Say what you will about Matt Yglesias, but we’ve got to hand it to him when it comes to standing up to the über-woke radical Left lately. It’s not easy to be a liberal who doesn’t want to bend to the mob’s will.
Much to radical libs’ dismay, Yglesias has been tweeting about how “Defund the Police” is genuinely problematic.
imo the big problem with “defund the police” is that defunding the police is a bad idea — austerity is bad, public services are good, policing is important, and better policing will be more costly than bad policing not cheaper
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) December 2, 2020
Yglesias has spent the past day or so defending his position.
These were little slogans that fit on signs not detailed policy papers, but they all make perfect sense. pic.twitter.com/EE1qNSbceB
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) December 3, 2020
My least favorite Twitter is when people dunk on me for ignorantly claiming something I never in fact claimed ¯_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/BM1dXiiaRY
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) December 3, 2020
I see way too many people use “hey look it’s activism” as a kind of all-purpose rebuttal to criticisms of people for advancing confused or erroneous ideas, and I sincerely do not believe that this is how effective movements for beneficial change work.
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) December 3, 2020
Go figure.
You said you liked my post the other day. There’s something similar here. If demanding that people think like strategists deters people from acting on the values that actually are the foundation of properly egalitarian societies, then maybe take the values over the strategy.
— Ryan Avent (@ryanavent) December 3, 2020
I don’t think the problem with “defund the police” is that its proponents aren’t strategic. I think they’ve been quite effective actually. As I have been saying all day, my criticism is that their policy goals are misguided.
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) December 3, 2020
And that’s controversial, apparently.
I like that on Twitter “police should not be abolished” counts as a trollish take. I think I have a very boring and widely held view on this. https://t.co/ByV6oyy0W7
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) December 3, 2020
I feel like I have said this many time’s today but my view is that the problem with “defund the police” is that it’s a bad idea not that it’s a bad slogan. Or rather what’s bad about the slogan is that the idea it expresses is bad. https://t.co/QenBcvizk8
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) December 3, 2020
This shouldn’t be a difficult concept for anyone. And yet … here we are.
And eventually the circle of life returns to the “what if we meant this other thing instead…” point https://t.co/cCQTVYD80k
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) December 3, 2020
Once more, for the people in the back:
Again, the problem with “defund the police” is not the slogan is bad it’s that the idea is bad. https://t.co/L4qanjw9Km
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) December 3, 2020
This is not a good direction for criminal justice policy (and certainly not for climate policy). https://t.co/TrzvBLa4QS
— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) December 3, 2020
Yglesias is actually approaching this issue pretty logically. So naturally lefty activists are pissed at him.
Was inspired by one of the responses to Yglesias to make a cute lil collage that took me 90 seconds of Googling pic.twitter.com/DFj4HAHGnD
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) December 3, 2020
2/The response to Yglesias should tell you a lot about what it’s like to try to be a mainstream journalism or pundit right now, above and beyond all the structural issues. Just a stiflingly conformist landscape driven by elite fads rather than principle or clearheaded thinking.
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) December 3, 2020
We can count on one hand the number of times we’ve suggested that anyone take Matt Yglesias’ advice. But we’ll be damned if they shouldn’t listen to him on this.
