The Reply Thread That Got Me Blocked From "Euphoric Recall"
so it goes
August 7, 2024: 100pm. Having just been blocked by yet another Substack page author, I feel obligated to share the exchange that led to it.
I don’t like having to lean on this for material, but I did find the exchange illuminating. Maybe other readers will, as well.
I’ve made a total of one edit so far, for grammatical purposes (I added the word [it].) If I find more grammatical errors, I’ll clean them up. For clarity, the responses of Euphoric Recall page author “Brad” will be in bold print.
I have screen shots, of course. Backed up, of course. You never can tell.
To cut to the chase: this is the part of the reply thread where your narrator showed up:
Aug 4·edited Aug 4
"this overwhelmingly left-wing company has managed to assume an institutional role in which its activist-inclined employees — a certain breed of progressive utopians who regard the marketplace of ideas with suspicion and are completely convinced of the perfectibility of humankind and think it’s within their power to engineer an entirely fresh pseudo-reality by imposing limitations on language, thought, and perception — operate as overtly censorious internet hall monitors thirsty for opportunities to socially reform the wayward masses."
If you're eliding "the Democratic Party" and Google with Left ideology, be it political or economic, you plainly don't understand left-wing ideological perspectives. Not that I'm identifying the Democrats with the ideological Right; the Democrats are merely a confused mess led by sinecured academics and public service careerists--an upper upper middle class that's gotten just a little bit too insulated from the experience of ordinary working and middle class Americans. And, as a result, now floundering in luxury beliefs and ad hoc expediency. An unwieldy combination if ever there was one.
As for Google, the ownership class and shareholders have handed its search apparatus over to advertisers, which are overwhelmingly private enterprises pursuing exclusively private ends, in order to obtain a revenue stream for Google shareholders. The top tier of Google shareholders are members of the top 2% of incomes- and bent on to obtaining, at minimum, 0.2% status. For that, the "shareholder value" seeking owners sold out the entire principle of an impartial search engine guided by the intentions of individual users. Because they could. Nothing left-wing about it. Much more like one of those contradictions that Ayn Rand never quite managed to resolve with her lofty dogmatic pronouncements. (Exhibit B, Jeff Bezos.)
Maybe Google is putting so much money into the Democrats because the contributors realize that they'll already get everything they want out of a Trump presidency, just as a matter of common ideological fealty. Whereas because the Democrats are the Duopoly system's approved champions of the public interest, Google has to angle for a controlling interest over their policies.
Don't blame me, I support ranked-choice voting.
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Are you familiar with the modern political spectrum.
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Aug 6·edited Aug 6
Go on, explain it to me. I want to read your outline, so it can be unpacked for false premises and unexamined assumptions. Only if that proves necessary, of course.
In any case, kindly keep rhetorical grandiloquence to a minimum. It's no substitute for facts.
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Author
You're being laughably pedantic. How exactly should I refer to liberals, progressives, Democrats? Do they not constitute today's Left? Should I double each post in length from here on out in order to explain that, *actually*, today's Left isn't really the Left, because today's left-wing ideological perspectives don't match those from 50 years ago?
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I'm requesting more clarity than a string of buzzwords.
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Author
Look, I don't mean to be snide. It's just that you're not the first person I've had this discussion with (in the past, it's been commenters on Matt Taibbi's Substack, for example), and it gets tiresome.
I understand the point that you're making. And while this requires an assumption on my part, I have a feeling that you're something of an "old school liberal" in much the same way that Matt Taibbi is, and that you resent being lumped together with the people who've pulled the Democratic Party and the Left side of the political spectrum as far left as ever. Or maybe not; maybe I'm wrong, and you just don't like what a cluster fuck the modern political spectrum is.
But for the sake of simplicity, I go by the general understanding of what "Left" means in America 2024, because the vast majority of people seem to as well.
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20 hrs ago·edited 19 hrs ago
I don't think that you do understand the point I'm making, because I do my best to craft my position on any given issue specifically, and in a way that uses ideological templates dialectically, by pitting them against each other. It's very seldom that one ideological view wins out entirely.
The only thing that makes that situation rare is that I'm conscious of it. Total conformity to "social conservatism" is the position of the Taliban, for instance. The vast majority of Americans are much, much more socially liberal than that. Yet many Americans insist on employing the Is of Identity--"I'm a Conservative"--instead of "on this or that position, I hold views that are relatively conservative, within the context of my society, where the 'Overton window' long ago moved in the direction of general acceptance of women wearing bikinis as beachwear, etc.."
I admit, the second statement is more of a mouthful. On the other hand, it actually says something meaningful. It isn't just a vague cipher that others make inferences about according to their own whimsical projections. My response is to not care about the label. I just want to know the details of someone's position.
"I go by the general understanding of what "Left" means in America 2024, because the vast majority of people seem to as well."
There is no such consensus in 2024 America on defining either Left or Right, because the defining criteria are incoherent. I'm only able to comprehend the use of those identifications and definitions indirectly, through my familiarity with American news media discourse, and the way that political actors and commentators sort themselves for partisan purposes. In order for me to follow those conversations, I need to set aside both classic ideological templates and logical consistency.
It has to be understood that the labels "Left" and "Right" have been improperly appropriated by, respectively, the Democrats and the Republicans. The labels mean what the party movements want those labels to mean, which in both cases includes inaccurate framings, self-serving valorization and demonization, and the application of the labels in utterly irrelevant ways to inappropriate topics.
For example, there's no "Left" or "Right" position on cultural issues. It's irrelevant. The debate exists in a different arena, with multi-factoral aspects. The trans debate revolves around an individualist libertarian perspective ("people get to be trans if they want to"- a position with which--when it applies to adults--even most culturally conservative Americans agree, although you wouldn't know it to hear partisan Dem rhetoric) versus a traditional communitarian values perspective ("why is my public school spotlighting sexuality as a pantheon of choices, rather than centering normative biological reality? Why the insistence on exposing preadolescent children to educational materials about sexual behavior, when it's well-known that preadolescent sexual expression is almost always coerced by adults?" "Considered as a justice issue, aren't there crucial differences between minority groups defined by birth characteristics, and those defined entirely by personal behavioral choices?" "What's with defining parental opposition to prescription drug regimens and elective medical procedures as a form of child abuse?")
To bring up an entirely different issue: consider the Republicans in Congress, who demand an end to any vestige of home rule in the District of Columbia in favor of turning the city entirely over the Federal oversight (as long as it's administered by them.) That's utterly contrary to the ideology of political conservatism, which emphasizes devolution and local control. The Republicans don't even really want the power. They're just advocating the move as a cudgel to bash DC, because it furthers the narrative du jour that "Democrat cities are crime-infested hellholes." The crime problems of Washington DC are largely the third-order fallout from the War on Drugs, in my opinion. In that respect, they aren't much different from the crime problems of Huntingdon, West Virginia.
https://www.city-data.com/city/Huntington-West-Virginia.html
https://www.city-data.com/city/Washington-District-of-Columbia.html
Neither of those problems are going to be solved by running the local governments from some House committee.
There's no clear consistency of "Left" or "Right" in either of those two examples. Yet there they are. I'm not a political or economic ideologue, but at least I respect the consistency of the templates, and the limits of their application. A lot of the issues in the modern American political debate are equivalent to asking "Left vs. Right: what's their position on tattoos?"
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What, nothing? We're done here? I guess I must have said something really offensive.
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Author
Ah, yes. "Buzzwords."
I notice you subscribe to Freddie deBoer and N.S. Lyons, both of whom use the same "buzzwords." Do you make the same pedantic request of them?
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21 hrs ago·edited 20 hrs ago
I have problems with the way both writers use those labels in their narrative framing. But at least they surround the terms with enough context and descriptive detail that I have a fairly clear idea of what they're on about. And crucially, neither DeBoer or Lyons leans on the terms as emotional triggering devices, a la commentary in the style of " LIBERALS something something PROGRESSIVES something something THE LEFT blah blah blah blah", or the inverse- the sort of commentary that valorizes or demonizes, by turns, in accordance with the partisan framing desired.
Rigid adherence to a single ideology always, always, always leaves a person more stupid than they otherwise would be. No matter how intelligent they are at their best. (The root of the word "stupid" is "stuporous.")
But political partisanship is even worse. Not only does partisanship lead partisan loyalists into stupidity; eventually, it demands that they jettison their integrity. Not only does partisanship demand conformity to partiality, it dismisses the value of impartiality. Typically by denying the very possibility of its existence. Not even as a goal worth struggling for.
Impartiality is unimaginable to a partisan. It's disdained as a fraudulent ideal. Partisans at both ends of the polarization hate "centrism", which is routinely caricatured by them as if it could be nothing other than weak, wishy-washy, temporizing, and muddled. Whereas to me, centrism [is] defined by authentic reality-based balance.
To give a specific issue-based example from my experience: I support drug law reform, including some reforms that many people would consider unacceptably radical. But I refuse to call for the abolition of the DEA, which is a common war cry I hear from the side I align with. To the contrary: one of the reasons that I favor drug law reform is to make the job of the DEA into a mission that's actually effective. But, mindless sloganeering being as superficially attractive as it is, "Abolish The DEA" is still a big applause and upvote line. And my position is typically passed over in silence. No one wants to discuss the position that I hold: that even if the laws on drugs are substantially liberalized. we'll still need a DEA, like we need a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
Judging from the lack of responses when I mention that position, it isn't just unpopular, it's taboo. I couldn't care less. It's the most sensible position on the issue, and a case I think I could easily make. If anyone were to challenge me about it.
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Author
Ah, and just so you know, N.S. Lyons subscribes to this Substack and has never once thrown a shit fit like this. Perhaps you should log off. Go read a book.
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35 mins ago·edited 28 mins ago
Fuck, it just happened again. No reply, no upvote, no downvote (what happened to downvotes? too many people's fragile psyche can't take it?). No sign that my comment even exists.
Go on, play with your food, toddlers. Fill up pages and pages with variations on the themes "I'M a Liberal"; "I'M a Conservative", "I'M on the LEFT"; "I'M on the RIGHT", etc. Tedious.
But I seem to have a different idea of what's boring than Everybody Else.
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Author
I literally just saw your comments, dude. I have a life. And yeah, you're done here. I have a tolerance for unconstructive bullshit, which you started with your original "you plainly don't understand left-wing ideological perspectives" and followed up with some of the most ridiculous, pedantic idiocy I've ever come across on Substack, which I've been using for nearly 6 years now.
Go play with your food, Boomer.
And that’s when I got blocked, by Brad at Euphoric Recall.
My big mistake there was tactical: I might have waited another day, or another week, before posting the comments I made just over an hour ago. That allowed Brad less of a plausible excuse for not responding to my posts. As it happened, I only allowed 21 hours before posting the reply that got me blocked. The “I have a life” excuse is good any time, of course. But I do have to note that only 10 minutes was required for Brad to respond to my most recent comment. I have more to say about the exchange, but it will be in another topic page.