Tag: cancel culture

nuance

I’ve been thinking about why writing publicly has become so difficult for me recently. I struggle to get coherent ideas down that I feel are ready to share with others, and stand up under the scrutiny of a reader. I have lots and lots of half-formed ideas (you should see my draft folder.) But stuff that makes it past the “Publish” button is rather rare anymore.

I really think this is because I have embraced a set of worldviews and ideas that require a lot of nuance and parsing, that aren’t easily applied in a quick way to the events of the world. And that fact, alongside the danger of being very quickly denounced or branded in some way as an undesirable based on a misunderstanding of the nuance I am embracing, has put the brakes on my desire to share much out in public anymore. I’m trying to overcome that fear.

I recently read this piece at Persuasion by Yascha Mounk, about the dangers of what he calls “180ism.” This is the tendency to set our opinions not based on fixed principles or virtues, but rather in opposition to what the “other side” thinks about an issue. Thus, if the person I perceived as my opponent believes X, then I must believe Y, because I surely couldn’t believe X if they do. This worldview doesn’t leave much room to explore options Z, or W, or V, because a key component of 180ism is that once I’ve committed to Y, then everything else becomes the X I know I hate. And this really captures where I am. Most of positions and ideas have swam into areas outside of that X-Y dualism, and I worry about alienating old and important friends and allies and being labeled as dangerous in some way. So, I choose to not opine nearly as much anymore.

Anyways, like I said, I’m trying to overcome that worry. I hope I’ll be given a fair hearing if I do.

a new moral majority

An aside in a recent Scott Alexander comments post caught my eye. The “this” he refers to in the first sentence is conflict theory:

The most famous example of doing this well was the Reagan coalition, where powerful business interests got to stay rich and powerful, and Moral Majority Christians got to have prayer in school or whatever. But the modern Democratic coalition works too – powerful class interests get to stay rich and powerful, and poor minorities get to have anti-racist math in school or whatever. This honestly seems like a pretty good deal for the Democrats, coalition-building-wise, and I’m not sure they can do better.

I had never thought about it in this way before, but as I become more critical of the identarian/”woke” wing of the left, this seems to ring true to me. Just as I strongly believe all of the culture war material on the right (Satanic panic, LGBT issues, euthanasia, stem cells, and above all else, abortion) has long been a convenient giveaway by economic elites in order to get everyday conservative voters to support an economic agenda that largely benefits the wealthy, I believe the same dynamic is increasingly at work on the left. These woke issues suck up a lot of time and energy and attention among progressive activists, and while they may in some ways be important, they also distract from economic issues that would be mire widely attractive to working class voters and harmful to elite interests. This kind of cultural distraction is very useful to those in power. The left would do well to re-embrace a class-focused progressivism, instead of allowing itself to fall into the trap of becoming a moral majority of the left.

Holding on to Dr. Seuss

Some thoughts about the Dr. Seuss kerfuffle that we should try to hold in our heads all at once:

  • The images in the six discontinued books are undeniably problematic, racist caricatures. To continue to go on acting like they aren’t is dishonest.
  • No one “cancelled” Dr. Seuss. The decision to stop publishing this six (rather minor) titles was made by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, founded by Seuss’ late wife.
  • Dr. Seuss was a visionary author and artist who was also a product of his times. His work as a political cartoonist, and his interest in social commentary, inevitably meant he was addressing controversial and popular topics, especially in the political work he did around World War II. Like many cartoonists and authors at the time, he caricutured and ridiculed America’s enemies in the war, especially the Japanese, in ways that today are clearly racist and unacceptable. However, judging a man who died over 30 years ago, and who worked in the middle of the last century, by today’s standards is unfair to him and a poor way to address art created in the past. Are these images problematic as they are observed and interpreted today? Yes. Does this make Dr. Seuss an unredeemable figure for us to learn about and from today? No.
  • Dr. Seuss was – and is – a powerful voice for a progressive, peaceful and clean world, who wrote against racism, bigotry, war, isolationism and pollution through out his life. I’ll quote here from his Wikipedia page:

Geisel made a point of not beginning to write his stories with a moral in mind, stating that “kids can see a moral coming a mile off.” He was not against writing about issues, however; he said that “there’s an inherent moral in any story”, and he remarked that he was “subversive as hell.”

Geisel’s books express his views on a remarkable variety of social and political issues: The Lorax (1971), about environmentalism and anti-consumerism; The Sneetches (1961), about racial equality; The Butter Battle Book (1984), about the arms race; Yertle the Turtle (1958), about Adolf Hitler and anti-authoritarianism; How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957), criticizing the materialism and consumerism of the Christmas season; and Horton Hears a Who! (1954), about anti-isolationism and internationalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss#Political_views

Anyone who cares about these issues can find a powerful ally in Dr. Seuss and a great teaching tool in his books. We would be foolish to completely dismiss him and his work because he was a product of his times. I look forward to continuing to read his books to my kids, and in doing so, teaching them about the beautiful vision of a better world found in the work of Seuss.