SIO104: Cornel West Owes Ta-Nehisi Coates an Apology

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 104. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. And before we get to the show, I'm so excited to announce the website subscription is up. That is at SeriousPod.com slash support. Please, I implore you to check it out. I've already got about 50 members on there. I announced it on Patreon, so the patrons are early adopters there. RSS feed going, which of course has a bonus recording on it that is only available to members of the website. If you join at seriouspod.com support, you will get an RSS fee. It'll be the only one you need. It will have everything. It has the highest amount of bonus stuff. I said I still will continue Patreon because I know there's people who want to be on there for different reasons.

0:01:16 Thomas: And I understand that I'm not going to take away the ability to support me because that seems like a dumb idea. So if you want to stay on Patreon, I will continue that. You'll still get the Jake News with Thomas. I'm still going to carry that on at just about exactly how it was. I'm just going to be doing extra stuff on the website because I'm cutting out the middle man. I'm trying to make it so I'm not completely dependent on a corporation that has really shown questionable decision-making and really gave us a scare in December and negatively, negatively impacted a lot of creators. One thing I wanna say is shoutouts, I'm just gonna do shoutouts for the website now, that's one consequence of the Patreon changes they started to make, and again, they're gonna do some other stupid thing, but for now, they didn't make, is everyone edited their pledges, it's just a mess, I got a whole bunch of notifications, I got people edited their pledges to, you know, one month's worth for one post.

0:02:11 Thomas: So that kind of messed up the whole hierarchy of support and all that. And whatever, no big deal. We'll just do the shoutouts through the website. I've got plenty to do because a lot of people have adopted that, and it's cleaner, and I can make sure I'm thanking the appropriate people and track it. Patreon really did just throw a wrench into the whole thing. It ruined, like, the goals. It ruined, you know, just everything. The display is just a mess now because everyone tried to edit their pledges to get ahead of it, which I, again, no blame is on patrons, 100% blame, for me anyway, is on Patreon. I'm not, by no means am I trying to suggest that you did anything wrong if you edited your pledge. I think you were trying to game the system in a way that would benefit both of us the most.

0:02:58 Thomas: And I do really appreciate that. But we can avoid that whole mess by just going over to SeriousPod.com slash support. Check it out. It has been going well. I'm right there. If anyone has any questions or concerns, I'm reachable. I'm staying way on top of it because I want to make sure it's working for everybody. Right, enough of that. Let's get to the actual, I want to talk about Cornel West and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Really interesting thing that happened. I've read Ta-Nehisi Coates' latest book, We Were Eight Years in Power, so when this little thing happened, this attack by Cornel West, I was keenly interested, and I think I have some insight into it, based on having read the book, I've pulled some passages that I think really undermine what Cornel West is saying, so I'm puzzled by it, I want to get more into it.

0:03:45 Thomas: I want to talk about the implications of it, and is it the left eating their own? It kind of is in a way, but Alright, I wasn't going to talk about the tax bill at all. You guys, we know it. We know it's terrible. We know what's going on. No one is confused about this. It's terrible! There's one thing I want to mention, though, and it was, I heard this from the Vox newsletter that I subscribe to. I don't want to try to take credit, but I think it was Ezra Klein or whoever writes that noticed something in the forecasting they're doing that is really, really tricky. So one, I'll just explain this real quick. As you guys know, there's some, the corporate tax cuts don't expire, but due to the budgetary reasons to be able to pass this with only 50 votes, most of the tax cuts do expire. And in order to do this forecasting, this absolutely bullshit forecasting they're doing where they're saying like, oh, actually that's only going to be $1.5 trillion because there's all this economic growth that comes from cutting taxes.

0:04:55 Thomas: What they did was they took the best of both worlds, which is they projected that these tax cuts would never expire because their reasoning is, oh, well, we won't let them expire in the future. And so they took that assumption to build the economic growth. But then when they build the cost, then they turn around and say, oh well, they do expire. So that's money that comes back to us in whatever year it is. Some of them expire earlier than others. So they're double counting there in a way, kind of a subtle way, because it involves the economic forecasting. So they are using one set of assumptions for forecasting and another, an opposite set of assumptions for cost, which I think is really dishonest. This thing is going to cost way more than even the $1.5 trillion that is already a ton.

0:05:41 Thomas: The party of fiscal responsibility does not care about fiscal responsibility. And that one point five trillion is already misleading. It's going to be two, two point something. I mean, there are estimates that go as high as two point five. It's gonna be a disaster. But we all know that. I'm not gonna, you know, maybe I'll do a deep dive later once it's law. But I don't even know if it's necessary. Like we, we all do. We all know it. We know what's going on. It's corporate handouts. It's top one percent handouts, it's a joke. It's a lie. So now I want to talk about, is the left eating its own? This is something that I've kind of laughed at at times, you know, this, oh, the stop of the left, eating its own. But I laugh at it in a certain context. There's a context in which people use that the minute they're criticized for anything.

0:06:28 Thomas: So if there's someone who thinks they're on the left thinks they are not, you you know, racist or sexist or hold any racist or sexist views or anything. And then they say something racist or sexist and they get criticized for it. Then they say, oh, the left is eating its own. And in that sense, I think it's kind of funny. It's not to be taken terribly seriously. Like when someone is essentially a libertarian and then says, you know, something racist or sexist or says like, hey, hashtag me two is a a witch hunt. I can't believe what's happening. And then people criticize them justifiably. So they say, oh, the left is eating its own. It's like, well, I don't think you're really the left, to be honest. I think you just that's a cynical ploy. But, but, I think it's very clear from recent events that the left does eat its own in certain ways.

0:07:15 Thomas: And, and how much should it do that is certainly an open question. I think that's something to consider. How many principles are flexible to the point where it's like, okay, we can disagree on this, you know, but we, but but we're still on the same side. We'll still vote, you Potentially. And that's a very difficult question. That's a complex question that I would love rational debate about. And since we're talking about the internet here, that doesn't happen. There's no way that's going to happen. All we get are, uh, it's too hard because the loudest voices shine through and the most harassing Twitter voices shine through. And there are a couple of bad examples of, I think, actually the left eating its own with the help of some cynical actors on the right, actually.

0:08:07 Thomas: So the first example is the one I already mentioned, which is I just find baffling. I find this baffled that Cornel West would have attacked Ta-Nehisi Coates in the way he did. It just seems so uncalled for and not careful and not very considered. And while there are certainly, you know, it's, it shouldn't be a rule that anyone can't be criticized. That's of course not, not the rule I would say is valid here. I would say Cornel West's article is clumsy and it's attacking kind of a straw man, and it just seems so unnecessary. So it's not like, okay, there are valid differences, let's work them out and move forward, or we can agree to disagree or whatever. Seems like some weird personal vendetta in a way.

0:08:56 Thomas: I'm really baffled by it. And the other example, so that's the example I'm going to go into more detail. I wanted to mention one other example, which was ContraPoints. ContraPoints is one of my most requested interviews, and I'm right there with you requesting that I have ContraPoints on to interview. But for those of you who don't know her, she's a YouTube personality, really brilliant, great content on YouTube. I like ContraPoints a lot, but I've seen kind of what she's been going through lately. It's the very thing that I'm about to mention, which is she agreed to do an event with two other trans women, but the other trans woman are, in my opinion, really awful kind of shit lordy types that I don't like, which is Taryn Meyer, who you might remember was a trans woman arguing against Bill C-16 in Canada.

0:09:45 Thomas: Her reasoning was terrible, and I didn't really understand why she would see fit to do that. And the other one is... Blaire White, a very frequent Dave Rubin guest, all kinds of problematic views, she really frustrates me. But anyway, Contra agreed to do an event with them and she got all kinds of shit for it. And the concerns weren't even valid because it was like, oh, you're feeding, you know, you are giving money potentially to an organization that would platform them.

0:10:22 Thomas: And to a charity. I think it was maybe the Trevor Project or something. But anyway, that was, that issue was worked past. And then it was, you know, Contra herself said something to the effect of, yeah, I just want to try to dialogue across the aisle. Like that's, that's what I'm doing my best to do here. And she was still just absolutely grilled for it to the point where she was receiving a lot of harassment. She seemed genuinely pretty upset by it. I don't blame her at all. And so So I tried to invite her on the show, but I don't think she was in the mood maybe for doing something like this. So I'll try again another time. But that's something that that is troubling. You know, that's that's troublesome that we would take a great voice.

0:11:08 Thomas: ContraPoints on YouTube has made really great content on the alt right, on some of the things we're seeing, diagnosing some of these arguments and and figuring out why they are the way they are. Just good content that I think is helpful for the left. I don't it's not like a hidden right wing message or anything. And to give her that much crap and harassment harassment for attempting to talk to some people on the other side. I just don't think that's a good idea. Like that is an actual case of possibly the left eating its own. Side note, this event was cancelled because Blaire White dropped out. So after all that after all, that and harassment and Contra kind of feeling crappy and for good reason, the event was canceled, so it was all for naught.

0:11:55 Thomas: That's frustrating. I think what was so bad about this for Contra as well is that she gets all kinds of the usual harassment from shitlords, uh, and that's one thing or from the alt-right and that bounces off of her, but getting criticism from people on the left who are really, really harsh just for her wanting to try to do this Bridge the Divide Talk, I mean, hasn't she earned at least the benefit of criticizing her or asking her a question in a way that's respectful? I think she has. So I was really sad to read about that. But let's talk about Ta-Nehisi Coates and this really curious opinion piece by Cornel West. It's not very long. I'm not going to read it all, but we'll go through most of it.

0:12:41 Thomas: It starts off so curiously. I have to tell you, okay, I'm going to to read the first paragraph. Ta-Nehisi Coates, "We Were Eight Years in Power." That's his recent book that I have read. Very good. It's a collection of his essays, but he adds in essays about kind of where he was mentally and also physically when he was writing these essays. "It is a book about Barack Obama's presidency and the tenacity of white supremacy has captured the attention of many of us. One crucial question is why now, in this moment, has his apolitical pessimism gains such wide acceptance?" And so End quote. And the the apolitical pessimism is hyperlinked, so I clicked on that to see what he was talking about, and it brought me to another Guardian opinion piece that is completely unintelligible to me.

0:13:31 Thomas: It's by Daniel Steinemans-Jakins, and while I can understand all the paragraphs and the words in the paragraphs, there's some assumptions that either he or I or both have that are rendering his meaning completely opaque to me. Like, let me, so he's concerned, or at least he talks about the fact that Ta-Nehisi Coates is an atheist, and that's, I guess, possibly why he doesn't believe in the moral arc of the universe, to reference an MLK quote. And here's what he says after referencing where Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about this. He says, "Coates' belief that white supremacy is fundamentally woven into the fabric of the United States is built on a larger metaphysical assumption that without the existence of God, the entire world bends towards injustice."

0:14:24 Thomas: That doesn't seem to be true to me, but anyway, stepping back into it, he points to the egregious history of racial injustice in this country and the atrocities committed by the Nazis and Soviets through the books of Jett and Snyder to prove his point. The real problem for Coates then might ultimately not be white supremacy, but rather the non-existence of God. It is non-existence of god according to his argument that rules out the possibility of any collective redemption, not just in the United States, but the world writ large. Is baffling to me, that just does not follow at all, what he just said does not follow. If he's, Ta-Nehisi Coates is saying yeah, I'm an atheist, I don't really have any faith that there's any reason that things are necessarily necessarily going to get better.

0:15:13 Thomas: That's way different from saying, without God, things can't get better, and I think that's maybe the disconnect here, when he said the non-existence of God, according to his argument, that rules out the possibility of collective, it doesn't rule it out, he's just saying the reason he doesn't have a lot of faith in it is because he doesn't think we're all on some cosmic plan by a God, like he doesn't, that's why he doesn't have faith in it. And I'll tell you, I'm way on Ta-Nehisi Coates's side.

I don't think we will ever properly reconcile what we've done in this country, just speaking in the in the U.S., I don't think we will ever properly make amends, uh, make the situation right for what we did to black people, and it's not just slavery, and that is the fundamental thing that I've learned these past few years reading a lot of really excellent black writing, uh, in history and all this. It's not just slavery, it's so much of what happened after. It's so much of wealth kept out of the hands of black people systematically, and the effects are long lasting, and they are the reason that black people at large, uh, on the whole, um, in this country were facing a lower socioeconomic status. They were first into ghettos, they were, like, all these things that you were not taught in school for the most part. We're taught a lot of symbolic things that are important,

0:16:45 Thomas: You know, we're taught about the Civil Rights Act and the Civil Rights Movement, these are important things, not to say they aren't, but I don't think we will ever properly account for the economic damage that we did to a certain group of people in this country, systematically, we will never, I mean, there are reasons why the black unemployment rate was like double, I think it's gotten a little better, but for the longest time was over double the white unemployment rate, why the black wealth is on the whole so much lower than white wealth.

I mean, these are things that you can't solve by saying, okay, it's a level playing field now. Well, sure. It might, you could, I don't agree with that, but even if I were to agree, okay. Right now it's level playing field in terms of kind of the rules of the game right. But that still doesn't account for the fact that so many more black people were put in a lower socioeconomic condition because of history and because of actual systemic racism. It doesn't count for that. It's not enough to say, okay, well, yeah, sure, you're poor, but all the rules are fine now, so you're fine. It is not enough in my mind. That's why I think Ta-Nehisi Coates' piece on reparations is excellent and is scary to think about as a white person. Like, it's worth reading. I highly recommend it. There's a lot there that I think white people in this country don't have an incentive to ever fully grasp or deal with.

0:18:22 Thomas: It's much easier to just think, okay, Martin Luther King came around and now things are great. You know, it's much easier as a white person to just be like, you know, things were bad, sure, but we fixed all that. And now, you Know, as Republicans love to say that, That racism used to be a problem. Glad we solved that. That doesn't quite do it. Let me read the last few pieces of this piece. Again, this is not Cornel West. This is a piece he linked in the very beginning of his opinion piece, but it's so baffling. I have to read it. Strangely, Coates echoes the atheistic outlook of libertarians like Ayn Rand, who denied the possibility of collective redemption since people were fundamentally driven by self-interest. That is such a misleading thing to say.

0:19:11 Thomas: Just because they're both atheists and you can draw some line on their pessimism like it being similar, that doesn't mean that their outlooks and their views and what they think we should do is the same. Okay, going back into the text. Yet despite all the horrors he locates in history, atheism entails no necessary ethics or politics. And that's where I thought, okay, this guy must be religious. But then what he says next, it makes me think he's not. In fact, as Coates is more than aware, atheism in the absence of a moral arc is for many what makes collective hope and national redemption possible. Religion is often by its very nature exclusionary. Atheism can, for some, allow a real coming together.

0:19:56 Thomas: Here's the last paragraph. If Coates has accused his leftist critics of stressing class over race, an equal argument can be made that he prioritizes a rather conservative atheistic philosophy over both. A theory of global chaos and not white supremacy accounts for his pessimistic political outlook. No, that's a false dichotomy. He might be pessimistic, but it's because of white supremacy.

He's pessimistic that we will never fully rid ourselves of or make amends for the white supremacy woven into our society, but he's pessimist because he doesn't think there's any God pulling the strings, that It's like, okay, I know this is a little dense and weird, and honestly, I've read this piece like 10 times and I still barely understand it, but I'm pretty sure this is what he's saying, and if I were to draw an analogy, it's like saying, okay I see a giant meteor headed at Earth, and there are some people who think, you know, God'll save us, I believe in God, there's no way that meteor's gonna hit us, and I'm over here saying, I don't believe in God, I don't, I'm, I're worried about this meteor. Like, uh, she probably do stuff about it, but even if we do stuff, about it I'm not like confident that we're going to avoid the meteor because you know, there's no plan here.

And science says that this meteor is going to hit us. And, uh you know the conditions look grim here. It doesn't seem like we have enough time to respond. And then this guy comes along and writes a column and says, you know he's pessimistic. His problem isn't the meteor. It's that there's no God. And it's like, no, I mean, the problem is still very much the media.

0:21:41 Thomas: If you were to ask Ta-Nehisi Coates, if he could push a button and get rid of the meteor and get ridof the white supremacy in our history and in woven into our government, all that stuff, he would still say, oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Well then that would be great. The problem isn't the lack of the belief in God. And that is a weird, weird thing to say, that "a theology," again, quoting again, "a theology of global chaos and not white supremacy accounts for his pessimistic political outlook." No, it's, well, it is both. And it is just a pessimism that I think is well earned. So, that is right away the beginning of this Cornel West article. Here's the gists of Cornel West's piece. I encourage you to read it, but essentially it can be boiled down to Ta-Nehisi Coates is a neoliberal.

0:22:28 Thomas: And he says that several times, his, his views are neoliberal and that that is the smear that he and others are applying to Ta-Nehisi Coates. We'll reasons he gives are that Coates doesn't care enough about certain issues. He doesn't care enough. Wall Street, uh, drone strikes, and some other stuff. That's kind of the typical complaints about the Obama presidency. And here's where I will say it is more than fair to to criticize Obama's presidency on these measures, on these matters. That's fine. But Coates has said, he's said before this, like before this even happened, because people, I think, uh, I think Cornel West has brought this up before. Coates said, yeah, I'm not, that's not my specialty.

0:23:14 Thomas: I don't write on foreign policy. I'm not an economist. I write about race and Obama's presidency is a very significant thing. You know, like that's what I'm going to write about. I am writing about it from that angle. It doesn't mean he doesn't have an opinion on that or is okay with Wall Wall Street or whatever, you know, drone strikes. West paints the picture in this piece that Ta-Nehisi Coates rode Obama's coattails to success by writing about him, and is sort of- is a worshipper of him, and doesn't care about any white supremacy, really. He just is glad that white people accepted Obama. That sort of thing. So, we have a couple of competing hypotheses here. One is Ta-Nehisi Coates is an Obama sycophant and doesn't care about these other issues, and that's why he hasn't written about them.

0:24:05 Thomas: The other is, from Ta-Nehisi Coate's own words, I write about race, I don't write about, you know, drone strikes. That's just not something that he's, he doesn't have to write about every issue. People can specialize in different issues. And here's some evidence that I would like to provide that goes to the second thing, because if what Cornel West is saying were true, we should expect all of Ta-Nehisi's writing to be incredibly positive on Obama and to ignore Obama's shortcomings, that kind of thing. And indeed, Cornel West references where Coates, here's a quote, Coates praises Obama as a deeply moral human being while remaining silent on the 563 drone strikes, the assassination of US citizens with no trial, the 26,171 bombs dropped on five Muslim majority countries in 2016, and the 550 Palestinian children killed with US support planes in 51 days, etc.

0:25:03 Thomas: He calls Obama one of the greatest presidents in American history who for eight years walked on ice and never fell. And this is, again, just a case where both these things can be true. I mean, I think Obama is a deeply moral human being, and I also think that he's the greatest president of my lifetime. That doesn't mean he made no mistakes. Honestly, greatest president of MY lifetime is not a high bar. That is really, it's not, unfortunately, it is not that high of a bar. If you read Coates's book, it's very clear that he's not talking in terms of like all his policy and all that. Ta-nehisi Coats talks about what Obama meant as a as a symbol and as a response to the we were eight years in power, for example, that title is something Cornel West gets wrong.

0:25:53 Thomas: There's another interview where where Cornel West says, "Who was in power? The people in the ghetto weren't in power." I can't believe he would say that about Obama. Well, if you've read the book, "We Were Eight Years in Power" doesn't actually refer to Obama's presidency. I mean, it's intentionally, I think, a double meaning. But "We Were 8 Years in Power" is a quote about the fact that black politicians did rise to power right after the Civil War and then very quickly were kept out of power. So they were in in power for eight years and then were disenfranchised because there was a white supremacist view that black people couldn't run anything and that it would be a disaster to allow them to try. And that's what that quote refers to. And so the first black president, in Coates's view, and he writes about this so compellingly, it's why I'm a big fan of his, the first back president was direct evidence to contradict that.

0:26:46 Thomas: Not only could Obama be president, he could do so in a way that there was, even better than, you know, like no major scandals. That's what he means when he said walked on ice and never fell. He doesn't mean his foreign policy was some utopian thing that's better than any, he doesn't mean that. He means black people can do this too. And by the way, that means black people can also be flawed. That means black people can be subject to some of the same, you know, partisan views or maybe some of the same if you want to say on Cornel West's side bad decision making that any president can be subject to. I want a read from his book. And you'd tell me which hypothesis this fits better, like an Obama sycophant who doesn't care about his shortcomings or the other thing.

0:27:36 Thomas: This is from "My President Was Black." This is one of the essays in "We Were Eight Years in Power." Quote, "In his second term, I'd written articles criticizing him for his overriding trust in colorblind policy and his embrace of personal responsibility rhetoric when speaking to African-Americans. I saw him as playing both sides. He would invoke his identity as a president of all people to decline to advocate for black policy and then invoke his black identity to lecture black people for continuing to make bad choices." Basis. In response, Obama had invited me, along with other journalists, to the White House for off-the-record conversations. I attempted to press my points in these sessions. My efforts were laughable and ineffective. I was always inappropriately dressed and inappropriately calibrated in tone.

0:28:24 Thomas: In one instance, I was too deferential and another too bellicose. I was discombobulated by fear, not fear of the power of his office, though that is a fearsome and impressive thing, but by fear of his obvious brilliance, it is said that Obama speaks professorally, a fact that understates the quickness and agility of his mind, end quote. First off, God, don't you miss that? Don't you Miss professorial? Don't you miss a president who has grasp of the language and the issues, by the way? God, I miss it. So, that's a very critical selection there. And indeed, if you've read Ta-Nehisi Coates, as I don't think Cornel West has or something, or he's just lying or something. It's really bad how he misrepresents some of the things he says.

0:29:14 Thomas: Coates is very concerned with criticizing Obama in pretty harsh terms on certain issues. But it's true that he also regards him as a great man and as a great example to black people and as a powerful symbol racially. I want to note for anyone who isn't familiar with Ta-Nehisi Coates, and this is important. One of his first big pieces was on, back before Bill Cosby was an out and out known rapist, back when people were listening to him as like a pull your pants up kind of guy to talk to black people, he had an article that really criticized that, you know, quote unquote, "straighten up" talk. And he thought, and he's criticized Obama a lot for playing into that, for, and that's what that last paragraph I read you was about, that. So that's why I said there's two hypotheses.

0:30:10 Thomas: Do you think he's afraid to criticize Obama or doesn't want to or worships him? Or is it that he has a focus, which is race in America and is not foreign policy and drone strikes? Let me read some other stuff. Quote, Obama's keynote address conflated the slave and the nation of immigrants who profited from him. To reinforce the majoritarian dream, the nightmare endured by the minority is erased. That is the tradition to which the, quote, skinny kid with a funny name who would become president belonged. It is also the only tradition in existence that could have possibly put a black person in the White House, end quote. That's criticism of, I think, his 2004 DNC speech.

0:30:58 Thomas: Where Coates is saying essentially that Obama did have to play into this, like the innocence of white people in order to be elected, that he would never have been viewed as accepted enough, white, to become elected if he were more radical. Here's some more pretty harsh criticism, I think. In 2014, the Obama administration committed itself to reversing the war on drugs through the power of presidential commutation. The administration said that it could commute sentences of as many as 10,000 prisoners. As of November, the president had only commuted 944 sentences. By any measure, Obama's effort fell woefully short, except for this small one, the measure of almost every other modern president who preceded him.

0:31:44 Thomas: Obama's 944 commutations are the most in nearly a century and more than the past 11 presidents combined. I think that's a very fair way of looking at it. Here, I'll criticize you on your own terms for not living up to what you said while still with Very sensibly, in my mind, recognizing that how much better Obama was than every other president on that issue. I mean, there is a difference, and I think that's an important one. His Twitter account because of all the backlash that he was getting. People calling him a neoliberal and God knows what else. He just signed out of Twitter. He's like, I'm done. Deleted it. Took down his account. I think this can be put in the broader context of what are we going to do in 2020, Democrats?

0:32:33 Thomas: What are we gonna do? Are we going to do this purity thing bullshit where we say that, you know, Obama is just as bad as Republicans because of drone strikes? Is that what we're going to do? There are people who have been on this show, Dan Errol and Michael A. Wood Jr., are the two that I, there may be more, but those are two that can think of, who have said, who said very clearly that both sides are equal, that both are equal. That is an incredibly damaging thing in my opinion. And I think this is feeding right into it. If you don't care enough about Wall Street and you're not campaigning on specifically that issue, you're a neoliberal, you are just as bad as the other side. I think that is the most harmful thing we could be doing, and we cannot do that in this next election.

0:33:24 Thomas: We just can't. There's another element to this that I think really sucks. And that is this. I think there are people who, you know, how in 2016, somehow there were a lot of people who were split, like, would I vote for Bernie or would I vote for Trump? And to me, and I would suspect to many of you, that seems insane. That seems like, how could you either be voting for the most liberal person, you know, or one of the most liberal people, radical liberals, or a racist who wants wants to build a wall and say horrible things about, like, how, how could that be your choice? And there is a weird overlap. I want to be very careful. I voted for Bernie in the primary. I mentioned it all the time because I, I, you know, I think it's, I guess I have to say it because I am very critical of people who didn't move on after the primary and who wouldn't vote for Hillary.

0:34:15 Thomas: Um, I did and I'm proud of it and I would do it again. Uh, what I think there's, some overlap. I don't mean to say by any means that every Bernie supporter or even a majority are this way. I do not mean to saying that, but there are some people who are really into Bernie Sanders who think that racism, white supremacy are not really issues and that it is more about class.

In fact, I heard it all the time in Milwaukee when I was talking to shit lords. Oh, it is about socioeconomic class. It is not race. There is no racism. What are you talking about. It's just about being poor. If you're a poor white person, you're just as bad of shape. That ignores historical context. There's a reason that more people of color are poor, as I already talked about a little bit. But it's also true that a rising tide lifts all boats, and it, and it's a debate that we can have on the left of, do we need a particular focus on people of color with certain policies, or do we just need policies that benefit the poor? And I actually think there's a great argument to be made that, well, given that, that we ought to be helping the poor anyway, why don't we just do that? I think that's actually a fantastic argument.

That, so while it's not true that it's quote unquote all about class and not about race, that's not because it ignores history. It is true that going forward, if we help the most unfortunate people in this country, if help the poorest people, it will be a benefit to everybody. It will fix a lot of the systemic inequality. Not all of it, but but it will be very positive.

0:35:48 Thomas: And we don't do that. And the reason is Republicans. Which brings us to this both sides are bad bullshit that I, I, we just cannot do in 2020. And I was, I was trying to think of a comparison. Like, let's say you are in a country, and this is a tough example. It's an unpleasant example, but I want to bring it up because I think it's important. People like Dan Errol, who I have argued with time and time again, I think are doing almost more harm in some ways than people on the right. Because convincing people who otherwise should know better to not vote, or to not care, or to vote third party because everyone's left and right are just as bad, I think you're actually going to convince more people than Trump is going to convert people from the left, for example.

0:36:38 Thomas: So in that way, I think it's a more harmful message going forward to say both sides are equal. Don't bother, because I think that actually could convince some very liberal people not to vote, whereas I don't think people on the right are going to convince very liberal people to vote for Trump. I don't really think that's going to happen, but I do think there is a danger of being apathetic because of this really pernicious and wrongheaded idea that both sides are the same, that moderation is never the way to go, that you never compromise on, and for, and for Dan Errol, it is the principles that there shouldn't be a government, that police shouldn't exist, that there shouldn't, just stuff that is never going to happen, that nobody support, I mean, very few people support this idea.

0:37:27 Thomas: You guys know I'm fond of hypotheticals. Here's a hypothetical for you. Let's say you live in one of the countries. This is a real thing too. You live, let's say, you live in one the countries where atheists are punished by death. I'm an atheist. That's horrible. I don't, I, you know, that's bad. Now let's say this is also a democracy, which, you know, it's possible. There's a, there's a lot of democracies in the world now. I just read an article. I think it's like 60% of countries. Uh, so that's good. But let's say you're in a democracy. But the law of the land is because the people voted voted this way, by the way, is that atheists should be put to death. And let's say you've got an election coming up and there's one candidate that is the yes, oh, absolutely, atheists-should-be-put-to-death candidate. And And then, the other candidates says, You know, I dislike atheist just as much as, you know, the next guy.

0:38:13 Thomas: But, uh, death is a little too harsh. Let's just find them $10, $100, whatever weird country we're in and the currency exchange rate. Let's just, let's just do that. By now, will you sit there and say, you know, that guy still hates, hates atheists. I did. He, he is a bigot. He hates atheist. He's obviously a, some religious fundamentalist. I, I can't, I'm voting third party. I'm, I've got, I am not voting. Throwing away, write-in vote. No, he didn't earn my vote. He didn't EARN my vote! No! Dummy, you vote for the guy who's going to make it a $10 fine! And the families of atheists who would have been killed are going to thank you for it. They're not going to THANK you for your purity of saying, you know what, I'm so principled, I could never vote for someone who still hates atheists. No!

0:38:59 Thomas: That's not how life works. That's NOT how government works. You're in a situation that you're in. When you're voting, you're IN the reality that you are in. We'll be right back. We do this weird thing where we're blaming the side that's moderating the other side for the bad behavior. Andrew brought it up with the crime bill. If it were just Republicans, it would have been horrendous. But Democrats, in order to even get elected, in order to have power, tried to moderate. And they tried to say, okay, well, we'll give in on a few things, but we also want to do some good programs that don't involve over-policing and just all this broken window crap. And then we look back and we say, God, what an evil bastard Bill Clinton was for signing that bill.

0:39:45 Thomas: It's like, hold on. Now, there's certainly a question of how much can you get away with and still get elected, and that's an open question. And maybe you could make a case that, oh, okay, the Democrats could have done a better bill and still gotten elected. I don't think that's true in certain cases. And in 2016, it wasn't true. We didn't get elected in anything. We have no, Democrats have no power in anything, so if If in 2020, the choices are some sort of moderate alleged neoliberal that you don't quite like, or Donald Trump, you need to vote for whoever the frigging Democrat is, because the other option is no power whatsoever. The other option, is the Republicans do whatever they want in a tax bill, and we have to just take it.

0:40:33 Thomas: We just, that's just, okay, cool, the rich get richer, the one percent gets one percenter, and we just sit here because we have no power, we can't do anything. You vote for the candidate who only wants to fine atheists and not kill them, that's what you do. And what you do is you hope through spreading the word and trying to educate that in the next election, maybe it will be between a guy who thinks we should fine an atheist 10 bucks and a guy doesn't think we should find atheists at all. Maybe that'll be the next election. That's what you hope for. That tends to be how it has worked. And there's a point I made a long time ago that I want to remake that I think is a really, really good one when it comes to this purity bullshit. The cases where people get too right wing. So, like, the states where everybody has gone furthest right.

0:41:22 Thomas: Now, let's assume that you're an extreme liberal and you want the most liberal set of things in the world. The states, if we look at an example where people are ultra conservative, are the ones where they're getting primaried from the right. They aren't the states. They're the states that are the most conservative. And then the right wing is like, you know, we should have run a more right wing person. So next time we'll do that. That's no, that's not how it works. The tends to be one of the most liberal states is California where liberals are primarying liberals. That's where you get in a competition to be more liberal. Not when you say, you know what? This person isn't liberal enough. I'm giving it to a Republican. Please remember this, and please remember my weird atheist country execution thing example in 2020.

0:42:07 Thomas: I think it will really come in handy. There is a Slate article by Ismail Muhammad, who I think says this far better than I can, because there's another really easy straw man that Cornel West used that it's just disturbing. Why is he doing this? Order to encourage this next iteration, West wrote a piece in which he comes off a bit like a vengeful father attempting to strangle a child before it has a chance to grow. The misreadings I've pointed out above are common among Coates' critics, but West's piece stands out for its viciousness and rhetorical sloppiness. At one point, he claims that Coates' allegiance to Obama has produced an impoverished understanding of Black history and goes on to cite a passage that, out of context, seems to situate Obama as the heir to Malcolm X's radical Black politics.

0:43:01 Thomas: Anybody who's read the book knows that the quote West cites arrives in an essay titled The Legacy of Malcolm X, which probes the ways in which Malcolm X's politics were intertwined with a moral conservatism and the myth of self-making. It is in the context of Malcolm X's image as a self-fashioned and morally pristine patriarch that Coates compares the Muslim preacher to Obama, another black man who chronicled his own self-fashioning and is given to a flawed moral conservatism that Coates repeatedly critiques as insufficient. Such moments of insincerity are what makes West's piece so disturbing. They suggest that West came to extinguish another younger writer's light, rather Rather than meaningfully engage him as an interlocutor, this attempt isn't befitting of an elder statesman who, even as he critiques and challenges, should, in theory, want to nourish other writers who share his desire to write America closer to true democracy.

0:43:57 Thomas: For those of us who, like Coates, find solace in being a part of a community and a lineage of black writers, West's critique breaks the promise of that community. Community. That's the end. There's a lot more to that piece, of course. I think you should read it. I'll link it. But I think that says it best, that Malcolm X quote. It's just the most elementary example of taking something out of context and running with it. And I just got to ask why? Like, why would someone go through so much trouble to take down a A brilliant writer like Ta-Nehisi Coates in this way, and that's why I talked about that kind of purity bullshit that the left does a lot, again, we can have a robust debate on which things are non-negotiable. But for me, what Ta-Nehisi Coate's alleged crimes are here is nowhere near that line.

0:44:47 Thomas: He is firmly for me on the left, and this is disappointing. Alright, thank you so much for listening. I'd love to hear from you. And now I need to thank my new supporters. Like I said, I'm done with the Patreon shoutouts. They've been totally mangled and I blame Patreon. I do not blame you guys. So we are going to do SeriousPod.com slash support shoutouts. I've got a lot of new ones now, obviously, because we're just starting it. And then next week, I'll go to do the weekly shoutouts as well. But since everybody's going to get one this week, we'll just go in the order of who signed up, and I'm looking at number one here, early adopter Lindsay Osterman. Thank you so much. Oh, and by the way, at seriouspod.com support, I made a field for shout out name, so it's easier, and you can just, rather than having to do like the first and last name field on Patreon, everyone can put in a message in there.

0:45:39 Thomas: I think it's really fun. That's one of my favorite parts of the shout outs. Lindsay Osterman, thank you so much. Ben Hux, Corey Johnston, host of the Brainstorm podcast and the hardcore skeptic. James Hamblin, Satan's swampy asshole. See, there you go. Taking advantage of it already. Eric Johnson, Andrew, not Andrew Torrez. That's a different Andrew. Shout out name here. Cody, Mr. Christoph Lynch, left at the Valley podcast. No need for a shout out. I closed Patreon to pledge here. Well, there you go. Not all heroes wear capes. Michael Horniak. Ron, the guy who nitpicks your discussions with Aaron Rabi. Dinosaur Repairman. I don't know where that one came from. I'd be very curious to hear that story. Trump tried to fire me on Twitter and all I got was a stupid interview.

0:46:29 Thomas: Drew, teach out Torrez 2020. Oh, I like that. I would vote for that for sure. Ysero Bartlett. Scott M. Oh my God, they killed Kenny. Weiland. Tim, go Hawks, my wife is paying for this, I have no money, oh, well, okay, thanks to your wife, Luke Voucher, that's interesting, Zabby, special snowflake, I hope that's not a typo, if that's Luke Boucher or whatever, I think I recognize that name, but anyway, special snowflakes, Sakashite Fukasumi, hashtag stop Brexit, hashtag save the NHS, hashtag Make Britain Great Again, In the Shadows, Nick V, Rob Ives, Rev, Kravatosaur, Colin Armstrong, Camel Pope, The Pope of Camels, Melania is a Russian Master Spy, and finally Liam.

0:47:17 Thomas: Remember, always take legal advice from a podcast. Really trying to mess with me there. Thomas hates fun. Yeah, that's true. For the love of God, get rid of Ted Cruz. Beto O'Rourke 2018. Oh, is that his competition? Absolutely. I echo that. Beto O'Rourke, if that's the real candidate, I hope it is. Get rid of Ted Cruz. If Beto O'Rourke is some cultural reference I don't get, I also support that over Ted, basically anybody over Ted Cruz. Richard Dondero, Annex, Jeff, where are we going and what are we doing in this handbasket? Pro-choice on cat declawing, okay, well, people disagree on that, apparently, manager of Second Chance Law and proud sponsor of SK2 versus Horseman, some comedy shoeshine references there. Atheist Feminist Killjoy, Dr.

0:48:04 Thomas: Poultry, Ph.D. Esquire, Steven, I Hate Being Awake, Goon Squad, Petty Officer Peter the Gooniest, Carrie, and John. Thank you so much. That is awesome that you guys are the early adopters. I know I'm going to have a lot of shout outs coming up, but they're really fun. People make the names funny and it's, it's I think it's one of my favorite parts of the show is hearing all the different names. So I can't thank you enough for jumping on over to Serious Pod dot com slash support. I hope you enjoy the extra stuff, and I've got an awesome interview planned for you for Monday. It I'll be speaking with an expert on traumatic brain injuries. There's a lot of ethical questions there. There's lot of interesting science there. Looking forward to it. I'll see you then. I suppose that will be Christmas Day for those of you who celebrate that.

0:48:50 Thomas: But, you know, my philosophy has always been most podcasts take time off during the holidays. I hate it because when I'm stuck at home or traveling or flying or whatever it may be, that's when I want podcasts the most. And I don't want, you know, like a clip show or anything like an old one. Like I want new content. So that's my philosophy. I hope you will enjoy that. But if you don't have time to listen, you can always catch up, you know, Tuesday or something. So I'll see you then.