Þis Time wiþ Nazi-Adjacent Richard Hanania; a few reflections on how to turn a bitterly divided humanity into a successful and functional anthology intelligence...
"David Frum: ‘A way back is vital, not only for the sake of the repentant extremist, but for the security of normal society. We want to reduce, not multiply, the ranks of the radically disaffected. We want to recall them to democratic constitutionality, not cast them as enemies forever…"
They are not enemies. They're not even opponents. They're people with bad ideas. And these aren't new bad ideas that people should think about/deliberate. These are ideas that have been tried from time to time with awful results. The outcomes were bad because the ideas were poorly thought through and have been shown to be poorly thought through every time they were proposed. Their premise is all wrong, even if the logic or analysis might be impeccable. Frum should know this. He is instead blaming the people who want to shun those ideas from their sphere ("we want to ... not cast them as enemies"). He's calling them intolerant. Is that the best he's got? Chris Best should know that people here today will leave Substack -- I will leave -- the day it starts looking even remotely like a Nazi bar.
Matt Yglesias notes that 'the current evidence that I have been excessively kind to Richard Hanania is a tweet in which I describe him as a “crazy person.”' But in the same tweet he also described Hanania as 'a smart guy with interesting things to say.'
The problem I have with this is that the actually existing Hanania that I have observed has mostly said dumb and boring things that weren't 'crazy' but merely malicious. This is not a case of uncovering the sordid past of someone we thought was a secular saint - as Yglesias has noted himself. So I will say what I said on the Musk-app: if you want to steelman Hanania, be specific. What is an example of a smart and interesting thing that Hanania has said? How representative is that of his writing and thought? Because I'm not going to waste my time doing that work for you.
I'm not sure we should treat David Brooks as entirely sincere on this point, but perhaps I missed the columns in which he urged right wingers to watch Chris Hayes and read Jamelle Bouie.
I like many of these comments and ideas but let me take a different view. I see the tough issue as how to pay for a digital public square. We know how to pay for outrage-driven private rant-filled paranoid fantasy cul-de-sacs (Fox news). Paying for public digital squares that are public property has always been tricky. Privately owned public squares seem to be destroyed by a Greshams law - Hate driven platforms have (so far) been worth more than trust driven ones - it is hard to keep them from being bought by bad people. How do we fund and maintain a digital public square. There used to be these things called taxes.
If we calculate interactions with others in social and public media, then we can identify nodes, linkages, and clusters. Am I a star connecting nodes, or buried in a tight cluster? Because where clusters are isolated there is group think which is susceptible to malicious manipulation, a cult if you will that is probably proud of its loyal isolation.
So an algorithm of recommendations could be valuable if it encouraged us to see other nodes, particularly for cults to hear from outside. We want an algorithm that promotes diversity of nodes rather than reinforces us into isolated clusters. The trick is how to design such an algorithm, and to ensure it is not used for evil by either intent or accident. We should not go down the algorithmic road until we decide on principles. Notably, we don't want the algorithm to be a recruiting tool for existing isolated clusters.
Valuable post, as evidenced by the number of comments.
The love of money, being the root of all evil, Substack is doomed to become a cesspool. We either use it as a utility and ignore the recommendation push posts, or we move on. I am OK with staying because I have a few authors I am interested in, and Substack has an easy to use technology for finding them.
The side issue is the curious cultural/tribal predisposition of most public intellectuals to assume value in others who posture as public intellectuals. For example, we have gotten used to Frum being an interesting right adjacent fellow traveler in trying to preserve democracy. Yet he wants to find an excuse for this Hanania guy. I don't think Frum is a closet Nazi but he has a blind spot.
I somehow doubt if he has a blind spot. The evidence is there for everyone to see. Poor judgement is more like it. The same type of poor judgement that led none of his cohort to speak up when the GOP was calling ideas for health insurance hatched at the Heritage Foundation as a Socialist onslaught.
At his core, David Frum is a right-neoliberal who believes that the meritocracy works: is productive, efficient, just, and fair. Don't ask anything more of him.
The problem is: I don't ask anything more of him, and yet I am still disappointed by this.
I feel like the GOP has systemically broken US politics and several "centrist" pundits are uncomfortable with a reality where ~20% or more or the US from one political direction thinks Democracy itself is a tiresome compromise. They're willing to overlook most glaring flaws as long as the person saying it doesn't seem devoted to Trump or like they'd tolerate a coup.
In other words, they're trying to treat a Q like a W because Ws don't exist any more. There are only Qs that would use violence to end democracy and Qs that would use democracy to end itself, and they're picking the latter and telling us all, "These are the new Ws!"
The truly curious thing is the way that the neo fascist Republicans conceptualize it is as "democracy is under threat" when the true issue is "we do not like democracy"...
So for class -- I graduate with a Masters in Diplomacy in 11 days. I'm 76 -- I'm writing this big final paper on the differences between classic, corporate, and climate diplomacy. People *think* differently? Do they ever. Education leads to empathy? Sometimes. Doesn't explain incendiary school board meetings and eeeeevil library books. A divided humanity, I think, is normal. Polarization is not so much change trying to happen as change thwarted. See also "My way or the highway", infidel, heretic, or delusional idiot across the political -- or any other -- aisle. Eliot says, twice, "Mankind cannot bear very much reality". Anthology intelligence is fine if we are talking data. (Insert J Q Adams and D P Mmoynihan tanget about their own facts here). I suspect that the substantive issue is trust. That would be trust comma lack of. Here beginneth the vicious circle.
Suppose we stipulate that Hanania is not sincerely interesting listening and learning. Why can't he still be useful in the network? Don't we have an Adam Smith situation where we do not rely on the baker's benevolence?
Hanania: I criticized his, I thought, weak and defensive "recantation" on his SubStack. And I fully agree that there are grounds to be suspicious about his sincerity. But the more productive way to proceed, it seems to me, is to take him at his word and engage or not with the opinions he now publicly holds.
I hesitate to denounce Hanania as a genocidaire or whatever. Partly, I feel like we’re labeling anything we don’t like “genocide.” But also, Hanania’s 15yo views are similar to what Romney campaigned on in 2012. Romney promoted “self-deportation.” If asked about that position now, Romney would say that self-deportation applied only to illegal immigrants. But, practically and as we recognized back then, self-deportation would be implemented by making US life unpleasant for colored Latins, immigrant or native-born, documented or not. After all, people become suspicious of someone being “illegal” by racial appearance. So, as we recognized, self-deportation was really classy way to say “drive colored Latins back across the rio grand.” I am unaware of anything that would suggest Romney has evolved or repented from self-deportation. In any case, he is the same (but older) person who promoted self-deportation on that national stage.
Yet, Romney seems fine now? Partly, because he lost in 2012. But also because he says some good or interesting things and he says some bad things, from the perspective of elite liberals. I think we are better off with Romney that whoever would replace him and I think we are better off with his views in the discourse. Like Romney, Hanania makes some good and interesting points. And unlike Romney, he’s not a senator (not even a tenured professor). So I think this whole thing is overblown.
I agree with your point about Clarence Thomas being rooted by his social network. I think that point would also apply to someone like Ginsberg though, because, even though she didn’t receive material gifts, she was feted by media, universities and other cultural elites. That feting would have dried up had she moved to the center.
Brad, what I'd like to see you write about is tools. Mental tools to approach synthesis. Liaa DiBello comes to mind. Joseph Nye / soft power, not so much. So does this:
There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and goal integration.
By domination only one side gets what it wants;
by compromise neither side gets what it wants [distributive baragianing];
by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish….[Positive sum thinking].
That's Mary Parker “conflict is settled and the next begins at a higher level” Follet, The Psychology of Consent and Participation (1927)
"David Frum: ‘A way back is vital, not only for the sake of the repentant extremist, but for the security of normal society. We want to reduce, not multiply, the ranks of the radically disaffected. We want to recall them to democratic constitutionality, not cast them as enemies forever…"
They are not enemies. They're not even opponents. They're people with bad ideas. And these aren't new bad ideas that people should think about/deliberate. These are ideas that have been tried from time to time with awful results. The outcomes were bad because the ideas were poorly thought through and have been shown to be poorly thought through every time they were proposed. Their premise is all wrong, even if the logic or analysis might be impeccable. Frum should know this. He is instead blaming the people who want to shun those ideas from their sphere ("we want to ... not cast them as enemies"). He's calling them intolerant. Is that the best he's got? Chris Best should know that people here today will leave Substack -- I will leave -- the day it starts looking even remotely like a Nazi bar.
Matt Yglesias notes that 'the current evidence that I have been excessively kind to Richard Hanania is a tweet in which I describe him as a “crazy person.”' But in the same tweet he also described Hanania as 'a smart guy with interesting things to say.'
The problem I have with this is that the actually existing Hanania that I have observed has mostly said dumb and boring things that weren't 'crazy' but merely malicious. This is not a case of uncovering the sordid past of someone we thought was a secular saint - as Yglesias has noted himself. So I will say what I said on the Musk-app: if you want to steelman Hanania, be specific. What is an example of a smart and interesting thing that Hanania has said? How representative is that of his writing and thought? Because I'm not going to waste my time doing that work for you.
I'm not sure we should treat David Brooks as entirely sincere on this point, but perhaps I missed the columns in which he urged right wingers to watch Chris Hayes and read Jamelle Bouie.
I missed those columns too!
I like many of these comments and ideas but let me take a different view. I see the tough issue as how to pay for a digital public square. We know how to pay for outrage-driven private rant-filled paranoid fantasy cul-de-sacs (Fox news). Paying for public digital squares that are public property has always been tricky. Privately owned public squares seem to be destroyed by a Greshams law - Hate driven platforms have (so far) been worth more than trust driven ones - it is hard to keep them from being bought by bad people. How do we fund and maintain a digital public square. There used to be these things called taxes.
If we calculate interactions with others in social and public media, then we can identify nodes, linkages, and clusters. Am I a star connecting nodes, or buried in a tight cluster? Because where clusters are isolated there is group think which is susceptible to malicious manipulation, a cult if you will that is probably proud of its loyal isolation.
So an algorithm of recommendations could be valuable if it encouraged us to see other nodes, particularly for cults to hear from outside. We want an algorithm that promotes diversity of nodes rather than reinforces us into isolated clusters. The trick is how to design such an algorithm, and to ensure it is not used for evil by either intent or accident. We should not go down the algorithmic road until we decide on principles. Notably, we don't want the algorithm to be a recruiting tool for existing isolated clusters.
Nicely put...
Valuable post, as evidenced by the number of comments.
The love of money, being the root of all evil, Substack is doomed to become a cesspool. We either use it as a utility and ignore the recommendation push posts, or we move on. I am OK with staying because I have a few authors I am interested in, and Substack has an easy to use technology for finding them.
The side issue is the curious cultural/tribal predisposition of most public intellectuals to assume value in others who posture as public intellectuals. For example, we have gotten used to Frum being an interesting right adjacent fellow traveler in trying to preserve democracy. Yet he wants to find an excuse for this Hanania guy. I don't think Frum is a closet Nazi but he has a blind spot.
I somehow doubt if he has a blind spot. The evidence is there for everyone to see. Poor judgement is more like it. The same type of poor judgement that led none of his cohort to speak up when the GOP was calling ideas for health insurance hatched at the Heritage Foundation as a Socialist onslaught.
At his core, David Frum is a right-neoliberal who believes that the meritocracy works: is productive, efficient, just, and fair. Don't ask anything more of him.
The problem is: I don't ask anything more of him, and yet I am still disappointed by this.
Lol! And we should all unanimously disagree if Frum's colleague in the Bush administration calls this a "soft bigotry of low expectations."
I feel like the GOP has systemically broken US politics and several "centrist" pundits are uncomfortable with a reality where ~20% or more or the US from one political direction thinks Democracy itself is a tiresome compromise. They're willing to overlook most glaring flaws as long as the person saying it doesn't seem devoted to Trump or like they'd tolerate a coup.
In other words, they're trying to treat a Q like a W because Ws don't exist any more. There are only Qs that would use violence to end democracy and Qs that would use democracy to end itself, and they're picking the latter and telling us all, "These are the new Ws!"
The truly curious thing is the way that the neo fascist Republicans conceptualize it is as "democracy is under threat" when the true issue is "we do not like democracy"...
One could say they love democracy but are just upset that it doesn't stop after their own primaries.
Many followers of these neos think democracy is too much work.
They just got some push back on their "democracy is under threat" in Ohio.
So for class -- I graduate with a Masters in Diplomacy in 11 days. I'm 76 -- I'm writing this big final paper on the differences between classic, corporate, and climate diplomacy. People *think* differently? Do they ever. Education leads to empathy? Sometimes. Doesn't explain incendiary school board meetings and eeeeevil library books. A divided humanity, I think, is normal. Polarization is not so much change trying to happen as change thwarted. See also "My way or the highway", infidel, heretic, or delusional idiot across the political -- or any other -- aisle. Eliot says, twice, "Mankind cannot bear very much reality". Anthology intelligence is fine if we are talking data. (Insert J Q Adams and D P Mmoynihan tanget about their own facts here). I suspect that the substantive issue is trust. That would be trust comma lack of. Here beginneth the vicious circle.
Suppose we stipulate that Hanania is not sincerely interesting listening and learning. Why can't he still be useful in the network? Don't we have an Adam Smith situation where we do not rely on the baker's benevolence?
What if the malevolence is the product instead of a bread or a cake?
Hanania: I criticized his, I thought, weak and defensive "recantation" on his SubStack. And I fully agree that there are grounds to be suspicious about his sincerity. But the more productive way to proceed, it seems to me, is to take him at his word and engage or not with the opinions he now publicly holds.
I hesitate to denounce Hanania as a genocidaire or whatever. Partly, I feel like we’re labeling anything we don’t like “genocide.” But also, Hanania’s 15yo views are similar to what Romney campaigned on in 2012. Romney promoted “self-deportation.” If asked about that position now, Romney would say that self-deportation applied only to illegal immigrants. But, practically and as we recognized back then, self-deportation would be implemented by making US life unpleasant for colored Latins, immigrant or native-born, documented or not. After all, people become suspicious of someone being “illegal” by racial appearance. So, as we recognized, self-deportation was really classy way to say “drive colored Latins back across the rio grand.” I am unaware of anything that would suggest Romney has evolved or repented from self-deportation. In any case, he is the same (but older) person who promoted self-deportation on that national stage.
Yet, Romney seems fine now? Partly, because he lost in 2012. But also because he says some good or interesting things and he says some bad things, from the perspective of elite liberals. I think we are better off with Romney that whoever would replace him and I think we are better off with his views in the discourse. Like Romney, Hanania makes some good and interesting points. And unlike Romney, he’s not a senator (not even a tenured professor). So I think this whole thing is overblown.
I agree with your point about Clarence Thomas being rooted by his social network. I think that point would also apply to someone like Ginsberg though, because, even though she didn’t receive material gifts, she was feted by media, universities and other cultural elites. That feting would have dried up had she moved to the center.
Brad, what I'd like to see you write about is tools. Mental tools to approach synthesis. Liaa DiBello comes to mind. Joseph Nye / soft power, not so much. So does this:
There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and goal integration.
By domination only one side gets what it wants;
by compromise neither side gets what it wants [distributive baragianing];
by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish….[Positive sum thinking].
That's Mary Parker “conflict is settled and the next begins at a higher level” Follet, The Psychology of Consent and Participation (1927)