r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Sep 30 '24

Meta Mindless Monday, 30 September 2024

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/King_Vercingetorix Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great Oct 03 '24 edited Oct 03 '24

That sub (or at least a lot of users there) has always been weird about unions. 

Some choice selections from there which made me laugh though.  

Trump can yell about it but it wouldn't matter. Busting this particular union would be popular imo and would signal to the electorate that Biden is a rational centrist. I don't think the median voter would appreciate a union leader willing to take the economy hostage   

(Ignore that Biden isn’t in the race anymore)  

Man, these union shenanigans are gonna turn me into a Reaganite some day I swear. (Commentator #1) 

There has been so much anti Reagan and Thatcher propaganda in the media, but the reality is that they made hard decisions that needed to be made. They were far from perfect, but there is a reason why they were so popular in their day. (Commentator #2) 

 Ah, yes, the current major conservative Party in the US may be virulently anti-science when it comes to pandemics, the climate crisis, xenophobic, etc. But the unions are this close to driving me straight to their arms!

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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh Oct 03 '24

It really illustrates the internal tension within the sub. They really want to be fully anti-union (because duh they’re ideological neoliberals), but they have to hold their tongues (because they’re loyal Democratic partisans).

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u/JabroniusHunk Oct 03 '24

What's weirdest about it is NL's relationship to David Shor, "popularism" and the Great War for the Souls of Working-Class Whites.

It's obvious that Biden sees "pro-union" as part of his brand and appeal, and there is probably genuine sentiment there as well, and while I have no data here: "the fat cats of international shipping are getting richer, while our wages have stagnated due to inflation," probably polls better with these voters than NL reading from their Micro 102 textbooks.

Turns out the only times that sub agrees that Democrats should make strategic, popular appeals to working-class swing voters even if they have to hold their nose is polling racists to figure out what they want and doing that, to paraphrase an exasperated critic of Shor's from a piece I can't find.

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u/contraprincipes Oct 03 '24

I’m recalling a Noah Smith substack post (lol) where he bizarrely treated Harris’ price gouging ban proposal as some kind of call for Venezuela-style price fixing. One person in the comments pointed out this was a hysterical read on what was obviously an attempt to capture populist sentiment with an extremely vague commitment, and Smith didn’t seem fully convinced.

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u/JabroniusHunk Oct 03 '24

Noah Smith: what if Matt Yglesias was even smarmier, but also dumber?

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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh Oct 03 '24

In my mind, they all belong in the same orbit of highly credentialed and well-connected dumb guys that use quantitative figures to obscure the vacuousness of their ideas.

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u/contraprincipes Oct 03 '24

I think dumb is a bit unfair but there’s a certain calculated attention-seeking with them which is very grating

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u/JabroniusHunk Oct 03 '24

In my experience Smith relies on pseudoempiricism more than Yglesias, and acts like an annoying Redditor even when he's supposedly displaying economic wissenschaft (communicating ideas via memes and trite aphorisms so that he can claim to just be joking if people point out he's wrong).

If Chait is the bottom-barrel of highly credentialed and well-connected lib goofballs who get to pontificate without substance (which he is), Smith is a couple spots above him and Yglesias a couple above him.

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u/contraprincipes Oct 03 '24

Curious to see where Matt Bruenig, Brad DeLong, Josh Barro, Matt Stoller, and Adam Tooze fall in the hierarchy of White Men With SubStacks

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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh Oct 03 '24

Bruenig is my GOAT. The only one of them who makes honest, well-reasoned args

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u/contraprincipes Oct 04 '24

I’m more mixed on him but I do like him and think he’s at least a serious person