Good dis I but I know this is going tô insult both of them in saying they are essentially arguing for the centrist moderate position on all of these issues. Of course, the sensible approach on marriage is to let people who want to marry go ahead and marry. Of course, the central position on police and black neighborhoods is that those neighbors should have policîng that isn’t dangerous to to the neighborhoods themselves. . Of course, Stockley was right. Of course, the child tax credit is a very good idea. Like one of my mentors, Alice Rivlin, I am a passionate moderate. Most of the time, solving sensibly the problems in front of you is the direction of actual achievement. Sometimes those are very big problems - civil rights in the south in the 60s - and the radical act is acknowledging the problem itself. Martin Luther King was a radical because he insisted in seeing the problems but he was also a very pragmatic moderate.
Excellent discussion between two people I admire! I am super curious about how we might think about fixing the incentives of the nonprofit sector so that, as you discuss, they do not just become self-sustaining entities in search of a problem.
I’ve heard about — can’t remember where — people founding such orgs with a built-in time limit, so that everyone who participates knows that there’s an expiration date and plans accordingly.
Not sure what kind of ppl would be able to deal with that (in terms of their own salary/health care needs), but it’s an interesting approach. More like a medium-term pop up org than a thing that relies upon its own continuation.
This would indeed solve part of the problem, but it may create another one that's equally serious. Major philanthropic foundations (like everyone else) go through major fashions, so if there's no basic funding for non-profits, there would be a continual building up of new organizations to respond to the perceived needs of the moment, and a constant dismantling of what has just been built.
Noah Smith likes to say that the 2020s are the new 1970s. Just as the Nixon Administration and the Movement drove each other so crazy that they mutually self-destructed, one can only hope that (and it may well be happening), Trumpism and wokeness do the same. I just hope we can manage a better aftermath than cynicism and disco.
Actually, the movement gave Nixon a fabulous landslide; as McGovern said, "I opened the doors to the Dem Party and 20 million walked out." (From '64 to '72, this was right on the nose -- a 40% loss from the Dems.) And the Movement did not disappear, it burrowed into universities in '68 and grew like crazy. CRT was spawned by '75, identity politics by '77. It's still growing as fast as ever, Woke is just the name of the present phase. Trump's base showed up in '70 at the Hard Hat Riot to literally bash the Peaceniks and the two sides are continuing to make each other stronger. No, this will not stop anytime soon.
In 2024, time has long since discredited the idea that America is so racist that revolution is the only hope. In the age of George Wallace and Bull Conner, it wasn't so obvious.
At this stage, I'd take cynicism and disco over our current reality of cynicism and... pundits fantasizing about a civil war (or whatever stage we're currently at)?
This is a fabulous discussion that focuses squarely on the issue we most need to understand − What the hell is really going on with this radical-woke-BLM-Kendi movement that started in the ‘60s?
deBoer nails the most fundamental insight in his first sentence: “these things never end—they just mutate.” Later, he adds, “You end up being left with, … the creation of all these organizational structures within various elite American institutions.” That’s the main result of the evolution, but these structures undermine the institutions.
Let me add some history. Peak woke occurred in 1971, when the president of Columbia University stated, "The trial of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins is … a political trial that should not be taking place in America." Yale’s president added that he was “skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the US.” Hillary Rodham (later Clinton) monitored the trial for civil rights violations on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Bobby, in charge of panther security, had stopped by Ericka’s NJ Panther chapter just after Ericka had presided over torturing a (false) confession out of 19-year-old Panther Alex Rackley, but before they took him out and shot him. The pro-Panther mood of the left was only slightly dampened when the tape-recording of Ericka during the torture was played in court. Of course, she and Bobby were acquitted.
In June 1972, Angela Davis was acquitted. She’d bought the shotgun two days before it was taped to the judge's neck (during the kidnapping) and blew his brains out.
That ideology, as I’ll now show, mutated into what’s now woke (the CRT ideology), and has wormed its way into various “organizational structures [in] American institutions.” Black Power has become systemic wokeism.
The crucial connection that’s forgotten can be found in the Jun 19, 1966, CBS podcast called Face the Nation, in which Stokely Carmichael, who had launched Black Power three days earlier in the Mississippi Delta, revealed the two core ideas that Derrick Bell latter used to launch Critical Race Theory. Carmichael explained "Bell’s idea" that schools were being integrated too soon. That became the very first CRT paper in 1975. Then he announced Bell’s “Interest Convergence Principle” (without naming it) and continued to repeat it during his intense speaking tour, at least through his Oct 30 speech at UC Berkeley. That’s the idea Bell is famous for and CRT is built on.
When Ibram Kendi finally settles on his definition of antiracism in Chapter 16, he bases it squarely on Malcolm X (by any means necessary) and the Carmichael/Bell Interest Convergence Principle.
Underneath all this is one crucial point that’s being missed. The BP/CRT movement that’s been evolving and growing for 60+ years is a thirst for revolution − NOT progress. Progress is kryptonite for revolutionaries; it undermines the desire for revolution. Extreme pessimism about “the system’s” ability to make progress is essential.
So when deBoer says, “the fundamental weakness of identity politics is that in politics you want to have a set of goals and to form a coalition around those goals,” I think he has not grasped their goal − revolution. Identity politics is working perfectly for its intended purpose — cultural destruction. You can’t build a utopia until you destroy the capitalist culture. Period. There is plenty of evidence dating back to 1937 (Traditional and Critical Theory) for this, if you want to dig into it.
Good dis I but I know this is going tô insult both of them in saying they are essentially arguing for the centrist moderate position on all of these issues. Of course, the sensible approach on marriage is to let people who want to marry go ahead and marry. Of course, the central position on police and black neighborhoods is that those neighbors should have policîng that isn’t dangerous to to the neighborhoods themselves. . Of course, Stockley was right. Of course, the child tax credit is a very good idea. Like one of my mentors, Alice Rivlin, I am a passionate moderate. Most of the time, solving sensibly the problems in front of you is the direction of actual achievement. Sometimes those are very big problems - civil rights in the south in the 60s - and the radical act is acknowledging the problem itself. Martin Luther King was a radical because he insisted in seeing the problems but he was also a very pragmatic moderate.
Didn't insult me! :)
Excellent discussion between two people I admire! I am super curious about how we might think about fixing the incentives of the nonprofit sector so that, as you discuss, they do not just become self-sustaining entities in search of a problem.
I’ve heard about — can’t remember where — people founding such orgs with a built-in time limit, so that everyone who participates knows that there’s an expiration date and plans accordingly.
Not sure what kind of ppl would be able to deal with that (in terms of their own salary/health care needs), but it’s an interesting approach. More like a medium-term pop up org than a thing that relies upon its own continuation.
This would indeed solve part of the problem, but it may create another one that's equally serious. Major philanthropic foundations (like everyone else) go through major fashions, so if there's no basic funding for non-profits, there would be a continual building up of new organizations to respond to the perceived needs of the moment, and a constant dismantling of what has just been built.
Noah Smith likes to say that the 2020s are the new 1970s. Just as the Nixon Administration and the Movement drove each other so crazy that they mutually self-destructed, one can only hope that (and it may well be happening), Trumpism and wokeness do the same. I just hope we can manage a better aftermath than cynicism and disco.
Actually, the movement gave Nixon a fabulous landslide; as McGovern said, "I opened the doors to the Dem Party and 20 million walked out." (From '64 to '72, this was right on the nose -- a 40% loss from the Dems.) And the Movement did not disappear, it burrowed into universities in '68 and grew like crazy. CRT was spawned by '75, identity politics by '77. It's still growing as fast as ever, Woke is just the name of the present phase. Trump's base showed up in '70 at the Hard Hat Riot to literally bash the Peaceniks and the two sides are continuing to make each other stronger. No, this will not stop anytime soon.
In 2024, time has long since discredited the idea that America is so racist that revolution is the only hope. In the age of George Wallace and Bull Conner, it wasn't so obvious.
At this stage, I'd take cynicism and disco over our current reality of cynicism and... pundits fantasizing about a civil war (or whatever stage we're currently at)?
I spent the late Seventies believing that the truest words in the English language are "Disco sucks", but I see your point.
This is a fabulous discussion that focuses squarely on the issue we most need to understand − What the hell is really going on with this radical-woke-BLM-Kendi movement that started in the ‘60s?
deBoer nails the most fundamental insight in his first sentence: “these things never end—they just mutate.” Later, he adds, “You end up being left with, … the creation of all these organizational structures within various elite American institutions.” That’s the main result of the evolution, but these structures undermine the institutions.
Let me add some history. Peak woke occurred in 1971, when the president of Columbia University stated, "The trial of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins is … a political trial that should not be taking place in America." Yale’s president added that he was “skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the US.” Hillary Rodham (later Clinton) monitored the trial for civil rights violations on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Bobby, in charge of panther security, had stopped by Ericka’s NJ Panther chapter just after Ericka had presided over torturing a (false) confession out of 19-year-old Panther Alex Rackley, but before they took him out and shot him. The pro-Panther mood of the left was only slightly dampened when the tape-recording of Ericka during the torture was played in court. Of course, she and Bobby were acquitted.
In June 1972, Angela Davis was acquitted. She’d bought the shotgun two days before it was taped to the judge's neck (during the kidnapping) and blew his brains out.
That ideology, as I’ll now show, mutated into what’s now woke (the CRT ideology), and has wormed its way into various “organizational structures [in] American institutions.” Black Power has become systemic wokeism.
The crucial connection that’s forgotten can be found in the Jun 19, 1966, CBS podcast called Face the Nation, in which Stokely Carmichael, who had launched Black Power three days earlier in the Mississippi Delta, revealed the two core ideas that Derrick Bell latter used to launch Critical Race Theory. Carmichael explained "Bell’s idea" that schools were being integrated too soon. That became the very first CRT paper in 1975. Then he announced Bell’s “Interest Convergence Principle” (without naming it) and continued to repeat it during his intense speaking tour, at least through his Oct 30 speech at UC Berkeley. That’s the idea Bell is famous for and CRT is built on.
When Ibram Kendi finally settles on his definition of antiracism in Chapter 16, he bases it squarely on Malcolm X (by any means necessary) and the Carmichael/Bell Interest Convergence Principle.
Underneath all this is one crucial point that’s being missed. The BP/CRT movement that’s been evolving and growing for 60+ years is a thirst for revolution − NOT progress. Progress is kryptonite for revolutionaries; it undermines the desire for revolution. Extreme pessimism about “the system’s” ability to make progress is essential.
So when deBoer says, “the fundamental weakness of identity politics is that in politics you want to have a set of goals and to form a coalition around those goals,” I think he has not grasped their goal − revolution. Identity politics is working perfectly for its intended purpose — cultural destruction. You can’t build a utopia until you destroy the capitalist culture. Period. There is plenty of evidence dating back to 1937 (Traditional and Critical Theory) for this, if you want to dig into it.