EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

Yeah, so. I don't think anything on this thread indicates anyone didn't get that this was where you were coming from, so the posting of fgst's post feels misapplied, is all I was saying.

xpost

i mean he was making bad posts like they were some deep jewels of knowledge, either of those on their own are are prob not going to set people off, but you put them together and youll get told about it, was pretty funny to see the aimless the master of the form show up to lend support

re hand wringing about pile ons brought to mind max writing about something awful

When the 2016 Democratic Primary tore Twitter apart, and establishment liberal journalists and political operatives complained of pile-ons by vicious BernieBros, anyone who’d been on a forum before could see that this was, simply, what happened when you made dumb posts.

good piece https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-most-influential-man-on-the-internet

Yeah, so. I don't think anything on this thread indicates anyone didn't get that this was where you were coming from, so the posting of fgst's post feels misapplied, is all I was saying.

xpost

― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, December 11, 2021 10:27 AM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well some people read it as ‘you shouldn’t complain’ which was not the point at all and then insulted me when I tried to make the case that yes, there are problems in the US and I made sure it was acknowledged.

The guillotine episode reminds me that mostly this is an overwhelmingly anglo-saxon messageboard with very angl-saxon viewpoints on most things. Enough for when I mention something that is jarring because it comes from my history and culture (the guillotine) it is being met with scorn. I don’t think I’m the first (or the last!) who is facing that sort of cultural barrier, and I don’t think some posters understand the level of assymetry at play here.

And yeah if it’s dumb lagoon, which you are still making a very poor case for, shitting on people is not just exactly how you advance anything. Some posters do try to engage in good faith and I appreciated it, other will just use the word ‘cunt’ and think this is some performative battleground of theirs to show how valuable their fight against fascists is and I think this is sort of the pile on goon was discussing.

not sure why were talking about the guillotine when the more relevant execution device is the cross

Anglo-Saxon
lol

Enough for when I mention something that is jarring because it comes from my history and culture (the guillotine) it is being met with scorn.

VHS, pretty sure that the blowback you've gotten on this thread in particular is hardly the result of lack of familiarity with your position; it's probably much more to do with frustration at a viewpoint that most of the posters are exposed to on a very regular basis - certainly the case for me! "We have it very good in America/the West" is a pretty common think to think/say.

I'd also argue that you can't complain too much about "performative battlegrounds" when half of your posts here were about characterizing everyone disagreeing with you as an incurious American when several of those ppl, myself included, aren't American or even "Anglo-Saxon".

The point is not merely ‘you have it good in the West’, it’s that populist movements describing the West as something that is out of touch with reality is bad. The right wing does it ‘we are becoming the third world’ and some on the left does it too. I considered calling it a dystopia an exageration, perhaps I was wrong about the word, but you’ll see people on the left making hyperboles the norm and I think it’s both disrespectful and useless. Never said there’s no reason to complain, I live in Canada and I complain a whole bunch.

Never said that everyone who disagreed with me was incurious, but certainly some posters seem to embody the caricature of the self-involved american and british. And c’mon, the percentage of anglo-saxons people on this board is what? 65%?

there were several posts acknowledging your point about averages and international standards but you still told us to read a book (to learn the same thing we had already conceded, i guess) and implied that we couldn't possibly understand why people would want to immigrate here. but it's just others who are self-involved, performative, condescending, and insulting. now it's anglo-saxon, i'm not even sure what to think about that one.

Yes I agree it was out of line to say to read the book and I lost patience and should not have.

when can we return to insulting Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias

van horn wants to call americans self involved ignorant babies and be applauded for it, which i mean if he had just done that mightve gone over better but he also wants credit for it being some serious intellectual position, combining those two requires a lot more finesse and depth of understanding than has been demonstrated, and then of course were hitting rock bottom with the complaints about being treated poorly

i want to know who the some posters are who are embodying the caricature of the self-involved american and british

The point is not merely ‘you have it good in the West’, it’s that populist movements describing the West as something that is out of touch with reality is bad. The right wing does it ‘we are becoming the third world’ and some on the left does it too.

Yeah, this to me is a fundamental misunderstanding of what people itt are doing when they characterise the US as dystopian. It's not about a lack of awareness of how bad things are elsewhere (Americans who don't care about what goes on in the rest of the world tend to think the US is BETTER off than it is, not worse); it's pushback against the official mainstream narrative (not just "republican", this is a bipartisan consensus) that America is The Greatest Country In The World and obviously the best place to live in the world. It's holding a mirror to the country's propaganda and looking just how far sgort it falls.

Additionally, it certainly rankles with me for you to take offense in the name of ppl from countries that are worse off when, as I said previously, immigrants from those countries who come to places like the US and the UK are amongst the ppl most likely to face the worst of what those countries have to offer dystopiawise, in terms of state surveillance, inequality, racism, etc.

Never said that everyone who disagreed with me was incurious

No, you just casually ignored ever post that you couldn't twist into that narrative :)

And c’mon, the percentage of anglo-saxons people on this board is what? 65%?

If you want to switch that to native English speakers, I'm not at all arguing that this isn't the main demographic of ILX. What I am arguing against is that your disagreements with ILX consensus are down to that factor - I mean even my father in law enjoys a good guillotine reference, and he voted Macron!

And I dunno harbl you kept saying that tweet wasn’t important even though it was important to me, you scoff at the fact that I might think a cultural barrier exist instead of listening and trying to make things better. You keep saying you understood my point and yet there’s no mention on how first world privilege and rethoric might seem really off to many people, without acknowleging my expressions that yes, some stuff in the US is quite terrible. Maybe if you don’t quite get what to make of it is because you’ve come to your conclusions without reading and can’t seem to understand that someone who don’t agree with you doesn’t neccessarily come from a place of bad faith to piss you off.

I should note that I live in one of the world's worst countries, Florida.

And I dunno harbl you kept saying that tweet wasn’t important even though it was important to me, you scoff at the fact that I might think a cultural barrier exist instead of listening and trying to make things better. You keep saying you understood my point and yet there’s no mention on how first world privilege and rethoric might seem really off to many people, without acknowleging my expressions that yes, some stuff in the US is quite terrible. Maybe if you don’t quite get what to make of it is because you’ve come to your conclusions without reading and can’t seem to understand that someone who don’t agree with you doesn’t neccessarily come from a place of bad faith to piss you off.

since i don't want to be accused of being mad online, i'll respond. i've read what you said. it was not an important tweet. it was disingenuous of matt yglesias to use it as a jumping off point for a dunk, especially when the response is to post data that must be well known to the original poster of the tweet, as it is to us here. i also don't value his comments on left-wing strategy, not least because the tweet was not a part of any strategy. the tweet only became important here because it's a thread about how much matty sucks and is frustrating.

i reject the notion that a general comment on the state of the u.s. is exhibiting "first world privilege" without some other context. it is not "first world privileged" to comment on things that are bad here. these conditions would be bad for all humans even if they are worse elsewhere, and as daniel pointed out, often negatively affect people who have come here from other countries to have a better life. we've also talked about things that are uniquely dire here such as high incarceration and school shootings. discussing that and other problems does not "insult" people in other countries who are doing poorly. i am frustrated because you have persisted in trying to force people to address things primarily in relative terms (unless they want to be self-involved), when that is not called for in this particular discussion.

i also have noticed on this and other threads that when challenged you like to attribute it to others just not knowing the things you know, which is offensive and also not the source of the problem.

Yglesias's West Side Story tweet should get him a suspension lmao.

hmmm that seems like an intelligent and well argued refutation of Betamax’s points but probably more likely they just didn’t penetrate your carapace xp

Fuck me, the whine off this
― coombination gazza hut & scampo bell (wins), Saturday, 11 December 2021 16:59 (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Lol first world problems amirite?

what da fuck is anglo saxon

It does seem to me that VHS has here espoused an entirely unsupportable argument because if you take it on its own terms it invalidates itself

I want to hear what Ezra Klein has to say about all this.

folks i just want to remind you that if u want to achieve maximum civility make me a mod and i will simply ban ppl who do Bad Posts without further explanation thus saving you many evenings of consternation #wellness

hmm might want to take a look at his record as ilh mod when evaluating this campaign promise comrades

banns are self care

wowwwww betrayed by my hoops brethren, a betrael if u will

xp

What even is a hoop

maybe if bad posts were less tolerated on ilh we wouldnt have gotten to this point

What even is a hoop

― plax (ico), Saturday, December 11, 2021 12:41 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://i.imgur.com/Ndl8ody.png

;_; i just want to ban ppl

it is aggravating that people from the US, a nation entirely made up of middle class white people, whine about their first world problems

Oh right, for kids?

thats the one

All I know is before she leaves for school I tell my daughter to put her Anglo socks on

In order to channel the dystopia discussion to the dystopia thread may I present:

The absolute most Covid-cautious people I know are less cautious than like random NYT articles and I’m not really sure how much deeper into the educated/lib bubble you can get than my life.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 12, 2021

I think this is an interesting one for many reasons. First among them is the idea, which must be hard to avoid sinking into in MY's line of work, that the real question is not "what should people be doing about COVID" but "what ARE people doing about COVID, especially the people I know, and is the NYT staff appropriately calibrated to it?" Like a music critic who never writes about whether the music is good or bad, only about whether it's over- or underrated by Pitchfork.

But also: what does Yglesias see as the level of caution espoused by "random NYT articles"? I'm finding it hard to imagine he really knows no one who, e.g., is eating inside in restaurants less than they usually do. So the level of caution he sees as NYT-median is.... more cautious than that? Does he think the NYT line is "no eating in restaurants at all?" "Mask on when you're jogging in Central Park?" What?

There’s a lot of people who think they are more Covid cautious than they are in real life. I’m thinking people who won’t let vaccinated family members in their homes but go to the supermarket regularly. Stuff like that.

— Helaine Olen (@helaineolen) December 12, 2021

could it be that one of these is optional and involves long-term direct exposure and the other... is a requirement to survive?

"a lot of people." how old are the family members? what was the person's stated reasoning? very mysterious.

look helaine's got it covered okay

I don't know who Helaine Olen is, is she part of the Extended Yglesias Universe?

WaPo opinion columnist

Centrist dweebs starting to circle toward the May 2020 MAGA argument of "if you're so concerned with COVID why don't you quit your job and stay home forever SO I CAN GO OUT AND LIVE MAH LIFE"

I had to read the Yglesias tweet several times. One of my buddies posted it in our WhatsApp thread a couple hours ago. He offered the following interpretation: even among liberal circles the performative standard of care talked about in outlets like the NYT doesn’t align with the actual behavior of the community. In NY at least even in the most liberal pockets like the West Village less and less people are wearing masks, people are having parties, going to bars, concerts because you can’t do anything without being vaxxed in NY.

Which made the most sense to me. I still don't get the point of posting such a thing, though.

there's a lot of people who think they are more washing-your-hands-after-using-the-bathroom cautious than they are in real life

And I'm not willing to go to their barbecues. If I want poop on my burgers I'll just go to

It seems plausible that Matty’s irl friendship circle is composed of liberal/educated ppl who are giant idiots and narcissists