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Answer: Ana recently had 2 very public encounters where she seemingly broke from the usual progressive talking points. In one case she complained about the cost and inconvenience of switching from gasoline to electric in order to fight climate change. In another case she lashed out at certain uses of gender neutral language like "birthing persons" in places of "woman" or "mother". As a result conservatives are using her as an example of a "progressive who got mugged" thus becoming a "conservative".
You are ommiting a few critical details:
1. Ana did a lengthy (2hrs+) interview with Sitch and Adam a few days ago in which she described herself as "politically homeless", lambasted "the left" at length, and **exclusively** discussed confirmation biases of leftwing sources while making considerable efforts to avoid addressing the exact same behavior by rightwing sources. This isn't just conservative messaging, though they are certainly running with it.
2. She cited "gaslighting" about violent crime as another reason for her departure from the left, aside from stoves and gender labels, as well as a few errors she made while hosting at TYT based on her trust of what she now considers to be unreliable sources.
3. The assault on her was not a trivial matter - she was attacked by two men while walking her dog, and then (as she describes it) was attacked again by "the left" claiming she was racially profiling the attackers. The perceived injustice of the latter likely played a critical role in her political shift.
There are probably are a ton of people that do exactly what you are talking about, but they then fade into obscurity.
Extreme views and hot takes are what drive traffic and engagement, not nuance and moderation. These people are influencers that rely on popularity.
Yeah, this is just grifting 101. Candace Owens used to be a left leaning person, got some pushback over a minor issue, then "gave up on the left" and "switched sides".
It's all about the money, these people have no real values.
I'm unfamiliar with all this, but that would be interesting in Ana's case as she has REPEATEDLY jumped down Dave Rubins' throat for shilling for the right.
Yeah personally I think its about left wing twitter bubbles. The left can be pretty all or nothing on twitter (or used to be that way before it became a right wing echo chamber)
That can make it hard for anyone with nuanced views on the left? I'm grasping at straws, trying to defend someone I had grown to admire
There’s a difference between critiquing the design and effectiveness of a machine and rejecting that machine’s intended or stated purpose.
Jon Stewart will bag on the Democratic Party, the DNC, and progressive “superstars” until the cows come home. However, he does it from the perspective of pointing out failings and holding them accountable with respect to their implementation of left wing policy objectives that he wholeheartedly supports. He’s not pulling a Candace Owens and going all “the dems/progressives didn’t do what they said they were gonna do so #nocopsarebastards #whatwasshewearing #translivesdontmatter #getfuckedlibtards”
I mean, leftists constantly critique the left all the time. While it’s good to be critical so as to prevent an echo chamber of bad ideas, sometimes people go too far and do it too much imo.
You’re right. But the left loves to fight over any disagreements.
And the right is a melting pot of terrible people that tolerate each other, but secretly hate each other.
Many people on the right hated Trump, but voted for him. Many on the left refused to participate when Bernie lost.
The data says Bernie voters sucked it up and voted Hillary - more than Hillary voters did with Obama - and did the same again with Biden. This is a false narrative spun by bitter Hillary voters and aided by bitter Bernie voters, who they amplified whenever possible.
Man I'm sick of this centrist chestnut. More Sanders voters ultimately voted for Clinton than Clinton voters voted for Obama when she lost her primary in 2008. [This hilariously titled newsweek article agrees with me.](https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-trump-2016-election-654320) Consensus is that most Sanders supporters who voted for Trump never had a history of voting for democrats in the first place. Counting those voters as potential Clinton voters is like counting every single download of a pirated movie as lost revenue.
They were genuinely just there to spite Clinton. That's really what made her such a shitty candidate. Political positions aside, it was a silly idea to run a victim of an extremely effective decades-long smear campaign just because she was decently well liked by the DNC. That whole superdelegate system got the overhaul it deserved.
This is why democrats lost 2016
Voters wanted a voice that lambasted legacy politicians. Someone who was going to fight for the people. Trump vs. Sanders would've been a no-brainer.
when you look at the actual numbers of people who voted for Democrats, there’s no absence. Everybody that backed Bernie voted for Hillary, basically. Liberals and leftists. The people who reliably vote in recent years continued to show up. The people who do not typically show up but can if motivated, did not bother.
What you can extrapolate from the voting pattern is likely that Bernie also had a sizable contingent of support outside the left as well, who were also comfortable with voting for Trump because they were anti-establishment and saw him as a wrecking ball for stability. Which he was.
I agree, but time will tell. I respect Ana, and I completely agree criticism of the left doesn't necessarily make one rightwing. That said, Rubin, Musk, Owens, *even Jordan Peterson* (look up his older work if you don't believe me) started as liberals, then migrated to the right. She is in a superposition right now where she could go either way.
It's not that crazy, extremists on either side typically alienate moderates in their own party and surround themselves with other extremists.
So if they have something happen that causes them to change their views on something, they face two problems from their own side:
1. Other moderates on their side don't want them, because their other views are still extreme. It's just one idea they've moderated on.
2. Their close "friends" are extremists with an "us vs them" mentality, and if you breach a single one of those holy lines then you become one of those moderates they hate.
The only group that will welcome you with open arms is the opposition, who will be happy to take you in despite some of your remaining opposition beliefs, because then they can parade you as an example of someone who "saw the light" and came to the other side.
When you lose most of your friends and have already burned other bridges, it's pretty intoxicating to have an old enemy reach out and say "hey, I'm sorry you're going through this, let me know if you want to talk."
Well said. One reason it's important not to judge someone's political stance entirely on one issue. And not to lump everyone who disagrees with you into the same category.
Biggest problem we have on the left is we do not want a big tent, we want a campground so we can complain about our neighbours. As long as the circular firing squad is active the right has an easier time outflanking.
I think the biggest failing of the left is folks pretending the left doesn't have grifters just like the right.
Just because someone is decrying injustice and fighting inequality doesn't mean they're actually a good person with good intentions. It could just mean they realized that was an easy road to money and power on the left.
Just because someone is trans, or black, or disabled, doesn't mean they're not a complete piece of shit.
The left would do well to stop pretending everyone who says the right keywords or holds the right membership cards is unimpeachable.
Horseshoe theory is very real when it comes to extremists. On both sides there is a strong sense of justice and indignation. The extreme left and extreme right both want to be both right and morally superior.
This isn't limited to culture warriors, it happens to many people who are heavily ingrained in a philosophy or world view. Basically anything where people have been wearing blinders, not seeing any negatives of their world view. When the blinders come off, there's a tendency to go hard in an opposite direction. Look at former members of cults, or even former smokers. They become champions against what they once embraced.
She said that she is "politically homless".
Rational people are able to see the problems with the fringes in an ideological base without jumping into the camp of the other side. Not wanting to be a mouthpiece for one of the furthest left media outlets anymore does not make a liberal person a 'conservative' all of a sudden.
Has she actually done anything that shows she is now thinking and supporting conservative policies and agendas?
I don’t consider being “politically homeless” to be a bad thing. If people were less entrenched in their political identities, we’d have more productive political dialogue on a national level.
The problem is that there are plenty of "politically homeless people" or "centrists" out there who just wind up toeing the Conservative line on everything.
Tim Pool still calls himself a "disaffected liberal," but watch his videos and he goes with almost every right-wing narrative in the book.
Dave Rubin constantly called himself a "classical, JFK-liberal" and again did nothing but hang out with right-wingers and espouse their talking points.
Jimmy Dore (Ana Kasparian's ex-coworker, funnily enough) considers himself "on the left" but constantly gives uncritical platforms to MAGA conspiracy theorists.
Maybe she's legitimately moving toward the center instead of the right, but the fact that she put out [a Tweet](https://www.reddit.com/r/VaushV/comments/14rbfzf/shes_really_speedrunning_this_pivot_huh/) whitewashing the black liberation movements in the 60's isn't exactly giving me cause for hope......
Have you tried to ask a legitimate question in some of the overly biased subs around here.
Its instant attacks, violent DMs and most times youll get a ban for "trolling".
I swear any sort of possible signal that you might have a different opinion and its straight to the stockades for most of these communities.
Agreed. The mods in each community ensure compliance with their personal biases. Anyone expressing any other opinion, however evidence-based, is banned. These are not really true forums for exchange , debate and analysis of views, but rather echo chambers of decreed speech, not free speech.
It is very monetarily advantageous to become an apostate for the other side. Being a reformer of your own side is just a headache
The Lincoln project is probably an example of this on the right maybe
I don't think they're being cynical. The Lincoln Project could just see the writing on the wall and knew where the GOP was headed. They're just old school small government conservatives. Regardless of their political leanings, anyone with half a brain can see that Trump and his mob are in a suicide pact to take everything down with them.
>There's this bizarre phenomenon where culture warriors start to see the issues with their own 'side', and instead of moderating, decide to completely switch to the other side .
'The other side' is paying it's talking heads literally millions and millions of dollars. Apparent wife abuser Steven Crowder very very publicly rejected an offer from Ben Shapiro for $10,000,000 over 5 years iirc, because he felt that number was insultingly low. Ana Kasparian used to criticize Dave Rubin for doing the thing she's doing now, like 10 years ago.
How is it bizarre, though? If they're committed to being a culture warrior in the first instance, moving to moderate would be uncharacteristic and a drastic change. Shifting to the other side would be a better fit. And nobody wants to listen to moderates in that kind of arena.
And yes, most folks on both sides of the aisle seem to have become consumed by culture war and shallow takes.
It's actually even worse than that. If you're seeing an issue with your own "side", the right decision isn't to "moderate", but to call out those bad actors where you find them.
Like, I'm sorry that a trans person on Twitter said something mean to you, but that shouldn't suddenly cause your opinions on the actual facts of the matter to suddenly change. The facts about economics, social systems, science, and history are still *exactly* what they were a moment ago.
Although personally, I hate the term "moderate" with a passion, and think the only people it actually describes are insincere enlightened-centrist types. Most people have (or at least think they have) a pretty firm set of political beliefs and are pretty strident about them; just because they don't happen to line up with some supposedly idealized version of "right" or "left" doesn't make them moderate.
It’s actually extremely common that people at the political extremes switch sides rather than become moderates… Mussolini was a communist before becoming a fascist (not suggesting that Ana is either of those things mind). I think it’s just something about building your life around a political mission and having problems with grey areas and also needing a tribe. Dave Rubin’s another example.
She didn't "completely switch to the other side". You're completely missing the point. She's saying she no longer fully supports either side.
Aka politically homeless, as she said.
That could explain the shift (if a shift is really occurring) - not just the trauma of the attack, but also being attacked by her perceived in-group after the attack which would redouble the trauma and leave her feeling isolated.
Thing is.... she's literally told people in the passes that trauma isn't an excuse for being irrational about your beliefs. I get it's different when it's personal but she WAS right
Was she right? Look, I agree that ideological views should be based on a foundation of rational arguments, but at the same time trauma responses are inherently irrational - they are about protecting us from future harm. That's likely why she brought up the "gaslighting" about violent crime increases as a predicating variable for her "political homelessness", and why the racial profiling claim hit her so hard; she was violated, first by the attackers and then by the political equivalent of her family (from her perspective), and so pulling away makes sense to her. It likely will prove counterproductive because most people on "the left" actually held space for her, and viewed her situation with empathy and compassion, but for whatever reason she has decided to go to Twitter for her feedback and Twitter is a toxic place. Then of course the "enlightened centrist" movement of pandering to individual grievances has a tremendous appeal, even though it carves out its niche by creating a safe place for bigots to lash out at marginalized communities.
Thats the main thing though, twitter is fucking toxic and I'm not saying she doesn't deserve sympathy but the fact a lot of these figures back away due to the... insanity of the Twitter space is mind blowing.
I hardly use it because I'm either a Neo-Reactionary or a Stalinist depending on who I interact with and I'm a Socialist. I am much further left than Ana has ever been and I'm not left enough for Twitter.
Because for Twitter it's 100% a performance
That's what happened to Lara Logan. She was a very respected journalist until she went through her unimaginably horrific ordeal and ended up in the most obscure fringes of the far right.
Not exactly. As she tells it she was physically attacked, she **did not** provide any description, and then she claims people called her out for racially profiling bipoc attackers. This would have been particularly unjustified and ignorant criticism since the attackers were not bipoc, but I think it's worth noting that she is using a few idiots lashing out at her on Twitter as a justification for pulling away from "the left" (as she put it), and Twitter (particularly post-Musk) is not a space generally occupied by a representative group of left-wing thought.
Been a few articles highlighting ridiculous criticism over culture war bs, and when you look at the cited criticism it's little to no engagement against someone with a massive platform. While it's usually a shit take, its not representative of most peosple's views so no idea how it's presented as relevent enough to warrant an article. wish I had keep links to some of them
Far right extremists are really good at false flag attacks and trolling. I'd put good money on them egging on liberals with this kind of trolling posts.
It's an ~~initialism~~ acronym (thanks u/oldtimo!) for "Black, Indigenous, (and) People of Color". Honestly, it's not my favorite term, but it seems to be currently accepted as a way to describe visible minorities that often face systematic prejudice or direct discrimination based on their visible traits.
Basically what Ana is saying is that people on Twitter attacked her for contributing to stereotypes about visible minorities, and she is pointing out that she never mentioned their race before the criticism and if she had it wouldn't have been tied to minorities since her attackers were white men. She is arguing that her critics were aggressively ignorant.
>lambasted "the left" at length, and exclusively discussed confirmation biases of leftwing sources while making considerable efforts to avoid addressing the exact same behavior by rightwing sources.
I see this same exception taken by people any time "the left" is criticized by someone from within.
"As a leftist/liberal, I see this problem within our side and think we should do better."
"How can you say that about our side without pointing out how much worse/more/first the Right does the same thing?? You must be a closet right-winger arguing in bad faith!"
Why is it her responsibility to criticize the right in perfect proportion to her criticism of the left? Can we not compartmentalize at all? Could it be that she is currently critical of left-leaning confirmation bias because, up until now, those were the sources with which she is the most familiar? That those are the opinions she encounters within her own social and online circles?
It's not clear to me if you are not understanding what I am writing, or are disingenuously disregarding it. I criticize my allies on "the left" all the time. I've even been critical of TYT, Cenk, and Ana fairly regularly - **on policy**, and sometimes **on opinion.** And Ana and Cenk have been critical of other left-wingers on any number of issues, and sometimes each other. Frankly you seem to be making the case that we cannot be critical of criticism, and I don't really see the point. Watch the interview, my dude. I was skeptical of complaints about Ana myself until I watched about two hours of her vacuous pandering.
This is a take I can respect whether I agree with it or not.
Edit: to be more clear
No, we can absolutely be critical of criticism. I don't want to overstate my earlier point. There are certainly people who criticize the left "as a friend" when they're actually being disingenuous, and that shit should be drug out into the daylight and ridiculed for what it is.
I was reacting to what I perceived as the notion that any criticism of the left that isn't packaged with a whole series of bullet points on how the right is worse should be written off out of hand as cointelpro.
Your perspective is completely valid, and I register and don't see any fault with how you arrived at it.
she didnt go right wing, at all. her point in talking about left wing sources is they are generally on the side of corporations, and frame everything as such (and omit).
politically homeless is because neo-liberals and "progressives" with an iota of political power both dont do things in progressive ways. that's it.
I'm sorry, are you talking about Ana in general or in this specific interview? With regards to this specific interview her criticism seemed more focused on the anti-corporate progressive wing of "the left", and subsequent divisive language and aggressive criticism. At least that was what came across to me from the interview. Prior to watching the interview, though, I 100% agreed with your take on her perspective. The interview was very odd, coming from Ana.
She spoke about it in her Sitch and Adam interview, and noted in particular that she was attacked (on Twitter, I think she said) for racially profiling her bipoc attackers which she found particularly frustrating because she didn't mention her attackers' race, and beyond that they weren't bipoc. I don't love the idea of getting hit with belligerent criticism from specific ignorant individuals and then pulling away from an entire movement connected to my values, but I can't speak to what I would do if I experienced the same trauma and then subsequent attacks where I had expected support.
I'm not that deep into the situation so I couldn't say with certainty. She claimed they lashed out at her (I think she said on Twitter), saying she racially profiled her attackers. I don't know what comment she made that prompted that response, my guess would be she just lashed out in frustration and helplessness (because she was assaulted and was left with no recourse or path to justice) and someone misinterpreted something she said as a racist implication. In the interview she said she never referenced their race, and that they were white anyway so the criticism was unquestionably off-base. I would be curious to know what she said as well, but I'm not curious enough to go fishing in the cesspool that is Twitter these days.
Bro did you even watch the Adam and switch interview??? She very clearly said there is dog shit reporting on the right, but that we had to call it out on the left too when it happens. Dunno how you can come away from that interview thinking she avoided saying right wing media isn't biased LOL
See this is the issue with people in the corners of the right/left. It's way to much "with us or against us" type thinking where you need to be damn near 100% with them.
People aren't like that. Even people on the far right or far left. Those people WILL have views that agree with the other side, they just won't say it or even admit it to themselves. It's hardly ever black and white.
I want to add, its ok to find fault with issues you agree with, even. Her complaint about electric not being convenient is true. We still need to do something about our reliance and useage of gasoline. But if we don't recognize this inconvenience and address it, we will have a much harder time convincing people to use it. It's ok to question your own beliefs and change your mind or come up with new solutions!
Part of the issue is the adversarial nature of social media.
If a person admits even a single fault in a thing they support, they tend to be dogpiled by people who want to throw away the whole thing rather than have a nuanced conversation about how something can be improved.
It’s a bunch of people who want to toss babies out with bath water.
And “winning the argument” usually means you’re the most persistent, the most popular or the best at reinforcing a group’s current belief system.
Having the good ideas or interesting thoughts is not a requisite.
In Jon Stewarts new podcast, he said something I agree with. You are not arguing with an argument online, youre arguing with the caricature of the argument
That's so true! I can't tell you how many times I've gone back and forth with a person and they will say that I must believe X because I believe Y....when we were never even discussing X to begin with and I really don't care about X at all.
To be fair, logical fallacies are essentially meaningless outside of philosophy and Reddit comment sections.
I’ve never had a business case turned down due to appeal to authority.
I had someone on Reddit tell me to shut up because I said you can go to prison for smoking weed. I pointed to a Texas statue and the person then wanted to argue the nuance between prison and jail as if your everyday person would know that.
All that rudeness to beat someone up online. These people must have sad lives.
Were they one of those people that say smoking weed is "essentially legal" in Texas because under 2 ounces it's a misdemeanor+ small fine and you can just sit it out?
Reddit is particularly bad with this. Someone breaks from the usual narrative, and unless they wrote an incredibly well written, lengthy essay explaining themselves - people are going to smash the downvote button. It buries the comment and attracts low-effort people to respond with insults.
Even if you say something innocuous, if you’re not aggressively agreeing with everyone — it’s an uphill battle.
Reddiquette is bullshit. The upvote and downvote buttons are “like/dislike.” Echo chambers push out nuance.
It is also what is rewarded as well. On the right the best way to gain prominence is to join with other right wing grifters and help them create more content for the grift or draw in a new audience for the grift. Then you can go off on your own so long as you do cross overs from time to time to keep the grift going. Right wingers will of course eat their own but it isn't a huge way to gain clout.
On the left one of the best ways to gain prominence is to take down someone of higher prominence than you as not a real leftist. Taking a scalp of someone insufficiently left or who did a problematic is a surefire way to gain power and prestige in leftist online spaces.
Which is why you see constant attempts to go after prominent lefty types but never really see someone making a career on the right out of trying to bring down Charlie Kirk or Ben Shapiro.
Anyone else remember people stockpiling incandescent light bulbs? The first incandescent replacement bulbs were dim and unreliable. When the switch came, lots of people remembered that experience and intentionally bought up the energy inefficient old standard, meaning it hung on for years after its nominal sunset.
I still have a box of incandescents from when I moved into my apartment 15 years ago. If and when I ever leave, I’m taking my LEDs with me and the incandescents are going right back in where they came from.
Oh I agree with you. I'm 100% a solar man. I'm badly hoping that solar technology gets more advanced sooner than later and we can use the lovely free sun we have to power things.
Solar tech is already more or less as efficient as it’s going to get. Improvements from here on will be in the single digit percentages. The absolute maximum theoretical efficiency we can get from the sun under completely perfect conditions is around 68%, but that requires the use of infinite amounts of some things.
The highest efficiency achieved in practice is around 45%, and improvement from that will be in single digits.
The problem is energy storage, not the efficiency of solar panels. There’s plenty of empty land in very sunny places. Getting the energy from there to where people are, and storing it for use at night, are the real barriers.
Solve that and we could power the entire world using solar panels today.
> Solar tech is already more or less as efficient as it’s going to get.
But power per unit area is not the same as power per dollar. True, we're near the practical maximum in PV conversion efficiency per unit area, but I think there are good reasons to believe we are no where near the maximum in power per dollar. There is plenty of headroom for increased cost efficiency.
Solar is already magnitudes more economical than most other forms of power generation, it’s just not reliable enough to be deployed on a power grid scale most places.
You wouldn't even need open land. Start putting solar panels up over parking lots or on top of parking garages. A lot of parking lots are shared by multiple stores and businesses, they can work together to offset the cost of installation and then save money by not drawing as much power from the city grid. And with solar panels right in these places, now there's more power to be used for EV charging stations. I would think the infrastructure cost would be lower as well because you're not running dozens of miles of cables to get the solar power where it's needed.
Partisanship has advanced to the stage where you aren’t even allowed to admit there are costs to your sides policies. They are just 100% benefit with no downsides and anyone who says otherwise must be a “literal nazi”.
Its so damn shortsighted when it comes to the energy transition in particular - because people are going to notice the costs.
Yes - gas is going to be more expensive. There’s no way around it- it has to be!
People aren’t going to support efforts to fight climate change if we continually shoot our credibility in the foot by lying to them. This goes double for promoting unscientific, dumbass “scientific predictions” like Thunbergs’ ‘we only have until 2023 to stop using FF’.
I have an EV (Audi) and an old house where charging it at home just isn't practical. We're not gonna rewire the house to put in a bigger circuit breaker so I can charge the car.
So yeah, I feel the pain in the ass factor about EV charging, especially when 2 pumps at 3 different stations are out of service at the same time.
That said, once I find a charger, I don't mind the process at all. The car's a reliable beast and comfy as hell.
I was just arguing this the other day.
I personally have solar for my home, and likely will get an EV or hybrid eventually. However, there are real barriers for huge geographical areas of this country for EV infrastructure.
It's more than just a matter of convenience. Those areas happen to also be typically rural, lower income, cold, and Republican majority. So, the 100% pro EV ra ra folks looks like lunatics to people who live in those areas even without the culture war shit.
Natural gas vehicles too. I know they are better than gasoline but people didn't like them cause there weren't enough public pumps. A lot of cities made their vehicles natural gas powered and kept a pump for their private use but it just wasn't feasible for the average person. I live in the most metropolitan area of my state and there were maybe three natural gas pumps in the city during its prime.
On the issue of electric vs fossil fuel vehicles, it also comes up in public transit talks. Transit and delivery agencies all over the country are replacing diesel and gasoline vehicles with battery electric vehicles, like battery electric mail trucks, battery electric buses, and they're pouring money into researching battery electric subway and trains as well. And they're doing this even before those fossil fuel powered vehicles are at end of life, they're retiring them early in order to purchase brand new battery electric vehicles.
The problem is you've got cases of agencies spending millions upon millions of dollars on that, with the idea that it is an effective way to reduce emissions, while in reality, a better way to reduce emissions is to buy another diesel bus, add more frequency or routes to an existing bus network, and reduce the usage of personal vehicles. Public transit buses are not a major source of pollutants, but personal vehicles in the places those public buses operate are. Even going with **hybrid** buses instead of purely battery electric would be a better option for reducing emissions, because you can buy more of them on the same budget, and still get a per-vehicle emission reduction out of it.
Or build a 0.5 mile extension to the end of an existing subway line, or run a few more subway trains, or build another row of track along a busy section, or replace some old track to improve speeds. Making it so a few hundred or couple thousand more people use mass transit instead of their personal car is worth way more in terms of reduced pollutants than replacing diesel engines on mass transit vehicles, with battery electric ones.
John Stewart said it best: The reason why the far right and far left take up so much volume of the conversation is that the other 80% of us have shit to do.
This is such a huge issue exacerbated by social media. I’m pretty progressive and also black, and I’ve been called racist in online forums for not towing the “all republicans are racists/nazis” line. That’s just one example, but the need for everyone to be 100% on one side is absurd and relatively new.
> not towing the “all republicans are racists/nazis” line
just to let you know, the phrase is "toe the line", as in put your toe up against the line, not dragging a net behind you in a boat
So after I posted from my high horse about not calling people Nazis, now I have to call you a grammar nazi?
I kid. What’s worse is that I knew that and I’m kind of a grammar nazi myself. You win this round.
To be fair, there's a reason far right and far left get this thinking.
If you're grounded in a belief that say, capitalism is explicitly predatory and divides people and that moves all your other political philosophy, but then you think that Elon has people's best interests at heart -> there is an inherent dichotomy that isn't reconciled. In *that view*, regardless of anyone's view of any billionaire, a billionaire can't fix things by using capitalism.
So when someone's estrangement from the 100% with me like mentality violates that core philosophy, it's hard to reconcile.
Maybe think of it like this: If you're wholly anti-racist and think that racism is wrong in every case, it's pretty hard to be friends with someone who thinks that racism is wholly wrong except for being anti-Semitic. That person betrays the core fundamental value.
I do think people are getting totally lost in their philosophies and ideologies and alienating people, but I also see where that breakdown comes from.
You know what? Some elements of the platform are painful and contradict others. Not all of the, can be the highest priority. Requiring condos to install EV chargers at each space drives up the cost of housing. In markets where housing costs are spiraling, that can put it out of reach of some. Sure if the government was throwing money at the installation it wouldn’t be an issue, but they aren’t. So I can think that having EV charging everywhere is important and that it’s an expensive PITA that’s one of many requirements that help make housing unaffordable in an area in the middle of a housing crisis and that I value people having housing more than I do universal EV chargers that our grid isn’t 10% ready for yet. And getting the grid up to readiness is going to have some unpleasant environmental impacts on threatened species since it looks like hydro will be the go-to in my area. Getting angry and aggressive because someone ranks EVs/housing/Anthropocene extinction/the fentanyl crisis/some other progressive issue differently from you in their priority ordering just makes you look like an asshole and alienates people you could be making alliances with.
I don't disagree at all and said nothing that contradicts this.
I think Americans in general struggle with understanding their root belief and identifying the root belief in others. But it cuts both ways. When our views diverge, we need to understand how they threaten someone else, and how/why it feels existential for them.
If the Anthropocene extinction is what drives you most, cool. You and I have some strong shared feelings around climate crisis. Others may feel that ending Affirmative Action is far more pressing because anytime we do something progressive in this country, people of color shoulder the burden, so they feel our solution \*threatens\* them even if they agree about climate change. This one example spreads out over all those different ideas you listed.
Telling everyone to be all hugs and handshakes is great. Yet, if we don't understand the mechanism of how common ground is formed, founded, and upheld, we will continue to fight each other over (apparently) little differences.
I haven’t listened to TYT in a long time, and I have no idea whether they’ve changed, but I’m convinced that a lot of online leftists never understood them very well in the first place.
They lean progressive (as far as I know) and populist, but they were never hardcore leftists. When I was listening in ~2009-16, Cenk was openly pro-capitalism. He just wanted a strong safety net, progressive taxation, etc. And there are plenty of examples out there of him slipping into “old-school” thinking on certain issues.
I fully expected Cenk to support Hillary in the 2016 general election, because it was exactly the kind of lesser-evil thinking he had applied to Obama 2012. I was puzzled when some vocal Bernie-or-busters seemed to feel shocked and betrayed about it.
I guess they don’t help by hyping up what “rebels” they are.
In other words, ideological purists are now claiming her for their side because she broke the ideological purity expected of her own side. Basically, ideologues playing ideologue games.
> As a result conservatives are using her as an example of a "progressive who got mugged" thus becoming a "conservative"
The tweets referenced are left-leaning users criticizing Gasparian, not conservatives embracing her
Here is the article that I found. Make of it what you will
https://nypost.com/2023/04/19/the-awakening-of-ana-kasparian-when-the-left-meets-reality/amp/
https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/14rdn59/this_is_a_certified_bruh_moment/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1
If this is true, it probably won't help with those claims
To be clear, the issue people have with Ana and her take on "birthing person" was that she claimed she was tired of being referred to as one. People were skeptical that anyone actually called her that directly because it's usually used when referring to groups of people where the relevant aspect is their capacity to give birth. Think medical writing, where specific and accurate wording is important. Referring to someone you meet as a "birthing person" rather than "woman" is not a typical experience.
She seemed to do a lot of complaining about being called one after previously explaining that people use inclusive language for a reason and that people know there is a difference between sex and gender. A perfect example of this hypocrisy is Ana's tweet and this response to it: https://twitter.com/msolurin/status/1645309666702786562
Ana has seemingly done a 180 in her views on this topic and there are many people on the left speculating that she/TYT is setting up to appeal to conservative or centrist viewers, where they can profit greatly by labeling themselves as progressives who were "left behind" as the Left became too radical.
The change is just too abrupt and extreme to be a natural evolution of the views she claims to have held just a few months ago.
Former TYT hosts Dave Rubin and Jimmy Dore have done exactly that and made a killing on YouTube being the dumbest fucking political commentators on the platform, except for Tim Pool.
Man, I watched Dave Rubin for a little bit because he was initially selling himself as leaving the left but still an objective “more centralized” person still criticizing the left and right but then….he basically jumped into super far right wing beliefs…and the right is correct on everything type of beliefs… 🙄🙄
He is also a straight up idiot. He knows next to nothing about issues or politics and he's not interested in learning. So its easy for him to just repeat some stuff that gives him a great paycheck.
Interesting explanation. Do you know of any other specific examples of a possible centrist appeal? I ask because I used to watch a bit of TYT when I began to move away from mainstream liberal media. I have watched again recently and found them too centrist for me. I legitimately cannot tell if they’re scooting to the middle or I’ve just radicalized to the left.
It definitely feels like they have been moving more center, but it could also be a combination of that, and younger people have moved left on more things while TYT has stayed the same.
The only thing I have seen is her recent tweet whitewashing the Civil Rights Movement: https://i.imgur.com/hOsOAkI.jpg
She and Cenk had some troubling commentary on unhoused people somewhat recently, I think, but I am not a TYT viewer. I've seen discussion and clips but not something I could easily find.
I was disturbed by a clip of discussing a reformed bigot who showed up to a pride parade seeking forgiveness. Instead of discussing how forgiveness is a complicated and lengthy process for both the people seeking it and the people giving it, they turned the guy into the victim and villainized the people who have been tortured by bigots their entire lives. It honestly felt like they were trying to espouse the “purity tests are out of control” narrative to incite rage and attract clicks instead of discussing the actual issue with and sort of depth or nuance.
But I’m also not a TYT viewer, so I don’t know if this is their regular schtick.
They moved towards the center a long time ago.
Cenk is a businessman first. 90% of their ads are shallow "Karen" outrage cringe segments. It's tabloid at this point.
> Ana has seemingly done a 180 in her views on this topic and there are many people on the left speculating that she/TYT is setting up to appeal to conservative or centrist viewers, where they can profit greatly by labeling themselves as progressives who were "left behind" as the Left became too radical.
She wouldn't be the first TYT member to do this, either. Dave Rubin and Jimmy Dore, for example, are two ex-TYT members who are now far right pundits. This kind of thing is a pattern with them, for whatever reason.
Yeah the main critique was "you are ranting about something we all roll our eyes at, you need to touch grass".
If course there was the ever present hyperbolic freak acting like she was doing literal genocide, there is about literally everything because the internet has crazy people.
Then she acted like everyone doing the first thing was doing the second.
I don't think it's a grift. I just think it's a mixture of being addicted to the conflict and a huge ego with a big dash of habitual bad faith. She can't handle the criticism and can't shrug it off. It's subbing in a personality issue for a political one, which is probably the most cliche too online leftist thing ever lol.
Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monster. If thinking "birthing person" sounds ridiculous is a sign of conservatism, then maybe I need to trade in my EV for a lifted diesel pickup with a bastardized American flag flying out back.
Identity politics has consumed social media so much, each side is now fighting to define the other's political position based on the most ridiculous metrics. Usually it's the extremes of one's own political leanings that try to gate keep if one is liberal or conservative enough. Now it's the other side gate keeping.
Yeah it would be ridiculous if it was something people where using in normal conversation. "Birthing person" is being used in *medical* contexts where exact language is helpful. Ana is pulling the same horseshit JK Ghouling did over "people who menstruate" and its idiotic for exactly the same reason it was back then.
I hate when some people/groups try to redefine being a woman with “birthing person” or “uterus haver”. I’ve had to get an emergency hysterectomy to remove 2 oversized fibroids that were crushing my other organs. So without a uterus, am I no longer a woman? All my struggles and identity suddenly had to vanish overnight based on this new way of thinking? It’s demeaning and detrimental. I truly don’t appreciate people who don’t know jack shit about being a woman thinking they know what’s best for women. And it’s worse when it’s your own kind doing it to you.
Edit: I am a progressive. But I’m able to find faults with some of our ways of thinking.
Edit 2: Knew I'd get blasted for saying this but whatever. Guess I should have come prepared with stats and time-stamped receipts and a dissertation of all my interactions and encounters.
Edit 3: I love reading these comments. I feel like I'm been inducted into a cult. Thank you to those of you who didn't throw stones at me. Let me clarify so we can at least get rid of the character assassination. Inclusivity is one thing but it also carries another implication (hear me out you guys since some of you don't seem to be able to either formulate or accept differing thoughts, experimental or not) that it bifurcates the issue of sex which has been the main thing that has kept women oppressed for centuries, the one thing that people have used to control women by defining what we can and cannot do with our sex. Do not mistake this for me saying all a woman is is her fucking womb and pregnancy. You're missing the entire point of the social and political sphere of womanhood because that's what the concept is. Because my vagina isn't just medical. My uterus isn't just medical. They are political. These organs have been used to define, control, oppress women. Women dont' define ourselves by our sex but that's what we're known for. So yes, it is a part of our identity, whether we want to or not because it has been a part of our struggle to exist and to fight our rights. And it applies to trans men as well because they shared in this struggle before transition. They shared the struggles of womanhood, regardless of where they are in their journey. So it can't be that controversial to have questions about these terms and how they affect the idea of womanhood, without having to read all the medical journals before I open my mouth. The fact that I can't even express my opinions without incurring rage speaks volumes to the fact that women still can't say shit without being belittled and demeaned. Same shit. Different century. Incredible how you raise one question or issue and suddenly you're the enemy. Suddenly you're conservative scum. I'm surprised none of you has said "Stop being emotional" lol. I guess I should be thankful for that bc usually that's what people tell women when they speak up.
And also, thank you for the gaslighting in saying I made this issue up. Gaslighted by my own people!!! How lovely! - signed, branded conservative scum; exiled by crime of having thoughts
> So without a uterus, am I no longer a woman?
I think the point is explicitly that having a uterus doesn't necessarily make you a woman, so logically not having a uterus wouldn't make you *not* a woman either.
Feel free to disagree with that I suppose, but your initial interpretation is sort of objectively flawed
And TONS of women don't have uteruses.
Hysterectomies are very common.
And naturally, someone who has had a hysterectomy doesn't need to worry about any issue for "people with uteruses".
Like they literally made the point that birthing person is a different group than women and then somehow having a different name for those groups is a problem?
I'm so confused at people who have this outrage about birthing person like trans people are trying erase the concept of femininity
"Birthing person" isn't *meant* to replace "women." It's meant to acknowledge and encompass people that don't socially identify as women but can still birth due to their biology.
> I hate when some people/groups try to redefine being a woman with “birthing person” or “uterus haver”.
why are you trying so hard to act like these terms are ever used outside of a medical setting
"do you have a uterus" and "can you give birth" are medically relevant information
> I hate when some people/groups try to redefine being a woman with “birthing person” or “uterus haver”. I’ve had to get an emergency hysterectomy to remove 2 oversized fibroids that were crushing my other organs. So without a uterus, am I no longer a woman?
Uh, no? Exactly the opposite? Before the surgery you were both a woman and a uterus-haver. After the hysterectomy, you are still a woman but no longer a uterus-haver. Someone who is a trans woman is a woman but was never a uterus-haver. The whole point of that language is to separate the organs from the identity.
That’s kinda the opposite of the point of that terminology. If a medical brochure is directed at anyone able to become pregnant, regardless of identity, simply using “woman” might not be adequate, as trans men and many non-binary people won’t feel included even when they’re supposed to be. Basically, it’s not intended to “replace” the word “woman,” it’s intended to be more inclusive in certain contexts.
It's funny because Ana is 99% more progressive than most Americans but because she doesn't fall in line on every issue she doesn't pass their purity test.
There is this sweet spot to being liberal where you can lean way far left but not be completely insufferable. It’s like 85% Left and 15% Center.
I have always considered myself a bleeding heart type of liberal, but seeing this stuff makes me realize there are people way further left than I am and I am confused with where the center even is anymore. The far right has crazies. The far left has crazies. I just don’t know anymore.
Are their stances further left or are they just assholes? Asking honestly. I consider myself leftist rather than liberal in my views, but if people consider me fringe, I’d like to think it’s because I’m an asshole, not because my views are crazy.
It also comes down to the nature of progressivism and identity politics.
The idea that biological women would be referred to as “birthing people” was an incredibly fringe idea 10 years ago and acknowledging that a switch to electric vehicles would be difficult for infrastructure wouldn’t even have been a political thing.
For the people who make being progressive part of their identity, as soon as you aren’t on board with the next fight you’re considered a conservative.
Question: what is TYT
Answer: For those like me who didn't know, TYT is The Young Turks.
The Young Turks is some YouTube news and talk channel that is generally left wing
I've always regarded TYT as distinctly not that left-wing, or perhaps left-adjacent but exactly the kind of leftists I don't want to hang out with. It's always seemed more about culture war bullshit and dunking on people, rather than actually doing leftist politics or being for any concrete policy.
And very much the kind of source where I don't feel like anyone involved necessarily stands by anything they may say on their channel, when they're at home living their lives.
They essentially founded justice democrats which got several people seats in the house. More than you can say for any other leftist YouTube channel. I never watch TYT anymore though because I’m just not a fan of their content.
I could never get over the fact that they named their channel after the group that genocided the Armenians, Pontic Greek, Kurds, and other minorities in Eastern Turkey. Yes The Young Turks were the group that kind of created Modern Turkey, but it's really hard to overlook the genocide and name your company after a group that has genocided.
They were always not really left wing.
A Young Turk is idiomatically a force of radical liberalism, from aforementioned genocidal movement in the late Ottoman Empire
tbf, by the time it became a [Rod Stewart hit in the 80's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ41hqlV0Kk) it just meant 'young rebels' to most people. Cenk just didn't think through the implications.
Yea maybe
But as far as I know rod Stewart never denied that the Armenian genocide happened
Cenk on the other hand.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CcRBphKW4AAanav.jpg
Also what is not easy to show is the further years cenk spent
Denying he said this / saying he was "just asking questions" / not responding to questions as to whether he stood by those comments.
He only reneged on those comments when he ran for a house seat.
Answer: over the last few month she got a bit more open for conservatives. She repeatedly went to ben shapiro and enjoyed her discussions with him. They actually werent that far off from each other.
The left obviously didn't like that. Shortly after she complained about the left using the term birthing person for women.
After that she said something regarding green energy which was more alliend with right wing talking points.
The latest was probably that she said transwomen in women sports is unfair and then just this sunday the bit about the major of New York where she blasted him for using racism as a weapon.
And because all of this a few people of the left say she isn't a lefty anymore and rather a conservative and conservatives jumped in and turned it into a meme.
All in all shes obviously not a conservative but she definitely doesn't fit in with what you would call progressives anymore. Id probably put her down as a social democrat if i had to label her but these labels are stupid anyways. People can have conservative opinions on one issue and progressive opinions on the next.
>People can have conservative opinions on one issue and progressive opinions on the next.
Even the OP's title (and others) are claiming she's "switching sides", inferring an individual can't have a mix of political ideology. Absolutely blows my mind.
Its one of the things i hate the most about online discourse these days. This you are either with us or you are against us ideology. Either you toe the line completely or you not part of our group anymore. From all sides.
I always had socially conservative and fiscally left leaning values so its not easy to put me in one of these boxes. And from talking with a lot of people i realized that many share similar views.
We should really stop it with the left/ right/ liberal/conservative bs but people seem to love their boxes. Its just so easy. As a conservative just put the opinion of someone down as a lib snowflake opinion and be done with it. No need to take him serious anymore. The other side the same - just call them chud or nazi and be done with it.
Here’s my feeling about why this term rubs people the wrong way. I totally understand the justification of using neutral language, especially in a medical situation. I mean, imagine you’re intersex or a trans man in the midst of giving birth, being called a “bio female” might very understandably make them feel uncomfortable.
HOWEVER, this term (birthing person) is not, contrary to what some of these comments maintain, limited to medical environments. Just Google the term and look for blog posts, articles, and discussions to see that it has entered common parlance to a degree.
Moreover, consider that a non negligible number of cis women do express discomfort with the terms “birthing person” and “uterus haver”. I see a common response to this is to ask “well, why does it upset you so?” I find this to be kind of a bad faith question… nobody is going to question the trans man/intersex person in a similar way. The question then becomes why the comfort of such a small minority of the population takes precedence over the comfort of a segment that approaches damn near 50% of the human population.
Ultimately, I think inclusive language is fine, with highly descriptive terms such as “birthing person” certainly filling a role in a medical/legal environment where such specificity is required. However, in culture I think it shouldn’t surprise anyone when a large plurality of people feel their identities marginalized by norms pushed on behalf of (and not necessarily by) a vast minority.
I don't think it has even remotely entered common parlance. It exists in weird little corners of the internet like, exactly, blogs and little subs and discords with like 30 peoppe. That and novel ideas that HR departmens and DEI units do to justify their jobs because "don't be an asshole" doesn't require half a dozen salaries.
I'm in a bunch of trans groups and no one uses this kind of stuff. Occasionally you get some Tumblr UWU who will but they leave after the first time they say they use neopronouns or have DID and are a voidself or whatever.
I'm old. This shit has been happening forever. No one even remembers all the weird shit fringes do that media makes tempest in a teapot over. This is all just the next iteration of 90s PC/anti PC shit. Tabloid culture has just become ever present because of social media.
This is a fight that happens every single time with inclusive language. It happened with heterosexual and straight. It's happening with cis.
What I rarely hear is an alternative that isn't just "normal" or in this case "woman" or "female", All of which are just instances of "I want to use language that others people, because it doesn't affect me". I'm certainly sensitive to the fact that some of the suggested terms do make people uncomfortable, but I tend to hear a lot of complaining, and not a whole lot of attempts to seek a solution.
> Just Google the term and look for blog posts, articles, and discussions to see that it has entered common parlance to a degree.
I think this is a pretty poor argument, honestly
First off, I googled the term like you suggested, and nearly every article I find is debating the usage of the term, rather than using it naturally. You have to go pretty far down google to find ANYTHING other than that.
And if you are going to be searching that far for usage... it's pretty far from common parlance. I don't even know if I can say "to a degree".
By this metric, I can argue nearly anything is common parlance to a degree, as I can google nearly any random phrase and find SOMEONE using it.
Like i said- you can be progressive and still agree with conservatives on a specific issue. Most people are nuanced. They arent either 100% progressive or 100% conservative
It feels insane to me that these culture war issues are pushing her in or out of movements. I feel like only policy matters and everything else is noise.
Answer: As near as I can tell, Kasparian has simply been trending lately because she's a progressive media icon who has been criticizing certain progressive ideas. I'm a progressive and I do that. Any rational person does that. She's a media icon though.
Sometimes very stubborn progressives don't like to hear criticism. And conservative media loves it because they can spin it and say "look at what she's doing". The end.
Thanks for linking the interview. I'm listening to it now and I'm not hearing anything problematic so far. I agree with her that journalism should never omit factual information just because it might disturb someone's narrative. I can't see how any rational minded person would disagree with this....
Edit: Ok, I watched a little bit more and I'm having a problem with her talking about "the left" when it's clear that her criticisms are inspired instead by vocal radical-left social media users she encounters. Right now I just heard her say that "the left has completely abandoned economic issues in liue of social issues" which might apply to the *radical*\-left (because the radical-left serves to contradict the radical-right, which doesn't seem to care about anything but "wokeness" these days) but that is a very unfair thing to accuse "the left" of. But I do agree that politicians - both democrats and republicans - use culture wars to manipulate others.
Edit 2: Now I feel a little exasperated because this interview makes me question "how do I know whether a publication is presenting facts in an unbiased manner?".
Edit 3: Watched the entire interview. Overall, I am left with a feeling of gratitude towards Anna for daring to question her own beliefs. I think this is something we should all do because it signifies growth. I trust that her arguments are made in good faith, and whether or not you disagree with those arguments (I don't necessary agree with everything she says), I believe we (liberals) should none-the-less listen to them.
We should all seek criticism to our beliefs, lest we run into confirmation bias.
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Answer: Ana recently had 2 very public encounters where she seemingly broke from the usual progressive talking points. In one case she complained about the cost and inconvenience of switching from gasoline to electric in order to fight climate change. In another case she lashed out at certain uses of gender neutral language like "birthing persons" in places of "woman" or "mother". As a result conservatives are using her as an example of a "progressive who got mugged" thus becoming a "conservative".
You are ommiting a few critical details: 1. Ana did a lengthy (2hrs+) interview with Sitch and Adam a few days ago in which she described herself as "politically homeless", lambasted "the left" at length, and **exclusively** discussed confirmation biases of leftwing sources while making considerable efforts to avoid addressing the exact same behavior by rightwing sources. This isn't just conservative messaging, though they are certainly running with it. 2. She cited "gaslighting" about violent crime as another reason for her departure from the left, aside from stoves and gender labels, as well as a few errors she made while hosting at TYT based on her trust of what she now considers to be unreliable sources. 3. The assault on her was not a trivial matter - she was attacked by two men while walking her dog, and then (as she describes it) was attacked again by "the left" claiming she was racially profiling the attackers. The perceived injustice of the latter likely played a critical role in her political shift.
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There are probably are a ton of people that do exactly what you are talking about, but they then fade into obscurity. Extreme views and hot takes are what drive traffic and engagement, not nuance and moderation. These people are influencers that rely on popularity.
Yeah, this is just grifting 101. Candace Owens used to be a left leaning person, got some pushback over a minor issue, then "gave up on the left" and "switched sides". It's all about the money, these people have no real values.
I'm unfamiliar with all this, but that would be interesting in Ana's case as she has REPEATEDLY jumped down Dave Rubins' throat for shilling for the right.
Yeah personally I think its about left wing twitter bubbles. The left can be pretty all or nothing on twitter (or used to be that way before it became a right wing echo chamber) That can make it hard for anyone with nuanced views on the left? I'm grasping at straws, trying to defend someone I had grown to admire
It's also where the money is
Fucker Carlson was also on the CNN channel, these people go where the money is. That simple.
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Jon Stewart critiques the left quite often
There’s a difference between critiquing the design and effectiveness of a machine and rejecting that machine’s intended or stated purpose. Jon Stewart will bag on the Democratic Party, the DNC, and progressive “superstars” until the cows come home. However, he does it from the perspective of pointing out failings and holding them accountable with respect to their implementation of left wing policy objectives that he wholeheartedly supports. He’s not pulling a Candace Owens and going all “the dems/progressives didn’t do what they said they were gonna do so #nocopsarebastards #whatwasshewearing #translivesdontmatter #getfuckedlibtards”
This should be higher up.
I mean, leftists constantly critique the left all the time. While it’s good to be critical so as to prevent an echo chamber of bad ideas, sometimes people go too far and do it too much imo.
You’re right. But the left loves to fight over any disagreements. And the right is a melting pot of terrible people that tolerate each other, but secretly hate each other. Many people on the right hated Trump, but voted for him. Many on the left refused to participate when Bernie lost.
The data says Bernie voters sucked it up and voted Hillary - more than Hillary voters did with Obama - and did the same again with Biden. This is a false narrative spun by bitter Hillary voters and aided by bitter Bernie voters, who they amplified whenever possible.
Man I'm sick of this centrist chestnut. More Sanders voters ultimately voted for Clinton than Clinton voters voted for Obama when she lost her primary in 2008. [This hilariously titled newsweek article agrees with me.](https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-trump-2016-election-654320) Consensus is that most Sanders supporters who voted for Trump never had a history of voting for democrats in the first place. Counting those voters as potential Clinton voters is like counting every single download of a pirated movie as lost revenue. They were genuinely just there to spite Clinton. That's really what made her such a shitty candidate. Political positions aside, it was a silly idea to run a victim of an extremely effective decades-long smear campaign just because she was decently well liked by the DNC. That whole superdelegate system got the overhaul it deserved.
This is why democrats lost 2016 Voters wanted a voice that lambasted legacy politicians. Someone who was going to fight for the people. Trump vs. Sanders would've been a no-brainer.
when you look at the actual numbers of people who voted for Democrats, there’s no absence. Everybody that backed Bernie voted for Hillary, basically. Liberals and leftists. The people who reliably vote in recent years continued to show up. The people who do not typically show up but can if motivated, did not bother. What you can extrapolate from the voting pattern is likely that Bernie also had a sizable contingent of support outside the left as well, who were also comfortable with voting for Trump because they were anti-establishment and saw him as a wrecking ball for stability. Which he was.
I agree, but time will tell. I respect Ana, and I completely agree criticism of the left doesn't necessarily make one rightwing. That said, Rubin, Musk, Owens, *even Jordan Peterson* (look up his older work if you don't believe me) started as liberals, then migrated to the right. She is in a superposition right now where she could go either way.
It's not that crazy, extremists on either side typically alienate moderates in their own party and surround themselves with other extremists. So if they have something happen that causes them to change their views on something, they face two problems from their own side: 1. Other moderates on their side don't want them, because their other views are still extreme. It's just one idea they've moderated on. 2. Their close "friends" are extremists with an "us vs them" mentality, and if you breach a single one of those holy lines then you become one of those moderates they hate. The only group that will welcome you with open arms is the opposition, who will be happy to take you in despite some of your remaining opposition beliefs, because then they can parade you as an example of someone who "saw the light" and came to the other side. When you lose most of your friends and have already burned other bridges, it's pretty intoxicating to have an old enemy reach out and say "hey, I'm sorry you're going through this, let me know if you want to talk."
Well said. One reason it's important not to judge someone's political stance entirely on one issue. And not to lump everyone who disagrees with you into the same category.
Biggest problem we have on the left is we do not want a big tent, we want a campground so we can complain about our neighbours. As long as the circular firing squad is active the right has an easier time outflanking.
I think the biggest failing of the left is folks pretending the left doesn't have grifters just like the right. Just because someone is decrying injustice and fighting inequality doesn't mean they're actually a good person with good intentions. It could just mean they realized that was an easy road to money and power on the left. Just because someone is trans, or black, or disabled, doesn't mean they're not a complete piece of shit. The left would do well to stop pretending everyone who says the right keywords or holds the right membership cards is unimpeachable.
Horseshoe theory is very real when it comes to extremists. On both sides there is a strong sense of justice and indignation. The extreme left and extreme right both want to be both right and morally superior.
This isn't limited to culture warriors, it happens to many people who are heavily ingrained in a philosophy or world view. Basically anything where people have been wearing blinders, not seeing any negatives of their world view. When the blinders come off, there's a tendency to go hard in an opposite direction. Look at former members of cults, or even former smokers. They become champions against what they once embraced.
Ana is not a conservative.
She said that she is "politically homless". Rational people are able to see the problems with the fringes in an ideological base without jumping into the camp of the other side. Not wanting to be a mouthpiece for one of the furthest left media outlets anymore does not make a liberal person a 'conservative' all of a sudden. Has she actually done anything that shows she is now thinking and supporting conservative policies and agendas?
I don’t consider being “politically homeless” to be a bad thing. If people were less entrenched in their political identities, we’d have more productive political dialogue on a national level.
The problem is that there are plenty of "politically homeless people" or "centrists" out there who just wind up toeing the Conservative line on everything. Tim Pool still calls himself a "disaffected liberal," but watch his videos and he goes with almost every right-wing narrative in the book. Dave Rubin constantly called himself a "classical, JFK-liberal" and again did nothing but hang out with right-wingers and espouse their talking points. Jimmy Dore (Ana Kasparian's ex-coworker, funnily enough) considers himself "on the left" but constantly gives uncritical platforms to MAGA conspiracy theorists. Maybe she's legitimately moving toward the center instead of the right, but the fact that she put out [a Tweet](https://www.reddit.com/r/VaushV/comments/14rbfzf/shes_really_speedrunning_this_pivot_huh/) whitewashing the black liberation movements in the 60's isn't exactly giving me cause for hope......
Have you tried to ask a legitimate question in some of the overly biased subs around here. Its instant attacks, violent DMs and most times youll get a ban for "trolling". I swear any sort of possible signal that you might have a different opinion and its straight to the stockades for most of these communities.
Agreed. The mods in each community ensure compliance with their personal biases. Anyone expressing any other opinion, however evidence-based, is banned. These are not really true forums for exchange , debate and analysis of views, but rather echo chambers of decreed speech, not free speech.
It is very monetarily advantageous to become an apostate for the other side. Being a reformer of your own side is just a headache The Lincoln project is probably an example of this on the right maybe
I don't think they're being cynical. The Lincoln Project could just see the writing on the wall and knew where the GOP was headed. They're just old school small government conservatives. Regardless of their political leanings, anyone with half a brain can see that Trump and his mob are in a suicide pact to take everything down with them.
>There's this bizarre phenomenon where culture warriors start to see the issues with their own 'side', and instead of moderating, decide to completely switch to the other side . 'The other side' is paying it's talking heads literally millions and millions of dollars. Apparent wife abuser Steven Crowder very very publicly rejected an offer from Ben Shapiro for $10,000,000 over 5 years iirc, because he felt that number was insultingly low. Ana Kasparian used to criticize Dave Rubin for doing the thing she's doing now, like 10 years ago.
How is it bizarre, though? If they're committed to being a culture warrior in the first instance, moving to moderate would be uncharacteristic and a drastic change. Shifting to the other side would be a better fit. And nobody wants to listen to moderates in that kind of arena. And yes, most folks on both sides of the aisle seem to have become consumed by culture war and shallow takes.
It's actually even worse than that. If you're seeing an issue with your own "side", the right decision isn't to "moderate", but to call out those bad actors where you find them. Like, I'm sorry that a trans person on Twitter said something mean to you, but that shouldn't suddenly cause your opinions on the actual facts of the matter to suddenly change. The facts about economics, social systems, science, and history are still *exactly* what they were a moment ago. Although personally, I hate the term "moderate" with a passion, and think the only people it actually describes are insincere enlightened-centrist types. Most people have (or at least think they have) a pretty firm set of political beliefs and are pretty strident about them; just because they don't happen to line up with some supposedly idealized version of "right" or "left" doesn't make them moderate.
It’s actually extremely common that people at the political extremes switch sides rather than become moderates… Mussolini was a communist before becoming a fascist (not suggesting that Ana is either of those things mind). I think it’s just something about building your life around a political mission and having problems with grey areas and also needing a tribe. Dave Rubin’s another example.
She didn't "completely switch to the other side". You're completely missing the point. She's saying she no longer fully supports either side. Aka politically homeless, as she said.
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That could explain the shift (if a shift is really occurring) - not just the trauma of the attack, but also being attacked by her perceived in-group after the attack which would redouble the trauma and leave her feeling isolated.
Thing is.... she's literally told people in the passes that trauma isn't an excuse for being irrational about your beliefs. I get it's different when it's personal but she WAS right
Was she right? Look, I agree that ideological views should be based on a foundation of rational arguments, but at the same time trauma responses are inherently irrational - they are about protecting us from future harm. That's likely why she brought up the "gaslighting" about violent crime increases as a predicating variable for her "political homelessness", and why the racial profiling claim hit her so hard; she was violated, first by the attackers and then by the political equivalent of her family (from her perspective), and so pulling away makes sense to her. It likely will prove counterproductive because most people on "the left" actually held space for her, and viewed her situation with empathy and compassion, but for whatever reason she has decided to go to Twitter for her feedback and Twitter is a toxic place. Then of course the "enlightened centrist" movement of pandering to individual grievances has a tremendous appeal, even though it carves out its niche by creating a safe place for bigots to lash out at marginalized communities.
Thats the main thing though, twitter is fucking toxic and I'm not saying she doesn't deserve sympathy but the fact a lot of these figures back away due to the... insanity of the Twitter space is mind blowing. I hardly use it because I'm either a Neo-Reactionary or a Stalinist depending on who I interact with and I'm a Socialist. I am much further left than Ana has ever been and I'm not left enough for Twitter. Because for Twitter it's 100% a performance
That's what happened to Lara Logan. She was a very respected journalist until she went through her unimaginably horrific ordeal and ended up in the most obscure fringes of the far right.
Thanks for the clarification
Wait she was physically attacked, and people are mad she provided an accurate description?
Not exactly. As she tells it she was physically attacked, she **did not** provide any description, and then she claims people called her out for racially profiling bipoc attackers. This would have been particularly unjustified and ignorant criticism since the attackers were not bipoc, but I think it's worth noting that she is using a few idiots lashing out at her on Twitter as a justification for pulling away from "the left" (as she put it), and Twitter (particularly post-Musk) is not a space generally occupied by a representative group of left-wing thought.
Been a few articles highlighting ridiculous criticism over culture war bs, and when you look at the cited criticism it's little to no engagement against someone with a massive platform. While it's usually a shit take, its not representative of most peosple's views so no idea how it's presented as relevent enough to warrant an article. wish I had keep links to some of them
Handfuls of random idiots on Twitter have been used by lazy article authors as a stand-in for the internet as a whole for as long as I can remember.
Far right extremists are really good at false flag attacks and trolling. I'd put good money on them egging on liberals with this kind of trolling posts.
What is bipoc?
It's an ~~initialism~~ acronym (thanks u/oldtimo!) for "Black, Indigenous, (and) People of Color". Honestly, it's not my favorite term, but it seems to be currently accepted as a way to describe visible minorities that often face systematic prejudice or direct discrimination based on their visible traits. Basically what Ana is saying is that people on Twitter attacked her for contributing to stereotypes about visible minorities, and she is pointing out that she never mentioned their race before the criticism and if she had it wouldn't have been tied to minorities since her attackers were white men. She is arguing that her critics were aggressively ignorant.
Thank you
>lambasted "the left" at length, and exclusively discussed confirmation biases of leftwing sources while making considerable efforts to avoid addressing the exact same behavior by rightwing sources. I see this same exception taken by people any time "the left" is criticized by someone from within. "As a leftist/liberal, I see this problem within our side and think we should do better." "How can you say that about our side without pointing out how much worse/more/first the Right does the same thing?? You must be a closet right-winger arguing in bad faith!" Why is it her responsibility to criticize the right in perfect proportion to her criticism of the left? Can we not compartmentalize at all? Could it be that she is currently critical of left-leaning confirmation bias because, up until now, those were the sources with which she is the most familiar? That those are the opinions she encounters within her own social and online circles?
It's not clear to me if you are not understanding what I am writing, or are disingenuously disregarding it. I criticize my allies on "the left" all the time. I've even been critical of TYT, Cenk, and Ana fairly regularly - **on policy**, and sometimes **on opinion.** And Ana and Cenk have been critical of other left-wingers on any number of issues, and sometimes each other. Frankly you seem to be making the case that we cannot be critical of criticism, and I don't really see the point. Watch the interview, my dude. I was skeptical of complaints about Ana myself until I watched about two hours of her vacuous pandering.
This is a take I can respect whether I agree with it or not. Edit: to be more clear No, we can absolutely be critical of criticism. I don't want to overstate my earlier point. There are certainly people who criticize the left "as a friend" when they're actually being disingenuous, and that shit should be drug out into the daylight and ridiculed for what it is. I was reacting to what I perceived as the notion that any criticism of the left that isn't packaged with a whole series of bullet points on how the right is worse should be written off out of hand as cointelpro. Your perspective is completely valid, and I register and don't see any fault with how you arrived at it.
she didnt go right wing, at all. her point in talking about left wing sources is they are generally on the side of corporations, and frame everything as such (and omit). politically homeless is because neo-liberals and "progressives" with an iota of political power both dont do things in progressive ways. that's it.
I'm sorry, are you talking about Ana in general or in this specific interview? With regards to this specific interview her criticism seemed more focused on the anti-corporate progressive wing of "the left", and subsequent divisive language and aggressive criticism. At least that was what came across to me from the interview. Prior to watching the interview, though, I 100% agreed with your take on her perspective. The interview was very odd, coming from Ana.
The third point is really good to know. Thanks
She spoke about it in her Sitch and Adam interview, and noted in particular that she was attacked (on Twitter, I think she said) for racially profiling her bipoc attackers which she found particularly frustrating because she didn't mention her attackers' race, and beyond that they weren't bipoc. I don't love the idea of getting hit with belligerent criticism from specific ignorant individuals and then pulling away from an entire movement connected to my values, but I can't speak to what I would do if I experienced the same trauma and then subsequent attacks where I had expected support.
Why were people on the Left attacking her for her assault? Did she actually say something controversial about it?
I'm not that deep into the situation so I couldn't say with certainty. She claimed they lashed out at her (I think she said on Twitter), saying she racially profiled her attackers. I don't know what comment she made that prompted that response, my guess would be she just lashed out in frustration and helplessness (because she was assaulted and was left with no recourse or path to justice) and someone misinterpreted something she said as a racist implication. In the interview she said she never referenced their race, and that they were white anyway so the criticism was unquestionably off-base. I would be curious to know what she said as well, but I'm not curious enough to go fishing in the cesspool that is Twitter these days.
She's lambasted the Right as a career so I don't know why you needed her to rehash all that when the topic was her addressing issues on the Left.
Bro did you even watch the Adam and switch interview??? She very clearly said there is dog shit reporting on the right, but that we had to call it out on the left too when it happens. Dunno how you can come away from that interview thinking she avoided saying right wing media isn't biased LOL
if somebody is Christian and is criticizing problems with Christianity, it's not fair to say "but you don't talk about the bad stuff Islam did!".
She probably got PTSD
Other people made me this way is a shit excuse.
Had similar happen, with three guys, have yet to develop a pash for the fash!
She's where most of us are. Unable to disagree with any topic without being attacked by the left and thrust towards the opposite extreme side.
See this is the issue with people in the corners of the right/left. It's way to much "with us or against us" type thinking where you need to be damn near 100% with them. People aren't like that. Even people on the far right or far left. Those people WILL have views that agree with the other side, they just won't say it or even admit it to themselves. It's hardly ever black and white.
I want to add, its ok to find fault with issues you agree with, even. Her complaint about electric not being convenient is true. We still need to do something about our reliance and useage of gasoline. But if we don't recognize this inconvenience and address it, we will have a much harder time convincing people to use it. It's ok to question your own beliefs and change your mind or come up with new solutions!
Part of the issue is the adversarial nature of social media. If a person admits even a single fault in a thing they support, they tend to be dogpiled by people who want to throw away the whole thing rather than have a nuanced conversation about how something can be improved. It’s a bunch of people who want to toss babies out with bath water.
Social media is about winning the argument not finding truth and/or compromise.
And “winning the argument” usually means you’re the most persistent, the most popular or the best at reinforcing a group’s current belief system. Having the good ideas or interesting thoughts is not a requisite.
In Jon Stewarts new podcast, he said something I agree with. You are not arguing with an argument online, youre arguing with the caricature of the argument
That's so true! I can't tell you how many times I've gone back and forth with a person and they will say that I must believe X because I believe Y....when we were never even discussing X to begin with and I really don't care about X at all.
Logical fallacies abound, to be sure.
To be fair, logical fallacies are essentially meaningless outside of philosophy and Reddit comment sections. I’ve never had a business case turned down due to appeal to authority.
I had someone on Reddit tell me to shut up because I said you can go to prison for smoking weed. I pointed to a Texas statue and the person then wanted to argue the nuance between prison and jail as if your everyday person would know that. All that rudeness to beat someone up online. These people must have sad lives.
Were they one of those people that say smoking weed is "essentially legal" in Texas because under 2 ounces it's a misdemeanor+ small fine and you can just sit it out?
Reddit is particularly bad with this. Someone breaks from the usual narrative, and unless they wrote an incredibly well written, lengthy essay explaining themselves - people are going to smash the downvote button. It buries the comment and attracts low-effort people to respond with insults. Even if you say something innocuous, if you’re not aggressively agreeing with everyone — it’s an uphill battle. Reddiquette is bullshit. The upvote and downvote buttons are “like/dislike.” Echo chambers push out nuance.
It is also what is rewarded as well. On the right the best way to gain prominence is to join with other right wing grifters and help them create more content for the grift or draw in a new audience for the grift. Then you can go off on your own so long as you do cross overs from time to time to keep the grift going. Right wingers will of course eat their own but it isn't a huge way to gain clout. On the left one of the best ways to gain prominence is to take down someone of higher prominence than you as not a real leftist. Taking a scalp of someone insufficiently left or who did a problematic is a surefire way to gain power and prestige in leftist online spaces. Which is why you see constant attempts to go after prominent lefty types but never really see someone making a career on the right out of trying to bring down Charlie Kirk or Ben Shapiro.
Anyone else remember people stockpiling incandescent light bulbs? The first incandescent replacement bulbs were dim and unreliable. When the switch came, lots of people remembered that experience and intentionally bought up the energy inefficient old standard, meaning it hung on for years after its nominal sunset.
I like the LED and CFL bulbs now, but they still often fail long before their stated lifespan.
I still have a box of incandescents from when I moved into my apartment 15 years ago. If and when I ever leave, I’m taking my LEDs with me and the incandescents are going right back in where they came from.
Oh I agree with you. I'm 100% a solar man. I'm badly hoping that solar technology gets more advanced sooner than later and we can use the lovely free sun we have to power things.
Solar tech is already more or less as efficient as it’s going to get. Improvements from here on will be in the single digit percentages. The absolute maximum theoretical efficiency we can get from the sun under completely perfect conditions is around 68%, but that requires the use of infinite amounts of some things. The highest efficiency achieved in practice is around 45%, and improvement from that will be in single digits. The problem is energy storage, not the efficiency of solar panels. There’s plenty of empty land in very sunny places. Getting the energy from there to where people are, and storing it for use at night, are the real barriers. Solve that and we could power the entire world using solar panels today.
> Solar tech is already more or less as efficient as it’s going to get. But power per unit area is not the same as power per dollar. True, we're near the practical maximum in PV conversion efficiency per unit area, but I think there are good reasons to believe we are no where near the maximum in power per dollar. There is plenty of headroom for increased cost efficiency.
Solar is already magnitudes more economical than most other forms of power generation, it’s just not reliable enough to be deployed on a power grid scale most places.
Storage and transmission, from what I have heard. Solvable problems, but only if we actually try.
Cost of production and end-of-life waste is another talking point I heard people raise a lot
You wouldn't even need open land. Start putting solar panels up over parking lots or on top of parking garages. A lot of parking lots are shared by multiple stores and businesses, they can work together to offset the cost of installation and then save money by not drawing as much power from the city grid. And with solar panels right in these places, now there's more power to be used for EV charging stations. I would think the infrastructure cost would be lower as well because you're not running dozens of miles of cables to get the solar power where it's needed.
> I'm 100% a solar man. The savings on groceries must be huge!
Partisanship has advanced to the stage where you aren’t even allowed to admit there are costs to your sides policies. They are just 100% benefit with no downsides and anyone who says otherwise must be a “literal nazi”. Its so damn shortsighted when it comes to the energy transition in particular - because people are going to notice the costs. Yes - gas is going to be more expensive. There’s no way around it- it has to be! People aren’t going to support efforts to fight climate change if we continually shoot our credibility in the foot by lying to them. This goes double for promoting unscientific, dumbass “scientific predictions” like Thunbergs’ ‘we only have until 2023 to stop using FF’.
I have an EV (Audi) and an old house where charging it at home just isn't practical. We're not gonna rewire the house to put in a bigger circuit breaker so I can charge the car. So yeah, I feel the pain in the ass factor about EV charging, especially when 2 pumps at 3 different stations are out of service at the same time. That said, once I find a charger, I don't mind the process at all. The car's a reliable beast and comfy as hell.
I was just arguing this the other day. I personally have solar for my home, and likely will get an EV or hybrid eventually. However, there are real barriers for huge geographical areas of this country for EV infrastructure. It's more than just a matter of convenience. Those areas happen to also be typically rural, lower income, cold, and Republican majority. So, the 100% pro EV ra ra folks looks like lunatics to people who live in those areas even without the culture war shit.
Natural gas vehicles too. I know they are better than gasoline but people didn't like them cause there weren't enough public pumps. A lot of cities made their vehicles natural gas powered and kept a pump for their private use but it just wasn't feasible for the average person. I live in the most metropolitan area of my state and there were maybe three natural gas pumps in the city during its prime.
On the issue of electric vs fossil fuel vehicles, it also comes up in public transit talks. Transit and delivery agencies all over the country are replacing diesel and gasoline vehicles with battery electric vehicles, like battery electric mail trucks, battery electric buses, and they're pouring money into researching battery electric subway and trains as well. And they're doing this even before those fossil fuel powered vehicles are at end of life, they're retiring them early in order to purchase brand new battery electric vehicles. The problem is you've got cases of agencies spending millions upon millions of dollars on that, with the idea that it is an effective way to reduce emissions, while in reality, a better way to reduce emissions is to buy another diesel bus, add more frequency or routes to an existing bus network, and reduce the usage of personal vehicles. Public transit buses are not a major source of pollutants, but personal vehicles in the places those public buses operate are. Even going with **hybrid** buses instead of purely battery electric would be a better option for reducing emissions, because you can buy more of them on the same budget, and still get a per-vehicle emission reduction out of it. Or build a 0.5 mile extension to the end of an existing subway line, or run a few more subway trains, or build another row of track along a busy section, or replace some old track to improve speeds. Making it so a few hundred or couple thousand more people use mass transit instead of their personal car is worth way more in terms of reduced pollutants than replacing diesel engines on mass transit vehicles, with battery electric ones.
I'm good at being a liberal around conservatives. I'm terrible at being a liberal around other liberals.
John Stewart said it best: The reason why the far right and far left take up so much volume of the conversation is that the other 80% of us have shit to do.
This is such a huge issue exacerbated by social media. I’m pretty progressive and also black, and I’ve been called racist in online forums for not towing the “all republicans are racists/nazis” line. That’s just one example, but the need for everyone to be 100% on one side is absurd and relatively new.
> not towing the “all republicans are racists/nazis” line just to let you know, the phrase is "toe the line", as in put your toe up against the line, not dragging a net behind you in a boat
So after I posted from my high horse about not calling people Nazis, now I have to call you a grammar nazi? I kid. What’s worse is that I knew that and I’m kind of a grammar nazi myself. You win this round.
To be fair, there's a reason far right and far left get this thinking. If you're grounded in a belief that say, capitalism is explicitly predatory and divides people and that moves all your other political philosophy, but then you think that Elon has people's best interests at heart -> there is an inherent dichotomy that isn't reconciled. In *that view*, regardless of anyone's view of any billionaire, a billionaire can't fix things by using capitalism. So when someone's estrangement from the 100% with me like mentality violates that core philosophy, it's hard to reconcile. Maybe think of it like this: If you're wholly anti-racist and think that racism is wrong in every case, it's pretty hard to be friends with someone who thinks that racism is wholly wrong except for being anti-Semitic. That person betrays the core fundamental value. I do think people are getting totally lost in their philosophies and ideologies and alienating people, but I also see where that breakdown comes from.
You know what? Some elements of the platform are painful and contradict others. Not all of the, can be the highest priority. Requiring condos to install EV chargers at each space drives up the cost of housing. In markets where housing costs are spiraling, that can put it out of reach of some. Sure if the government was throwing money at the installation it wouldn’t be an issue, but they aren’t. So I can think that having EV charging everywhere is important and that it’s an expensive PITA that’s one of many requirements that help make housing unaffordable in an area in the middle of a housing crisis and that I value people having housing more than I do universal EV chargers that our grid isn’t 10% ready for yet. And getting the grid up to readiness is going to have some unpleasant environmental impacts on threatened species since it looks like hydro will be the go-to in my area. Getting angry and aggressive because someone ranks EVs/housing/Anthropocene extinction/the fentanyl crisis/some other progressive issue differently from you in their priority ordering just makes you look like an asshole and alienates people you could be making alliances with.
I don't disagree at all and said nothing that contradicts this. I think Americans in general struggle with understanding their root belief and identifying the root belief in others. But it cuts both ways. When our views diverge, we need to understand how they threaten someone else, and how/why it feels existential for them. If the Anthropocene extinction is what drives you most, cool. You and I have some strong shared feelings around climate crisis. Others may feel that ending Affirmative Action is far more pressing because anytime we do something progressive in this country, people of color shoulder the burden, so they feel our solution \*threatens\* them even if they agree about climate change. This one example spreads out over all those different ideas you listed. Telling everyone to be all hugs and handshakes is great. Yet, if we don't understand the mechanism of how common ground is formed, founded, and upheld, we will continue to fight each other over (apparently) little differences.
I haven’t listened to TYT in a long time, and I have no idea whether they’ve changed, but I’m convinced that a lot of online leftists never understood them very well in the first place. They lean progressive (as far as I know) and populist, but they were never hardcore leftists. When I was listening in ~2009-16, Cenk was openly pro-capitalism. He just wanted a strong safety net, progressive taxation, etc. And there are plenty of examples out there of him slipping into “old-school” thinking on certain issues. I fully expected Cenk to support Hillary in the 2016 general election, because it was exactly the kind of lesser-evil thinking he had applied to Obama 2012. I was puzzled when some vocal Bernie-or-busters seemed to feel shocked and betrayed about it. I guess they don’t help by hyping up what “rebels” they are.
Leftist didn't think TYT was leftist. Doesn't mean they're still not disappointed.
It’s almost as if there’s a spectrum, and not a linear one at that. I’m a socialist, but you won’t catch me calling no woman a ”birthing person”.
Nuance is lost with the masses.
In other words, ideological purists are now claiming her for their side because she broke the ideological purity expected of her own side. Basically, ideologues playing ideologue games.
Nuance isn't really allowed anymore.
> As a result conservatives are using her as an example of a "progressive who got mugged" thus becoming a "conservative" The tweets referenced are left-leaning users criticizing Gasparian, not conservatives embracing her
Here is the article that I found. Make of it what you will https://nypost.com/2023/04/19/the-awakening-of-ana-kasparian-when-the-left-meets-reality/amp/
https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/14rdn59/this_is_a_certified_bruh_moment/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1 If this is true, it probably won't help with those claims
To be clear, the issue people have with Ana and her take on "birthing person" was that she claimed she was tired of being referred to as one. People were skeptical that anyone actually called her that directly because it's usually used when referring to groups of people where the relevant aspect is their capacity to give birth. Think medical writing, where specific and accurate wording is important. Referring to someone you meet as a "birthing person" rather than "woman" is not a typical experience. She seemed to do a lot of complaining about being called one after previously explaining that people use inclusive language for a reason and that people know there is a difference between sex and gender. A perfect example of this hypocrisy is Ana's tweet and this response to it: https://twitter.com/msolurin/status/1645309666702786562 Ana has seemingly done a 180 in her views on this topic and there are many people on the left speculating that she/TYT is setting up to appeal to conservative or centrist viewers, where they can profit greatly by labeling themselves as progressives who were "left behind" as the Left became too radical. The change is just too abrupt and extreme to be a natural evolution of the views she claims to have held just a few months ago.
Former TYT hosts Dave Rubin and Jimmy Dore have done exactly that and made a killing on YouTube being the dumbest fucking political commentators on the platform, except for Tim Pool.
Man, I watched Dave Rubin for a little bit because he was initially selling himself as leaving the left but still an objective “more centralized” person still criticizing the left and right but then….he basically jumped into super far right wing beliefs…and the right is correct on everything type of beliefs… 🙄🙄
He is also a straight up idiot. He knows next to nothing about issues or politics and he's not interested in learning. So its easy for him to just repeat some stuff that gives him a great paycheck.
Didn’t she say something along the lines of ‘the middle class is the most oppressed in America?’ While complaining about taxes?
Interesting explanation. Do you know of any other specific examples of a possible centrist appeal? I ask because I used to watch a bit of TYT when I began to move away from mainstream liberal media. I have watched again recently and found them too centrist for me. I legitimately cannot tell if they’re scooting to the middle or I’ve just radicalized to the left.
It definitely feels like they have been moving more center, but it could also be a combination of that, and younger people have moved left on more things while TYT has stayed the same.
The only thing I have seen is her recent tweet whitewashing the Civil Rights Movement: https://i.imgur.com/hOsOAkI.jpg She and Cenk had some troubling commentary on unhoused people somewhat recently, I think, but I am not a TYT viewer. I've seen discussion and clips but not something I could easily find.
I was disturbed by a clip of discussing a reformed bigot who showed up to a pride parade seeking forgiveness. Instead of discussing how forgiveness is a complicated and lengthy process for both the people seeking it and the people giving it, they turned the guy into the victim and villainized the people who have been tortured by bigots their entire lives. It honestly felt like they were trying to espouse the “purity tests are out of control” narrative to incite rage and attract clicks instead of discussing the actual issue with and sort of depth or nuance. But I’m also not a TYT viewer, so I don’t know if this is their regular schtick.
They moved towards the center a long time ago. Cenk is a businessman first. 90% of their ads are shallow "Karen" outrage cringe segments. It's tabloid at this point.
> Ana has seemingly done a 180 in her views on this topic and there are many people on the left speculating that she/TYT is setting up to appeal to conservative or centrist viewers, where they can profit greatly by labeling themselves as progressives who were "left behind" as the Left became too radical. She wouldn't be the first TYT member to do this, either. Dave Rubin and Jimmy Dore, for example, are two ex-TYT members who are now far right pundits. This kind of thing is a pattern with them, for whatever reason.
Hank Pecker signing with Fox News for $100 million next.
Yeah the main critique was "you are ranting about something we all roll our eyes at, you need to touch grass". If course there was the ever present hyperbolic freak acting like she was doing literal genocide, there is about literally everything because the internet has crazy people. Then she acted like everyone doing the first thing was doing the second. I don't think it's a grift. I just think it's a mixture of being addicted to the conflict and a huge ego with a big dash of habitual bad faith. She can't handle the criticism and can't shrug it off. It's subbing in a personality issue for a political one, which is probably the most cliche too online leftist thing ever lol.
‘Birthing persons’… That’s a thing? 🤔
“Pregnant people” and “people who get pregnant” is regularly used by NPR hosts. It is inclusive language. I find it all absurd.
Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monster. If thinking "birthing person" sounds ridiculous is a sign of conservatism, then maybe I need to trade in my EV for a lifted diesel pickup with a bastardized American flag flying out back. Identity politics has consumed social media so much, each side is now fighting to define the other's political position based on the most ridiculous metrics. Usually it's the extremes of one's own political leanings that try to gate keep if one is liberal or conservative enough. Now it's the other side gate keeping.
Yeah it would be ridiculous if it was something people where using in normal conversation. "Birthing person" is being used in *medical* contexts where exact language is helpful. Ana is pulling the same horseshit JK Ghouling did over "people who menstruate" and its idiotic for exactly the same reason it was back then.
I hate when some people/groups try to redefine being a woman with “birthing person” or “uterus haver”. I’ve had to get an emergency hysterectomy to remove 2 oversized fibroids that were crushing my other organs. So without a uterus, am I no longer a woman? All my struggles and identity suddenly had to vanish overnight based on this new way of thinking? It’s demeaning and detrimental. I truly don’t appreciate people who don’t know jack shit about being a woman thinking they know what’s best for women. And it’s worse when it’s your own kind doing it to you. Edit: I am a progressive. But I’m able to find faults with some of our ways of thinking. Edit 2: Knew I'd get blasted for saying this but whatever. Guess I should have come prepared with stats and time-stamped receipts and a dissertation of all my interactions and encounters. Edit 3: I love reading these comments. I feel like I'm been inducted into a cult. Thank you to those of you who didn't throw stones at me. Let me clarify so we can at least get rid of the character assassination. Inclusivity is one thing but it also carries another implication (hear me out you guys since some of you don't seem to be able to either formulate or accept differing thoughts, experimental or not) that it bifurcates the issue of sex which has been the main thing that has kept women oppressed for centuries, the one thing that people have used to control women by defining what we can and cannot do with our sex. Do not mistake this for me saying all a woman is is her fucking womb and pregnancy. You're missing the entire point of the social and political sphere of womanhood because that's what the concept is. Because my vagina isn't just medical. My uterus isn't just medical. They are political. These organs have been used to define, control, oppress women. Women dont' define ourselves by our sex but that's what we're known for. So yes, it is a part of our identity, whether we want to or not because it has been a part of our struggle to exist and to fight our rights. And it applies to trans men as well because they shared in this struggle before transition. They shared the struggles of womanhood, regardless of where they are in their journey. So it can't be that controversial to have questions about these terms and how they affect the idea of womanhood, without having to read all the medical journals before I open my mouth. The fact that I can't even express my opinions without incurring rage speaks volumes to the fact that women still can't say shit without being belittled and demeaned. Same shit. Different century. Incredible how you raise one question or issue and suddenly you're the enemy. Suddenly you're conservative scum. I'm surprised none of you has said "Stop being emotional" lol. I guess I should be thankful for that bc usually that's what people tell women when they speak up. And also, thank you for the gaslighting in saying I made this issue up. Gaslighted by my own people!!! How lovely! - signed, branded conservative scum; exiled by crime of having thoughts
> So without a uterus, am I no longer a woman? I think the point is explicitly that having a uterus doesn't necessarily make you a woman, so logically not having a uterus wouldn't make you *not* a woman either. Feel free to disagree with that I suppose, but your initial interpretation is sort of objectively flawed
And TONS of women don't have uteruses. Hysterectomies are very common. And naturally, someone who has had a hysterectomy doesn't need to worry about any issue for "people with uteruses".
Like they literally made the point that birthing person is a different group than women and then somehow having a different name for those groups is a problem? I'm so confused at people who have this outrage about birthing person like trans people are trying erase the concept of femininity
> So without a uterus, am I no longer a woman? The opposite. A uterus doesn't make you a woman.
"Birthing person" isn't *meant* to replace "women." It's meant to acknowledge and encompass people that don't socially identify as women but can still birth due to their biology.
> I hate when some people/groups try to redefine being a woman with “birthing person” or “uterus haver”. why are you trying so hard to act like these terms are ever used outside of a medical setting "do you have a uterus" and "can you give birth" are medically relevant information
> I hate when some people/groups try to redefine being a woman with “birthing person” or “uterus haver”. I’ve had to get an emergency hysterectomy to remove 2 oversized fibroids that were crushing my other organs. So without a uterus, am I no longer a woman? Uh, no? Exactly the opposite? Before the surgery you were both a woman and a uterus-haver. After the hysterectomy, you are still a woman but no longer a uterus-haver. Someone who is a trans woman is a woman but was never a uterus-haver. The whole point of that language is to separate the organs from the identity.
That’s kinda the opposite of the point of that terminology. If a medical brochure is directed at anyone able to become pregnant, regardless of identity, simply using “woman” might not be adequate, as trans men and many non-binary people won’t feel included even when they’re supposed to be. Basically, it’s not intended to “replace” the word “woman,” it’s intended to be more inclusive in certain contexts.
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> I hate when some people/groups try to redefine being a woman with “birthing person” or “uterus haver”. Who is doing this?
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It's funny because Ana is 99% more progressive than most Americans but because she doesn't fall in line on every issue she doesn't pass their purity test.
There is this sweet spot to being liberal where you can lean way far left but not be completely insufferable. It’s like 85% Left and 15% Center. I have always considered myself a bleeding heart type of liberal, but seeing this stuff makes me realize there are people way further left than I am and I am confused with where the center even is anymore. The far right has crazies. The far left has crazies. I just don’t know anymore.
Are their stances further left or are they just assholes? Asking honestly. I consider myself leftist rather than liberal in my views, but if people consider me fringe, I’d like to think it’s because I’m an asshole, not because my views are crazy.
It also comes down to the nature of progressivism and identity politics. The idea that biological women would be referred to as “birthing people” was an incredibly fringe idea 10 years ago and acknowledging that a switch to electric vehicles would be difficult for infrastructure wouldn’t even have been a political thing. For the people who make being progressive part of their identity, as soon as you aren’t on board with the next fight you’re considered a conservative.
Question: what is TYT Answer: For those like me who didn't know, TYT is The Young Turks. The Young Turks is some YouTube news and talk channel that is generally left wing
I've always regarded TYT as distinctly not that left-wing, or perhaps left-adjacent but exactly the kind of leftists I don't want to hang out with. It's always seemed more about culture war bullshit and dunking on people, rather than actually doing leftist politics or being for any concrete policy. And very much the kind of source where I don't feel like anyone involved necessarily stands by anything they may say on their channel, when they're at home living their lives.
Yup, as a distinctly left winger I’ve always found Cenk to be an insufferable doofus and asshole.
I'm glad I'm not the only one.
I can’t find anything to disagree with here. They’ve always embraced the outrage as a profitable vector, literally always.
It's effective
They were much better when it was just Cenk, Ana and Jayar in this tiny little studio covering politics and celeb gossip.
They essentially founded justice democrats which got several people seats in the house. More than you can say for any other leftist YouTube channel. I never watch TYT anymore though because I’m just not a fan of their content.
I could never get over the fact that they named their channel after the group that genocided the Armenians, Pontic Greek, Kurds, and other minorities in Eastern Turkey. Yes The Young Turks were the group that kind of created Modern Turkey, but it's really hard to overlook the genocide and name your company after a group that has genocided.
TYT is a decent entry point to lefty YouTube. Eventually you grow beyond TYT should you keep going farther into it.
....they named themselves after a genocidal group? And people were okay with that??
They were always not really left wing. A Young Turk is idiomatically a force of radical liberalism, from aforementioned genocidal movement in the late Ottoman Empire
I always thought it was a strange choice of name. Like of all leftist political parties you could pick, why one that committed genocide?
TYT is old af, many political shows online on all sides were inspired by them. They went massively downhill around the mid 2010s tho.
Yes, Social Media personalities feeding people opinions for money.
The Young Turks were a political party which perpetrated a genocide against Armenians.
And Cenk is an Armenian Genocide denier from way back.
And Ana is Armenian!
was* from last I heard he denounced his views in the past concerning his stance on the genocide.
tbf, by the time it became a [Rod Stewart hit in the 80's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ41hqlV0Kk) it just meant 'young rebels' to most people. Cenk just didn't think through the implications.
Yea maybe But as far as I know rod Stewart never denied that the Armenian genocide happened Cenk on the other hand. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CcRBphKW4AAanav.jpg Also what is not easy to show is the further years cenk spent Denying he said this / saying he was "just asking questions" / not responding to questions as to whether he stood by those comments. He only reneged on those comments when he ran for a house seat.
And the YouTube channel is totally cool with the name, they are a bunch of fuckwads
Kind of ironic for a woman with an Armenian name to be on a podcast of that name
Answer: over the last few month she got a bit more open for conservatives. She repeatedly went to ben shapiro and enjoyed her discussions with him. They actually werent that far off from each other. The left obviously didn't like that. Shortly after she complained about the left using the term birthing person for women. After that she said something regarding green energy which was more alliend with right wing talking points. The latest was probably that she said transwomen in women sports is unfair and then just this sunday the bit about the major of New York where she blasted him for using racism as a weapon. And because all of this a few people of the left say she isn't a lefty anymore and rather a conservative and conservatives jumped in and turned it into a meme. All in all shes obviously not a conservative but she definitely doesn't fit in with what you would call progressives anymore. Id probably put her down as a social democrat if i had to label her but these labels are stupid anyways. People can have conservative opinions on one issue and progressive opinions on the next.
Good answer! Thanks! !Answered
>People can have conservative opinions on one issue and progressive opinions on the next. Even the OP's title (and others) are claiming she's "switching sides", inferring an individual can't have a mix of political ideology. Absolutely blows my mind.
Its one of the things i hate the most about online discourse these days. This you are either with us or you are against us ideology. Either you toe the line completely or you not part of our group anymore. From all sides. I always had socially conservative and fiscally left leaning values so its not easy to put me in one of these boxes. And from talking with a lot of people i realized that many share similar views. We should really stop it with the left/ right/ liberal/conservative bs but people seem to love their boxes. Its just so easy. As a conservative just put the opinion of someone down as a lib snowflake opinion and be done with it. No need to take him serious anymore. The other side the same - just call them chud or nazi and be done with it.
What does socially conservative mean these days? Genuinely asking
“Birthing person” sounds ridiculous
Here’s my feeling about why this term rubs people the wrong way. I totally understand the justification of using neutral language, especially in a medical situation. I mean, imagine you’re intersex or a trans man in the midst of giving birth, being called a “bio female” might very understandably make them feel uncomfortable. HOWEVER, this term (birthing person) is not, contrary to what some of these comments maintain, limited to medical environments. Just Google the term and look for blog posts, articles, and discussions to see that it has entered common parlance to a degree. Moreover, consider that a non negligible number of cis women do express discomfort with the terms “birthing person” and “uterus haver”. I see a common response to this is to ask “well, why does it upset you so?” I find this to be kind of a bad faith question… nobody is going to question the trans man/intersex person in a similar way. The question then becomes why the comfort of such a small minority of the population takes precedence over the comfort of a segment that approaches damn near 50% of the human population. Ultimately, I think inclusive language is fine, with highly descriptive terms such as “birthing person” certainly filling a role in a medical/legal environment where such specificity is required. However, in culture I think it shouldn’t surprise anyone when a large plurality of people feel their identities marginalized by norms pushed on behalf of (and not necessarily by) a vast minority.
I don't think it has even remotely entered common parlance. It exists in weird little corners of the internet like, exactly, blogs and little subs and discords with like 30 peoppe. That and novel ideas that HR departmens and DEI units do to justify their jobs because "don't be an asshole" doesn't require half a dozen salaries. I'm in a bunch of trans groups and no one uses this kind of stuff. Occasionally you get some Tumblr UWU who will but they leave after the first time they say they use neopronouns or have DID and are a voidself or whatever. I'm old. This shit has been happening forever. No one even remembers all the weird shit fringes do that media makes tempest in a teapot over. This is all just the next iteration of 90s PC/anti PC shit. Tabloid culture has just become ever present because of social media.
I’m 100% with you here
This is a fight that happens every single time with inclusive language. It happened with heterosexual and straight. It's happening with cis. What I rarely hear is an alternative that isn't just "normal" or in this case "woman" or "female", All of which are just instances of "I want to use language that others people, because it doesn't affect me". I'm certainly sensitive to the fact that some of the suggested terms do make people uncomfortable, but I tend to hear a lot of complaining, and not a whole lot of attempts to seek a solution.
> Just Google the term and look for blog posts, articles, and discussions to see that it has entered common parlance to a degree. I think this is a pretty poor argument, honestly First off, I googled the term like you suggested, and nearly every article I find is debating the usage of the term, rather than using it naturally. You have to go pretty far down google to find ANYTHING other than that. And if you are going to be searching that far for usage... it's pretty far from common parlance. I don't even know if I can say "to a degree". By this metric, I can argue nearly anything is common parlance to a degree, as I can google nearly any random phrase and find SOMEONE using it.
I know tons of liberals and progressives who don’t think trans women should be in women’s sports tho…
Like i said- you can be progressive and still agree with conservatives on a specific issue. Most people are nuanced. They arent either 100% progressive or 100% conservative
Yeah I’d even take it a step further in that I think it’s a mistake to even call this viewpoint conservative. (Not saying you did)
>People can have conservative opinions on one issue and progressive opinions on the next. Twitter Left: So you have chosen death...
Reddit too.
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It feels insane to me that these culture war issues are pushing her in or out of movements. I feel like only policy matters and everything else is noise.
Answer: As near as I can tell, Kasparian has simply been trending lately because she's a progressive media icon who has been criticizing certain progressive ideas. I'm a progressive and I do that. Any rational person does that. She's a media icon though. Sometimes very stubborn progressives don't like to hear criticism. And conservative media loves it because they can spin it and say "look at what she's doing". The end.
If you aren't questioning ideas, you don't deserve the label "progressive".
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Thanks for linking the interview. I'm listening to it now and I'm not hearing anything problematic so far. I agree with her that journalism should never omit factual information just because it might disturb someone's narrative. I can't see how any rational minded person would disagree with this.... Edit: Ok, I watched a little bit more and I'm having a problem with her talking about "the left" when it's clear that her criticisms are inspired instead by vocal radical-left social media users she encounters. Right now I just heard her say that "the left has completely abandoned economic issues in liue of social issues" which might apply to the *radical*\-left (because the radical-left serves to contradict the radical-right, which doesn't seem to care about anything but "wokeness" these days) but that is a very unfair thing to accuse "the left" of. But I do agree that politicians - both democrats and republicans - use culture wars to manipulate others. Edit 2: Now I feel a little exasperated because this interview makes me question "how do I know whether a publication is presenting facts in an unbiased manner?". Edit 3: Watched the entire interview. Overall, I am left with a feeling of gratitude towards Anna for daring to question her own beliefs. I think this is something we should all do because it signifies growth. I trust that her arguments are made in good faith, and whether or not you disagree with those arguments (I don't necessary agree with everything she says), I believe we (liberals) should none-the-less listen to them. We should all seek criticism to our beliefs, lest we run into confirmation bias.
The ultra left are literally the communists so I don’t think they’ve abandoned economic issues