had trouble watching this video. I have only managed a few bits, as I am one of those people who not only feel instantly put off by rank bullshit and flat out lies. I am also the kind of person who often feels like I have seen this same bad movie before, but with other actors. In other words, I am easily turned off by not only bullshit, but recycled bullshit, all the moreso. But ok. Once again, I am going to try to make it through the first segment:
Ok. I made it to the point where I stopped watching before, because my bullshit alert when off in full klaxon mode. A Frenchman who has for the most part been living in the bubble that is Tier One American Academia (for just the past few years in America,) and he was surprised that the stories he heard about blatant racism in America did not match his experience? As they say in France, Mon Dieu! Encroyable!
On no he didn't? He just threw shade on Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow." I heard a lecture given by her a year ago, as part of NYU Law's Derrick Bell Lecture Series on Race In American Society. Brilliant woman who knows her topic academically and in her bones. Just for the record, Philippe Lemoine. We African Americans don't need even our native born white countrymen whitesplain'n what it is to be black in America to us, never mind, foreign born white conservatives! Just saying!
So I went past the intro and then jumped to the last part, and that blurs into the topic I really mean to discuss: the Conservative Whine Box. Now it won't kill me to hear or read one more conservative whine about how unfair the world of academia is so discriminatory against them as if they are some kind of aggrieved minority. But in adopting the victim posture, they not only invalidate all their alleged beliefs in meritocracies and anti victim hood (by advocating for justice and fairness and affirmative action for their team,) but they are using the totally wrong model, and as well, rely on some truly bullshit assumptions.
Sorry fuckwads. You are the pro capitalists. You are the ones who sing the praises of market forces, but only until the marketplace of ideas reject your ideas, which if they were bread, would be stale, moldy,and rancid. But I get ahead of myself.
In the chunk of that bloggingheads post, the conservative Frenchman goes into that tired whiny . . . we are oppressed . . . bullshit. And when researching him, I read a longer form of that tired old whine by him on some other site, as a comment to some other person article. And that reply to that article is what caused me to think, write about that bullshit.
First, the false assumptions.
(1) There is something inherently solid and worthy about the left/right political and or ideological dichotomy. That is patently false. Look to any nation with a parliamentary and or otherwise robust multi party system. The USA is actually an anomaly, globally speaking.
(2) conservatives believe their opinions are entitled to respect. Nobody has that right. If you think so, you are wrong.
(3) One of the things the conservative Frenchman says in that last chunk of the bloggingheads video that is totally false (well nearly, I would have to imagine at least,) is that liberals don't know conservative arguments.
Alors! Can a person say anything more ignorant? Conservative as a term describes people who follow the way people thought and did shit in the past. We liberals know what the fuck you conservatives think because you have not come up with a single new idea since
Baby Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a dinosaur. As the joke goes.
But my main point is #2. Even if academia is not the total national market, it is an important market in the realm of the marketplace of ideas, as that is where a high concentration of the best educated people are clustered. And just as most people rejected New Coke, most academics reject conservatism. I am not sorry, for sure. But if I have to rub your face in it for you to get the point, let me rub some more. It is not unfair to reject a product because you find it distasteful. That is how the market fucking works. Just as it would be fucked up if we forced people to buy and drink New Coke, it would be equally if not more fucked up to make academics and students drink the nasty tasting swill that is conservatism.
The problem is not in the marketplace. The problem is with the product. Make and market a better, or more appealing at least, product.
(1) foreign born white conservatives, and
(2) internet tough guys, who
(3) have no problem taking to the internet to talk about subjects they, for all intents and purposes, know nothing the fuck about, but for their ability to republish the same old tired bigoted conservative bullshit, that is older than dirt. (Hint. I will get back to that. Promise.)
I had trouble watching this video. I have only managed a few bits, as I am one of those people who not only feel instantly put off by rank bullshit and flat out lies. I am also the kind of person who often feels like I have seen this same bad movie before, but with other actors. In other words, I am easily turned off by not only bullshit, but recycled bullshit, all the moreso. But ok. Once again, I am going to try to make it through the first segment:
Ok. I made it to the point where I stopped watching before, because my bullshit alert when off in full klaxon mode. A Frenchman who has for the most part been living in the bubble that is Tier One American Academia (for just the past few years in America,) and he was surprised that the stories he heard about blatant racism in America did not match his experience? As they say in France, Mon Dieu! Encroyable!
On no he didn't? He just threw shade on Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow." I heard a lecture given by her a year ago, as part of NYU Law's Derrick Bell Lecture Series on Race In American Society. Brilliant woman who knows her topic academically and in her bones. Just for the record, Philippe Lemoine. We African Americans don't need even our native born white countrymen whitesplain'n what it is to be black in America to us, never mind, foreign born white conservatives! Just saying!
So I went past the intro and then jumped to the last part, and that blurs into the topic I really mean to discuss: the Conservative Whine Box. Now it won't kill me to hear or read one more conservative whine about how unfair the world of academia is so discriminatory against them as if they are some kind of aggrieved minority. But in adopting the victim posture, they not only invalidate all their alleged beliefs in meritocracies and anti victim hood (by advocating for justice and fairness and affirmative action for their team,) but they are using the totally wrong model, and as well, rely on some truly bullshit assumptions.
Sorry fuckwads. You are the pro capitalists. You are the ones who sing the praises of market forces, but only until the marketplace of ideas reject your ideas, which if they were bread, would be stale, moldy,and rancid. But I get ahead of myself.
In the chunk of that bloggingheads post, the conservative Frenchman goes into that tired whiny . . . we are oppressed . . . bullshit. And when researching him, I read a longer form of that tired old whine by him on some other site, as a comment to some other person article. And that reply to that article is what caused me to think, write about that bullshit.
First, the false assumptions.
(1) There is something inherently solid and worthy about the left/right political and or ideological dichotomy. That is patently false. Look to any nation with a parliamentary and or otherwise robust multi party system. The USA is actually an anomaly, globally speaking.
(2) conservatives believe their opinions are entitled to respect. Nobody has that right. If you think so, you are wrong.
(3) One of the things the conservative Frenchman says in that last chunk of the bloggingheads video that is totally false (well nearly, I would have to imagine at least,) is that liberals don't know conservative arguments.
Alors! Can a person say anything more ignorant? Conservative as a term describes people who follow the way people thought and did shit in the past. We liberals know what the fuck you conservatives think because you have not come up with a single new idea since
Baby Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a dinosaur. As the joke goes.
But my main point is #2. Even if academia is not the total national market, it is an important market in the realm of the marketplace of ideas, as that is where a high concentration of the best educated people are clustered. And just as most people rejected New Coke, most academics reject conservatism. I am not sorry, for sure. But if I have to rub your face in it for you to get the point, let me rub some more. It is not unfair to reject a product because you find it distasteful. That is how the market fucking works. Just as it would be fucked up if we forced people to buy and drink New Coke, it would be equally if not more fucked up to make academics and students drink the nasty tasting swill that is conservatism.
The problem is not in the marketplace. The problem is with the product. Make and market a better, or more appealing at least, product.
Labels: "free speech" bullshit, cult of white right wing victim hood, Philippe Lemoine
posted by Abstentus at 3:23 PM
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