"Daniel Bessner argues that the Democrats’ failure is a sign of liberalism’s exhaustion. It has, he says, nothing left to offer."
This is not accurate. First, what the left has been offering is not "liberalism" in any traditional sense. Maybe we can call it progressivism. In any case, it still has a lot "left to offer," chiefly what it has been offering for at least 15 years now: an emotional support system that gives adherents a nearly religious sense of righteousness and superiority. But this appeal has beccome self-defeating; in exploiting these emotional needs the Democrats have lost control of the faithful, and the emotionally-needy fanatics who now dominate are repelling not just nonbelievers but also many former disciples.
a) If we agree that Identity politics is bad, then do we also agree that it's bad for EVERYONE? Or are SOME people tacitly, or even explicitly, allowed to keep engaging in it for their group?
b) How do you tactfully tell people who are raging against identity politics for everyone BUT themselves and THEIR group that they are being hypocritical?
c) Who was it, exactly, that taught everyone that identity politics was justified and a GREAT way to go? Do they need to do some introspection on this?
I very deliberately chose Charles Mills to read around the time of the election to guard against Trump book bans, and I did not know at the time that Mills had no problem with "The Racial Contract" being called CRT. (The CRT people may have gone in a different direction in the ensuing 20 years.) That was helpful to me because Trump voters may not have chosen the 2024 version of the Racial Contract but they chose the social contract that they themselves had signed even if that contract was not perfect. It may be more a sexual contract than a racial one. Harris was not really offering people a new contract to sign in the same sense as Obama.
You can think of this in terms of pre-Obamacare rhetoric that if you liked your doctor or insurance plan you could keep it. Similarly if you liked your social contract (or wanted to feel part of any social contract at all) you could keep it. The New York Magazine reporter who went looking for Trump voters in Corona, Queens had some helpful information here but that was published after the show aired.
The Democrats lost because they let the far left determine policy for them. Trans rights are important, but the government and hospitals imposing gender affirming care on children who are too young to make what is now the second (Right to die), or third (Right to abortion), most important decision they will have to make. They decided to do this without allowing them to thoroughly explore their decision and get the full facts of transitioning. There is a high correspondence between autism and gender dysphoria. As somebody who was born hard of hearing and legally blind, and whose doctors refused to diagnose him with hearing loss until two months after high school graduation, and legal blindness when he was 52, after being hit six times while walking across the street, let me state that the medical establishment has nobody's best interest at heart. They work in 10x12 offices, and have no clue what the social situation is for people with disabilities. The Democrats ran with a candidate whom the electorate did not vote, who did not declare any policy, and listened to the Ivy League know nothings. For 60 years we have let your class creates policy that has destroyed the lower classes.
The CDC refuses to acknowledge that we have a crisis in our country; 10% of all children are born preterm. Of those, 49% are born to women on Medicaid. The highest rate according to the CDC Wonder database, is 14% of Black babies born premature; 65% of their mothers are on Medicaid. This rate has remained steady since 1996.
What does preterm birth mean? As I mentioned before, I am hard of hearing and legally blind since birth. If the women who give birth to preterm babies are on Medicaid, they most likely live in low income neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are where Title I schools are located; impoverished schools that are not funded enough to afford quality education, updated classrooms, or even provide teachers with materials to teach their students.
The medical establishment has not re-evaluated hearing loss since 1984; they are stuck on 15 decibel hearing loss in one ear for children as the definition. They have examined binaural hearing loss, which is possibly 10 decibel or 5 decibel loss that can cause sensory deprivation and social isolation. The Educational system has done little to explore disability as a reason for educational failure in Title I schools and systems; instead, they assume stupidity.
The problem with education is the philosophy is now garbage. Dialects should be respected outside of the classroom; Standard Spoken English is the only form of English taught in the classroom. African-American Vernacular English is only one of at least 35 American English dialects, but probably the most famous one. "The" is pronouced "De" at the beginning of the word, and "V" at word medial and word final; "Th" as in thought, is pronounced "T" at word initial, and "F" word final. There are numerous contractions that are used in dialect that do not have parallels in SSE. With consonants, some consonants do not appear at the start of a word, and others do appear at the end of the word. The school district I attended went from 20% Black in 1968 to 70% Black in 1978; I could not understand AAVE because it is not mutually intelligible for somebody who lipreads SSE.
Even with minimal hearing loss, children cannot understand spoken English without lipreading. Much of television and radio is voiceover; whether its cartoons or puppets, or any other format other than a person's face appearing forward in clear light, they are not going to pick up vocabulary. (Only 40% of sounds in English appear on human lips, and 50% are dentals (t,d,s,sh,...))
The question of who is acting up in school and why needs to be explored keeping hearing loss, central auditory processing disorder, and reading disorders in mind. The research does not explore this enough. If a child cannot understand the teacher, I give the child five minutes before they act up in class. (The CDC only provides insurance coverage as a search term; we need socio-economic status, complete with number of members of the family, and the determination by upper, middle, lower-middle, and lower status to determine just who these children are born to, and the CDC needs to restore mapping status, so that we can target those neighborhoods for more intensive outreach for well-baby care.) By emphasizing Standard Spoken English (SSE), the students are more easily identifiable for remedial education and speech therapy. (We need to allow speech language pathologists the right to diagnose hearing loss in a classroom setting.)
Finally, under project 2025, and even without it, the Republican Party is targeting Title I funds, with a reduction of a quarter of its funds; this amounts to 4.5 billion dollars. This affects 63% of schools. Meanwhile, Columbia University's federal funding is 3.5 billion dollars, and will only be cut off if they refuse to correct their classicist, elitist, ableist, racist environment. I think all Ivies should be cut off from federal funding. Given the crisis in research, where data is falsifiable, or plagiarized, there is no reason to subsidize research.
Title I schools need to be updated, their students deserve quality materials, the students do not have access to the same level of cultural enrichment as their peers in well-funded schools. I believe the upper class elite virtue signalers can stop the Equity of Outcome brigade, and truly fund, and support, true equality of access. These communities need education available to all citizens.
I was lucky; my parents knew I was smart, and encouraged education. These students who have disabilities are not given the opportunity to shine. Teachers need to demand excellence on all levels.
Let's not forget that the Republican party's roots are in the working class, more so, at least, than the democratic party. The democratic party was born of aristocratic feudalism. The democratic party fiercely defends the right of every American to do and think as the democratic party tells them to. That's why they saw no problem with slavery. Is it different today? No. Democrats keep blacks penned up in the inner-city plantation. Sure, they'll help you out of there, but only if you pledge fealty to them.
"Daniel Bessner argues that the Democrats’ failure is a sign of liberalism’s exhaustion. It has, he says, nothing left to offer."
This is not accurate. First, what the left has been offering is not "liberalism" in any traditional sense. Maybe we can call it progressivism. In any case, it still has a lot "left to offer," chiefly what it has been offering for at least 15 years now: an emotional support system that gives adherents a nearly religious sense of righteousness and superiority. But this appeal has beccome self-defeating; in exploiting these emotional needs the Democrats have lost control of the faithful, and the emotionally-needy fanatics who now dominate are repelling not just nonbelievers but also many former disciples.
a) If we agree that Identity politics is bad, then do we also agree that it's bad for EVERYONE? Or are SOME people tacitly, or even explicitly, allowed to keep engaging in it for their group?
b) How do you tactfully tell people who are raging against identity politics for everyone BUT themselves and THEIR group that they are being hypocritical?
c) Who was it, exactly, that taught everyone that identity politics was justified and a GREAT way to go? Do they need to do some introspection on this?
I very deliberately chose Charles Mills to read around the time of the election to guard against Trump book bans, and I did not know at the time that Mills had no problem with "The Racial Contract" being called CRT. (The CRT people may have gone in a different direction in the ensuing 20 years.) That was helpful to me because Trump voters may not have chosen the 2024 version of the Racial Contract but they chose the social contract that they themselves had signed even if that contract was not perfect. It may be more a sexual contract than a racial one. Harris was not really offering people a new contract to sign in the same sense as Obama.
You can think of this in terms of pre-Obamacare rhetoric that if you liked your doctor or insurance plan you could keep it. Similarly if you liked your social contract (or wanted to feel part of any social contract at all) you could keep it. The New York Magazine reporter who went looking for Trump voters in Corona, Queens had some helpful information here but that was published after the show aired.
The Democrats lost because they let the far left determine policy for them. Trans rights are important, but the government and hospitals imposing gender affirming care on children who are too young to make what is now the second (Right to die), or third (Right to abortion), most important decision they will have to make. They decided to do this without allowing them to thoroughly explore their decision and get the full facts of transitioning. There is a high correspondence between autism and gender dysphoria. As somebody who was born hard of hearing and legally blind, and whose doctors refused to diagnose him with hearing loss until two months after high school graduation, and legal blindness when he was 52, after being hit six times while walking across the street, let me state that the medical establishment has nobody's best interest at heart. They work in 10x12 offices, and have no clue what the social situation is for people with disabilities. The Democrats ran with a candidate whom the electorate did not vote, who did not declare any policy, and listened to the Ivy League know nothings. For 60 years we have let your class creates policy that has destroyed the lower classes.
The CDC refuses to acknowledge that we have a crisis in our country; 10% of all children are born preterm. Of those, 49% are born to women on Medicaid. The highest rate according to the CDC Wonder database, is 14% of Black babies born premature; 65% of their mothers are on Medicaid. This rate has remained steady since 1996.
What does preterm birth mean? As I mentioned before, I am hard of hearing and legally blind since birth. If the women who give birth to preterm babies are on Medicaid, they most likely live in low income neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are where Title I schools are located; impoverished schools that are not funded enough to afford quality education, updated classrooms, or even provide teachers with materials to teach their students.
The medical establishment has not re-evaluated hearing loss since 1984; they are stuck on 15 decibel hearing loss in one ear for children as the definition. They have examined binaural hearing loss, which is possibly 10 decibel or 5 decibel loss that can cause sensory deprivation and social isolation. The Educational system has done little to explore disability as a reason for educational failure in Title I schools and systems; instead, they assume stupidity.
The problem with education is the philosophy is now garbage. Dialects should be respected outside of the classroom; Standard Spoken English is the only form of English taught in the classroom. African-American Vernacular English is only one of at least 35 American English dialects, but probably the most famous one. "The" is pronouced "De" at the beginning of the word, and "V" at word medial and word final; "Th" as in thought, is pronounced "T" at word initial, and "F" word final. There are numerous contractions that are used in dialect that do not have parallels in SSE. With consonants, some consonants do not appear at the start of a word, and others do appear at the end of the word. The school district I attended went from 20% Black in 1968 to 70% Black in 1978; I could not understand AAVE because it is not mutually intelligible for somebody who lipreads SSE.
Even with minimal hearing loss, children cannot understand spoken English without lipreading. Much of television and radio is voiceover; whether its cartoons or puppets, or any other format other than a person's face appearing forward in clear light, they are not going to pick up vocabulary. (Only 40% of sounds in English appear on human lips, and 50% are dentals (t,d,s,sh,...))
The question of who is acting up in school and why needs to be explored keeping hearing loss, central auditory processing disorder, and reading disorders in mind. The research does not explore this enough. If a child cannot understand the teacher, I give the child five minutes before they act up in class. (The CDC only provides insurance coverage as a search term; we need socio-economic status, complete with number of members of the family, and the determination by upper, middle, lower-middle, and lower status to determine just who these children are born to, and the CDC needs to restore mapping status, so that we can target those neighborhoods for more intensive outreach for well-baby care.) By emphasizing Standard Spoken English (SSE), the students are more easily identifiable for remedial education and speech therapy. (We need to allow speech language pathologists the right to diagnose hearing loss in a classroom setting.)
Finally, under project 2025, and even without it, the Republican Party is targeting Title I funds, with a reduction of a quarter of its funds; this amounts to 4.5 billion dollars. This affects 63% of schools. Meanwhile, Columbia University's federal funding is 3.5 billion dollars, and will only be cut off if they refuse to correct their classicist, elitist, ableist, racist environment. I think all Ivies should be cut off from federal funding. Given the crisis in research, where data is falsifiable, or plagiarized, there is no reason to subsidize research.
Title I schools need to be updated, their students deserve quality materials, the students do not have access to the same level of cultural enrichment as their peers in well-funded schools. I believe the upper class elite virtue signalers can stop the Equity of Outcome brigade, and truly fund, and support, true equality of access. These communities need education available to all citizens.
I was lucky; my parents knew I was smart, and encouraged education. These students who have disabilities are not given the opportunity to shine. Teachers need to demand excellence on all levels.
Let's not forget that the Republican party's roots are in the working class, more so, at least, than the democratic party. The democratic party was born of aristocratic feudalism. The democratic party fiercely defends the right of every American to do and think as the democratic party tells them to. That's why they saw no problem with slavery. Is it different today? No. Democrats keep blacks penned up in the inner-city plantation. Sure, they'll help you out of there, but only if you pledge fealty to them.