Nellie Bowles: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History

[@jeffswingdancer8302]

She gives the woke too much credit -- they weren't that smart. Perfecting bullying is what allowed them to capture so many institutions. During a discussion, if challenged by facts that they can't refute they, just shut the other person down by calling them a racist, or transphobe, or bigot. When you can do that, you never lose an argument.

[@valuedCustomer2929]

@@jeffswingdancer8302 and that's been their MO for over half a century now. They're just more brazen about it now

[@estheramma]

@@jeffswingdancer8302 Woke didn’t invent ad hominem attacks or bullying, social media helped amplify & normalize it.

[@yaaraamozig4862]

Thank you🙏

[@italukr]

Reminds me of two Mensheviks giggling about the Bolsheviks platform just before they were sent to the Gulag.

[@gregallen485]

That sounds profound but I don't understand how your comparison applies to this discussion.

[@italukr]

I got the sense that you are underestimating the amount of damage that the Progressives can do.

[@jamesbell7220]

​@@gregallen485 Very important to understand the widely popular evolution throughout the Western nations of Progressivism into Totalitarianism in the late 1920s through the 1930s and into the early '40s. Important, also, to understand the veins of consistencies in human nature that have brought our episodes of popular social madness. Giggling in the wake of the calamity is common.

[@gregallen485]

​@@jamesbell7220 Hmm, just to be clear, I didn't get James's analogy. Google could give some definitions but I didn't know Russian/Soviet history well enough to get the comparison. Your description helped. Thanks. Having said that, while your description helps give context, I have to disagree with the linearity of the phrase "the widely popular evolution throughout Western nations of Progressivism into Totalitarianism" the late 19th century into the early 20th was a very fraught time in the US at least there was a backlash against the excesses of Capitalism (many emphasize "Capitalism" there but I emphasize "excesses"). In many other nations, it the backlash was against the excesses of the aristocracy (as in Russia). That backlash took many forms Marxism, Progressivism, the Anarchists, etc. Also WWI brought it's own messes into the mix, particularly in Germany. Progressivism in the US supported by Teddy Roosevelt enacted a great many reforms, In Russia Lenin & Co went the Marxism route and demonstrably that didn't go as well there or anywhere else Marxism was implemented. Anarchy and populism aren't plans, they are a primal complaint/scream. Saying Progressivism leading directly to (evolved into) totalitarianism/fascism is just wrong What the author here is objecting to is the Progressive movement's confidence that their successes in the early 1900's means they are "obviously" right now along with their adoption of failed Marxist theories of class reworked into theories of identity politics and an even more overly simplification of the social justice movement's Oppressed vs Oppressor division of... well, everything, driven on by an array of things: social media and their algorithms to drive viewership, the echo chambers that allow flat earthers to flourish, resentment of the US's influence around the world, such as Putin's drive to tear the world down to Russia's level as it failed as a superpower (like the Russian joke: In France one farmer looks at his neighbor's sow and says "I will grow my sow to be twice as big as his!", the American farmer says "My corn field will be twice as productive as my neighbor's!", the Russian farmer looks at his neighbor's cow and says, "I hope his cow dies...") all this to varying degrees has lead to a rise in populism that got exploited by a consummate con-artist. None of this is an evolution or destined to play out as it has. The author is challenging just one part of this set of problems: the arrogance of the Modern Progressive movement who, because they were right 100 years ago assume they are right about everything now and will use the courts and social shaming to force this "right" solution on the reluctant public. Sure, giggling when under stress is common. One can't cry or scream the whole time and it's better then ginning up rage like Trump & Co are doing.

[@gbaran7991]

@@italukr I don’t think she is helping her argument by trying to make it humorous. Real people really died. How many people lost their kids to overdose or double mastectomy. With no police real people have been victimized by felons.

[@whiskey6actual]

77 Year Old Vietnam Vet Conservative ( non trumper) in love with Nellie and Bari and The Free Press ---- loved the book

[@1984isnotamanual]

I think the New Progressivism is a good term. Maybe Neo-Progressivism could be an option go.

[@heatherg7682]

She's been part of the problem and now a 'backslider'. Let's wait and see how being a parent plays out.

[@GlobalShutterNY]

Thank you Nellie - let's hope your new baby will enter a world just a bit better than this one thanks to your work - speaking truth to power - speaking truth to anyone who is smart enough to listen!

[@Steelblaidd]

At 25 years this essay by the great Douglass Adams is still true and getting more true. Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back - like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust - of course you can’t, it’s just people talking - but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV - a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make. One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us’. douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html

[@jonwesick2844]

Did the Oregon drug legalization fail because it was bad policy or because drug warriors refused to fund adequate treatment?

[@gregallen485]

That's always the question. You'll have to dig deeper. Sometimes it's a lack of resources devoted to the problem but often that's a very easy excuse to explain a misguided policy. I really don't know which in this case.

[@redcoltken]

Love this woman

[@skytowergnome4664]

Given everything she’s just said, why in the world should we trust reporters now?

[@gregallen485]

I think her point was saying this kind of wishful thinking and group think did real damage to our trust in reporters and there needs to be a reality check and an understanding of what went wrong. Unfortunately that erosion of trust is being exploited but Trump and his collaborators who are living in their own even more dangerous bubble that is detached from reality. Kinda like standing on a barrier island being eroded from both sides. I fear it will end badly before it stops.

[@Merriwether-w8k]

The arrow of time moves forward - this won't look good in 10 years - 2nd law of Thermodynamics

[@gregallen485]

*sigh* What she is describing is what happens when wishful thinking comes unmoored from reality. It's fine to have a vision of the future like, "I will wade across this river to the paradise on the other side!" but refusing to fall back and work on a better plan when you find the water is too deep and the current is dangerously fast but instead let yourself get swept away and drown with your followers is foolish, not principled. Being blind to reality when we're convinced otherwise is a human frailty and it doesn't just happen to those on the right, even if your vision is far nobler. It won't be her position that looks bad in 10 years. BTW, the 2nd law of thermodynamics says temperatures will move away from the extreme hot and the extreme cold and approach the average between the two. It's not proof of constant improvement. Entropy doesn't work that way. It kinda sucks, actually. It takes careful thought to get useful work out of a system, not wishful thinking.

[@Merriwether-w8k]

@@gregallen485 You projected quite a lot onto my comment - lol - "far nobler"? - Your values are yours - that's it - where did I write that it wouldn't take work? It will happen because it is happening - slowly, our ethics improve - doesn't mean there aren't set backs - but over time, humanity moves forward - things do get better ethically - as a queer, I can attest to this

[@gregallen485]

@@Merriwether-w8k I suppose I did combine a lot of what I've been studying lately into what you wrote but it had a strong "end of history" tone which I believe will go down in history with lines like "peace in our time". Wishful thinking that greater freedoms. growing prosperity, and democracy is the natural order of things. Unfortunately, that feeling just made us complacent. As Joh Stewart said, "democracy is hard". We grew complacent and now we're scrambling to save it from a Trump lead authoritarian movement fed by populism. I understand how that hope sprang up. In my 66 years, I've seen the end of the Cold War, the amazing progress gay rights have made from the 70's to gay marriage becoming the law of the land and the broad acceptance that came with it. The economic, technical, medical progress we've made in that time is amazing as well. All heady stuff. We forgot all the hard work it took to get there. the dead ends that needed to be reversed, the pitfalls avoided. Marxism was a "far nobler" economic/social system then capitalism but Marxism failed, each and every time. -"One more tweak!", "This time it will work!" was announce/promised over and over again but it is a fatally flawed concept. Some parts worked. Monopolies were broken up. Social safety nets were installed and continue to be tuned but as a whole it was a failed model/concept and now it's been dressed up and rebranded as the social justice/occupy movements and identity politics where identity replaced class. It's an overly simplified dream that has become unmoored from reality and those will be the ideas which seen as fatally flawed in the future, no matter how noble the sentiment, not those who are attempting to tug us back to reality like Nellie Bowles. And whatever the better future is, it will not just happen. It will be hard work and there will be many missteps. Hopefully we'll make it but it won't be easy or natural. As an aside, I'm honestly curious what your definition of queer is these days. I have writer friends and friends heavily involved in the LGBTQ+ community who pay very close attention to their words and labels and they couldn't even agree on the meaning even if they sometimes applied it to themselves. The best I could figure out is that it means a mix of all and other. Is that correct or can you provide something more accurate?

[@Merriwether-w8k]

@@gregallen485 Hmm - maybe the best definition is NOT STRAIGHT - not heterosexual and not honoring binary thinking/hierarchies -

[@gregallen485]

@@Merriwether-w8k So anything EXCEPT traditional? It seems like Russel wrestled with this in set theory ;) More seriously it seems like a label saying "I don't want to be in any box/category you or society wants to put me in. I refuse to be labeled!" Ironically, I think the drive to label/classify everyone is the fundamental flaw with identity politics. That and the grossly oversimplified system of determining who is right and who is wrong by simply figuring out who is oppressed and who is the oppressor. Nothing worth thinking about is ever that simple. Anyway, thanks for the thoughts on the definition. That makes some sense (if I get your meaning). Am I correct in thinking that not heterosexual means that, while not opposed to a heterosexual pairing, it's based on the compatibility/desirability of the partner(s) independent of how that bonding would stereotypically be classified? *sigh* sorry for the word salad. I must have eaten a dictionary for dinner.

[@gailfg2211]

The hands, the halting expressions are so distracting, but the content is so interesting and disturbing, at the same time. So thank you for your tenacity and the book., but it’s a leftists woke movement by any other name. So please don't gaslight your own book. Really🙏

[@geoffreynhill2833]

Wealthy Airhead Alert ! 🤔

[@gregallen485]

@geoffreynhill2833 You do realize that your ad hominem attack of the author is an excellent demonstration of the point she's making, right?

[@geoffreynhill2833]

@@gregallen485 Apologies! 🥴