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Politics: where a week is a long time
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This is interesting in the context of our recent conversations about Labour’s messaging.
Rachel Reeves to consult Joe Biden’s team on Labour’s economic offer
Shadow chancellor will discuss how party can appeal to blue-collar voters and urban graduates
The new shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, intends to consult Joe Biden’s economic team on how Labour can make a major economic offer before the next election, rooted in job security, childcare and social infrastructure.
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It’s actually hugely complex. You have to begin with what ‘conservative’ even means.
In the UK there is at the moment a huge correlation between age bracket and voting for right or left wing parties. Ellie Mae O’Hagan recently noted though that this wasn’t always the case. In 1983 Thatcher had a lead in the 18-24 group, Labour in the 2019 election had an overwhelming 50 point lead there. When I was in university in 1992 the students union did their own polling and the Tories came top (yes even from those radical students).
What you see in that period since 1980 is two opposing moves, in economic and social politics. We have become socially more liberal with greater rights with regard to gender and race and sexuality (it was the Tories that passed gay marriage) while the prevailing mood has been to cut services and lower taxes (the current 20p income tax rate as the lowest in modern times was set by Labour).
So when they analyse the motives of ‘red wall’ voters in England that have gone from Labour to Tory, similarly to rust belt voters in the US in 2016, one thing that can be gleaned is they haven’t actually changed their stances at all. When young they’d be giggling at Mind Your Language and ‘mother-in-law’ jokes and agreeing with social spending. While the current Tory party is suddenly open to big spending (at least in their rhetoric) and dog whistling that the PC stuff and immigration has gone too far.
Part of the right wing economic change in the last few decades but especially the last 10 years is a huge chunk of it has been taken from the young. I left college (in the days that poll went to the Tories) with £850 of student loan debt I paid off easily within 6 months of getting a job. Now the debts run into the tens of thousands. Minimum wage is not applicable to the under 23s, neither is housing benefit etc. So they are far more likely to reject those policies because of their circumstances than in 1983 or 1992. They have no issue with the socially liberal side as that’s what they’ve always been used to.
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The new shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, intends to consult Joe Biden’s economic team on how Labour can make a major economic offer before the next election, rooted in job security, childcare and social infrastructure.
This is what they really need to do.
I heard one of the main Labour guys the other day being asked after the election failure what they should offer. He made some points about climate change.
This is horseshit and why they are up their own arses and floundering. Of course climate change is important, probably the most important question facing us, but you can’t present it in the abstract like that, especially when Johnson already is. Same as the why the Brexit argument failed by talking about macro economics. Point out that most offshore wind power is off working class areas, like the north east of England or west Wales. Say your policy is to make the turbines there instead of importing from overseas, using British steel. That will increase how green the process is and be a practical selling point for a lot of people. Sell the individual impact, like an increased minimum wage does. Not concepts.
Labour had some mixed fortunes last week but the areas where they did well, Manchester, Preston and Wales for example, have clear examples of them actually doing things and delivering, which people respond to.
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I think this is a big part of it. While I do think that some people will probably veer right as they get older (due to the kind of class changes you mention) I think it’s often overlooked that the moral/ethical landscape is these days changing hugely, certainly over the period of a lifetime, and what was seen as progressive when someone was young isn’t necessarily going to align with progressive thought today.
Yeah, and I think you see this play out a lot with a lot of the discussion about what you can’t get away with on TV any more – people our age complain that kids 20 years younger than us don’t like Jerry Seinfeld or whoever, while ignoring that when we were in our 20s, our parents were complaining that we didn’t like Roy Chubby Brown or Benny Hill. And the rhetoric used to attack the kids today was the same used against us when we were their age.
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Having said that a lot of music today is just noise.
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Yeah, and I think you see this play out a lot with a lot of the discussion about what you can’t get away with on TV any more
It’s kind of interesting how the dynamic has flipped there in some ways, partly due to the progress that has been made.
When I was young the conversation around censorship was more about broadly leftwing types pushing back at Mary Whitehouse types for the sake of more artistic freedom, while decrying the fact that old-school racist and sexist comedy and entertainment was still thriving.
Now I’d argue the dynamic is reversed. Censorship of free expression is less prevalent than it used to be as standards have relaxed and technology has allowed more channels of communication to flourish. At the same time, thankfully those politically incorrect forms of entertainment are no longer seen as acceptable. But it means you have a pushback from broadly rightwing types saying that we are being overly sensitive by ‘cancelling’ this kind of material, and claims of unfair censorship are more directed at people who don’t want to give regressive viewpoints a platform.
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Having said that a lot of music today is just noise.
Yeah, I mean listen to this!
These kids with their… checks notes… 39-year old noise music…
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Yeah, and I think you see this play out a lot with a lot of the discussion about what you can’t get away with on TV any more
It’s kind of interesting how the dynamic has flipped there in some ways, partly due to the progress that has been made.
When I was young the conversation around censorship was more about broadly leftwing types pushing back at Mary Whitehouse types for the sake of more artistic freedom, while decrying the fact that old-school racist and sexist comedy and entertainment was still thriving.
Now I’d argue the dynamic is reversed. Censorship of free expression is less prevalent than it used to be as standards have relaxed and technology has allowed more channels of communication to flourish. At the same time, thankfully those politically incorrect forms of entertainment are no longer seen as acceptable. But it means you have a pushback from broadly rightwing types saying that we are being overly sensitive by ‘cancelling’ this kind of material, and claims of unfair censorship are more directed at people who don’t want to give regressive viewpoints a platform.
Kinda sorta, I’ll see if I can dig it up but there was a clipping from a paper doing the rounds, it was an article from the early 90s decrying political correctness, and the arguments are the same as you’ll hear on Fox News as they yell about Cancel Culture or “Woke people”, like almost word for word.
I think that there’s a lot of misinformation around what progressives making social commentary actually want – like very few actually want less sex or sexiness on TV (note for example how beloved Sense8 is in
ourthat side of the culture war divide), just less exploitation, but it’s very easy to conflate the two either on purpose or by accident. Of course, a lot of it is the same kind of stuff Eco talked about in Ur-Fascism, the idea of holding two opposing ideas at the same time and accusing others of what you want to do. -
Kinda sorta, I’ll see if I can dig it up but there was a clipping from a paper doing the rounds, it was an article from the early 90s decrying political correctness, and the arguments are the same as you’ll hear on Fox News as they yell about Cancel Culture or “Woke people”, like almost word for word.
Oh, for sure. I’m old enough to remember those arguments at the time. But I think the balance of power has shifted – back then, the people advocating political correctness were coming from a position of relative weakness compared to today, when I think moral standards have caught up with them a lot more nowadays.
“Political correctness” – or as one comedian once suggested you substitute in, treating people with dignity and respect – is far more the mainstream thinking of today I think.
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Having said that a lot of music today is just noise.
John Cage was composing noise in the 1950s.
See, that’s the problem with kids these days. They think history begins with them, not realising we’ve already been there, done that.
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This is where the class and financial element is changing though. Young people today aren’t getting on the housing ladder, they aren’t reaching comfortable middle class in the same numbers.
- When boomers were roughly the same age as millennials are now, they owned about 21% of America’s wealth, compared to millennials’ 3% share today, according to recent Fed data.
In an analysis I read today that was pretty damning of how the Labour Party in the UK ran their campaign they did point out that the one advantage they have is they know where their next voters are coming from.
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Kinda sorta, I’ll see if I can dig it up but there was a clipping from a paper doing the rounds, it was an article from the early 90s decrying political correctness, and the arguments are the same as you’ll hear on Fox News as they yell about Cancel Culture or “Woke people”, like almost word for word.
Oh, for sure. I’m old enough to remember those arguments at the time. But I think the balance of power has shifted – back then, the people advocating political correctness were coming from a position of relative weakness compared to today, when I think moral standards have caught up with them a lot more nowadays.
“Political correctness” – or as one comedian once suggested you substitute in, treating people with dignity and respect – is far more the mainstream thinking of today I think.
The way I’ve seen it presented – and I think it is accurate – the political correctness / “woke brigade” stuff is about who is setting the rules.
30 years ago, it was more or less white people. Now it’s blacks, asians, women, disabled and various sexualities and none laying claim to the same levers of power, which is what is being objected by those who used to be exclusively in charge of them.
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The way I’ve seen it presented – and I think it is accurate – the political correctness / “woke brigade” stuff is about who is setting the rules. 30 years ago, it was more or less white people. Now it’s blacks, asians, women, disabled and various sexualities and none laying claim to the same levers of power, which is what is being objected by those who used to be exclusively in charge of them.
However, it isn’t just white comics complaining about cancel culture and the woke brigade stuff. Black, Asian, Women, Jewish – you’ll find the reaction is similar across the board. The problem is that “whites” have never really been in power in the United States. The rich have always been in power and most of them have always been white, while the majority of everyone of any race or ethnicity have had really no power even if they were middle class.
So, a lot of the conflict ends up setting people who have no political power or influence against each other to the benefit of the very few who do have the wealth and influence and don’t really care about any other color than green.
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She was voted out as a head of the GOP. Amazing how the long time traditional GOPers like Cheney, Romney, McCain, the Bushes, are being phased out and put out to pasture in favor of those who drink the proverbial Kool Aid of The Cult of Trump.
Also… weeks ago, I posted about the failure of the education system etc. Well the severe gas shortage (allegedly caused by Russian hackers) led to obscenely long gas lines all along the East Coast states in the US. Some people tried to fill plastic bags with gasoline. I kid you not.
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However, that is the point that people rarely take into consideration. It’s not about abandoning lifelong convictions, but retaining convictions over time. That’s the essence of conservatism – not changing. Imagine you’re like my generation that was young under Clinton. Well, if you retained the political convictions of that period, you’re going to be considered a moderate conservative or even strong conservative today.
In some areas, but not in others (socially, you would be, but when it comes to economic policy, a middle-of-the-road moderate in the seventies would today be seen as a radical leftie). I think Lorcan’s 3 points summed this all up nicely, though. The thing is: If you were a Clinton-era Democrat, would your political convictions today align with Trump? So much that you would vote for him? I would think not. (And again, this also isn’t what the research shows.)
Except maybe where social policies are concerned, but hell, stuff like weed and gay marriage are actually pretty broadly accepted these days and I would suspect that the older generations actually have become more accepting of these things.When you look at opinion polls in the US around social policies like gun control, marriage equality, abortion and other hot topics for the Republicans, support for them is usually in the 60-70% bracket, but voter support for Republicans is usually around 50%, or close enough in swing states and the Presidential election that outside of major upsets it’s frequently a close-run thing, especially if it’s not an incumbent president running for a second term. Because it’s very hard to get more than 50% of registered voters out, that suggests that the 30-odd% of people who are opposed to progressive policies are more dedicated voters, and they form the core of Republican support. I think that the conservatives who support gun control and whatever mostly vote Democrat or don’t vote at all.
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It was interesting when I was working in Texas and chatting to my boss and some colleagues there. While Republican voters they were very much of the libertarian persuasion, so on subjects like marriage equality or legalising pot they were very much in favour. They wouldn’t view them so much as progressive policies but libertarian in allowing you to pretty much do as you please. That would be allied with being very against gun control.
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Yeah, I mean, that’s one of the problems with this, that voting behaviour isn’t just down to political standpoints, but also to how the individual candidate is perceived on a personal level – do you like this person or not? The vote may be based on that rather than the policies they stand for. And it may even be based on your view of the other candidate. And you’re quite right that especially recent years have demonstrated our democracies’ vulnerability to scammers.
But when it comes to research that examines voting behaviour based on political positions, the point stands, I believe. By and large, people actually don’t grow more conservative as they age, so the GOP can’t rely on people just coming around to their point of view.
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It was interesting when I was working in Texas and chatting to my boss and some colleagues there. While Republican voters they were very much of the libertarian persuasion, so on subjects like marriage equality or legalising pot they were very much in favour. They wouldn’t view them so much as progressive policies but libertarian in allowing you to pretty much do as you please. That would be allied with being very against gun control.
Libertarians almost universally vote Republican because in the US at least, there’s a long running joke that they’re just Republicans who want weed to be legalised.
But yeah, there’s definitely going to be people who are pro-choice and against gun control or whatever and vote Republican because they’re more anti-choice or more pro-gun, but I find it hard to believe that overlap accounts for almost 20% of all American voters.
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It depends, in that specific example of libertarians – probably not.
However I think you could maybe garner a majority of people who don’t fit universally into a left or right set of beliefs. There’s definitely a big clash between the social and economic liberal/conservative side. My friend who is trans is way to the right of me and praises conservative talking points like tax cuts and benefit cuts while also calling for LGBT rights and being pro-choice, has no strong views on immigration.
With things like surveillance and ID cards you’ll find the opposition increases both the further left and right of centre you go.
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Some or most of the libertarian philosophy may be a reaction to the general sales pitch by a lot of our society that people should not be selfish or self-interested while all of our politicians are obviously selfish and self-interested. Recently, a congressman made a speech on the floor about a certain piece of legislation where he said “can we just this once not make this about politics?” and I thought that’s like the manager in a restaurant in the middle of a busy dinner night saying “can we just this once stop making and serving food?!”
Politics is why they are there in congress, and politics is about the power to get what you want. There is a lot of pop psychology where supposed experts promote the idea that “you are not your ego” or “the self doesn’t exist.” The idea that there is “something greater” than yourself that you should put before your own little interests. Obviously, this is coming from people who don’t have to worry about a paycheck, or paying rent or buying food.
On the other side, the people who are repackaging Nietzche, Machiavelli and Ayn Rand are also running another scam on people who are interested in their own personal improvement by essentially carving them out of society and promoting the idea that individual accomplishment is all that matters.
In politics, the size and solidarity of a movement is the strongest determining factor in winning power. However, what attracts the numbers to the movements or the parties is what they can deliver individually to their supporters. If you’re constantly suffering personal setbacks from your political affiliations no matter how much they theoretically align with your political point of view, then you probably should leave them and either find a movement that will benefit you or start one. Because, it is likely you’re not alone.
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The idea that there is “something greater” than yourself that you should put before your own little interests. Obviously, this is coming from people who don’t have to worry about a paycheck, or paying rent or buying food.
This is true but it would be nice if the people who don’t have to worry about those things would involve their self in things beyond their own self interest. I would hazard a guess that most people in Congress do not have to worry about those things.
“can we just this once not make this about politics?”
was probably misphrased. It is more likely a request for common sense over the need to make everything REP v DEM. Unfortunately it was also most likely disingenuous. A more apt metaphor may be “can we just this once stop make food that is greasy”
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This is true but it would be nice if the people who don’t have to worry about those things would involve their self in things beyond their own self interest. I would hazard a guess that most people in Congress do not have to worry about those things.
If no one in the world was willing to enlist in the military, then we would never have wars. We blame political leaders for starting wars and sending soldiers to kill and die in them, but if all those millions of individuals uniformly refused, it wouldn’t matter what world leaders wanted.
However, is it realistic?
That’s politics. Even politicians who say they want to leave politics out of something are playing politics by saying that. The reason they are in office is that they followed their interests to get there. Anyone with principles outside of politics – the acquisition of political power – will be at a disadvantage when trying to win an election. So, we end up with people in office who are very self-interested and selfish. However, we choose them – or at least we choose one of the small selection who were able to get through the filter of money and power that leads to their names on the ballots.
In the end, the very nature of politics reasonably recommends that every individual should be selfish when engaged in politics. Don’t try to be a hero – a hero is the one that pays the price when they stick to their ideals. No one will thank you or reward you for it until you’re dead and then they’ll just use your memory for their own interests.
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https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/21/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-mask-mandates-holocaust/index.html
This is the same person who claimed the Parkland shooting was staged, a Jewish space satellite was firing lasers and really responsible for the fires in Northern California, posted a picture or Pelosi in crosshairs as well as Dem congresswomen, openly harrasses Dem congresswomen… you get the point. She and the other Congresswoman Boebert are something else…
What happened to the GOP for them to allow this theatre of the absurd to put it mildly? Even the GOP members who know better have been silenced or compromised. Interestingly, Ted Cruz, who attended the Ivy League tweeted something about Biden and the Paris Accord as Biden caring more for France than the US. Cruz knows full well what the Paris Accord is. He is just feeding into the ignorance of some in the GOP constituency further causing their hysteria. Gaetz and others were doing the same thing in implying that defunding the police meant no police force to defend the white surburbs from black crime invasion.
I have to say it is a case of them reading the room and seeing who their voting base really are as shown by Trump when he had his populist message during his election drive in 2016.
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This guest on CNN once said he wouldn’t put anything past the GOP “given how stupid this country really is”.
Sadly, he was right.
I’m often reminded of this lyric from the Crowded House song “Don’t Dream It’s Over”:
In the paper today
Tales of war and of waste
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Dominic Cummings currently giving evidence to Parliament, and totally throwing his former boss under the bus. I have no love for Cummings, but I’m loving this performance
Mr Cummings says after April, once the UK had switched to plan B, fundamentally there was no proper border policy “because the prime minister didn’t want there to be a border policy”.
He says that Boris Johnson was “back to lockdown was all a terrible mistake, I should have been the Mayor of Jaws, we should never have done lockdown one, the travel industry will all be destroyed if we bring in a border policy”.
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Cummings says that there were some of the best communications people around but says “fundamentally the reason for all these problems was bad policy, bad decisions, bad planning, bad operational capability”.
“It doesn’t matter if you have got great people doing communications if the prime minister changes his mind 10 times a day and then calls up the media and contradicts his policy day, after day, after day,” he says.
“You are going to have a communications disaster zone.”
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He says “everyone was screaming” about the need for an effective quarantine policy to be put in place that the government would stick to but there was a situation where the PM changed his mind according to what newspapers were saying.
Boris Johnson was “like a shopping trolley” he said, swinging from one side to the other.
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Yeah, I mean, Cummings is the worst kind of person possible, but you kinda have to love him for this:
He says that Boris Johnson was “back to lockdown was all a terrible mistake, I should have been the Mayor of Jaws
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The trouble with Cummings is that it’s the same self-serving solipsistic revisionist bullshit that you’d expect from him, even if a lot of the facts are true.
His testimony has been a mass of contradictions. It was crazy that someone like him was given so much power, yet at every turn his attempts to do the right thing fell on deaf ears. He was well aware for years of the dangers of a pandemic and of the UK’s ill-preparedness, yet didn’t have a firm enough grasp of the details to make firm recommendations until mid-March 2020, by which point the decision on the lockdowns had basically been made anyway. His influence on government policy was massively exaggerated, yet he constantly had a direct line to the PM and was making policy recommendations on a daily basis.
He’s always tried to position himself as the smartest person in the room and cultivate that media image. Then a pandemic happened, and guess what? He was positioned at the highest level of a government that completely cocked up its initial response and was several moves behind for many, many months, leading many thousands of lives to be lost. He can’t wriggle out of his shared responsibility for that.
I’m sure Cummings would love today to be a big show that absolves him of all responsibility for the bad parts of the last 15 months, credits him for all the good parts, and drops the PM in it so that his good friend Michael Gove can have another shot at it. And who knows, to some extent maybe it will be?
But you’d think by now that people would be smart enough to see through Cummings’ self-serving, self-aggrandising bullshit.
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That this information is being unveiled in a pantomime-style spat between Cummings and Johnson, littered with independence day, Jeff Goldblum and spiderman references, is utterly inappropriate and makes this even more appalling.
3/5
— Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK (@CovidJusticeUK) May 26, 2021
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Yeah, I mean, Cummings is the worst kind of person possible, but you kinda have to love him for this:
Bizarrely the mayor from Jaws is an ongoing meme for Johnson. He frequently makes the same speech about admiring the mayor for keeping the beaches open.
I am not joking, this is from last year.
Boris Johnson’s hero is the mayor who kept the beaches open in Jaws. That’s fine by me
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I have seen pushback on that rather despairing view that I have been swayed by.
My original take was the Cummings revelations will end in a 5% increase in Tory lead but in truth we do have to push back rather than succumb to that, as depressing as it often seems. It can be a bit like following a sporting team that keeps getting thrashed and the easiest emotional approach is to just give up hope.
I don’t really understand his appeal to the English electorate, he just looks like a fat lying idiot to me, but I suppose my role is to persuade more people my take is correct.
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If we’re being rational about it then of course he isn’t universally loved, and he hasn’t even got a particularly broad appeal to the electorate.
Even if you take every conservative vote in the 2019 general election as a personal endorsement of Johnson, he still only got 43.6% of the vote, and that was on 67.3% turnout, which when you put the two numbers together hardly represents blanket adoration by the voters.
The point – and maybe the more pertinent point at the moment – is whether anything could happen to reduce that support to the point where it isn’t sufficient to make him the favourite in the next election.
As much as I’m sure we all try and persuade people in our personal lives that our political views are correct and encourage them not to vote for people we don’t like, I think it takes more than that for real change to happen.
It will require a strong and competent opposition (which we don’t have at the moment) to provide a viable alternative; and it will require something to happen to meaningfully damage the public perception of Johnson, which seems pretty difficult to come by at the moment.
For all the fuss and noise around Cummings and his performance today I don’t really see it harming the government. Much of it is stuff we already knew, and much of the rest of it is very subjective or disputed stuff coming from a disgruntled former advisor with an axe to grind.
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Although for me, the most outrageous thing he said today was his reference to the meme involving the two “Spider-Mans”, when of course it should be Spider-Men.
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Although for me, the most outrageous thing he said today was his reference to the meme involving the two “Spider-Mans”, when of course it should be Spider-Men.
Spiders-man
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Although for me, the most outrageous thing he said today was his reference to the meme involving the two “Spider-Mans”, when of course it should be Spider-Men.
Spiders-man
Spiders Men.
(Yeah, you heard me, no hyphen.)
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Although for me, the most outrageous thing he said today was his reference to the meme involving the two “Spider-Mans”, when of course it should be Spider-Men.
Spiders-man
Spiders Men.
(Yeah, you heard me, no hyphen.)
Spiders-Mens
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With great power comes zero accountability. pic.twitter.com/AGYJAsG7AW
— Captain Howdy (@MajorPazuzu) May 26, 2021
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As much as I’m sure we all try and persuade people in our personal lives that our political views are correct and encourage them not to vote for people we don’t like, I think it takes more than that for real change to happen.
Absolutely.
I think my point, if not very well made, was slightly different to that. Which was since 2016 it’s easy for liberals to be resigned to defeat and that mood music is essentially negative. So it’s not that we all individually turn enough people around with political discourse but rather a vibe that’s given off. Political campaigns generally succeed most with a strong whiff of positivity.
Even though we have a lot of negative campaigning elements if you look at the strongest wins, there’s a big and convincing element of a ‘yes we can’ approach even if the slogan varies.
Of course good leadership, policies and communication are vital too but it felt a point well made that if you begin in a fog of resignation then you aren’t going to get very far.
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I’m not quite sure it’s that. Brexit has really fallen down the story pages with everything else going on and I think for most people not involved with the downside (i.e. roles that involve import and export) the majority consider it ‘done’ and nobody is proposing undoing it really.
There’s definitely a change of culture in the UK. Labour is taking more metropolitan middle class seats, the Tories eating into post industrial working class areas (Johnson’s ‘red wall’ similar to Trump’s ‘rust belt’ gains). Scotland has ditched Labour entirely although that may not be as decisive as it seems as the SNP would never go into partnership with the Tories but would with labour so in the case of a hung parliament those stay on their ‘side’.
The hope for Labour there is a similar scenario to 2020 in the US where Trump’s rhetoric on bringing back loads of great jobs didn’t happen. Johnson’s not as ridiculous in his statements as Trump but he has the same style of promising the earth with wildly optimistic claims but that can only last so long without results. The party claim of plans to ‘level up’ these areas after London and the south east have raced ahead but in truth there’s very little strategy or policy for that to happen.
None of it helped by Labour being very ineffective in their policy and messaging and the Liberal Democrats as the centre party having pissed on their chips, they used to take a chunk of rural seats away from the Tories, especially in the south west, that they have lost.
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Bizarrely the mayor from Jaws is an ongoing meme for Johnson. He frequently makes the same speech about admiring the mayor for keeping the beaches open.
That’s been an interesting thought experiment actually. I think most people know that Peter Benchley was directly inspired by the plot of Henrik Ibsen’s 19th century play AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE when he came up with the plot of JAWS.
In fact, Peter Benchley borrowed the plot for his bestseller, Jaws: a small coastal town is threatened with closure, except in Ibsen’s version it’s a health spa and the danger in the water is not a shark, but poisonous contamination. The man who has made this discovery, Dr Stockmann, finds himself in a battle against the mayor (his brother) and the rest of the town.
Steve McQueen made a movie based on the play except it was never given much of a release and Warner Bros basically actively hid it from the public to the point a lot of people think it was never actually made. McQueen was one of their biggest stars and they thought it would hurt his image.
As part of the political debate, there is a big difference between a great white shark and water contamination. The former can only kill a few people while the latter can kill anyone – or maybe everyone – that gets into the water. So, in the play, the moral debate is much more clear. The mayor is clearly putting people in mortal danger and knows exactly what the threat is.
However, in the movie, there are a lot more mitigating factors. First, shark attacks are very rare and this shark is shown time and again to be extremely atypical. On top of that, the sheriff is an alcoholic, weak-willed and incompetent officer of the law who basically failed his way from better positions into this one and it doesn’t really look like he was going to keep the job – or his marriage – even if the shark didn’t show up. It’s something I really like about 70’s movies in that the heroes – especially if they are played by Roy Scheider – generally start out as losers who have to stand up and face something that would be overwhelming to a much more competent and well-adjusted person.
He then gets hooked up with Quint (Shaw) who is essentially this extremely overconfident fisherman – even more alcoholic than the sheriff – who basically has the shittiest boat at the dock that they still choose to take out after this monster when Hooper (Dreyfuss) could’ve gotten them a much better and “bigger” boat.
So, unfortunately, the question becomes was the mayor really irresponsible given all the factors around the situation that only the audience was aware of, or was the real fault in the lack of competence and confidence that the Sheriff displayed in his job?
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Starting to feel like I’m heading into another cycle of this:
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Yeah it’s difficult to argue against it. Same for Iran getting nukes to defend themselves from Israel or the US, Taiwan getting nukes to defend themselves from China etc etc
However, it has to be acknowledged that Israel doesn’t want to invade Iran. China is really trying to bully the world into basically going along with complete b.s. with Taiwan, but Israel isn’t trying to actively take over the Middle East. It just wants to exist as a secular nation surrounded by enemies who also don’t seem to have any interest in promoting the welfare of the Palestinians. Jordan, Lebanon and Syria have a terrible record on the rights of Palestinian refugees and, honestly, I personally can’t blame them for not wanting to invite a completely intractable problem into their already troubled regions.
Iran doesn’t need nukes against Israel… it needs nukes as a deterrent against Saudi Arabia and the United States. Israel is just caught up in that because it sees siding with the USA as its best chance of survival. Hard to blame them honestly. In real political terms, the United States is a pretty ruthless player. We always portray our opponents as serious James Bond villain level actors, but honestly that is projection. It’s hard to think of a nation state since Sparta that was as single-mindedly self interested and willing to do anything to maintain itself than the USA. Even in the case of atomic warfare, you have to remember that at the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was Kruschev that backed down, not Kennedy.
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I’m against lockdowns but people have to make up their own minds.
I don’t think many people, bar agoraphobics maybe, are pro lockdown.
I think the UK is now at a point though it has to look to living with the virus, with a very advanced vaccination program. While cases are rising hospitalisations and deaths are significantly lower, more of the cases are among the under 30s who are far more resilient and most of them will have received a first dose in the next month. There’s a point where you will have to accept a certain level of casualties, like we do with flu. Provide boosters for any variants, again as we do with flu.
I do think a large part of the graphic Ben posted is more about quick action, delays in reacting actually only prolong lockdowns, meaning more time under them, not less. That was seen in the UK and the US last year.
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I think Comedians are finding that now. Richard Herring was selling livestream tickets to go with the actual theatre ones now limited audiences are allowed back in.
For Glastonbury though they show most of it on the BBC in normal years so the big guys already have a second revenue stream.
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No and it’s a fair point and I agree Ben. We often do develop under aversity. I think in education especially the pandemic has forced a lot of innovation, I think it has a lot of us questioning the need for constant travel.
We’re closing on 20 years of remote conversation on MW/Carrier but I think it’s now people are cottoning on really that it’s a viable mainstream idea.
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My workplace would not have developed the way it has without the pandemic. The changes would probably happened, but far slower. The challenge now is to continue on that road of adaptation and change, keep the benefits of the remote working of the last year while enabling in office working for those that need it.
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I have watched several dozen live music streams over the last 15 months. I would swap the whole lot for a single live concert. It’s not even worth a second thought, it’s that simple.
I’d rather watch 15 livestreams of acts I like than endure say… Mumford and Sons in-person again.
(for the record, I was working the bar and the music was so bland that I thought the second support act was them and when they finished I was wondering why they hadn’t played the I fucked it up this time song, and why were we still serving drinks?)
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I’d rather watch 15 livestreams of acts I like than endure say… Mumford and Sons in-person again.
I can’t argue with that.
I often wonder how venue staff feel about being forced to listen to music they don’t like. I would rather listen to nothing
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If the tech is cracked to livestream to millions, you’ll have a second income stream alongside physical tickets, which massively changes access across the entire entertainment spectrum. I go back and forth on this, probably everyone else does too.
I never go back and forth, the answer is simple and obvious. Live streams will never be better than in-person live music, no matter how good the tech.
I have watched several dozen live music streams over the last 15 months. I would swap the whole lot for a single live concert. It’s not even worth a second thought, it’s that simple.
Here’s how it is David – enjoy having that choice while you are able to because my wife practically doesn’t, not with anything near the ease you do. Which is why I am very much in favour of this change. It opens up access.
Nor do the two ways exist in a competitive relationship.
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I’d rather watch 15 livestreams of acts I like than endure say… Mumford and Sons in-person again.
I can’t argue with that.
I often wonder how venue staff feel about being forced to listen to music they don’t like. I would rather listen to nothing
I volunteered to be there, to make things worse. I had seen The Cure a week before under the same circumstances and I guess I was a little punch drunk about fundraising…
That said, I do remember going to two gigs in a small-ish venue within like a week of each other. One was Powderfinger, a fairly standard Aussie rock band that Laura and her brother love and I went with them. The other was Combichrist, a very aggressive EBM/Industrial act. I saw the same bouncer up at the front of the stage for both and he had a much more disdainful look on his face for the crowd at Combichrist because of the Industrial and Goth fashion on display. That didn’t last long after he saw how the crowd went nuts after the band came on, though.
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Stacy Abrams’ grassroots movement that decided the Presidency to Biden must have really struck a nerve all along the South….Must not have liked the black vote to be a determining factor.
Good news: members of the Democratic Party have finally found their spines
Texas Democrats walk out of vote on new voting laws
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Combichrist
That’s a very solid name for an industrial band!
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Live streams will never be better than in-person live music, no matter how good the tech.
I think pretty much everyone (outside the agoraphobics again) would agree.
It’s not always either/or though – the livestream is an additional option which is why, Covid permitting, they are screening attended gigs. Maybe the gig is on the other side of the world, maybe you have mobility issues as Ben says or all manner of reasons why going to the gig isn’t possible. With the new Brexit visa issues a lot of bands may no longer tour the UK or vice versa.
I think that value is shared in the asking price. I’ve paid £105 for a ticket to a sporting event that was broadcast live on ITV1 for free. It was worth it for me to be part of the atmosphere and occasion. Prices for virtual comedy and music gigs vary but are generally lower than attending in person.
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Combichrist
That’s a very solid name for an industrial band!
I know, right? It’s almost the platonic ideal of industrial band names
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often wonder how venue staff feel about being forced to listen to music they don’t like. I would rather listen to nothing
I have some similar experience. I worked in a cinema in the days of the permanent usher, I’d be expected to sit at the entrance way with a tray of snacks for sale. So essentially had to watch every movie, multiple time. There was nothing else you could do, no light allowed to read a book or magazine, too loud to listen to music, you had to watch the film.
It wasn’t too arduous as I was only a kid working weekends but I do get questioned now on how I know so much about Dirty Dancing, 3 Men and a Baby, La Bamba and Flowers in the Attic. I haven’t seen any of them in 33 years but I watched them the first time about 20 times each (double that for Dirty Dancing as it ran for weeks and weeks).
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Unbelievable…
Is it, though? I actually have no problem believing that his drooling minions would condone and encourage something like this.
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Yes, but the weak liberal opposition must be armed with only sharpened fruit, no body armour, not resist in any way and then, then the MAGAs celebrate their victory, as these big, wannabe tough guys walking around with bazookas are very, very sensitive.
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Yeah, calling for a coup is pretty on brand. Threats of violence and anti-democratic rhetoric are basically a new norm in the conservative world. And until someone finds a way to actually hold these people (including Trump) accountable for their words/actions it will only get worse.
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And until someone finds a way to actually hold these people (including Trump) accountable for their words/actions it will only get worse.
*world war 3 intensifies*
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I think the point of the speech in The Newsroom though is to puncture a certain narrative used often by politicians without challenge, that the US is the greatest nation on Earth. That scene wouldn’t work for Germany or Denmark because there’s no grand proclamations to drag down.
You are right it’s an impossible and subjective concept anyway. You could run off a bunch of stats where the US are leaders, innovation being a clear one. I’d say the majority of the tech to make this post is from the USA originally, Windows, WordPress and the browser I’m typing in often discussing the arts they produce in music, comics, TV and film. The MRNA vaccines will save loads of lives this year. Those are as true as the negative ones in the clip.
As someone who’s lived and worked in a few places you often get asked which is best and the answer is always they are different. There’s stuff that’s great and stuff that sucks, sometimes the stuff that’s great can also suck (e.g. food is cheaper here than in Europe but it’s because entry level workers get poor pay and conditions, in the US it’s because they use a lot of dodgy production practices like growth hormones and bleaching). I think people are friendlier here than in the UK, cost of living is better and it isn’t grey all the time but the arts scene is almost non-existent and I miss going to gigs and shows. Stuff isn’t as efficient and simple tasks can be mired in bureaucracy more (but not universally, getting a passport here is really quick and cheap in comparison and our Covid app is way better).
So it’s complex but I think you have to look at that clip in the context of a narrative it is railing against rather than Sorkin is saying that the USA is shit, if he really felt that he has the money to move somewhere else.
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Still he ends that fragment by saying “The US is not the greatest country in the world.” Times like these I wish Jim was still here, he could make the case for the US so much better than I. Maybe a lot of this changed because of the Iraq war. But there sure is a powerful pressure in US society to think negatively about one’s own country.
It’s the same in parts of Europe, but also different. Dutchies have this feigned humility when asked such questions. Not a lot of us would outright say we think we are a superior culture. When asked which country we think has a culture superior to ours we might say Italy for instance, and we’d say their food is so much better than ours, but very few Dutch people would actually want to move there and build a life. I always thought Dutchies tend to be more “patriotic” in secret.
(Of course the makers of this poll see claiming your country is the best as a negative by calling it chauvinistic. Self flagellation scores points)
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Isn’t the best result to be positive and patriotic without having to claim superiority? Isn’t it the truth that the USA and the Netherlands and the UK are great places with faults?
Speak for the UK, we’re a fault with some great places.
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As always it depends. Nationalism is at its core about the self-actualisation of a nation and the culture of its people. If you’re using Nationalism to justify imperialism and racial or cultural purity, that’s bad. But nationalist movements are often at the core of the desire for colonies or culturally distinct territories to get free of a centralised power that might not value them – like the Basque movement in Spain, Scottish Nationalism in the UK, and the Quebecois in Canada.
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