Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Interested in checking this out

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing

Author was just on The Dig, would like to read it as well. ILX dirtbag crew book club?

I'm interested

I was trying to figure out the other day how to quickly explain "the existence of police is fine, there are good police officers, but the police are a horrible institution"

also, "unions are good, police unions are inherently bad"

I really think way less of the Catholic rank-and-file are against contraception compared to 30 years ago, but I can't prove it.

certainly garry wills has been this for something like 20 years (and he is certainly more likely to know than e.g.me)

30 years ago you'd be more likely to hear from conservative christians (meaning protestants) that catholics were "not christians, they're catholics" but now there's an entire catholic wing in lockstep with evangelicals

I used "centrist Democrats" pejoratively and un-ironically on FB today, should I start listening to this podcast?

This recent one is probably a good test

http://podbay.fm/show/1097417804/e/1505703578?autostart=1

today in wacky pronounciations on podcasts, The Dig guy saying "aberrant" as "a-BEAR-rant"

is…is that wrong…

I always thought you stressed the first syllable like so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rKoURCfbe8

Naomi Klein ep was good but also probably one of the less Chapo-esque episodes/more similar to what you'd hear on other left podcasts. I always tell people to start with one of the Douthat eps. Also the ones where they do movies (e.g. Reign Over Me) put their ethos on display a little more.

either is ok i think xp

today in wacky pronounciations on podcasts, The Dig guy saying "aberrant" as "a-BEAR-rant"

― Simon H., Wednesday, October 25, 2017 8:27 AM (fifty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the standard pronunciation in britain and ime canada

savages

never heard the BEAR version

me neither, savages indeed

Alex Vitale also on Verso’s in-house Show: https://soundcloud.com/versobooks/the-end-of-policing-a-conversation-with-alex-vitale

Self-indulgent promotion: I talked with three women from the local DSA chapter about why they got involved, the emotional benefits of actually organizing, etc.

Also the requisite tangents about Cedar Point, Catfish, idiotic cat behavior.

ILX dirtbag crew book club

I’d be down for this. I’ve been reading Max Elbaum’s Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che, about how American leftist movements disintegrated from the late 60s on, which got recommended to me by Derick Varn, whom we had on a previous episode,

ILX dirtbag crew book club

I’d be down for this. I’ve been reading Max Elbaum’s Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che, about how American leftist movements disintegrated from the late 60s on, which got recommended to me by Derick Varn, whom we had on a previous episode

Dammit

dirtbag reading crew would be good. i mean i think it might totally crumble after a short-time but it might be fun while it lasts

to aberr is human

30 years ago you'd be more likely to hear from conservative christians (meaning protestants) that catholics were "not christians, they're catholics" but now there's an entire catholic wing in lockstep with evangelicals

― mh, Wednesday, October 25, 2017 3:08 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

history author dude I follow had a tweet last week or so that said 'if you think islamophobia is bad here now, just go back and see what people said about the catholics 50-100 years ago'

Yeah, Stephen Prothero’s book has chapters about the early 19th-C freakout about Catholics and Mormons, to the point where you got mobs forming to go after them.

Joseph Smith and his brother were murdered by a mob, so yeah.

this is why I grungingly respected the mormons' anti-trump stance.. they know what its like to experience religious persecution first hand

Liz Bruenig is now on an opinion writer and editor at the Post, making her the first actual leftist in such a position at a major paper (that I know of)

30 years ago you'd be more likely to hear from conservative christians (meaning protestants) that catholics were "not christians, they're catholics" but now there's an entire catholic wing in lockstep with evangelicals
― mh, Wednesday, October 25, 2017 3:08 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is OTM, it is pretty nuts how different attitudes are now about that kind of thing, especially compared to when I first moved to the South in 1992. I was told multiple times as a kid that me and my Catholic family were going to hell for being idolatrous Mary worshippers. People’s eyes would widen or their brows would furrow when they heard we were Catholic.

I’m sure that still happens but probably not as much. It feels like the lines between conservative evangelical culture and conservative Catholic culture have blurred somewhat. There’s also a lot more Catholics and Northern transplants here now than there were when I was kid, so that is probably is a factor.

This is OTM, it is pretty nuts how different attitudes are now about that kind of thing, especially compared to when I first moved to the South in 1992. I was told multiple times as a kid that me and my Catholic family were going to hell for being idolatrous Mary worshippers. People’s eyes would widen or their brows would furrow when they heard we were Catholic.

I went to an insane southern baptist elementary school with Beka Book text books published in Pensacola, FL. My 7th grade history book explicitly said that Catholics worship Mary as a deity and thus are not Christian.

This was in like 1991

i'd like to joint the book club

also to join

I remember those Jack Chick comic books that evangelicals used to leave in phone books and restaurant booths saw no distinction between Catholics and Satanistd

Jointing the book club would be dirtbag appropriate.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/10/24/16503462/dsa-women-cumtown-chapo

discussed upthread

Interested in checking this out

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing

― Simon H., Wednesday, 25 October 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A whole bunch of materials (incl piece above) here:

The police are bad and should be abolished.

— Marika Rose (@MarikaRose) September 13, 2017

As such, meaningfully dismantling police brutality, racism, inequality and poverty in general requires more than simply reforming or even dismantling the police. It requires dismantling the root of the police - property relations. This, in turn, requires dismantling property as such.

i agree that once we've entered our utopian post-historical stage we will no longer need police

I too reached this conclusion at age 16

idg these arguments that police unions are uniquely bad. guess what - all unions have downsides. union construction costs more, takes longer and produces shoddier work than non-construction. teacher unions protect bad teachers from being fired. unions in general protect + support workers but increase costs (duh) and often lower standards (if the union can protect its members from being fired/disciplined for poor work). why should police be denied union rights of all groups? if you're pro union i don't understand where this exception gets carved out.

the point - for me as a union activist - isn't that police shouldn't be able to organize and have unions. they should, and do. it's that they shouldn't be embraced in solidarity by other unions due to the fact that police unions jobs role is partly doing shit like getting police 2 weeks paid vacation for harming/killing poor people, which is a against the whole point of our movement. a lot of police unions don't even try to be participate in the broader labour movement anyway.

Rather read ppl thinking and arguing the detail through work being done on the question than this ho ho Utopia business - stop acting like 16 year olds. Its not how change happens.

Nobody will abolish police anywhere soon but in the UK they can abolish stop & search and the use of tasering, make police officers accountable for their abuses and close facilities such as Yarl's Wood.

xpi do agree a bit with your point about entering our post-historical stage nonsense though mordy and maybe it should be cross-posted on uncool conservative beliefs - if your solution to pressing social problems - and I've heard this sort of impossibilist argument aimed at the housing crisis, sexual harassment in the workplace, etc. in recent days even - is ending capitalism you're not helping that social problem

and close facilities such as Yarl's Wood.

You're probably aware of this but Yarl's Wood is not operated by police (as some detention centres in the UK are) but rather private security companies.

i think that if you're going to talk about abolishing the police you're inevitably courting "utopia" talk. you can discuss police reforms without discussing police abolition obviously. it's just that the latter makes you look unserious.

way xp to Mordy:
that's not universal -- skilled trades use unions as an education/skill scale (progression from apprentice to journeyman to master, with testing and number of hours logged) and require training. the protection of people who aren't doing well at their job is used as a bludgeon and while some union leadership has been bogged down over generations by inept or malicious administration, that's not universal. if a union is _lowering_ standards then, yes, that union is a problem

the difference being that there's a doing a difference between doing your job poorly and participating in criminal activities during your work.

I have friends and family members who have been union members or managed people who are union members, and there are hoops to jump through (a friend's understandable frustration about trying to have someone on a factory floor do a procedure in a different way and getting a "I'm supposed to do it this way, I'm calling my rep" response), but they value the union

I guess when I see cases of teachers being arrested for child endangerment or molestation, I don't typically see a union lawyer representing them? But for clear-cut assault, harassment, or even rape, cops often get union lawyers

I think part of the problem is that some of the protections unions provide should be part of the standard contract, or enshrined in law, but those protections are demonized or taken as the status quo and we have right to work laws -- which are really "the employer can set whatever terms they want" laws -- in a number of places that put the means in employers' hands

i come into contact with a lot of trade unions (electrical, construction, transportation) and they always cost more and take longer than a non-union equivalent. i understand why and don't blame them -- they get paid by the hour (at a much higher rate than non-union workers) so they're not motivated to complete a job quickly and move onto the next one. i think this is baked into what a union is - how can you expect them to do work inexpensively and quickly if their very existence is designed to increase pay for their members?