From the tip of the American cultural revolution to the greatest example of NIMBYism, regressive leftism, coddled college kids, drug abuse, homelessness, cultism and hypocrisy.
The hippies all own expensive houses now and will do ANYTHING to keep the town from changing - specifically, to prevent the construction of affordable housing. As a partial result, there is a massive homelessness problem and the town is very expensive for young people.
Meanwhile, rather than campaigning for serious political and economic change, the current local protest movement is pretty singularly concerned with countering the "alt-right" (who are non-existent among the actual residents of the town) and rioting over "offensive" speech.
I was a fairly long time Berkeley resident but I had to get out. Berkeley rules but it has some pretty serious problems that it refuses to address.
I'm fully aware that yesterdays protesters are today's incumbents. And if you think people aren't campaigning for serious social and political change I don't know what to tell you. Surely you are aware that the historical protest movement was considered A Bad Thing in its day by many people, as opposed to being the subject of mass adulation.
That's an interesting way to think of it; that the anti-building folks are just yesterday's hippies, having grown older, more moderate and self-interested.
Another way of looking at it is that political movements are coalitions. Sure, people who are really concerned about the environment and people who are really concerned about poverty and the welfare of the poor are both on the left of the political spectrum in America, but they are not really natural allies; those in poverty use a lot less resources than they would if they had middle-class incomes, and things like organic food are massively less efficient, meaning that choosing organic food, to the extent that it crowds out inorganic production, is raising the price of food, something that is largely irrelevant if you primarily care about the environment, but central if you primarily care about the poor.
(Of course, there is some agreement, I mean, the price of farmland forces the issue, but 'sustainable farming' is important for all; you don't want another dust bowl, but that's a problem that, from my understanding, is largely solved, outside of, say, cattle grazing on public land. No farmer wants to destroy the production capability of his or her land. )
I mean, I'm certain that was a biased example, but my point is just that there are a lot of competing interests within a particular political coalition, so quite often, apparent hypocrisy is simply the fact that different people and different sub-groups within a broad political movement have different and sometimes conflicting priorities and values.
Agreed. It's difficult to discuss things like this in a fast moving discussion forum like HN, plus the fact that making a witty or ironic point that might work perfectly well at some times ends up being confusing or alienating at others.
I feel we're at a complex historical moment in terms of not just US politics but global trade relations, questions about the future of finance and economics, the pressing problem of climate change, and competing but radically different philosophies of national and global destiny.
> And if you think people aren't campaigning for serious social and political change I don't know what to tell you.
The social/political change they've been managing to make happen is normalization of left-wing radicalism, exponential broadening of the definition of "nazi" and generous application of violence to said "nazis".
They're also bringing back gender and race segregation under the PC-approved expression "safe space".
Definitely it's social and political change they're after.
This doesn't seem like an argument we're going to resolve here, since we clearly have quite different views.
However, you might like to reflect that right wing commentators have been complaining about 'Feminazis' for 30 years (1) and equating liberalism with fascism for 10 (2), so there has been plenty of effort invested in normalizing right-wing radicalism for quite a long while now. Complaints about the fact that the far left has decided to come off the sidelines of political discourse seem a little facile.
You seem to assume I'm calling feminists "nazis", or that I'm right-wing, or that people advocating for "punching nazis" are somehow liberal. None of that is true.
Not in the slightest. I'm just commending other facts to your attention that you appear to have overlooked. Nowhere did I attribute such beliefs to you.
Nor do I understand why you brought up 'punching nazis'; nobody has even mentioned that in this discussion.
I'm so glad I left that place. I've never lived in a place that was so obnoxiously proud of its past, all the while so completely hypocritical about its present situation. Great school, shit town.
> I'm so glad I left that place. I've never lived in a place that was so obnoxiously proud of its past, all the while so completely hypocritical about its present situation. Great school, shit town.
You found the town was proud of its past and hypocritical about the present, and not the school?
Keep Berkeley weird!