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@thett3
I actually agree with this to some extent. Power does use pre-existing racial divides as a convenient scapegoat to mask the real issues. But there's a big problem with your narrative--this stoking of racial resentment only seems to go in one direction. No one can honestly say that if these statistics showed the opposite, that white people committed 90% of interracial crime, the media wouldn't run it as a major story.
I'm not sure how you can say resentment only runs in one direction? The moment you frame an issue in terms of "white vs black," you're stoking resentment on both sides. And either way, I'm more concerned about who benefits from the resulting divisiveness. It's not whites, and it's not blacks.
You seem mostly concerned about the abuse that hides behind anti-racism, and while I share those concerns, it's important to keep sight of the bigger picture.
Warren, who is the person most likely to win according to betting markets, supports reparations, along with 73% of black voters. Democrats as a whole back reparations 49-47, and that support skews younger. It's far from a distraction, it will be on the official democratic platform in the near future.
I don't think 49% of Democrats, mostly blacks, is enough support. And it's deeply unpopular in our growing immigrant population, so I'm skeptical this'll happen. But who knows?
I'm not entirely opposed to reparations. I'd be willing to pay the price if it gets Americans to stop being so weird about race. And it's worth noting that there'd be benefits for whites too -- ending programs like affirmative action, for example. Living in a world where race doesn't matter is the ultimate objective, and that's a good thing for all of us.
As for Warren, I doubt she becomes the nominee or beats Trump. I think Biden or Bernie seems likely at this point, for reasons that polling or betting markets don't reflect. But again, who knows? Am I wrong to assume you'll vote Trump regardless?
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@RationalMadman
What's Yang so great with regards to? Any specifics? What makes him a good man as opposed to a soft-spoken strategic manipulator?
He supports universal basic income, which is a stepping stone in my mind to universal basic assets. This is a very good thing. Bernie's approach is a bit different in that he's focusing mostly on healthcare, which is also an important stepping stone to universal basic assets. Either one would be great for the country.
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I like Yang. My preferred candidates are Bernie or Yang, for what it's worth.
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@thett3
When I think “power” I think “the group that is victimized 90% of the time.” How is the issue of net harms irrelevant when discussing oppression?
I guess I should be more precise. When I think "power," I mostly think "the major holders of financial, cultural, and technological capital," the people reaping the benefits of our system.
I don't think "oppression" is a useful term anymore because everyone's engaged in self-exploitation. You see examples of this everywhere, people willingly working their asses off to enrich the owners of Twitter, Instagram, etc. People obsessing publicly over victimhood are part of this.
The "white vs black" rhetoric plays out within this framework. It's been monetized by corporate power, and most of those engaging it aren't actually concerned about blacks or whites, they're just repeating what they've been told. It keeps us divided against each other so that we don't notice what's actually happening, and the rhetoric of net harms reinforces these divisions.
I think there's a lot of progressives who think along the lines I'm outlining, maybe not in these precise terms, but along the same lines. It's a strongly anti-neoliberal view.
That’s because a growing plurality on the left—spearheaded by several major presidential candidates—wants to take money from me for reparations. That is, by definition, a white vs black issue so if we have to divvy up exactly who owes who what, we should be allowed to make the obvious counter argument.
Neither Biden non Bernie support a reparations bill, and they clearly have the majority of black voters behind them. Reparations is just a purity test for the awful neoliberal candidates (e.g. Buttigieg). So again, it's a distraction.
It's also never going to happen, no matter what anyone says, and your concern about this feels a bit fake, no offense. I'm personally more worried about how reparations-talk is alienating Hispanic voters, and I see little hope of the Democrats winning if they don't go with Biden/Bernie as their candidate.
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@thett3
You're asking the wrong questions. The relevant issue is power. The issue of net harms to specific racial groups is mostly a distraction at this point, and based on the media creating false narratives around it, I'd say it's been co-opted & monetized.
As you can probably tell, I'm a Bernie fan but don't care much for people like AOC. Just like the disagreements among those on the right re: things like nationalism/globalization, there's some big disagreements among those on the left as well especially re: the victimhood stuff.
And btw, you say that you aren't trying to play up "white victimhood" but if you frame the issue as "whites vs blacks," it always turns into some sort of victimhood olympics. I'm very surprised that's the approach you take.
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@thett3
I mostly agree with you on this. The government needs to get involved in protecting students from predatory lending, and I like the idea of an investigation into rising tuition costs. My biggest concern is that I don't feel comfortable punishing the students who made good decisions, as well as people who didn't even attend college. And by the way, I'm saying this as someone who made bad decisions. I'm still paying off student debt and have a lot of regrets about my choices re: college.
2) Many people made mistakes (something teenagers are known to do.) and I’m not saying we should simply pay off all student debt. They made irresponsible choices and they should pay for them. But how much? Should their lives be ruined? Because in many of the horror stories, that is exactly what will happen. We give people who rack up massive credit card debt the ability to start from nothing again. Why should students not be given this same opportunity? As irresponsible as their choices, influenced by a lifetime of propaganda, were, they weren’t any more irresponsible than racking up credit card debt online shopping. I think that if a student demonstrates a serious effort to pay off their loan (10% of your income for 10 years is not insignificant) they should at least be given the opportunity, ten years after college, to declare bankruptcy.
I don't understand how student debt "ruins" lives. As things stand, you can already discharge student loans in bankruptcy if you prove that they cause an "undue hardship." So if it's actually ruining your life, there are remedies available. We could look into relaxing the "undue hardship" standard to make it a bit easier, but I'm skeptical of the "horror stories." Maybe I'm giving the bankruptcy courts too much credit in distinguishing "entitlement" from legitimate claims of "undue hardship," I dunno.
It's a tricky issue, for sure. As you know, I tend to agree with Democrats a lot more but this is one of those issues where I think they're just wrong in their thinking.
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What's the harm in a deficit?
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The most likely explanation for your perception of Democrats is that you're wrong about what they believe & why they believe it. After all, Democrats/Republicans agree on most issues. To say the Democrats are wrong about everything is to say the Republicans are wrong about everything too.
In terms of the superficial issues they purportedly disagree about, it's not because either party is evil, stupid, or exclusively reactionary to the other. The disagreements stem from reasonable interpretations of the Constitution & neoliberal political theory. Don't let the voices of a few extremists on either side obscure the reality that both parties have consistently advanced liberal autonomy even while pretending they're locked in a political death grip.
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@thett3
In the US, you can already get a good college degree for a very reasonable amount of money. You get massive debt by wasting $120,000 on a BA or $70,000 on a master's program when there's great ones for much less.
I'd stop lending money for these schools. I wouldn't end student loans entirely.
Will ending student loans lower costs? I'm skeptical. Is there data supporting that? I know lots of universities waste money on expensive useless shit but why would that change just because you get rid of loans? We already have plenty of affordable colleges that can barely stay open at their current level of funding, and ending loans won't impact their tuition at all. The goal should be to encourage students to weigh costs in their decisions, not to eliminate expensive options altogether.
As for already-existing debt, I understand paying more taxes to help the disadvantaged. But paying more taxes to forgive the debt of entitled irresponsible folks? I don't think that's right. Let's say we forgive their debt, what's the likelihood these people won't rack up the same debt within a couple years? And why should responsible non-entitled students have to pay for the luxuries of the irresponsible?
Yes, it sucks that a bunch of students were misled. But there's also a lot of students who were able to make responsible decisions & they shouldn't be punished. And going forward the priority needs to be changing the culture -- getting kids to weigh costs instead of blindly chasing prestige -- and forgiving loans seems like something that would solidify the current culture instead of promoting change.
By the way, this is FourTrouble from DDO. I just joined the site to see what's going on, and looked for a familiar person to respond to. How are things going around here? Seems fairly dead.
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