[Kevin Drum] If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals

It's just an odd take to sympathize with slave owners and rationalize their behavior because of the economy. It's actually a pretty modern take as people rationalize a lot of shitty behavior for the sake of the economy. We can't have a public health option with universal healthcare, because you know, the economy. Can't make any real major effort to reverse climate change, because you know, the economy. What will the economy think of if we enact legislation that could improve upon the quality of life of more Americans most maligned by bad policy. Can't go around hurting the economy's feelings like that. You know how fragile the economy is and you know how the economy gets when people try to change it.

I mean your take is up there with StupidMoniker's that the Civil War was unnecessary because it would have ended due to automation. Maybe other nations saw the Civil War that happened in the U.S. and all the loss of life that resulted and were perhaps influenced to not go down that route within their own nation knowing all the self inflicted damage it'd do. That would hurt a narrative though and we can't go around doing that.

I mean never mind that slavery ended in 1865 and the Industrial revolution which introduced a lot of automation began in the mid 1700s and slavery continued to exist after the fact after already having existed for centuries. His hot take is slaves would have been fine for another few decades (unless you're a slave that is then I imagine abolishing slavery couldn't come a moment sooner but StupidMoniker doesn't want to frame his narrative that way). Instead slaves would be fine when white savior and red blooded American and equal rights activist Henry Ford would have freed them from their shackles when the economy decided that automobiles could do a slave's work that much better in the 1890s. Never mind it being the humane thing to treat humans as equals instead of property you can legally rape, murder and sell off for wares. We must absolutely view slave owners with a sympathetic lens as they were just doing what was the best at the time for the economy and we all know the economy must trudge along, even at the greater expense of human quality of life. Hot take there. Hot take.

You strike me as a centrist rockbox with your hot takes.

 

yeah you can say that about pretty much any crime

stealing/killing/forced labor

 

I suppose the implication from this argument is that it is not okay for your culture to change and to demand that public policy change with it?

 

Don't have access to it but I disagree with the notion. I've been dabbling in my own Sci-Fi story writing for leisure and am recently affected after reading Kindred by Octavia Butler. That book did such a fantastic job of destroying the romanticized revisionist history of Antebellum South and how slave owners treated their slaves. I guess I just picture an alternate universe where the automobile and more mobile access to automatic weapons were invented in the south and the north lost. Completely different narrative where slaves would be in the factory producing automobiles and even more oppressed than they were with their slave owners wielding the equivalent of an AR-15 opposed to a whip or smaller stock rifle. That's just as much of a What If alternate universe as the above historians posit that slavery would have ended on it's own without the need for Civil War. How many decades would it have taken without war? Why is the idea that further automation and improved technology would have dis-incentivized those in power from continuing to treat human beings as property?

If you're good with treating humans like livestock, I find it personally difficult to rationalize that all of a sudden they'd do the right thing, in an alternate universe where the South won the Civil War, just because they started seeing cars rolling down those dirt country roads. By then your rationalizations have already taken you to a pretty dark place from which it would be very hard to get out of while holding out hope that technology would be the savior to do it. I just don't see it, but the above historians do and I'm sure they present their arguments for it very articulately.

 

I guess I find it impossible to separate the morality of slavery from the economics of it as the people that advocated to keep slavery going were willing to die for the cause on a massive scale. If you're willing to die for a cause that is almost universally agreed upon as being on the wrong side of history, I doubt pointing out the economic merits of ending it would have much sway. In fact, I'd wager there were historians and citizens back then that tried to argue the economics benefits of abolishing slavery but were ignored due to the larger push to go to war and die for the cause. Otherwise there would have been no Civil War would there? It strikes me as an attempt of revisionist history personally.

 

Just wanted to say I appreciate when you post with candor. You challenge ideas very thoughtfully.

 

The logic here is like saying, blame the victim for being a victim.

 

Much of the Southern economy did rely on slavery but relatively few southerners owned slaves and even fewer of those were what we think of as the big plantation owners. Most of the soldiers who fought weren't slave owners but did strongly believe that slavery was not only morally justifiable but a necessary for maintaining social order. Even in the North many didn't feel that blacks could just coexist in the same country on an equal basis with whites. So while yes economics mattered there was a moral element to slavery and why many who didn't own slaves still fought for the Confederacy.

I'm not a gun expert but I'm not sure you need an AR-15 to get rid of hogs. That said I will agree that there is more comfort with firearms in rural areas than urban areas.

Rural costs are lower but so are salaries. In many ways rural areas depend much more heavily on the government than urban given what it takes to maintain infrastructure and get resources out to far flung homestead or small villages. Consider that things like electrification only came to most rural areas because of the New Deal and Great Society. Even now it is taking government to step in to get broadband out to rural areas. At the same time with many rural economies being fragile and very sensitive to things like commodity prices government support is needed to make sure rural economies don't collapse.

 

This might be a subject best for another thread but I also believe that slavery as it was practiced in the South wouldn't have survived very long if the Confederacy won. There was a reason why even the Southerners called it a "Peculiar Institution" and by the 1860's it was already obvious that it was problematic economically. Simply put massive immigration and industrialization was economically superior to forced labor. Even poorly paid free workers were more productive than slaves. Further they weren't just producers but also consumers and that was something that Ford and other industrialist realized that their labor force was also their market.

A slave was a means of production but never would be a consumer. While it took resources to maintain slaves like machinery or farm animals they weren't as cheap to maintain as machinery so while a machine isn't a consumer either at least it cost less to maintain. Further machines can rapidly and quickly be replaced. By the time of the Civil War many countries had already outlawed the slave trade so there were fewer opportunities to get more slaves.

Also a slave can never be an entrepreneur and given how important innovation and expansion of markets was in the 19th Century already the South couldn't match the dynamism and growth of the North and other industrialized countries. So while the Confederacy could've held off the Union and forced a diplomatic settlement allowing it to exist as an independent country the Antebellum South was already doomed.

 

On the main subject I agree that the culture has changed quite abit in the last few decades and those changes were driven by Liberals. Legalization of same sex marriage, changing gender roles, legalization of mar1juana, acceptance of non-European cultures, and decline (or fragmentation of) religious views are all threats to American Conservative cultural views . For people holding cultural and moral views based upon a narrow Biblical interpretations and Western European cultures they have very good reason to feel threatened.

That said the "Culture War" is more often fought on exaggerated, hyperbolic and frankly fictitious issues. We literally see it fought over fictional characters. Issues like that get an inordinate amount of attention that is being driven often by Conservatives trying to gin up outrage.

 

Title is clickbait somewhat. The author argument as I understand it is to slow down a bit. The counter argument is it doesn’t matter. Outrage can be developed and amplified by anything as we have witnessed plenty.

 

Liberal tear isn’t a platform?

 

“**** your feelings”

 

I didn't have too much of an issue with any of this until it started affecting my own life and ideas in certain ways. Cancel culture is larger than just what is said in the mainstream or fox news. It has created smaller pockets which I think can be a little over the top. As someone who considers himself very progressive, I hope people actually listen to my thoughts on this because I take this very seriously.

I am in the music community in NYC and have had a foot in the academia side of things as well. This is where I think things have gone too far.
Musicians and scholars are actively purging and canceling composers from the past. I don't believe we should be taking art away from our history. For people who descended from Europe, it is important that their heritage is celebrated too. Among numerous other examples, people want to stamp out composers like Wagner who was anti-semetic, or even someone who still innovates in the jazz field like Steve Coleman for being sexist. I think it is important to not gloss over composers when gaining an understanding of the music tradition. There is a lot of interesting music theory that is very particular to Wagner or Steve Coleman and we are just supposed to throw that innovation away and not learn from it? It reminds me of burning books during authoritarian regimes. Are people ok with this? And now the debate is about music theory being racist as a concept. Are we supposed to not teach music theory in music schools? Is that where we want society to go?

It really feels like Western culture is trying to be erased or changed. Do other white people just not care about their roots? This is our culture and history and we don't get a say? Beethoven who did nothing wrong to anyone is not only on the verge of being cancelled in some circles, but nonsense articles are coming out simply attacking his music because he's not POC. What? Beethoven. And this is coming after years of people claiming, and many still do, with absolutely no basis that Beethoven was a black man living in Austria. WTF?? Look all of this up people. Earlier this year Beethoven was trending on twitter because people said he was black. Look any of this up. Its real and stupidly enough talked about in music circles. The world is going nuts.

Read these articles about canceling Beethoven. A guy who did nothing to anyone.

https://www.varsity.co.uk/music/20344

https://www.classicfm.com/composers/beethoven/composer-cancelled-fifth-symphony-elitist-vox-debate/
“Wealthy white men embraced Beethoven and turned his symphony into a symbol of their superiority and importance. For others – women, LGBTQ+ people, people of colour – Beethoven’s symphony is predominantly a reminder of classical music’s history of exclusion and elitism,”

https://musictheoryswhiteracialfram...above-average-composer-lets-leave-it-at-that/
This article is entitled - Beethoven was an above average composer lets leave it at that.
The reasoning behind his sudden mediocrity is race and sexual orientation. Really? A straight white man can no longer have a positive impact on the world?

I've studied music from all over the world. Beethoven is undoubtedly a genius and people can't celebrate him? And who would be next? Bach? Why do we need to purge composers who brought an advancement to our society because they were racist or sexist hundreds of years ago? In some cases just for being white? WTF is this?

This is where it gets ridiculous to me. Rzewski died this week. One of the greatest American composers of our time. He's one of ours. Where is the patriotism? The day he dies twitter is filled with hatred about how he was mean to them in a masterclass or private lesson. No sexism no racism. Just a well documented crabby old man. No one cares about his work. Just self centered soft people looking for the next person to blame. People advocating a guy gets canceled for being mean on the day that he died. LMAO. Is this still cancel culture?

And with regards to music theory which is essential for anyone studying music.

This is an article from recent times where a music theory teacher at North Texas was fired for defending Schenkerian analysis. Philip Ewell (Who also wants to cancel Beethoven and is an author of one of the above posted articles) claimed that Heinrick Schenker was a racist. Schenker was born in 1868. While I am not so much a fan of Schenker's theory, I don't understand why a useful tool for some in schenker analysis should be taken out of text books and discarded. Why are we erasing things of value from our history?
https://slippedisc.com/2020/08/a-cancelled-music-professor-speaks-out/

And now the big debate is on if music theory in general is racist. Not only because it is "white" but because and I quote from another article, "exclusionary in its customs." Has anyone ever heard classical Indian music? How fascinatingly confusing Raga can be to an outsider? Should we cancel that too?

And at the end of the day with all of the sexual misconduct allegations toward people in classical music and jazz these days, we have to remember that Miles Davis used to beat his wives but no one cares. I wonder why? Is anyone still trying to cancel Michael Jackson? Or just Beethoven for being white?
None of these people should be removed from history. It doesn't matter what you did in the 18th century ffs. Leave the culture alone. This is a very scary thing. How are people not afraid of losing their own history? Shouldn't we have a right to celebrate our own heritage? Isn't it better to have as much knowledge and information from the past for musicians to learn from and for people to be influenced by? This is insanity.

As much as this all bothers me to my core its not even close to enough for me to even THINK about voting republican. Don't even get me started.

 

Victim hood complex dude on clutchfans attacks other victims

 

I thought the left moved way too far to win elections but here we are. Maybe the loss was the trump factor but I dont know. I am hoping they continue to trend outrageous and more people get pissed off and start supporting more conservative platforms.

 

As long as Trump is the face of the Republican party it isn't even a true representation of conservatism.