Which Marxist governments that prioritized class justice over individual rights did not end up repressive?
The inaccuracy is comparing Marxist governments to what is happening in Missouri. It's an intentional reach. So now we argue about Marxist governments because, Oh God, Oh God we will do anything possible to not talk about Race in America.
Do you think American college students in 2015 are so "hurt and desperate" that we should not expect them to respect basic democratic norms? I'd like to see that argument.
Are you implying that college students can't be hurt and desperate? This is like Fox News talking about how people with Refrigerators and televisions can't be poor. You might have noticed that some people in America are having a harder time than others. We are kind of in a flashpoint right now and it's maddening that people will fight so hard not to talk about Race. They just won't do it.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
said: "Among opinion writers, Jonathan Chait is outranked in my esteem only by Hendrik Hertzberg. This lovely takedown of Robert Johnson is a classic of the genre, one I studied incessantly when I was sharpening my own sword."
If you disagree with him, fine, let's hear why. Implying that his agreement with any idea discredits it is strange, as his actual policy views and contemptuous opinions of Republicans are each completely mainstream here.
Consider
Fredrik de Boer, a staunchly leftist professor at Purdue:
See all of this feels like you are digging up quotes from "lefties" to win rhetorical points. Guess what? I don't have to agree with Coates and de Boer on this or any other matter. And it isn't germane to my point there at all, which is that if you only have unreliable evidence you have no place drawing hard conclusions. It's a subject that has really bugged me recently. People who barge into a subject and pop off without understanding what's going on.
And if you are glad something is happening because the current order is irredeemably corrupt, and you think democratic norms and respecting dissent is for suckers, I'd really like to hear how people who are primarily concerned with safe spaces and microaggressions are going to win the civil war against the gun-toting people who'd line up behind a Trump presidency for life.
Civil war? Yikes.
There are two issues being conflated here:
1. Centuries of fucked up Race relations in America
2. The all too common "Older generation stopping down to shit on students." thing. We can find examples of this phenomenon dating back to Ancient Greece.
For the second issue it's always been funny to see it happen. The basic American Dream is for your children to do better than you did. But for that to be a Nation's dream and not just a few individual's dreams, you need to improve things for everyone. Generational improvement. To improve things have to change.
Improvement is change. Generational change is going to start in Schools and Universities by necessity. So for the American Dream to be a real thing Schools and Universities need to be in a constant state of flux.
So when people stroke their beards and cluck their tongues at
schools these days and fight for schools to stay the same as they were when they went, they are actively fighting against the American Dream. I am not saying that the changes are always good, that will hash itself out, but things have to change. And the Safe Space change is, at its heart, about seeing the world with a little more empathy. Which seems like a pretty good road towards a solution for the first issue.
The frustrating thing about pundits like Chait is the assumption at the heart of their writing, that there is
one obvious and true solution. It's an attractive thought, comforting and seductive, but it's impossible to build on. It's a dead end.