The SubStack Attempt to Avoid the ClickBait-Rage Trap Is Failing: The argument against the idea that SubStack needed to develop a social-media #discoverability layer in order to reach appropriate...
The SubStack Attempt to Avoid the ClickBait-Rage Trap Is Failing: The argument against the idea that SubStack needed to develop a social-media #discoverability layer in order to reach appropriate audience scale was that to drink from that cup was to drink from a poisoned chalice that would lead to the death of reason and discussion…
This morning Matt Yglesias provides a powerful data point strengthening that argument.
He finds the best use of his time to be to issue a SubStack note stating that “The United States of America is not ‘occupied Turtle Island’”, and goes on to say that the “movement to delegitimize the United States of America… needs to be contested by American liberals…”
How are American liberals to contest it?
They are, he says, to do it by invoking a so-called “Sister Souljah” moment, and ostentatiously refusing to do “land acknowledgements”.
Me?
I think we should do land acknowledgements right.
For example:
In 1861 U.S. soldiers wrongfully accused Cochise, Chief of the Chiricahua Apache, of abducting a boy. Botched negotiations led to hostage-taking, executions, and an eleven-year mobile guerrilla war across southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, with Cochise and Mangas Colorados leading the maneuvering and fighting with small, fast bands, deep local knowledge, and selective violence: ambushes of patrols and stage routes, rapid dispersal after strikes, and control of water and passes. The aim was not to hold towns but to impose constant cost on military columns and settlers, deny safe movement, and preserve autonomous living space.
In 1872, U.S. General Oliver Otis Howard gave up the U.S. Army’s campaign, and established the Chiricahua Reservation: a reservation in the tribe’s place, not a distant relocation, recognizing Cochise’s authority and military strength.
In honor and admiration of their fight and their success—of those who, when relationships between colonial settlers and previous inhabitants degenerated into the unfortunate human social practice of war, were highly effective and punched well above their numerical weight in the use of deadly violence against U.S. military personnel and civilian colonizers in ways their understanding of that human social practice allowed—we have since the mid-1980s had: the AH-64 Apache, the U.S. Army’s primary attack helicopter, built around survivability and precision fires, pairing a nose‑mounted sensor suite with armored, redundant systems and powerful engines for low‑level combat in bad weather and at night:
We have named this helicopter thus to call to the forefront of our minds the memory of what Cochise, Mangas Colorados, and the Chiricahua Apache warriors did and suffered between 1861 and 1872.
We hope that calling their deeds to the forefront of our minds will help us acquire some of their virtues today, to maintain and spread human freedom.
I wake up this morning to see John Quiggin correctly calling bullshit on Matthew Yglesias:
John Quiggin <https://substack.com/@jquiggin/note/c-184058595>: ‘I try hard not to get upset about the collapse of the US. Today’s news run -of-the-mill. Trump admin committing multiple crimes that would have justified impeachment in the past—murder, corrupt use of the pardon power, bribery, etc.—not to mention renaming the Institute of Peace after himself. But my Substack feed is full of people linking to a piece by Harpers letter signatory Matt Yglesias in which he denounces a bunch of ultra-obscure lefties who want to call the US “Turtle Island”…
Matthew Yglesias <https://substack.com/@matthewyglesias/note/c-183786395>: ‘The United States of America is not “occupied Turtle Island”: ‘National Students for Justice in Palestine describes its mission as “supporting over 400 Palestine solidarity organizations across occupied Turtle Island (so-called North America).” I think both friends and foes of the anti-Zionist movement understand that they are sincere in their desire to delegitimize the Israeli state, and it’s worth taking seriously the fact that there is a parallel (albeit more far-fetched) movement to delegitimize the United States of America and that this needs to be contested by American liberals in a re <https://www.slowboring.com/p/no-land-acknowledgments-no-remigration>…
So I drop over to google, search for “National Students for Justice in Palestine”, drop down to the bottom of the first results page, click the link, and find myself at: <https://warriorlife.csustan.edu/sjp/home/>:
300 organizations of 20 associated people each, having issued no newsletters and planned no events, would be 6000 people. Yes, NSJP is bigger than that—but not much, and the number of people all-in on the “Turtle Island” delegitimization of the United States is much fewer. I am told by NGO Monitor <https://ngo-monitor.org/ngos/students-for-justice-in-palestine-sjp/> that “SJP is the campus organization most directly responsible for creating a hostile campus environment saturated with anti-Israel events, BDS initiatives, and speakers…” and that it has received $45,000 in tracked donations.
A year ago Matt <http://slowboring.com> had 20,000 paying subscribers and $1.5 million a year of money flowing in.
Now Matt would presumably say that he has a much bigger point to make here than that “The United States of America is not ‘occupied Turtle Island’”, and that that SubStack Note was merely a clickbait teaser to get people to clickthrough and read his more serious argument:
No land acknowledgments, no remigration: Immigration is good for America, and America is good…. The Native Governance Center’s guide to Indigenous land acknowledgments tells us, “Don’t sugarcoat the past. Use terms like genocide, ethnic cleansing, stolen land, and forced removal…”… The stolen land claim is an ideological provocation that I think needs to be rejected…. It’s worth taking seriously the fact that there is a… movement to delegitimize the United States of America and that this needs to be contested by American liberals…. America is a country whose institutions are committed to the noble principles of human freedom and equality, and we need to be able to say in both directions that those institutions are legitimate…. There is no real historical or moral logic to the claim that each country is the rightful possession of whichever ethnic group happened to have dominated it right before it was dominated by Europeans…. We can only foster a politics of national interest if we believe in promoting the interests of the nation!… I think there is a tendency to go along with demands for land acknowledgments because progressive leaders are trying to do coalition management and it seems so low stakes…. [But] the ideological superstructure of what you’re saying matters, even when the short-term practicalities are low…. If we want to defend the ideas of liberalism, pluralism, democracy, and all the rest we can’t accept the premise that there’s something uniquely criminal about the origins of the American state…
And yet the 2024 Democratic platform does not say that there is something uniquely criminal about the origins of the American state. It says, rather, that the convention is on “lands that have been stewarded through many centuries by the ancestors and descendants of Tribal Nations who have been here since time immemorial…”
And while Matt is eager to quote from the National Governance Center on “don’t sugarcoat the past. Use terms like genocide, ethnic cleansing, stolen land, and forced removal…”
he is not eager to quote the National Governance Center on:
Land acknowledgments shouldn’t be grim. They should function as living celebrations of Indigenous communities. Ask yourself, “How am I leaving Indigenous people in a stronger, more empowered place because of this land acknowledgment?” Focus on the positivity of who Indigenous people are today…. Starting somewhere is better than not trying at all. We need to share in Indigenous peoples’ discomfort. They’ve been uncomfortable for a long time. Dr. Kate Beane (Flandreau Santee Dakota and Muskogee Creek) says, “We have to try. Starting out with good intentions and a good heart is what matters most…”
And Matt is not eager at all to say that, since the 1940s, the U.S. Army has gone all-in on what one might see as full-throated “land acknowledgements”. We have and have had: AH‑64 Apache, UH/HH‑60 Black Hawk, CH‑47 Chinook, UH‑1 Iroquois, OH‑58 Kiowa, UH‑72 Lakota, RAH‑66 Comanche, AH‑56 Cheyenne, OH‑6 Cayuse, H‑21 Shawnee, H‑34 Choctaw, OV‑1 Mohawk, RU‑8 Seminole, T‑41 Mescalero, U‑21 Ute, C‑12 Huron, and CH‑54 Tarhe military helicopters.
We have named our military helicopters thus out of respect for the power, bravery, and self-sacrifice of the warriors of America’s Tribal Nations.
We have named them thus in a hope that calling this memory to the forefront of our minds will help us acquire some of their virtues.
We remember, honor, and admire them.
For they, when relationships between colonial settlers and previous inhabitants degenerated into the unfortunate human social practice of war, were highly effective and punched well above their numerical weight.
They then used deadly violence against U.S. military personnel and civilian colonizers in ways their understanding of that human social practice allowed.
A country that is committed to liberalism, pluralism, democracy, freedom, and equality can do land acknowledgements, and do them right. Only if you are not, in fact, so committed—only if you are desperately embarrassed by who you really are—do you find them too cringe and awful to consider.
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His posts are frequently, regularly, goading liberals, Dems, to throw their leftist allies under the bus. He's always inferring that their extremes, "the woke mind virus" (land acknowledgements, reparations, pronouns, whatever), somehow justifies the fascist turn in the country by billionaires and bigots, which he laments along with his dear readers with crocodile tears. My hunch is he's a troll for the rich corporate libertarian lobby. But, most infuriatingly, I'm never prepared or have the time to refute his BS beyond the occasional pot shot. Thank you, Professor DeLong, for doing the job and bringing the receipts. Good work.
I don’t read Yglesias anymore. Is it the narcissism of small differences to say that “liberals” like Yglesias, Ezra Klein and Chuck Schumer are part of the problem? I don’t think so.
His posts are frequently, regularly, goading liberals, Dems, to throw their leftist allies under the bus. He's always inferring that their extremes, "the woke mind virus" (land acknowledgements, reparations, pronouns, whatever), somehow justifies the fascist turn in the country by billionaires and bigots, which he laments along with his dear readers with crocodile tears. My hunch is he's a troll for the rich corporate libertarian lobby. But, most infuriatingly, I'm never prepared or have the time to refute his BS beyond the occasional pot shot. Thank you, Professor DeLong, for doing the job and bringing the receipts. Good work.
I don’t read Yglesias anymore. Is it the narcissism of small differences to say that “liberals” like Yglesias, Ezra Klein and Chuck Schumer are part of the problem? I don’t think so.