I agree with most of your criticisms of the left, but I would argue that echo chambers are less to blame than - for lack of a better word - experience silos. How many young liberals have lived in a town with boarded up buildings on main street? Sent their kids to public schools with large numbers of ESL students who force principals to reallocate limited resources? Ever hauled lumber at a construction site or assisted a master plumber? Signed up for a job retraining program that was a complete joke? Had to deliver narcan to a comotose friend? Has ever gone on a ride along with a friend who happens to be a cop? Would feel completely at ease walking into a local bar in rural America and striking up an innocent conversation?
There is a compounding problem here in that many progressives are aware of the experience silos when it comes to their's vs those of people of color or marginalized groups, thanks in no small part to the DEI/SJ boon, but when it comes to giving epistemic grace to the working class of rural white America, I think there's a tendency to move away from that in favor of a kind of "well, I know those people, because that's my culture and I reject it, so no, I don't need to extend grace there". This was how I sometimes used to think at least. The problem is that at best this is just the negative partisanship mentioned above. At worst it's white elites mistaking their racial category for epistemic authority when it comes to class/socioeconomic concerns.
As a resident of Wash DC, I'd lean toward a kind of selective empathy, which might be a bit different from your lack of epistemic grace. In DC there are lots of poor and working class black people. Only very recently have any white people been on our streets, and I'm not sure I've ever seen a white person working as a parking attendant or unskilled laborer. What many white progressives know is black poverty. Black single moms. Black kids struggling in school. White poverty is too abstract to trigger the same empathy they feel toward people of color.
I definitely relate to this- I suppose I would be grouped as an “elite” but I would not see myself that way. This is definitely a white-on-white class issue. When I graduated from public highschool in the mid 1990s at least 90% of my class went to college, and 99% of white students I graduated with went to college. I assumed this was the general average across the US because I’m not from the Berkshires or whatever- I’m from Durham NC- very average. So yeah- I don’t have much grasp on what was or does happen in lower class white households in “the heartland”-my assumption is that lack of intellectualism, cultural knowledge etc is intentional. I also now know that I benefited from “generational wealth” but again we were not “rich” compared to a fair amount of my fellow students. I guess the point I’ve taken too long to get to is that there may be a fair amount of “elites” who don’t know they are elite and many Americans must be living in conditions I can’t even fathom
One thing I found helpful when thinking about this is rather than a very generic term like "elite", which people of various stripes use very differently, I like how people like Musa al-Gharbi use terms like "symbolic capitalists" or Catherine Liu uses Professional Managerial Class to refer to something similar. Basically we can think of these two terms somewhat interchangeably to refer to the "top 20%" of earners, who largely work in the symbolic professions, or "knowledge work". They're still somewhat fuzzy categories, but put together they basically distinguish between wage labor and salaried workers, with the added understanding that symbolic capitalists also have a culturally dominant dimension and not just an economic one. This at least helps us avoid the terms "rich" "wealthy" etc, which are hard to pin down for people, as you alluded to.
People I grew up with might call me rich based on my lifestyle, but I could probably provide a solid rebuttal to that. I can't exactly rebut accusations that I'm part of the PMC or a symbolic capitalist though. I'm pretty squarely both of those, and squarely in the top 20% of earners. From that perspective I am a kind of "elite" despite not having much power structurally-speaking.
"I don’t have much grasp on what was or does happen in lower class white households in “the heartland”-my assumption is that lack of intellectualism, cultural knowledge etc is intentional."
IME, anti-intellectualism in rural/working-class cultures is somewhat intentional in that most working class people, especially now, have decent access to resources for new information, either via schools, libraries, internet, etc, but it's not as robust as urban/suburban areas, and there's a cultural dimension that is a kind of cope in that it still requires resources to take advantage of that working/poor people are very wary of expending. Could I work in a grocery store AND read books on high theory and continental philosophy for fun? Yes, but why? To be smarter than everyone else? Again, what does that do for me? Probably just makes everyone think I'm a know-it-all. Who will I relate to and discuss these things with once I decide to become the Albert Camus of Carson City, MI?
Sub/urban culture, from my experience, has a tendency toward social/educational maximization, striving, achievement, etc, because there is an abundance of opportunities, and it creates a low-key war for cultural capital. People in rural/working-class communities have limited job prospects unless they decide to leave, so there is a devil's bargain that sort of says, "if I want more, I will have to leave the community that I know, and there's no certainty it will pay off, or that I will succeed". Speaking as someone who took that bargain and succeeded somewhat, you also then have to deal with the liminal state of being a "class defector" and all of the imposter syndrome effects that come with it.
"Class defectors have to face a dominant class sure of its values" - The Crisis of Culture by Oliveir Roy
Working class cultures, again IME, are far more geared toward a social calculus of "what can you DO". The rest becomes fluff, because everyone is just trying to make ends meet. Having grown up that way I often struggle, even as a nerd who loves reading for fun, when I encounter a ton of what seems like circular, endless overanalyzing and choice paralysis in bureaucratic systems like academia. Burnout is almost a badge of honor, and people seem to go to great lengths to invent ways of making their lives harder and more complex than they need to. People in rural/working-class settings know this, and they have decided it isn't worth it, and in some ways I think they're smarter for making that choice sometimes.
Your point is well taken. A lot of conservatives haven't actually had those experiences either, but they're in a discourse where they hear a lot about those experiences so they're real to them.
The big objection I have is that a lot of the most progressive people I’ve ever met grew up in conservative Christian families or in rural areas… They head to college, realize their old worldview has holes, and get blue-pilled by their peer. Then it’s the zeal of the converted. I think these people don’t always have the inoculation to realize that the left can also be dumb.
I do t really think there is one clean explanation, people just glom onto ideologies.
Here's another defense of criticizing the left even while it's the right that's trashing the economy and trampling on the rule of law.
You've got a lot of human capital that puts you in a position to have productive conversations with people on the left, and much less that puts you in a position to have productive conversations with people on the right. You have much more practice talking to people on the left, and can offer criticisms in a way that doesn't sound inauthentic. (For the contrast, think of of an atheist arguing with a fundamentalist Christian over biblical interpretation in a way that's transparently an attempt to shift their politics, rather than to genuinely grapple with the text.) Your status as a university professor gains you credibility on the left, while it costs you credibility on the right. In general, one shouldn't try to write/talk about the most important topics. (Let's stipulate that the most important topic is the damage Trump is doing to our country.) Rather, one should aim to write/talk about the topics where one is best placed to make a valuable and distinctive contribution.
Except, always in the first or second paragraph (or breath) is the parenthetical stipulation on what is the most important topic. Because that is the whole point. And unless and until that stipulation is open to question, the left will continue to stunt itself.
By “human capital” are you communicating that you view intellectuals as readily fungible? In other words do you see intellectuals as stable units of matter(subjects) which can be rearranged or reconfigured into new political project formations (forms.) Is tribalism objectionable or inconvenient to you because psychologism interferes with a view of politics as a “hylomorphism”?
I am confused because you seem to be arguing that it’s better for academics to criticize left wingers because left wingers are more open to persuasion (through your talents at conversation) then right wingers. Yet if one manipulates by merely rearranging a pre-existing and known resource, how is this “productive” as you say? Even if many substackers follow your advice and convert through persuasion a great number of woke intellectuals into becoming left-liberal or liberal intellectuals, I must say here that while this feat may indeed be impressive it is a feat of extraction/reconfiguration of a pre-existing resource and not a feat of “production”(your word.)
Much closer to a semblance of a feat of production as concerns intellectuals would be the expansion of the franchise of intellectualism into the apolitical public.
Interesting article. Very glad Dan Williams pointed it out. We are all, like it or not, in echo chambers, and must constantly be vigilant and try to fight our way out. One question I would raise, and perhaps you'll address it in a future article, is whether the left-right axis is the most appropriate mode for discussing the problem. For example, I am a lifelong progressive Democrat, but I am also a sex-realist female who finds gender ideology regressive and identitarian. As a result of this, friends of mine also sometimes regret inviting me to dinner. :) I point this out because I don't think this particular set of issues, at least, falls on the ordinary left-right axis most assume. I wonder, actually, whether that framing isn't itself a sort of bubble. Great food for thought here. Do keep serving it up!
Yes, I don't think it's limited to that axis. Some of the issues in the essay point to disagreements among progressives, between liberals and leftists.
You know, I did see that you mentioned that, now that I look back. I really do look forward to what further you write, particularly on that score. Too much gets put into these neatly labeled, but I think thought-terminating, buckets, then time is spent, for example, explaining how one can be progressive and yet not agree with what is conventionally thought to fall into that bucket. I am reminded of this quote from Mencken: “Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”
A better frame to me in 2025 is authoritarian vs. liberal. I have recently been unpersoned in my liberal social circle for my sex realist beliefs. I am surprised as a lifetime leftist to be finding that the people I connect with at this point are those who are willing to tolerate my alternative views and accept my ambivalence. What I cannot abide is being told what to think and I find it strange that conservatives are (currently) more accepting of heretics.
Yes, "left wing" and "right wing" are terms invented to describe the Republican politics of late 18th-century France. The fact that we're still using them in 2025 is kind of ridiculous.
I would encourage you to look into female behavioral norms and group psychology and potentially examine if this is a gendered matter. The democrats institutions and culture makers take cues from female behavioral norms, not least because women dominate many culture creating institutions that happen to be disproportionately composed of people to the left. The presence of men is a confounding variable; groupthink is a hallmark of female spaces and coed spaces, because the latter are also governed by female behavioral norms.
Spot on. The democrats are dominated by Boomer AWFLs, with some Beta males. Not sure how that happened, but the COVID policies brought it all to a forefront. We'll, good luck!
I find most of my left leaning associates to be "magic word" people. Language is distorted into a code that allows one to recognize membership in the club. It also allows club members to completely discount any outside thought. It is hilarious while feigning seriousness. You are all members of an obnoxious sorority. One that would never consider allowing membership to most of the folks the group purports to help.
Please do the rest of the world a favor. Stay in your caves and close the doors. Enjoy gradually excluding each other until you fid yourselves individually isolated in your hatred for humanity.
I agree with your pathologies of the left, but I'm sure you know that it is a love for humanity beneath it. Just as the right seeks autonomy, the left seeks harmony. Neither looks good when taken to extremes.
There's no better example of elite intellectual capture than the transgender ideology where a minority keep democrats in thrall to ideas that turn wide swaths of Americans off. I think this is because elites have bought into these ideas, allowed their children to indulge them and are loathe to move forward when that means moving against their own kids. GOP strategists understand this dynamic better than we do as their draconian moves in this arena are predicated on keeping the issue alive for more election cycles by creating a no-budge response from Democratic leadership. In short, they are using our tribalism against us.
Transgender ideology is also blatantly anti-science. Much of the nation views it as akin seven day creationism. Speaking of that, Richard Dawkins had his humanist of the year rescinded over mild criticism of transgender claims on Twitter. I am no fan of Dawkins as he often pontificates about things such as religion and philosophy that he knows little about. But when progressives cancel Richard Dawkins, you know they’ve jumped the shark. Things like that are why progressives have so little credibility to those outside their tribe.
There is no such thing as transgender ideology. Few had even thought about the issue until after Obergefell when the ADF was casting about for an issue, and the left championed it in response. This is a conflict between partisans with the tiny transgender minority used as a football.
The set of ideas that I have in mind are that one’s’ feelings about one’s gender identity trumps biological reality and those who refuse to recognize this are oppressive bigots who should be banished from polite society. The first component of this is antithetical to science and basic common sense. The second component is illiberal and antithetical to democracy. I don’t dispute that this involves a lot of virtue signaling (e.g. pronouns in email signatures). And it isn’t a very intellectually coherent ideology! But it is a set of ideas, in other words, an ideology.
Not at all. The first component is clearly possible given the consistent expression of transgender identity over decades of study, and it is a personal matter that does not warrant people inserting their personal feelings into the matter. The second is accurate–it’s as unreasonable to require that someone hold a supportive opinion of a transgender identity as it is to demand that someone be opposed. This is fundamentally a private matter of free self expression as protected by the Constitution. The error here is not in the relative validity of transgender identity, but in the demands from both liberals and conservatives to involve themselves in it.
I certainly agree that this is a partisan argument with a tiny minority (transgenders) as a political football. But why is there no such thing as a transgender ideology? What else would you call the set of ideas about transgenderism that the left has espoused the last decade or so?
I would challenge the notion that anyone has been ‘espousing a set of ideas’. There has certainly been plenty of virtue signaling, and even making accusations of transphobia against people who don’t conform to the set of virtue signals, but I think it’s mistaken to regard this as an ideology. Transgender people describe their subjective experiences, and medical organizations have care protocols intended to alleviate distress, but there is no coherent ideological basis for any of this. Just a lot of political arguments about matters which ought to be private.
Maybe we are talking past each other. One the first part, I agree that it is a personal matter that has been observed as a phenomenon for decades. But those who are truly convinced that individuals can change their biological sex ( e.x. a man who says he is a woman based on his feelings or identity really is a woman) are either ideologues or delusional. The problem is people who hold these beliefs don’t seem to want to keep them private or live and let live. They want to force others to express agreement with said beliefs and affirm the validity of those who “transition.” But the public action is premised on beliefs about transgenderism itself.
Thanks for engaging, I appreciate your thoughtful and open answers. I think we can leave it there. We disagree on the point of whether transgender people have legitimate experiences, but agree that forced social conformity around such beliefs is improper. That may be sufficient for society to function.
Preaching to the choir here, but one concern I find fascinating comes from Colin Marshall, who has argued that it’s generally disrespectful to try to change people’s minds about deeply held moral or political values. https://philarchive.org/rec/MARPPI-9
This gets straight to your dinner party example. Is it wise to aim to persuade so much? Maybe your call is not really to change the values of progressives but to change their mind about how to achieve those goals? I suppose those beliefs are less deeply held, though I don’t know climate change comes to mind.
Re: Marshall's thesis, I think of Plato's adage out of the Gorgias that it is better to be refuted than reaffirmed in one's deepest convictions. Why? Because, following Popper, we humans are more likely to be wrong than right, and following Clifford, our wrong convictions produce widespread practical harms on ourselves and others. So, whatever the value of 'respect,' isn't it an imperative of the life worth living that we become people who are open to having our deepest convictions challenged, and who are willing to challenge the deepest convictions of others? Perhaps Socrates was exemplifying the moral duty to be uncivil (John Lewis' notion of "good trouble").
I actually clicked on this link, in spite of my reservations and found a delightful Ted Talk. I do understand where conservative values come from, but MAGA does not wish to preserve the existing order they wish to overturn it.
My bad, I should have said check out Haidt instead of a link. I do see in-group, loyalty and authority in abundance with MAGA, it's the personality cult that I struggle with.
I challenge you to edit this piece by removing all references to the right being ‘so much worse’ on nearly every point of reflection. It works against what I read to be the primary point you’re making.
I noticed that too. But then I realized that it's a necessary calming measure to help the message get through. Like a "there, there, it's ok, I'm still on your side, don't panic"
I agree. If you showed one of those real time graphs reflecting engagement and agreement, like you sometimes see during a presidential debate, as a conservative centrist, my line dips considerably during those mentions.
Maybe I don’t really know anything, but I think the need for the Left to assert that ‘the economy’ is the primary reason liberals and centrists switched sides seems like a deflection to try to minimize the real reason; which is entirely about culture overreach issues, and that most of us do not like the progressive positions aat all. And the piling on effect that when criticizing these positions you’re accused of being racist and far-right!
One can care about those issues (diversity, etc) and simply find progressive approaches to them to be highly problematic.. but woe-be-it to anyone liberal to venture into that territory if you want to keep your job and your friends.
Here’s another lens: the left and right are both tools of the globalists. Trump is hated precisely because he is anti-globalist. The progress made by the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations created Trump. The media paints Trump as a moron who has no idea what he’s doing, while ignoring Biden who had no idea where he was at any given moment. The media’s a’s one sided reporting made the majority of America lose all confidence in the MSM. Now the MSM are s a useless propaganda tool.
One thing about the tariffs issue that I don’t understand. Why don’t all the countries affected simply call Trump’s bluff and offer to eliminate all tariffs on US exports if the US does likewise? What’s wrong with totally free trade between our countries? Most all of them have a huge competitive advantage in their lower wages so why do they need protection from high wage US workers?
Yeah no shit Sherlock. Everyone left of center has been saying this every hour of everyday for a decade. Welcome to the club. Everyone you know is about to cancel you into complete exile, which has happened to me and everyone like me. Progressives are not our friends.
Thank you for this well-written, thought-provoking essay. I look forward to reading more. I, too, get looks from my spouse when I complain about how DEI and progressive identity politics contributed to the electoral disaster last November. Hmm, perhaps my complaints convey more negative judgement on my part, than an open willingness to discuss the matter..
The best word I can think of to describe this article is wimpy. The fact that you chose to cave to the leftist tendency to hold the hand of your readers the entire way through (no no, don’t cry! The right is still worse, I promise!) proves your point better than you did. And you’re right about what you said, but honestly, why is this even a contentious opinion? If you really want to make some headway in solving this problem, I recommend that you say it with your chest next time.
It's going to take a long time, if ever, for the former proggies to stop being scared of their shadows, i.e., of being canceled for some sort of slip-up. So, to state something critical of proggies still requires a dose of BUT TRUMP HITLER MAGA WAY WORSE in every paragraph or two. A verbal tic. Like a NYT article must mention climate change in the first paragraph, and how it makes everything worse (whatever the topic), especially for the "marginalized" people. Look through the comments. You can tell the proggies, because they do the same thing. I don't know how people can go on for years walking on egg shells and sitting on broken glass. Are these dinner parties "fun"? They don't sound like it.
The far right should read this too. They're just as bad….It's funny how the extremists on both sides of the political spectrum resemble each other. Here's an example of a Socialist City Council member in Portland (Mitch Green) behaving just like Trump….hellbent on freeing criminals who participated in political violence and vandalism.
I agree with most of your criticisms of the left, but I would argue that echo chambers are less to blame than - for lack of a better word - experience silos. How many young liberals have lived in a town with boarded up buildings on main street? Sent their kids to public schools with large numbers of ESL students who force principals to reallocate limited resources? Ever hauled lumber at a construction site or assisted a master plumber? Signed up for a job retraining program that was a complete joke? Had to deliver narcan to a comotose friend? Has ever gone on a ride along with a friend who happens to be a cop? Would feel completely at ease walking into a local bar in rural America and striking up an innocent conversation?
There is a compounding problem here in that many progressives are aware of the experience silos when it comes to their's vs those of people of color or marginalized groups, thanks in no small part to the DEI/SJ boon, but when it comes to giving epistemic grace to the working class of rural white America, I think there's a tendency to move away from that in favor of a kind of "well, I know those people, because that's my culture and I reject it, so no, I don't need to extend grace there". This was how I sometimes used to think at least. The problem is that at best this is just the negative partisanship mentioned above. At worst it's white elites mistaking their racial category for epistemic authority when it comes to class/socioeconomic concerns.
As a resident of Wash DC, I'd lean toward a kind of selective empathy, which might be a bit different from your lack of epistemic grace. In DC there are lots of poor and working class black people. Only very recently have any white people been on our streets, and I'm not sure I've ever seen a white person working as a parking attendant or unskilled laborer. What many white progressives know is black poverty. Black single moms. Black kids struggling in school. White poverty is too abstract to trigger the same empathy they feel toward people of color.
I definitely relate to this- I suppose I would be grouped as an “elite” but I would not see myself that way. This is definitely a white-on-white class issue. When I graduated from public highschool in the mid 1990s at least 90% of my class went to college, and 99% of white students I graduated with went to college. I assumed this was the general average across the US because I’m not from the Berkshires or whatever- I’m from Durham NC- very average. So yeah- I don’t have much grasp on what was or does happen in lower class white households in “the heartland”-my assumption is that lack of intellectualism, cultural knowledge etc is intentional. I also now know that I benefited from “generational wealth” but again we were not “rich” compared to a fair amount of my fellow students. I guess the point I’ve taken too long to get to is that there may be a fair amount of “elites” who don’t know they are elite and many Americans must be living in conditions I can’t even fathom
One thing I found helpful when thinking about this is rather than a very generic term like "elite", which people of various stripes use very differently, I like how people like Musa al-Gharbi use terms like "symbolic capitalists" or Catherine Liu uses Professional Managerial Class to refer to something similar. Basically we can think of these two terms somewhat interchangeably to refer to the "top 20%" of earners, who largely work in the symbolic professions, or "knowledge work". They're still somewhat fuzzy categories, but put together they basically distinguish between wage labor and salaried workers, with the added understanding that symbolic capitalists also have a culturally dominant dimension and not just an economic one. This at least helps us avoid the terms "rich" "wealthy" etc, which are hard to pin down for people, as you alluded to.
People I grew up with might call me rich based on my lifestyle, but I could probably provide a solid rebuttal to that. I can't exactly rebut accusations that I'm part of the PMC or a symbolic capitalist though. I'm pretty squarely both of those, and squarely in the top 20% of earners. From that perspective I am a kind of "elite" despite not having much power structurally-speaking.
"I don’t have much grasp on what was or does happen in lower class white households in “the heartland”-my assumption is that lack of intellectualism, cultural knowledge etc is intentional."
IME, anti-intellectualism in rural/working-class cultures is somewhat intentional in that most working class people, especially now, have decent access to resources for new information, either via schools, libraries, internet, etc, but it's not as robust as urban/suburban areas, and there's a cultural dimension that is a kind of cope in that it still requires resources to take advantage of that working/poor people are very wary of expending. Could I work in a grocery store AND read books on high theory and continental philosophy for fun? Yes, but why? To be smarter than everyone else? Again, what does that do for me? Probably just makes everyone think I'm a know-it-all. Who will I relate to and discuss these things with once I decide to become the Albert Camus of Carson City, MI?
Sub/urban culture, from my experience, has a tendency toward social/educational maximization, striving, achievement, etc, because there is an abundance of opportunities, and it creates a low-key war for cultural capital. People in rural/working-class communities have limited job prospects unless they decide to leave, so there is a devil's bargain that sort of says, "if I want more, I will have to leave the community that I know, and there's no certainty it will pay off, or that I will succeed". Speaking as someone who took that bargain and succeeded somewhat, you also then have to deal with the liminal state of being a "class defector" and all of the imposter syndrome effects that come with it.
"Class defectors have to face a dominant class sure of its values" - The Crisis of Culture by Oliveir Roy
Working class cultures, again IME, are far more geared toward a social calculus of "what can you DO". The rest becomes fluff, because everyone is just trying to make ends meet. Having grown up that way I often struggle, even as a nerd who loves reading for fun, when I encounter a ton of what seems like circular, endless overanalyzing and choice paralysis in bureaucratic systems like academia. Burnout is almost a badge of honor, and people seem to go to great lengths to invent ways of making their lives harder and more complex than they need to. People in rural/working-class settings know this, and they have decided it isn't worth it, and in some ways I think they're smarter for making that choice sometimes.
Your point is well taken. A lot of conservatives haven't actually had those experiences either, but they're in a discourse where they hear a lot about those experiences so they're real to them.
You might have some kind of a point.
The big objection I have is that a lot of the most progressive people I’ve ever met grew up in conservative Christian families or in rural areas… They head to college, realize their old worldview has holes, and get blue-pilled by their peer. Then it’s the zeal of the converted. I think these people don’t always have the inoculation to realize that the left can also be dumb.
I do t really think there is one clean explanation, people just glom onto ideologies.
Why would one be? Self-sorting ("voluntary segregation", if you will) is expected and feels good.
Here's another defense of criticizing the left even while it's the right that's trashing the economy and trampling on the rule of law.
You've got a lot of human capital that puts you in a position to have productive conversations with people on the left, and much less that puts you in a position to have productive conversations with people on the right. You have much more practice talking to people on the left, and can offer criticisms in a way that doesn't sound inauthentic. (For the contrast, think of of an atheist arguing with a fundamentalist Christian over biblical interpretation in a way that's transparently an attempt to shift their politics, rather than to genuinely grapple with the text.) Your status as a university professor gains you credibility on the left, while it costs you credibility on the right. In general, one shouldn't try to write/talk about the most important topics. (Let's stipulate that the most important topic is the damage Trump is doing to our country.) Rather, one should aim to write/talk about the topics where one is best placed to make a valuable and distinctive contribution.
I agree with all of that. Thanks!
Except, always in the first or second paragraph (or breath) is the parenthetical stipulation on what is the most important topic. Because that is the whole point. And unless and until that stipulation is open to question, the left will continue to stunt itself.
By “human capital” are you communicating that you view intellectuals as readily fungible? In other words do you see intellectuals as stable units of matter(subjects) which can be rearranged or reconfigured into new political project formations (forms.) Is tribalism objectionable or inconvenient to you because psychologism interferes with a view of politics as a “hylomorphism”?
I am confused because you seem to be arguing that it’s better for academics to criticize left wingers because left wingers are more open to persuasion (through your talents at conversation) then right wingers. Yet if one manipulates by merely rearranging a pre-existing and known resource, how is this “productive” as you say? Even if many substackers follow your advice and convert through persuasion a great number of woke intellectuals into becoming left-liberal or liberal intellectuals, I must say here that while this feat may indeed be impressive it is a feat of extraction/reconfiguration of a pre-existing resource and not a feat of “production”(your word.)
Much closer to a semblance of a feat of production as concerns intellectuals would be the expansion of the franchise of intellectualism into the apolitical public.
Interesting article. Very glad Dan Williams pointed it out. We are all, like it or not, in echo chambers, and must constantly be vigilant and try to fight our way out. One question I would raise, and perhaps you'll address it in a future article, is whether the left-right axis is the most appropriate mode for discussing the problem. For example, I am a lifelong progressive Democrat, but I am also a sex-realist female who finds gender ideology regressive and identitarian. As a result of this, friends of mine also sometimes regret inviting me to dinner. :) I point this out because I don't think this particular set of issues, at least, falls on the ordinary left-right axis most assume. I wonder, actually, whether that framing isn't itself a sort of bubble. Great food for thought here. Do keep serving it up!
Yes, I don't think it's limited to that axis. Some of the issues in the essay point to disagreements among progressives, between liberals and leftists.
You know, I did see that you mentioned that, now that I look back. I really do look forward to what further you write, particularly on that score. Too much gets put into these neatly labeled, but I think thought-terminating, buckets, then time is spent, for example, explaining how one can be progressive and yet not agree with what is conventionally thought to fall into that bucket. I am reminded of this quote from Mencken: “Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”
A better frame to me in 2025 is authoritarian vs. liberal. I have recently been unpersoned in my liberal social circle for my sex realist beliefs. I am surprised as a lifetime leftist to be finding that the people I connect with at this point are those who are willing to tolerate my alternative views and accept my ambivalence. What I cannot abide is being told what to think and I find it strange that conservatives are (currently) more accepting of heretics.
Yes, "left wing" and "right wing" are terms invented to describe the Republican politics of late 18th-century France. The fact that we're still using them in 2025 is kind of ridiculous.
I would encourage you to look into female behavioral norms and group psychology and potentially examine if this is a gendered matter. The democrats institutions and culture makers take cues from female behavioral norms, not least because women dominate many culture creating institutions that happen to be disproportionately composed of people to the left. The presence of men is a confounding variable; groupthink is a hallmark of female spaces and coed spaces, because the latter are also governed by female behavioral norms.
Spot on. The democrats are dominated by Boomer AWFLs, with some Beta males. Not sure how that happened, but the COVID policies brought it all to a forefront. We'll, good luck!
I find most of my left leaning associates to be "magic word" people. Language is distorted into a code that allows one to recognize membership in the club. It also allows club members to completely discount any outside thought. It is hilarious while feigning seriousness. You are all members of an obnoxious sorority. One that would never consider allowing membership to most of the folks the group purports to help.
Please do the rest of the world a favor. Stay in your caves and close the doors. Enjoy gradually excluding each other until you fid yourselves individually isolated in your hatred for humanity.
I agree with your pathologies of the left, but I'm sure you know that it is a love for humanity beneath it. Just as the right seeks autonomy, the left seeks harmony. Neither looks good when taken to extremes.
There's no better example of elite intellectual capture than the transgender ideology where a minority keep democrats in thrall to ideas that turn wide swaths of Americans off. I think this is because elites have bought into these ideas, allowed their children to indulge them and are loathe to move forward when that means moving against their own kids. GOP strategists understand this dynamic better than we do as their draconian moves in this arena are predicated on keeping the issue alive for more election cycles by creating a no-budge response from Democratic leadership. In short, they are using our tribalism against us.
Transgender ideology is also blatantly anti-science. Much of the nation views it as akin seven day creationism. Speaking of that, Richard Dawkins had his humanist of the year rescinded over mild criticism of transgender claims on Twitter. I am no fan of Dawkins as he often pontificates about things such as religion and philosophy that he knows little about. But when progressives cancel Richard Dawkins, you know they’ve jumped the shark. Things like that are why progressives have so little credibility to those outside their tribe.
There is no such thing as transgender ideology. Few had even thought about the issue until after Obergefell when the ADF was casting about for an issue, and the left championed it in response. This is a conflict between partisans with the tiny transgender minority used as a football.
The set of ideas that I have in mind are that one’s’ feelings about one’s gender identity trumps biological reality and those who refuse to recognize this are oppressive bigots who should be banished from polite society. The first component of this is antithetical to science and basic common sense. The second component is illiberal and antithetical to democracy. I don’t dispute that this involves a lot of virtue signaling (e.g. pronouns in email signatures). And it isn’t a very intellectually coherent ideology! But it is a set of ideas, in other words, an ideology.
Not at all. The first component is clearly possible given the consistent expression of transgender identity over decades of study, and it is a personal matter that does not warrant people inserting their personal feelings into the matter. The second is accurate–it’s as unreasonable to require that someone hold a supportive opinion of a transgender identity as it is to demand that someone be opposed. This is fundamentally a private matter of free self expression as protected by the Constitution. The error here is not in the relative validity of transgender identity, but in the demands from both liberals and conservatives to involve themselves in it.
I certainly agree that this is a partisan argument with a tiny minority (transgenders) as a political football. But why is there no such thing as a transgender ideology? What else would you call the set of ideas about transgenderism that the left has espoused the last decade or so?
I would challenge the notion that anyone has been ‘espousing a set of ideas’. There has certainly been plenty of virtue signaling, and even making accusations of transphobia against people who don’t conform to the set of virtue signals, but I think it’s mistaken to regard this as an ideology. Transgender people describe their subjective experiences, and medical organizations have care protocols intended to alleviate distress, but there is no coherent ideological basis for any of this. Just a lot of political arguments about matters which ought to be private.
Maybe we are talking past each other. One the first part, I agree that it is a personal matter that has been observed as a phenomenon for decades. But those who are truly convinced that individuals can change their biological sex ( e.x. a man who says he is a woman based on his feelings or identity really is a woman) are either ideologues or delusional. The problem is people who hold these beliefs don’t seem to want to keep them private or live and let live. They want to force others to express agreement with said beliefs and affirm the validity of those who “transition.” But the public action is premised on beliefs about transgenderism itself.
Thanks for engaging, I appreciate your thoughtful and open answers. I think we can leave it there. We disagree on the point of whether transgender people have legitimate experiences, but agree that forced social conformity around such beliefs is improper. That may be sufficient for society to function.
Preaching to the choir here, but one concern I find fascinating comes from Colin Marshall, who has argued that it’s generally disrespectful to try to change people’s minds about deeply held moral or political values. https://philarchive.org/rec/MARPPI-9
This gets straight to your dinner party example. Is it wise to aim to persuade so much? Maybe your call is not really to change the values of progressives but to change their mind about how to achieve those goals? I suppose those beliefs are less deeply held, though I don’t know climate change comes to mind.
Yes. Those dinner party conversations, and this essay, is about means not ends (I think).
Re: Marshall's thesis, I think of Plato's adage out of the Gorgias that it is better to be refuted than reaffirmed in one's deepest convictions. Why? Because, following Popper, we humans are more likely to be wrong than right, and following Clifford, our wrong convictions produce widespread practical harms on ourselves and others. So, whatever the value of 'respect,' isn't it an imperative of the life worth living that we become people who are open to having our deepest convictions challenged, and who are willing to challenge the deepest convictions of others? Perhaps Socrates was exemplifying the moral duty to be uncivil (John Lewis' notion of "good trouble").
What are MAGAs deeply held moral values? Not being flip here, genuinely trying to understand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SOQduoLgRw&t=636s
I actually clicked on this link, in spite of my reservations and found a delightful Ted Talk. I do understand where conservative values come from, but MAGA does not wish to preserve the existing order they wish to overturn it.
My bad, I should have said check out Haidt instead of a link. I do see in-group, loyalty and authority in abundance with MAGA, it's the personality cult that I struggle with.
lol love you too, babe
I challenge you to edit this piece by removing all references to the right being ‘so much worse’ on nearly every point of reflection. It works against what I read to be the primary point you’re making.
I noticed that too. But then I realized that it's a necessary calming measure to help the message get through. Like a "there, there, it's ok, I'm still on your side, don't panic"
I agree. If you showed one of those real time graphs reflecting engagement and agreement, like you sometimes see during a presidential debate, as a conservative centrist, my line dips considerably during those mentions.
Maybe I don’t really know anything, but I think the need for the Left to assert that ‘the economy’ is the primary reason liberals and centrists switched sides seems like a deflection to try to minimize the real reason; which is entirely about culture overreach issues, and that most of us do not like the progressive positions aat all. And the piling on effect that when criticizing these positions you’re accused of being racist and far-right!
One can care about those issues (diversity, etc) and simply find progressive approaches to them to be highly problematic.. but woe-be-it to anyone liberal to venture into that territory if you want to keep your job and your friends.
Here’s another lens: the left and right are both tools of the globalists. Trump is hated precisely because he is anti-globalist. The progress made by the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations created Trump. The media paints Trump as a moron who has no idea what he’s doing, while ignoring Biden who had no idea where he was at any given moment. The media’s a’s one sided reporting made the majority of America lose all confidence in the MSM. Now the MSM are s a useless propaganda tool.
What is a globalist? Is it objectionable to be one? Is there a more attractive alternative?
What is a globalist? Is it objectionable to be one? Is there a more attractive alternative?
One thing about the tariffs issue that I don’t understand. Why don’t all the countries affected simply call Trump’s bluff and offer to eliminate all tariffs on US exports if the US does likewise? What’s wrong with totally free trade between our countries? Most all of them have a huge competitive advantage in their lower wages so why do they need protection from high wage US workers?
Yeah no shit Sherlock. Everyone left of center has been saying this every hour of everyday for a decade. Welcome to the club. Everyone you know is about to cancel you into complete exile, which has happened to me and everyone like me. Progressives are not our friends.
Thank you for this well-written, thought-provoking essay. I look forward to reading more. I, too, get looks from my spouse when I complain about how DEI and progressive identity politics contributed to the electoral disaster last November. Hmm, perhaps my complaints convey more negative judgement on my part, than an open willingness to discuss the matter..
The best word I can think of to describe this article is wimpy. The fact that you chose to cave to the leftist tendency to hold the hand of your readers the entire way through (no no, don’t cry! The right is still worse, I promise!) proves your point better than you did. And you’re right about what you said, but honestly, why is this even a contentious opinion? If you really want to make some headway in solving this problem, I recommend that you say it with your chest next time.
It's going to take a long time, if ever, for the former proggies to stop being scared of their shadows, i.e., of being canceled for some sort of slip-up. So, to state something critical of proggies still requires a dose of BUT TRUMP HITLER MAGA WAY WORSE in every paragraph or two. A verbal tic. Like a NYT article must mention climate change in the first paragraph, and how it makes everything worse (whatever the topic), especially for the "marginalized" people. Look through the comments. You can tell the proggies, because they do the same thing. I don't know how people can go on for years walking on egg shells and sitting on broken glass. Are these dinner parties "fun"? They don't sound like it.
The far right should read this too. They're just as bad….It's funny how the extremists on both sides of the political spectrum resemble each other. Here's an example of a Socialist City Council member in Portland (Mitch Green) behaving just like Trump….hellbent on freeing criminals who participated in political violence and vandalism.
https://open.substack.com/pub/recalibrateportland/p/mitch-green-makes-a-threat?r=12nari&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false