The Death of Progressivism

To begin, I apologize. This essay will mostly just be a stream of consciousness rant, so any contradictions or irregularities...well they will just be baked into the cake.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them

Philip K. Dick

It has to be said: Progressive is dead.
Yes, it is.

The term progressive has no meaning anymore. It is nothing more than a tool used by those who value its popularity, not its content. Let's look over the last election here.

Many were calling Bernie a progressive, dealing with a strong economic message, along with environmental and social justice. Realizing she was being flanked from her left, Hillary called herself "a progressive who got stuff done". What garbage.

The term has no meaning, is utterly devoid of any value because any and every Democrat calls themselves that.
Obama, who is bombing in 7 different nations, oversaw the death of numerous innocent civilians, cemented the surveillance state, conned people into corporate health insurance plans which they are mandated to buy otherwise be taxed, saved Wall Street and the banks from themselves leaving the victims to fend for themselves...is a progressive? Why, cause it's the cool term now.

Hillary, who oversaw the destruction of Libya, voted for Iraq, beat the drums of war for Russia, is a neoliberal through and through...is also a progressive? Why, cause it's the hip term now.

Cory Booker, who voted against the importation of drugs from Canada...is a solid progressive.

Hell, everyone is a progressive. It's like Oprah giving out cars. You're a progressive, I'm a progressive, everyone is a progressive.

The damage is that many are starting to see that corporate, neoliberal, imperalist policies are being labeled as "progressive". Then, people, who wish to remove ourselves as the world stage as imperialists, help deconstruct the toxic capitalist system we live in, get conflated with those "progressives".

The damage is done, there is no salvaging the term now. It seems that each time a term is constructed, it is co-opted. But that is the point. If you own the word, you get to shape the discussion that happens.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them

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I am an Independent, eclectic, socialist. I still flinch when I hear someone criticize liberals. Then I remind myself I am not one anymore.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Bob In Portland's picture

@dkmich I'd suggest that socialist has been pretty well muddled up since the National Socialists of Germany in the twenties. If you don't think so, watch how reactionaries like to twist natso with socialism in comments sections.

Labels are important, but labels are easily distorted.

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Bob In Portland's picture

@Bob In Portland @Bob In Portland Also icons. That's why leaders provide them. Icons are shorthand for belief systems, and considering the conduct of our leaders, you can understand why leaders do it, especially if they themselves are the icons.

They used to wait until someone was dead to build his statue or put him/her on a postage stamp. Icons are created these days out of real flesh which means they sometimes disappoint the idolators.

I recall back in the 90s when the the City of San Francisco named an alley next to the old AAA insurance building on Van Ness for Lech Walesa. Already there were hints of NED strings on him and that he was double-crossing union workers once he was installed in power.

I remember Michael Parenti had a book named "Land Of Idols". I'll have to see if I still have it.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Bob In Portland In America, (IMO), socialists are not so much conflated with Hitler as with Stalin and others who ran the Soviet Union. Right-wingers love red-baiting.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Phoebe Loosinhouse's picture

has lots of alternate interpretive and historical contexts, then yeah, it becomes a diversion.

Don't we all wish we had a euro for every time we had a long pointless discussion over who and what was "progressive" at TOP, not to mention all the unintentional comedy and irony that ensued when it was inevitably one of the more militant " a crumb is as good as a loaf" realist pontificating - someone who would have told Rosa Parks that sitting in the front of the bus on alternate Mondays was a good starting point.

It's would be better to have some word that identifies a concrete and specific agenda, sort of like "Wobblie" became an identifier for the IWW at the beginning of the twentieth century. Of course, until we have some kind of party and movement that actually possesses a concrete and specific agenda, that's not possible. "Berner" did become shorthand for someone who was for national health, living wages, free tuition and anti-trade pact, IMO.

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" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "

Strife Delivery's picture

@Phoebe Loosinhouse Well Phoebe, sitting on the front on alternate Mondays? Pie in the sky. Pie in the sky.

Rosa should have started in the middle of the bus...then in 10 years move up one more seat. Eventually she would get to the front, in 80 years.

But regarding your overall point haha, yes pigeonholing yourself into a singular term is dangerous but that is something that people often find themselves doing. You are also right, everyone suddenly likes to say they are a progressive; when you challenge them saying those values don't mesh up, well, suddenly who are you to decide what is a progressive...so then why call yourself one if it isn't the actual thing. As I said, it's is in vogue and helps with the polls.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Phoebe Loosinhouse Now we're getting to the heart of it. Human perception has been made into a battlefield; the target is the human imagination; the aim is to colonize it. You do that by controlling what words mean. Visibility is the key, or perhaps I should say audibility: who and what gets heard by tens of millions or more?

When tens of millions (or more) hear words being used in a particular way, over and over again, those words end up being defined however they are used where they are widely heard. In other words, the 24/7 news cycle exists to rewrite the dictionary:

How do people like us get the visibility, or audibility, necessary to even be able to strike a blow on that battlefield? So far, there are two answers: independent social media, and Bernie. Or not really Bernie himself, but someone who has instant access to legacy media because of his rank. Legacy media rarely completely black out a Senator. That said, they did their damnedest to do just that last year. But one of the things that rank affords a person is that it's easier for them to be seen and heard. If a United States Senator who's running for President comes to town, generally people spread the word. If I ran for President and came to town, far fewer people would hear about it and far fewer people would come to my event. If I didn't run for President and came to town just to organize because things are bad, almost nobody would come.

Occupy got around this by sitting in a public park and refusing to move. The Standing Rock Sioux are, obviously, in a more remote location, but they're doing a version of the same thing. Add a refusal to leave plus ubiquitous portable cameras being carried on people's persons, throw in the Internet, and you have coverage.

Unfortunately, the establishment has developed fairly effective countermeasures. They can't shut down the signal (hence my handle), so they've figured out a million ways to muddy the waters, exploiting the anonymous nature of the Net to deploy trolls and sockpuppets who can poison the message or twist it. As one company said of their work on climate change, "Our business is to sow doubt."

But anyway, this is one reason people are obsessed with politicians and elections; they are visible.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Phoebe Loosinhouse

Any term can be made into a general term with a questionable definition. If you're Wolf Blitzer, you can lie all day long about everything, including what the word "liberal" means or what the word "progressive" means--the problem isn't in the flexibility of the words:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that's all.”

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Phoebe Loosinhouse I was and am a proud Bernie supporter, but I always chafed at being called a "Berner." It's a derisive term, coined and proliferated by the Establishment, meant to imply "Burner," as in someone interested in burning everything to the ground.

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PriceRip's picture

          If Progressive means nothing then Nigger means nothing. I am not buying it at all. I have been around too long to allow anyone to take away and / or co-opt the very words I need to speak my mind. So, Bullshit I cry !

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Strife Delivery's picture

@PriceRip @PriceRip But isn't that the point? The term is slowly morphing away from what people were trying to designate themselves as. Nowadays, progressive is just slowly morphing into what Democrats are already are: socially liberal, with neoliberal economic policies and neoconservative foreign agendas. Obama is a progressive, Clinton is a progressive, was told that snooze machine Tim Kaine was a progressive, and corporate garbage Cory Booker is a progressive. At this point, who isn't a progressive?

Edit: I hop around the interwebs trying to catch various political discourse and opinion from folks, trying to gauge what thoughts are on certain topics. Something I often hear from more right-leaning individuals is that "Progressives have ruined this country the last eight years, now it is time for Trump". Again, progressive is being conflated with centrist, neoliberal, neoconservative policies of the Obama administration.

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PriceRip's picture

@Strife Delivery

          So lets pick another word, so that it will get taken, then another so that it will get redefined ? When will that end ?

          I am not interested in chasing after a word that doesn't exist. I have enough trouble describing well defined stuff in my own field where there are plenty of idiots that want to obfuscate. In this context this one, Progressive, is just fine.

RIP

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Bob In Portland's picture

@PriceRip I have found that the spectrum going from top to bottom is more accurate than left to right.

But I feel your pain.

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solublefish's picture

@PriceRip Don't allow others to define 'progressive' to mean, Humpty Dumpty, whatever they want it to mean. When people call themselves or others 'progressive' and they are full of shit by a fair standard of the word's meaning, call them on it and instruct.

I have done this on TOS in the past, and though there is no end to the stream of hopeless invective that may come as a response, I think it is worth the lesson in what progressive politics really is. A little political evangelism in the cause of justice is a good thing: there will always be some who get it and absorb it. Meanwhile, those who claim it will be held to a higher standard. So make a little spiel and memorize it.

The next question, then, is what IS 'progressive', really? I think the only defensible answer to that is one that has a historical basis. THE progressives were citizens and politicians alike in the early twentieth century who explicitly REJECTED the rule of of corporations and the tyranny of 'private power' over the rights of citizens. They believed that government was not only a potential threat to liberty, but was also a obligated ally and necessary champion of the liberty of ordinary persons against concentrated power of any kind. This principle is one they found at the heart of the liberal social contract theory of John Locke, and for which they drew warrant from the words of Paine and Jefferson, among others. They insisted that the government had a role to play as a REGULATOR of the economic activity of the nation, to ensure that activity was pursued in accord with the general welfare, and as a REDISTRIBUTOR of wealth unjustly distributed by the normal economic processes of a capitalist society, and as a GUARANTOR of essential goods and services (from roads to postal service to education to, hey, why not internet and health care for all!).

I am not making this up: this I glean from reading the speeches of progressive champions from W.J. Bryan (of Populist fame) to Teddy Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson (really Brandeis), Herbert Croly, and Robt. LaFollette, among many others.

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PriceRip's picture

@solublefish

          I refuse to give up the word just because others try to pervert its meaning. I did that once with "liberal" and regretted it. Going through the 1950s and 1960s on the "wrong side" of the race issue taught me the importance of words. I have spent too much time steeped in the progressive tradition to let this go, so this is where I draw the line in the sand, and the rest can do as they please.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@PriceRip IMO, we're focusing on the wrong thing. Any word can be taken from us. The key is not to find the right word, but to develop both large- and small-scale means of dissemination of our words, defined as we choose to define them. Also, we need to have a much closer relationship with our audience, and, perhaps (I'm not sure of this) eventually democratize the relationship between speaker and listener.

Most Americans know the media are lying sacks of shit. But if the only water you have access to is a polluted puddle, you'll probably drink from it sooner rather than later.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

PriceRip's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

I am not interested in chasing after a word that doesn't exist.

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riverlover's picture

@Strife Delivery In other words, libtard. A hate word, I think. No, a hate word tossed as a conversation-stopper.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

mimi's picture

@PriceRip @PriceRip
I cry back: Progressive is a word that invites weaseling with its meaning. And that's what people do. To me it's a weasel word. And your comparison to the meaning of "nigger" is fubar. At least fubar is not a weasel word. And "nigger" had a real non-weaseling meaning and was more fubar than fubar.

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PriceRip's picture

@mimi

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mimi's picture

@PriceRip @PriceRip
ok, I remember years ago that I suggested in a thread to MB at TOP that the definition of "Progressive" was not clear. He was not amused and said that my suggestion makes no sense. I hope that consoles you, as you are in fine company with your opinion about the word "progressive" and I am sent into the corner to "reflect" about my bad thinking.

People, who self-identify as progressive, are among themselves very different in their political activities. How can this be, if the word "progressive" would be clearly defined?

PS I think your sig-line is nailing me on my head directly now. Smile

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@mimi I don't see why. "Progressive" has a specific historical meaning. Not everyone who uses it knows about it, but it does. I always used it with that historical meaning in mind:

https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/progressive-era.cfm

Of course, the Progressive Movement was far from perfect; people have found racism within it; they were, unlike the socialists, reformers rather than revolutionaries, which is problematic. But the core of their message was anti-corruption, and the focus of their gaze was the rise of unfettered corporate power and the graft which allowed it to control the government.

That's what I meant when I called myself a progressive. If I don't call myself one now, it's not because of bullshit like Hillary or Cory Booker or Tim Kaine calling themselves progressives (or Jared Polis for that matter). It's because I no longer believe that working within the system can lead to anything helpful.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

in general may be in the process of disintegrating. The old labels don't correspond very closely to personal belief-structures any more, nor do they clearly describe actual, real-world patterns of social organization. Of course people can still be categorized politically, but I don't think they identify themselves primarily as being loyal to a particular political "ism" - at least, not nearly as much as they once did.

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native

gulfgal98's picture

@native We have been conditioned to think in terms of left and right, but the real direction is up and down. One of the great gifts of Occupy was this redefinition of where our focus should be. IMHO, when we take the old bastardized terminology out of the conversation, and simply replace it with the concept of the 1% versus the rest of us, then people begin to understand who the real enemy is. It is not those of us on the left, but those who are dominating all of us economically and otherwise who are the super wealthy or the oligarchs.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

that what is left of democracy can be saved.

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mimi's picture

@LaFeminista
Thank God. Me too. At least in my mind. Wink

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Cassiodorus's picture

to demonstrate that there is really any politics going on at all. Otherwise we may presume that "politics" is merely a construction of fantasy worlds about "how one would like things to be" in the absence of any concrete, physical means from getting from here to there. And fantasy worlds are fine, except that without any dance with the world our fantasy concepts become mere talk.

So this is what "progressive" has become: a fantasy without any dance with the world. There is certainly no point to the values in one's declaration of values, for instance, if one is going to vote for the likes of Hillary Clinton or Dianne Feinstein or Chuck Schumer. "Progressivism" serves as a tribal affiliation: we are Team (D), and we may stand for no relation to the world but we are still proud of being Team (D) and if you call us on it we will ask you to shut the fuck up.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Strife Delivery's picture

@Cassiodorus @Cassiodorus Besides the issue of tribalism (which is a vicious disease), is the bridge between one's values and thoughts to an actual physical manifestation, or simply, real world results.

I mean, how many people feel that the political realm is ABOVE them, something foreign and removed from them, vs. the reality that you coincide (or should) with your government body? How many people feel that they themselves could run for a certain office?

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mimi's picture

@Strife Delivery
heh, Donald Trump believed it and as you know we little people are all Donald Trumps now./s

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Strife Delivery's picture

@mimi Well I find myself quoting him a lot, and enjoying myself. He may be one of the easiest Presidents to quote:

"Sad"
"Wrong"
"Going to win bigly"

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mimi's picture

@Strife Delivery
you forgot that one ...

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Cassiodorus's picture

@Strife Delivery @Strife Delivery @Strife Delivery the modern consumer makes a poor political animal. The modern consumer is designed, in ways significantly apropos of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and (initially) in a great act of world-economy-saving performed shortly after World War II, to enjoy individual acts of commodities-purchase and to celebrate the passage of recreational time with prearranged activities.

The political enthusiast, on the other hand, asks the modern consumer to "be political," which might mean protest or meeting-attendance or writing letters or running for office or donating money or something like that. But since the modern consumer is not equipped to do any of those activities in ways that "add up," at least not with the aid of political "professionals" (see e.g. David Brock or Jonathan Cowan), the activities are all degraded and politics as physical transformation is handled at the meetings and cocktail parties where the system's elites are in attendance.

This is why the Bernie Sanders phenomenon is so important, and it's also why the elites are trying to see that it never happens again, just like they never want Occupy to happen again either. See my diary currently up.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Strife Delivery's picture

@Cassiodorus
Agreed.

P.S. Nice call out to Brave New World, one of my favorite books.

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solublefish's picture

@Cassiodorus Yes, to everything you said about the problem of consumerism. But then, the problem with socialism is it takes too many evenings...

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PriceRip's picture

@Strife Delivery

          I mean, how many people feel that the political realm is ABOVE them, something foreign and removed from them, vs. the reality · · ·

          I wonder this all the time, no wait, that is not true! I mean, "how many people feel that Physics is ABOVE them, something foreign and removed from them, vs. the reality · · · See, I wonder all the time about how people function without understanding something so trivial as elementary particle physics. For me most political talk is profoundly puzzling because most people refuse to actually care about real Reality, preferring a cartoon version where the rules are mutable on a whim.

          Funny thing it is, that thing called perspective.

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Strife Delivery's picture

@PriceRip Either I'm not necessarily getting your point, or vice versa

I mean, how many people feel that the political realm is ABOVE them, something foreign and removed from them, vs. the reality that you coincide (or should) with your government body?

My statement isn't meant to be borne out of arrogance, saying that I know the ins and outs of our political system (going to admit I don't know all the senate rules and all that jazz). You cut off a portion of my statement there that helps define my point.

My use of the word above wasn't meant to be intellectual, it was meant to be unreachable. That's why our government feels so foreign and removed from us as the people. It is above us, almost out of reach from the people to exert control. But the idea is that people are meant to coincide on equal footing with their government, not be ruled from up above outside any idea of being changed.

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PriceRip's picture

@Strife Delivery

          I find this statement to be funny:

Besides the issue of tribalism (which is a vicious disease), is the bridge between one's values and thoughts to an actual physical manifestation, or simply, real world results.

I mean, how many people feel that the political realm is ABOVE them, something foreign and removed from them, vs. the reality that you coincide (or should) with your government body? How many people feel that they themselves could run for a certain office?

          Particularly this part, "how many people feel that the political realm is ABOVE them, something foreign and removed from them, vs. the reality · · ·"

          People are very good at not feeling connected to reality. Many of those same people use a cartoon version of reality so that they feel like they are connected to real reality. This perception of lack of control, understanding, being less than capable, et cetera spans the entirety of human knowledge and activities.

          So, are you saying people feel our government is unreachable?:

My use of the word above wasn't meant to be intellectual, it was meant to be unreachable. That's why our government feels so foreign and removed from us as the people. It is above us, almost out of reach from the people to exert control. But the idea is that people are meant to coincide on equal footing with their government, not be ruled from up above outside any idea of being changed.

          That's what I thought you meant. Just like people think they are incapable of understanding the fundamental nature of Reality.

          Perhaps I write a bit too cryptically. Perhaps, I do not understand what you are writing.

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asterisk's picture

@Strife Delivery

I mean, how many people feel that the political realm is ABOVE them, something foreign and removed from them, vs. the reality that you coincide (or should) with your government body? How many people feel that they themselves could run for a certain office?

You have hit a key point I think. I have had people at TOP tell me humbly that they are not as qualified to express their opinions as the 'experts' who post there.

These people had reasonable thoughts they shared in clear English. Too many of the decent people have been intimidated by the thought police. They want to do something to work on the problems in this country, but their confidence has been undermined so much they cannot decide where to start.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Cassiodorus Your point is good, but the fact is that the fight has progressed (heh) beyond that. They are now attempting to monopolize the human imagination.

Conceiving of something is certainly not enough, but if one can't conceive of something, one certainly won't be able to do it. So they are attempting to monopolize thought itself. Then they won't have to worry about people coming up with concrete plans.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

detroitmechworks's picture

AND they get to use ours too when it suits them.

That's the problem with anything attempting to label itself as the ultimate "Good". You have lots of evil little shits using the name to do something that's NOT even remotely close to the meaning.

For example, I'll use the Term "Feminist". Unpack that if you have a couple years to spend on "No True Scotsman" fallacies.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@detroitmechworks It's nice to have someone else see what I see, even when it's horrible.
Yes, Hillary just put the last nails in the coffin of feminism.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Bob In Portland's picture

Now I'm going to listen Patti Smith's "Ask The Angels". I'd always presumed her angels were metaphors, but with her recent hanging out with the current pope I'm not sure if they are more than metaphors or if the current pope has moved them from the category of supernatural to metaphor.

You know what I mean?

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@Bob In Portland @Bob In Portland Smith's memoir, Just Kids, if you haven't read it. It's very evocative of that period of time in NYC. It's both informative about her life (and relationship with mapplethorpe) and that time in NYC. It reminds me of Mary Woronov's memoir of her factory days. I found it the most evocative book on the warhol scene that I have read.

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Creosote.'s picture

@orestes Feels powerfully like that era felt to me, though I was living at First and 87th and not facing hunger -- for food at least -- while she knew the value of important books and could resell them at the Strand to buy cheese sandwiches at the Automat. But I got to the city when it was a place where one could find a sixth-floor walkup for $86 a month. Smith is a brilliantly direct writer.

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Wink's picture

relevant. Liberal, progressive... they all still work. Repubs and the RW know what they mean. That a handfull of conservaDems have co-opted the term doesn't make it less relevant.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

We can call ourselves "True Scotsmen..." (Scotspersons?)

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus likes sugar with his porridge."
Person A: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

Similarly, no true Scotsman would vote against drug re-importation!

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"We've done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."

@rmwarnick My Democratic senator voted against drug importation. Damn Him. I thought that he was a Progressive, but I guess the money from the drug companies was just too good to turn down.

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@rmwarnick My Democratic senator voted against drug importation. Damn Him. I thought that he was a Progressive, but I guess the money from the drug companies was just too good to turn down.

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It would be a fine thing IMO, if people would cease to think of themselves as being "ists" of any kind: whether R-can, D-crat, Sunni, Shia, Atheist, Fundamentalist, capitalist, or Socialist.

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native

PriceRip's picture

@native

naïveté

          It would be a fine thing IMO, if people would cease to think of themselves as being "ists" of any kind: whether R-can, D-crat, Sunni, Shia, Atheist, Fundamentalist, capitalist, or Socialist.

          Just try living without labels. We evolved this way, our very existence depended upon our ability to think in terms of "ists" and "isms" and to see patterns where none exist.

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@native we're human beings...it's what we do to a fault

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@native It's a fine thing, if you don't need to talk, or accomplish anything that involves more than one person.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

When I was an undergraduate student in a seminar on literary theory (a fascinating subject area that I recommend to all, although it does suffer from the usual academic jargon pissing contest), we, of course, studied Derrida and post-structuralism. The chief complaint of the opponents was that it was nihilistic. As a young upstart (who was unwittingly a post-structuralist since HS), I found them stodgy and defensive. Poststruarlism was as intuitive as structuralism.

Ah, but I eventually learned to agree with the defectors. Although Derrida's approach was intellectually rigorous, I had failed to see how post-structuralist thought could be dangerous in lazier hands. And that appears to be where we are today. Words no longer have meanings. People feel quite comfortable asserting their own meanings to terms, OED be damned. We see this intellectual anemia at TOP, for example, in great numbers. On another site recently someone referred to clinton as the left. I made the uncontroversial statement that this was an inaccurate moniker for clinton and was subjected to a "no true scotsman" rebuttal. He couldn't address the substance- what are the bases for asserting she is left- and didn't really feel he needed to do.

So, this intentionally dishonest or lazily self-serving practice has become epidemic. I think it is an expression of the general breakdown of our society. If we are no longer capable of shared meaning, we are utterly alienated. (Caveat- of course, shared meanings are never absolute; they are subject to regional differences, etc. But those are issues that are the subject of debate/discussion. What we get these days is- I say I'm a progresive and I get to define myself; you don't. I find it soul-sapping.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@orestes I went through the same process, except that I was one of the early naysayers. Well early-ish (1990s). In the 80s, in college, it was wonderfully freeing to play in the playgrounds the deconstructionists and other post-structuralists unveiled (though they wouldn't like that metaphor, I bet). But by the early 90s, I was shaking my head.

I remember, in particular, a post-structuralist socialist from Europe who came over to talk at Penn. She told us "All these forms of identity: nations, genders, etc.--are coming down. And that's a good thing!" What I immediately thought was "Yes, but what's waiting in the wings to replace it? The post-structuralist conception of the subject, rather than the self, looks an awful lot like the ideal customer for a multi-national corporation. And, in fact, the multi-national corporation itself looks an awful lot like the post-structuralist conception of the subject: no race, no gender, no particular home or nationality, no culture; it's located nowhere and everywhere (the P.O. box in the Caymans accentuates this fact more than refutes it). What I saw waiting in the wings to take over from the nation-state, which was dying, was international capital.

It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

To say that you "are" something only works if you are the one who defines what that something is. There has to be an agreement as to what a word refers to, before it can have a shared meaning. If enough people agree that the moon has become blue, and only a few think it's still yellow, then the yellow moon becomes a blue moon - without ever changing its color.

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native

PriceRip's picture

@native

          Spectroscopically nothing has changed. Reality is real. And, while you might wish to play word games, I don't have to have any respect for that bullshit.

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PriceRip's picture

          Lexicographers are not supposed to delineate words, their solemn duty is to define words according to the usage of the day. Hence, literally can mean figurative because "I literally died laughing last night!" is a legitimate "tweet" when sent the next day.

          So, a talking dinosaur is in error to list "literal" as an antonym of "figurative", sigh. Ah! except "antonym" is just a variant spelling of "synonym".

          My bad, progressive means [Redacted], I stand corrected. George Orwell would be so proud.

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and to descriptors; Orwell made this very point in discussing the use of the word "fascism" (which was one of the reasons that he shifted to the word "totalitarianism."

"Progressive" might still have some meaning but you have to couple it with "regressive" nowadays in order for it to make any sense in a political context, it seems to me.

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tapu dali's picture

Well, in Canada a few decades ago we had the "Progressive Conservatives", and a significant fraction then were "Red Tories" (meaning the left wing, of course. Smile

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There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.

tapu dali's picture

As one of my students said when I tried to explain the difference between "its" and "it's".

Bqwhatqwever.

And this was a freshman physicist.

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There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.

trying to get at.

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native

hellinahandcart's picture

because he didn't run away from the republican branding of what a liberal was/is, but boldly rebutted and embraced it. Where are these people in our Congress, today?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3oY93doosg

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Although I don't know if there's an end point they have in mind--some term they want us to claim, like "socialist" or "anarchist" that they can easily demonize--or if it's just that they want there to be no way for us to articulate or define ourselves.

I suspect the latter.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver