Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-prophet-of-the-revolt

by deepbow • 6 years ago

67 48 6 years ago

thepullrequest.com

kickout• 6 years ago

Long read (already read it previously), but very good.

Should be more fodder for breaking up and beefing up regulations on tech companies

nickff3• 6 years ago

I think you're misreading Gurri; according to his reasoning, any measure is almost impossible (including regulation or anti-trust). From the post:

"Liberal democracy is still the only game in town. You can’t compete with it – but you can destroy it. You can smash it to bits and put nothing in its place. You can bring down an avenging chaos on a corrupt world. So when you ask whether today’s protests will ever lead to anything, the answer is probably not. They have little positive content."

If we use his paradigm to analyze the 'tech situation', the most likely outcome is furious protests, with no ability to cohere around any specific action.

starkd• 6 years ago

Right. It's very unclear just what "breaking up the tech companies" really means. There's a few interesting ideas, for sure, but structure change could very well make it worse, not better.

They could start by not putting themselves in the position of being arbiters of information. As Gurri said, a little humility would go a long way.

deeeeplearning• 6 years ago

If we use his paradigm to analyze the 'tech situation', the most likely outcome is furious protests, with no ability to cohere around any specific action.

Who exactly is going to participate in "furious protests" against breaking up mega tech companies? lol

Ygg22• 6 years ago

Is it though?

It seems China with its repressive apparatus put a clamp on Inteenet and free flow of information.

Lot of his argument fall apart, if there is an alternative he isn't willing to entertain.

wahern• 6 years ago

In the interview Martin Gurri characterizes the left thusly:

Today the big issue is… what? Wearing MAGA hats? Racism certainly isn’t a divisive issue. Everybody’s against it. Capitalism isn’t much of an issue. Nobody even talks about class or poverty any more. Identity’s too diffuse and dispersed – if identitarians started fighting, it would look more like a scrum than a civil war.

That's not honest. It would be like saying that Reagan supporters in the 1980s only cared about welfare queens, without any substantive policy preferences regarding industrial regulation, unions, defense, etc. In reality "welfare queens" was short-hand for all the substantive policy preferences demanded by conservatives, as well as a statement about the perceived consequences of the excesses of liberal policies. Similar, MAGA hat derision is a liberal statement about the irony of promoting conservative, free market, anti-social safety net policies to "Make America Great Again" when from the left's perspective all the agreed upon societal ills--e.g. loss of blue collar jobs to free trade, lack of income growth combined with increasing income disparity, corporate oligopolies, etc--are a consequence of conservative, Republican, policies. The GOP was the architect of both NAFTA and China entering GATT/WTO.[1] The "neoliberal" movement in the Democratic party was a conservative movement; it was an adoption by some Democrats of conservative Republican economic policies in an attempt to win over increasingly Republican-leaning voters who had been successfully persuaded that traditionally Democratic economic policies (e.g. antagonism to free trade, pro union, "tax & spend" entitlements, etc) were hostile to job growth. And just as Democrats were scrambling to realign their economic platforms with the rightward shift in the electorate, so too was Labor doing exactly the same thing in the U.K. Thatcher and Reagan ushered in the preeminence of conservative economic policies, and Blair and Clinton were late-stage responses to that. To then blame Democrats and their "neoliberal" policies for the legacy of conservative (classically "liberal" outside the Anglosphere--note the semantic games) economic policies is... rich.

I'm sorry, but either Martin Gurri is less than 25 years old, or he's willfully misrepresenting actual, factual, not-particularly-distant political history. I'm pretty sure it's the latter, and he's simply using obtuse, scholarly-sounding terminology to sell a constructed narrative popular among far too many conservatives. I'm familiar with the tactic having heard plenty of similar B.S. political fantasies (e.g. Marxist, Fascist, etc, arguments) that build plausible seeming narratives around hidden, false premises.

There's plenty of blame to go around regarding contemporary cultural divisions. The conservatives were right in their criticisms of the left's identity politics and victim culture. Indeed, identity politics has swallowed up everybody, and it turns out the empowered and entitled often make for the most sympathetic victims of all. But let's be clear about who promoted what, when, and why before we start naming our oppressors and nominating our saviors.

[1] When NAFTA passed under a Clinton presidency, 2/3 of House Republicans voted for it (including Newt Gingrich, who successfully helped to push through special "fast-track" voting rules), while only 1/3 of Democrats voted for it. President Clinton, like Tony Blair in the U.K., was seen as successful precisely because of his conservative economic policies. Clinton also supported GOP authored welfare reform, including block grants to states (which Democrats feared would be directed away from the working class), despite fierce opposition from his own party.

pdonis3• 6 years ago

from the left's perspective all the agreed upon societal ills--e.g. loss of blue collar jobs to free trade, lack of income growth combined with increasing income disparity, corporate oligopolies, etc--are a consequence of conservative, Republican, policies

But even if this is accepted for the sake of argument (I'm not sure it's entirely true, but let's assume it is), the left has not done what a sane political party should do when these things happen: penalize their own party leaders who let it happen. If Clinton allowed NAFTA to pass despite his own party's fierce opposition, why didn't the party fire him? Why didn't some other candidate beat him in the 1996 primaries? Why did the Democrats continue to protect him despite the fact that he's a womanizer and a liar? And why does the party machine of which he and his wife are poster child beneficiaries continue to run the party despite the fact that it obviously doesn't represent the will of the people? If it did, Bernie Sanders would have been the Democratic candidate for President in 2016, and again in 2020 (and he might have won in 2016).

In other words, I think Gurri is correct that the left talks a lot about reforms it says it wants, but doesn't back up its talk with action.

bleepblorp• 6 years ago

Quoting Martin Gurri as quoted in the parent post, NOT the words of wahern in parent post itself:

Today the big issue is… what? Wearing MAGA hats? Racism certainly isn’t a divisive issue. Everybody’s against it.

In light of the past months of Black Lives Matter protests, counter-protests by white supremacists (who often enjoyed the support of law enforcement), and overt race baiting by Trump and his surrogates, claiming that racism isn't a divisive issue in American society is tone deaf at best.

TwoNineFive• 6 years ago

Listen to the May 25, 2020 Econ Talk episode where Gurri is interviewed (Russ Roberts sucks BTW but that's another issue). I don't think he's being dishonest, he's delusional. His brain just can't accept that mainstream fascism has arrived and is in his face. And yes, I agree with you that the reason is that he's got some regressive and authoritarian ideals and is probably a registered republican based on his comments and behavior that I've seen.

scottlocklin2• 6 years ago

It's widely recognized by the actual American left that neoliberals have taken over the Democratic party, but it's less often said that the Republican party is mutating into a worker's party, differentiated largely on social class. Political correctness: it's just a social class differentiator; keeping the filthy workmen off of our proverbial lawns. Democrats are now the party of the managerial/professional/muh collitch class and minorities, and Republicans are the party of the working class and ... I guess its historical association with small businessmen holds. The history of who passed NAFTA (back almost 30 years ago now, mind you) is pretty irrelevant: nobody in the present day Democratic party is talking about revoking it (2016 Bernie might have; I miss 2016 Bernie); it was the modern worker's party, not the past workers party who wants to renegotiate this disaster.

Lasch saw this at work in the 1970s, FWIIW, which is why Gurri is talking about him. Lasch was an actual Marxist, though he eventually made common cause with Paleocons because he saw the cheerful "left wing" atomization of the family as incredibly destructive for working people, which, of course, was true.

gipp• 6 years ago

That's a curious reading of the post.

I think he would say that the ongoing fallout is caused by structural changes in communication networks, and that the players who happen to be at the top of the pile economically are incidental to that process.

_2d30• 6 years ago

I always recommend Martin Gurri for people looking to model the present state of the US and, in particular, new media/communications platforms impacts.

8bitsrule• 6 years ago

I liked this piece in many ways. But can't help but notice that the neoliberal economy is missing from his picture. Gurri mentions it once:

The usual economic explanations explain nothing, in my opinion.

Pretty sure Sanders disagrees.

DubiousPusher9• 6 years ago

Yeah, I have to give this one to Maslow. Having your basic needs met is great but that gets boring and a feeling of progress becomes a need too. Stagnation is only slightly more tolerable than regression.

Kephael• 6 years ago

I learned early in my life that the worst democracy is infinitely better than the best-performing tyranny. So I’m happy to make a leap of faith and say that liberal democracy will still be with us, but with new and interesting permutations, at the turn of the 22nd century.

This is absolutely false, would you rather live in Haiti or China? Also, what makes "Democracy" isn't really clear, you don't necessarily have a say in what you'd like in Democracy. It's just a vehicle to give government legitimacy, even if the votes don't actually matter or are even real.

We can't even have a civil war, as it's impossible to draw the lines.

This is more false hope, it's very easy to have a civil war even without clear lines. Aggrieved parties just need to pick up a rifle and attack their enemies. You don't need uniforms and flags to have an insurgency.

DubiousPusher9• 6 years ago

Yeah, that second one is such an absurd point. I would be willing to bet money that more civil wars have followed the model of spiralling, multilateral chaotic violence than one like the U.S. which had clear sides geographically and politically as well as symmetrical structures.

NateEag2• 6 years ago

I think he'd argue that "spiraling, multilateral violence" is not a civil war.

I could be wrong.

I think he's right, though, that mostly you need young men hopped up on testosterone for a conflict like a civil war to happen.

I think if you're over twenty-five, you're unlikely to volunteer for things that are likely to kill you, and that actually forms strong backpressure against large-scale violence in the US.

DubiousPusher9• 6 years ago

Scattered thoughts, fun read, thanks.

In the last century, two generations of elites tackled the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, and came ahead on every count. They built the great dams and nuclear plants that electrified the country, and threw in the interstate highway grid for good measure. What has changed?

What! Completely overlooking the popular nature of these accomplishments. Watch interviews with even telephone operators for major government projectsin the 40s and 50s and you'll see a pride in them even a fairly senior governmental manager would not display today. People believed in these things and I think not because of their faith in elites but because they saw these instructions employing their friends and neighbors. People believed in their team. There were overlapping institutions like church which also connected people. We have a huge decline in people doing things together. Mass media could in part be to blame but Reagan style cowboy individuality might be too.

I will say this: the struggle today is structural, not personality-dependent. Even an FDR or a Reagan would have difficulty preserving institutions whose authority has collapsed because of a radical reversal in the information environment.

Absolutely. See the failures of one Barrack Obama

As flawed as these narratives were and are--the map was very definitely not the territory--they were coherent worldviews that helped that society navigate reality.

This accurately describes the media of the post WWII era but totally ignores the hodgepodge corrupt media landscapes of the late 19th century and early 20th century. You think people are in a bubble now. Imagine getting all your news from one or two papers which were directly party appartuses and probably ethnically isolated.

The most disruptive innovation of this nature was surely the printing press.

I think this point is taken too often for granted. 1848 begs to differ. At the time the printing press came about regional european powers were beginning to equalize in strength. The decline of hedgemons could as easily be responsible for reforms theology as the press. You can't set up your own church unless you can keep the Pope's armies out. Once you can it's only a matter of time until controlling your regional branch of the church becomes desirable enough to break things off.

History has never sponsored reruns of dead ideals, even as sitcoms

Oh come on. This is pure progressivism. There's no "conservation of momentum" in history. No one decides or devine's the rules of what will and won't happen next. Nothing is ever the same and nothing is ever new but change can be heavily weighted to looking much like it did before. Maybe we won't get the third reich again but am ecofascist exclusionary state could absolutely be in the cards. Just as America now greatly resembles Empiral Britain at it's zenith and turn towards decline.

At the individual level, the nihilist is the random shooter who stalks into a gay bar or a mosque and slaughters dozens of innocent strangers.

This is borderline, "video games cause school shooting" level of association. Political nihilism is not obviously the proximate cause of lone wolf violence. In fact such violence often comes from those politically irrelevant or even activated by a sense of these acts leading to a kind of victory. Timothy McVeigh viewed his action as a successful pokticial act not as a "fuck it, burn it down" shrug.

What I can't help feeling about this writing is that it has fallen deeply for the progressive narrative that is popular in both the elite Republican and Democratic parties. Not to be confused with contemporary "progressivism". Rather the narrative that links Washington, Lincoln, TR, FDR, sometimes LBJ and sometimes Reagan into a single progression of civil cosmopolitan liberty. I'm not saying here that that narrative is necessarily wrong. But to get this far on an intellectual level and not interogate closer the conflicts which bred these changes and the places where equality has failed to find a hold on liberal democracy. It's like taking for granted labor progress as a part of liberal democracy. As if it will just happen and left movements didn't have something powerful to do with that.

Whiles it's not "end of history", it reads very "end of history but...". Regardless of my complaints it's very thought provoking but I am getting a Slavoj Zizek, lapping himself in his own rationalism, vibe.

thunderbong• 6 years ago

As others have mentioned, this is a fantastic long read. And some wonderful lines worth quoting. My favourites -

> The highest calling of true elites is to translate the flux of reality into a coherent story.
> Perspectives on reality of course vary according to the ideals and institutions involved.
> We are fractured creatures, trapped in a subjective perspective, but we are also symbolic animals, viscerally craving a meaning for our individual lives that is universally acknowledged and so transcends individuality.
> Belief is the default. What needs to be explained is systematic cynicism or unbelief: it’s a pathological state that makes individuals miserable and society untenable.
> The public is disenchanted in the elites and their institutions, much in the way science disenchanted the world of fairies and goblins.
> All you need is a smart phone and a sufficient measure of anger against.
> The lust for destruction, rather than fascism or some “successor ideology,” looms as the great threat to democracy today.
> For all the anger, we live pretty comfortably within this evil old system.
> Websites must compete for attention and so practice the art of the rant.
> Newspapers are trying to survive by selling polarization.
> I have learned that the best way to be wrong in public is to make a prediction.
> On the web, you can vote on anything, at any time. I’m pretty sure that’s not a good thing, but it’s the purest form of democracy, and explanations about why it’s not a good thing always start with the assumption that the elites are smarter than the voters.
> Like I said, I’m really old, and one of the few things one learns with age, young Antonio, is that there are many more important things than personal vanity.

Martin Gurri and the ungovernable public

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