The difference between liberals and leftists
I was reading this article and shaking my head in disgust, when I had an epiphany.
Fifty-one percent of Democrats in the Economist-YouGov survey say they have a somewhat or very favorable view of the 43rd president, while 42 percent hold a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Bush.
I remember Dubya. He was, and still is, a war criminal. That hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is liberals.
How can they forgive him?
To understand this, it requires a deep dive into tribal politics. Fortunately, this article does the hard work for me.
Party loyalists believe the gap between the two parties is huge. The Republican party is so egregiously horrible, they argue, that it is imperative to remain loyal to our only hope of stopping them: the Democratic party. This viewpoint is captured in a recent Democratic Campaign Coordinating Committee sign reading “Democrats 2018: I mean, have you seen the other guys?”
...Leftwingers, on the other hand, see the gap between Democrats and Republicans as smaller. They like to point out examples of silent bipartisanship: the complicity of Democrats in the disastrous war in Iraq and the racist war on drugs, for example, or the Obama administration’s continuation of Bush-era, corporate-driven education reform.
Behind this divide is a failure to see eye-to-eye over certain larger narratives – narratives that leftwingers talk about more than liberals do. The left often situates both parties within broader conceptual frameworks, such as neoliberalism, corporate power and imperialism. To defeat these larger, nefarious societal structures and historical trends, leftwingers argue, we must identify them and prepare a plan to conquer them – a task more difficult than just defeating the Republicans at the ballot box.
Many liberals, meanwhile, either have not thought about, do not believe in, or do not prioritise addressing these forces.
This is the critical point: liberals do not share my values.
Liberals don't care about our endless wars that slaughter innocent people and bankrupt the nation, just like Republicans.
Liberals don't care about wealth inequality because they believe in a capitalist meritocracy that doesn't exist, just like Republicans.
Oh sure, liberals give lip-service to leftist values, but then they forgive war criminals too. So who cares what they say?
Simply, liberals are as different from leftists as liberals are from conservatives.
So what do liberals value? The appearance of protecting minorities.
I say "the appearance" because liberals are delusional.
What’s more, the threat of Republican power, liberals point out, is especially acute to marginalised communities: whereas privileged idealists can afford to say “it has to get worse before it gets better,” immigrants at risk of deportation, black people at risk of police brutality and gay couples at risk of having their rights rolled back do not have the same luxury.
Which makes some sense, until you look at the track record (i.e. facts).
Let's start with "immigrants at risk of deportations".
Obama was the “deporter-in-chief” so you might think that liberals wouldn't like him.
Nope. Liberals are still in love with him.
Well, it's OK because Trump is so much worse to immigrants than Obama was, right?
Nope. Obama was, and is, still worse than Trump.
Mostly deportations have remained lower than in past years under the Obama administration. From January to June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 61,370 criminals, down from 70,603 during the same period last year.
The same can be said about blacks, who are worse off under Obama.
There is no reconciling this huge gap between what liberals believe and value and reality.
What's more, pointing out these indisputable facts regarding immigration and the AA community on places like DKos will trigger unhinged fury and accusations of racism from liberals.
Why is that?
I used to think it was because of shameless, hypocritical, opportunistic, partisan politics. Now I think the reason is much deeper: Identity Politics.
Identity pertains not simply to the kind of person that we are. People have been sorted (and self-sorted) into kinds throughout history. Identity is different. First, it carries a determination about guilt or innocence that nothing can appreciably alter. Its guilt is guilt without atonement; its innocence is innocence without fault. No redemption is possible, but only a schema of never-ending debts and payments. Second, this schema is made possible because identity politics is, tacitly or expressly, a relationship — something quite different from sorting (and self-sorting) by kinds. In the identity-politics world, the further your distance from the epicenter of guilt, the more debt points you receive. What is the epicenter of guilt? Being a white male heterosexual. The debt points are not real currency, but they offer something that mere money cannot: a sense of moral superiority. “Join us,” says the Democratic party, “and though your actual wounds cannot be healed, or even eased, by our policies and programs, they can be covered with the cloak of righteousness.” This is the stuff of religion, not normal politics.
Hostility to contradictory facts and reality.
The delusion of moral superiority simply by inclusion in 'the club'.
Original Sin.
Blind loyalty to authority figures and institutions.
A child's-coloring-book knowledge of the real history of their basic tenets.
The inability of the leaders to accept responsibility for failures, and instead assigning the blame to a lack of faith and will in the little people.
You could just as easily be talking about a religious cult, or about the current state of liberal Identity Politics.
Of course, Republicans are no better, and in some ways are worse.
Like liberals, Republicans have their own "white version" of Identity Politics, with all of the same magical thinking, hostility to facts and logic, blind loyalty to authority figures, and of course a delusional reality.
The right, meanwhile, does not understand the divide, continuing to believe in a monolithic “radical left” filled with “radical liberals”. This leads to the funny situation, as one commentator noted, in which members of both the left and the right reach for the same “I made it through college without becoming a liberal” T-shirt.
Comments
Liberalism in fantasy and reality
Fantasy: (D) is better because... oh, I guess it's self-fulfilling, all the cool NGOs are (D) like crazy, and so everyone is co-opted from them downward.
Reality: At various places and times in the future, portions of planet Earth will experience climate departure, in which the seasons will no longer matter. In these places at these times, neither complaints about Russia nor attempts to get Mike Pence appointed President, the (D)'s collective strategy at present, will matter.
I should do a "Fantasy and Reality" series identifying dominant delusions in present-day social belief.
BONUS COVERAGE
password: AddletonAP2009
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Great point here.
"Identity is different. First, it carries a determination about guilt or innocence that nothing can appreciably alter. Its guilt is guilt without atonement; its innocence is innocence without fault. No redemption is possible, but only a schema of never-ending debts and payments."
Weaponized Identity Politics and the time of Trump coincide perfectly to once again, divide and conquer. If one does not buy wholly into the over-riding importance of Identity, then you are a defacto Trump supporter, or at the very least a sympathizer. And there simply IS no valid excuse for THAT, so you can be jettisoned without fear of mistake from all political discourse.
If you're willing though, to bow down to Identity, admit how much of a hateful racist, sexist, idealistic pie in the sky dreamer you really are and come to our "side" and swallow the Kool-Aid, THEN we'll welcome you with open arms. Don't do that though, dissent from our position, and we'll see to it you suffer endlessly for that wholly unforgivable action.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Favorability polls
link
I made a comment on ToP about income inequality
and how it went way up during Obama's tenure. I was told that first, Obama couldn't get his legislation passed because republicans blocked him for 8 years. Then I was informed that Obama entered office with a Great Recession happening because republicans passed the Bush tax cut and then invade Iraq on false pretenses and did nothing while the US hemorrhaged jobs...blah, blah, blah.
I asked him if there had ever been a weaker president that couldn't figure out a way past the nasty republicans? Then I reminded him that democrats made the tax cuts permanent, Obama too invaded a country on false pretenses and after his attorney general found that banks had committed massive fraud, Obama protected them from prosecution. Plus, most of the new jobs that were created were part time jobs or low paying ones.
Obama Bailed out Wall St. and
let the peons swing in the wind,and don't forget the Catfood Commission. Limousine (or Volvo, BMW) Liberals do ok no matter who's in power. They'll get the tax cuts, their investments are safe.
More of Obama's legacy.
Obama not only let banks off for their crashing the global economy, but he did nothing while banks continued to commit fraud and take people's homes from them. 9 million people lost their homes and because he did nothing to them, hedge funds and other financial institutions bought them for pennies on the dollar. One person bought 5,00 houses and is now renting them out for high rents and they have become absent slum lords. Plus they have jacked the prices for rents and people are having problems finding affordable rental homes. The amount of homes that were taken off the market has made it difficult for younger people to buy their first homes. This is directly related to Obama not doing anything to stop foreclosures.
I haven't posted comments on ToP for a few years, but I couldn't help myself this week. I said that income inequality went up during Obama's tenure and a few other things and these are some of the comments in reply.
My comment
Heh. There replies
Answer is:
"I don't believe it can melt beams in symmetry, 190 floors down and drop an 1800 foot building in it's own footprint AND drop an adjacent building that had no jet fuel coursing through it... call me crazy, as you did, but it strains credulity.
The real answer is that GWB did EVERYTHING possible to protect America, including scrambling jets to intercept the passenger jets that were in the air for an hour and a half after being hijacked.
Personally, I think Putin did it."
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
A recent article on the towers falling
showed numerous other buildings that had burned for much longer than the towers did that were still standing. The kicker is building 7 though. How many buildings have fallen in their footprints just because they had been on fire? People say that they had also been hit with the debris from when the towers fell, but seriously?
Plenty of people were told not to go to work that day. Then there's the number of people who pulled their stocks out of the airlines or bought some type for if something happened to the airline industry.
Just too many discrepancies for it to be believable.
I thanked him for following me around the nets.
This has to be the funniest thing I've read all year.
The Democratic Party platform doesn't mean jack shit because that's not how the DP operates. The Dems have spent nearly 40 years racing Republicans ever rightward when it comes to actual policy. The platform is nothing more than rhetoric at this point.
The fact that the assholes at Daily Kos continue to make excuses for the Fracker and Deporter in Chief just goes to show how far to the right they've gone. If FDR or Truman could, they'd rise from the grave and beat their asses senseless.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
D Party politicians can
climb up or down off their platform at will... they do it all the time.
But if politics is the art of convincing people that you mean what you say, the Dems have been doing a piss poor job of it. I doubt that blaming Trump and Putin is going to help them... not even if they team up with neocons and the MIC.
native
I pointed out that Obama also ran on the most progressive
platform and look at how that turned out.
It doesn't matter what anyone says to people who are hung up on Obama's charisma and his beautiful family, they will not see him for who he is. Plus, he is entitled to get paid almos half a million for a one hour speech. Because.
I replied to the person who said that Obama inherited a recession that it wouldn't have been so bad if Clinton hadn't deregulated the banks and signed NAFTA which saw millions of jobs go overseas.
Funny, they have stopped responding to me.
For a Democrat to lose faith
in both Obama and Clinton, is often equivalent to losing faith in much else besides. In many cases that is a lot of faith to lose. It's no wonder that so many still cling to the system that produced it. Especially considering a lack of anything better.
native
It's fascinating that his rebuttal consists primarily
of completely unrelated accusations against you, you won that round by default. This shows how far the GOS has fallen, in that they actually stalk people around the internet, and hold them accountable for what they've said elsewhere, SteveD actually got banned for what he's said here, not there, and he's not the only one.
I used to enjoy your comments over there back when it was run by humans, but now we're here, so it all works out.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Most of us made intelligent comments over there, dervish
they just fell on deaf ears. As seen in their responses to my comments. It's team D for them all the way just like they used to make fun of people who voted for republicans because of "gawd, guns and gays"
Watching them expand on how Russia interfered with the election has been more sad than humorous. Each new tidbit about a news organization writing some new way that the election was interfered with gets 3-4 diaries each days.
Facebook has destroyed democracy forever in this country because Russia placed ads telling the BLM protesters where to meet up next and what to do. Even though the BLM started in 2014 after Mike Brown was murdered by Wilson. Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and the other blacks that were killed by the police gave their lives for Russia so it could keep Hillary out of the WH. Does this sound stupid? Absolutely. So does their imaginations.
I agree with you that this has worked out better for us. We have the great writers and great commentary, but we don't have to put up with people that tell us that we are wrong or have to deal with numerous pie fights and 7 armed trolls.
Kos must be hurtin for money these days
Every front page diary has a petition on it asking people to sign and tell congress or someone to stop something from happening.
One says to sign the petition:
Puerto Rico needs aid not debt
Other are just to sign your name so that you can say that you signed your name.
The ones that don't have a petition ask people to donate money to a certain candidate.
People who sign petitions get to have their email address sold to a third party advertising company.
IIRC, kos gets a cut of any donation.
Heh. The Kos exit has done a lot of damage to his pockets. Maybe he should have thought about this before his March ultimatum. Remember, actions have consequences.
I stay on TOP email list
just to enjoy the announcement that they missed their monthly target and can I chip in the amount of the day. I know longer use sugar in my morning coffee.
Have you noticed how many names you don't recognize?
there are so many new members that joined during the election and I wonder how many were correct the record folks that came there to hit back against the criticism of Herheinous and decided to stick around?
I get a laugh from the type of petitions that they post.
@snoopydawgColor me shocked a
Color me shocked a regular at DKos has no idea how an economy works.
no idea
Or the federal government, for that matter.
For the first two years of his first term, President Obama had solid majorities in both houses of Congress, including 60 votes in the Senate. He could very easily have delivered on all his major campaign promises in those two years when he had this in his hand. Instead, he worked on getting the "healthcare reform" clusterfuck (Romneycare) passed, which single act cost him the entire rest of his Presidency.
We remained in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are still there today.
The Guantanamo Bay prison base is still open and full of the prisoners he promised would have been dealt with one way or another. And the Bush tax cuts, which accelerated income and wealth inequality at the expense of ordinary working-class Americans, were made permanent.
Our hopes were dashed, and nearly all the change he delivered was for the worse.
But, of course, the "vote blue no matter who" cadre over at Daily Kos can't be bothered with all that crap. They refuse to face the fact that we don't need two conservative parties in this country. (We really don't even need one.)
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Color me shocked
That those GOS toddlers can't help themselves but lurk/spy over here just so they can run back to Daddy and tattle.
If we were truly irrelevant, they wouldn't waste their time.
tattle
Great point!
We're relevant, all right. And the powers-that-be over on Daily Kos can't stand it.
We represent the very things the current Kos populace wants rendered extinct, and what this Essay calls leftists.
In my parents' heyday, we would have borne the "liberal" moniker, and that proudly. As FDR and JFK did, and LBJ in domestic policy.
What this Essay calls "Liberals" were known by other names back then: limousiners, milquetoasts, two-faced liars, hypocrites.....
Today, of course, the labeling has shifted. And survivors from the 1960s and 1970s don't appreciate the loss of "liberal" describing what they still believe in. That's one reason the term "progressive" has caught on as it has.....
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
@gjohnsit
Beg to differ with the author; the Dems need to be cleaned out and replaced with actual people who believe in democracy, or to be replaced with a party of, by and for the people, who actually believe in democracy. Better yet, both, and a Fair Vote system!
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
To put it another way
Leftists want to stop firing Tomahawk missiles, while liberals want to rename them because they are offensive to Native Americans.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." --Noam Chomsky
Oh Snap!
That's a perfect example!
Gender Neutral Unicorn Horns!?!? ROFLMAO! That one wins...
the internet....
I literally laughed so hard I dropped my bubbler fumbling for a paper towel to clean up the water I shot everywhere from involuntarily laughing into it. (Fortunately it didn't break or you'd have owed me a new one just for linking that!
)
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
@movie buff
Classic! Couldn't be a better illustration!
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Top Comment!
That was great!
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Your comment & this essay
Are quite the hit on Facebook.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Excellent, is there a way to link to that?
I don't know much about that platform.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Both of the words, " liberal " and "conservative"
have been robbed of their original meanings, to the point where neither of them actually means very much at all. These words are now mainly signifiers -- each is intended to represent an entire range of beliefs and opinions, which may or may not correspond to those of the people who are said to hold them.
One is always asked: Are you A or are you B? No one is ever asked if they might rather be C, D, E, F, or G. These are not considered to be pragmatic options, in what we (very loosely) term our "democracy".
native
A debate leftists lost on TOP
During more naive times on TOP there was a debate which went like this.
Leftist: our duty is to do the right thing.
Liberals: our duty is to elect democrats.
Certainly with the ascension of Hillary, the Leftists lost the argument. Looking at the front page, natural extension of the battle. It is pretty much all about "republicans are evil". True enough but result is no self-critiques of the party after ten years of loses, nor discussion about the major forward, positive policies put forward by the Leftists as represented by Bernie's agenda.
This seems to be universally the case in other places.
Yep
This certainly describes many of them.
I frequently refer to the entire DNC as willfully stupid, and..
what levels of willpower they have!
Man, If I had half the willpower they did I never would have gotten up to 325 pounds with a 48 inch waist lol!
(Fortunately I am over 100 pounds lighter now and am down to a 34 inch waist, but that had less to do with willpower, more like self disgust, lol! Oh and pain, pain helped keep it off once I could no longer work out like I did to get there.
)
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
Leftists Lost Because the Boss Was a Neoliberal Asshat.
Same reason why Bernie Lost, and Dean, and Jackson.
He who owns the property makes the rules, same as it ever was.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Yep
The neoliberals won because they could decide who could talk and who couldn't
Say something The Powers That Be at TOP really didn’t like,
and they’d do the “Agent Smith meets Mr. Anderson (Neo)” number on you — the next time you tried to speak, you’d find they’d fused your lips together.
debate
We didn't "lose a debate"; we were ejected by force on the Ides of March, 2016, because there was too much danger we would win it.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
ROTFLMAO!
Leftist: our duty is to do the right thing.
Liberals: our duty is to elect democrats.
Certainly with the ascension of Hillary, the Leftists lost the argument.
How do you figure that?
We thought we should do the right thing. They thought they should elect Hillary and other Democrats.
Who succeeded?
"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
@MrWebster I'm sorry, Mr. Webster. I
I'm sorry, Mr. Webster. I think I misinterpreted your comment.
Apologies.
"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
@MrWebster Anyway, it's not exactly
Anyway, it's not exactly a debate when the moderator throws one side out the door and declares the debate lost by the guy whose ass he's kicking out into the rain.
"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
More on the DNC purge.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgm3p_nOAO4]
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
@The Aspie Corner
It's not a party, has no creditability, is busily poison-stinging those it expects to carry them and everyone else within range.
They are not normal people, they are psychopathic parasites.
The Dems are a dead donkey.
Demexit again, let them rot and start over elsewhere.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Yep, the epicenter of guilt.
I sometimes propose an Identity Politics scoring system when talking with Liberals. You get one point each for not being straight, white or male. Barack Obama would get a score of 1 as would Hillary Clinton. Kamala Harris gets at least a 2 while poor Bernie Sanders gets a 0. Policy proposals and positions on issues mean nothing and cannot add to or subtract from a person's score.
Simple, huh ?
Liberals don't usually appreciate this system.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
This is how it comes off
simple
My sister and I moved with her two young
kids to a duplex in a neighborhood of houses after a racial confrontation in the apartment we left. I had moved up to WA to get a job, and only thing I can think of is the black couple upstairs saw my AZ plates and decided I was a bigot. Didn't help when I went up late on Sunday night to ask them to tall their kids to stop pounding around in the room above me, that's what made it intolerable to stay there.
When we moved our new neighbors were a middle aged white couple, the husband every bit of the biker dude - long hair, full beard, forbidding look, etc. New landlord knew them, knew they were nice, and right there the landlord said something to the effect of "yeah, I bet that guy knows what it's like to be judged on appearance." They were very nice neighbors and I felt comforted by him out there in his garage, puttering around. LOL, he'd given up the Harley by then but he kept the look.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
I get that a lot too.
If I had a nickle for every time an inmate asked me to "Show him my Bolts" (Meaning the SS lightning bolt tattoo's that the Neo-Nazi's so love to sport.)
I'm an old biker myself, but took a different direction due to the influence of my buddies father, a Fire Captain whom he and his wife invited me to accompany his family to move to Lake Tahoe from New Jersey because he knew I was only fucking up there and unlikely to change unless I removed myself from that environment, and saw potential in me that I didn't see in myself. (To this day, he, not my biological father, is the one I call "Pop" and gets the only card I send out on Fathers Day.)
I just got lucky enough to have someone become my "Mentor".
I still strive to pay it forward to this day, I owe a tremendous debt to fate for intervening when it did.
So while I can't say I know the black experience, I can 100% understand being judged ahead of time, and to not deserve the conclusion, nor having to start out at a deficit due to that initial assessment.
One thing I know for certain though is that none of the positive changes I achieved would have ever occurred if the approach of "You SUCK! So change into what I find acceptable!" would have been used.
But that is what religions are all about.
Original sin immediately struck me as bullshit when the Catholics tried that approach on me and turned me towards the path of Atheism.
Just as, "Your a Racist, Misogynist, (Insert all other "ists" here) has driven me away from the SJW's.
Do I support social justice?
Totally.
Just not the justice that they perceive....
The blowback is only gonna get worse too, nothing drives people into the arms of your enemy, even if they were not your opponent to begin with, faster than telling people that they suck, are impure and morally inferior to you.
But hey, at least we found the one thing that the Democrats are good at.
Creating enemies where none previously existed.
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
...
[video:https://youtu.be/iKcWu0tsiZM]
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Man, that video is terrific.....
And that actress is phenomenal. She REALLY invoked a feeling of disgust in me and made me hate her. That takes skill.
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
DNC Strategery
For in depth analysis of American politics, fortunately we have The Guardian to clear things up. I was struck by this point:
Because pragmatism was what won elections for Tea Party Republicans and The Freedom Caucus? And when Obama and the Democrats controlled Congress they
enacted progressive legislationcontinued the same Reagan/Clinton/Bush economic and military policies that paved the way for catastrophic electoral loses at the ballot box.Establishment Democrats adjust their strategy to the reality of corporate campaign bribes. Establishment Democrats are just as corrupt as Republicans, but we should vote for them because they have better manners. Got it.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
@Meteor Man Liberals’ go-to strategy
Liberals’ go-to strategy is often thus: if you are losing, tack your policies to the centre to win; once you win back power, you can enact what you want.
You can enact what you want.
But instead you adopt an all-of-the-above Bush energy strategy, bail out the banks without helping defrauded homeowners or giving the bankers any incentive to behave differently next time, expand wars in the Middle East from 2 to 7, make the Bush tax cuts a permanent part of our economy, flush the toilet on the Bill of Rights, adopt a Paygo policy in Congress which requires Congress to cut an existing program every time they want to expand or invent a new one, lay more pipeline than any other President before you, muzzle the EPA on fracking, abandon the idea of single-payer, or even of a public option and give the public a doomed-to-implode Romneycare package, and create an anemic weak-tea stimulus that would make the inventors of the New Deal snort in derision.
You also enable a new political strategy in which every time someone criticizes one of your policies they are subject to character assassination as a racist.
"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
Lol, and obviously that's what they want to enact, because that's why they get the big bucks.
Only, please allow me to retract the laughter, because that hysterical sound keeps coming through the sobs.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I have seen comments that say just that on ToP
it doesn't matter to them if democrats can only get blue dawg members from deep red states because winning is everything. Or something. What they won't admit is that blue dawg democrats usually vote with republicans on policies that democrats are against. Look at how many times Mankin, Nelson and the other ones vote with republicans. There are 3 of them currently in congress that I know are going to vote with republicans.
Yeah, like smashing Libya's government was
such a wonderfully pragmatic thing to do. The Dems sure got rid of that dictator alright. Or how about bailing out billionaire banksters, while the public happens to be starving? Sheer pragmatism is what that was, no more and no less. Building more and better nukes is very pragmatic too -- so what if they cost a trillion dollars? It's all purely practical believe it or not, and it's a Democratic project too. Which improves it by definition. Of course, now that Russia is invading the Homeland (I read that somewhere) all good Democrats need to be more pragmatic than ever. If America'a Democrats weren't working so hard on our behalf, who knows what evil those Republicans might get up to?
native
@native I guess they prolonged
I guess they prolonged the survival of the petrodollar, which I guess was the point.
"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
Something worth checking out.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_rto6JPYQ8]
The funny thing about this is, the Democratic Party on its current path is very similar to the assholes talked about in this video.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Thatcher Praised Pinochet
I had an Uber Conservative college professor who told the class he considered himself a "classical liberal" and never could track down what he meant. I guess he was a classical liberal like William F. Buckley.
Excellent history lesson Aspie Corner! I missed Thatcher's praise for Pinochet when it happened. Jeesh.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
@The Aspie Corner
Only all I can see between the two sets of text is a big white blank. Nancy Pelosi, is that you in there?
Edited for an extra letter that snuck in there with Nancy.
And it times out again...
Re-edit: and now the video shows! Hope it's still there after another Terribly Long Sticky handshake with the site. Now beginning to wonder what all those time outs are for - not hand-washing, evidently, lol...
And another edit to say thanks for the video. Good to hear some sense!
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Thanks. I love long-term thinking
like this. The American public is not exposed to nearly enough of it.
native
Liberals Believe In the Wisdom of the Market, Leftist Do Not.
It is why I started calling myself a "Progressive" in the late 90s.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
that's definitely one of my classification markers
for distinguishing them from, uh, me.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Yeah, but until racism is entirely solved...
everything else can wait.
(Anon Identity Politics Person)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
@Bollox Ref I'm sure racial equality
I'm sure racial equality will matter a lot to the white and black corpses rotting on the surface of an uninhabitable planet in 40 years or so.
"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
So, liberals must be Daily Kos and
leftists must be most people here?
I don't get it man. Over my head. I just want Peace on Earth.
There’s NO PROFIT in peace.
The money comes with the sale of big tickets armaments, jets, ships, etc. We are the world’s one-stop shop for things manufactured to kill people. Peace cuts into their profits.
Therefore, world peace is NOT in our 1%’s best interests.
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
World Peace Is Not Profitable, Therefore It Is Impossible. nt
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
I'm Going to Get a Pony and Call It World peace. nt
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Profit Is the Meaning of Life.
are we, as a society, doing ANYTHING that doesn't generate
profits?
Serious question...
We don't.
The answer to the meaning of life seems to be Profit.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
@k9disc How do you define
How do you define profit?
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
"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
And Israel too, selling arms to, and training troops in, Myanmar
all of which are being used to drive out the Rohingya.
Israel refuses to stop arms sales to Myanmar, despite its campaign of rape, torture and massacres against the Rohingya
Top secret: Israel’s top court just ruled about arms sales to Myanmar. But we’re not allowed to tell you the verdict
Opinion: Israel, partner in genocides
One who fights monsters
should take care that the fight does not turn them too into a monster. (Nietzsche, de-genderized)
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
And where is it Israel gets their killing
machines????
The US and Israel are simply ‘gun running terrorist’ partners in my book.
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Liberals believe
in the equal opportunity for all peoples to exploit the working class.
Solidarity forever
@Akze Upper-middle class and
Upper-middle class and upper-class women should have the exact same right to be CEOs that their brothers and husbands do.
"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
I'm a little snowflake
short and stout, fill me up and pour me out. Heh heh heh!
The oligarchy's Guardian describes the democratic party
divide between the Clinton loyalists and the Sanders loyalists. That's a bullshit way to describe the left because there's a large portion of what should be considered the left that want nothing to do with Sanders and the democratic party. Both liberals and leftists in that regard are sellouts to the duopoly. It's why I don't even refer to myself as of the left anymore. Those living in the electoral politics world forget there's a whole separate world out there now.
I'm a Little, Not a Big. Therefore, I Don't Get to Influence
public policy, even if I vote.
If I wanted to influence public policy and have my voice heard, I'd be a Big, and could do something that not only influenced public policy and have my voice heard, but it would make me a shit ton of cash.
Big people matter, little people don't. Quite as simple as that.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
The telling thing
is that out of the political spectrum the left is the only position that seems to be totally incredulous to the media. They can accept racism, economic oppression, fake wars, torture as worth reporting and discussing as a political position, but a single payer, tax wall street, break up monopolies can't even be discussed. Too radical, can't happen, impossible, same as the view of all the current political parties. The Alt-Right can be viewed as a political entity, but the left can't.
The republican party doesn't have to control the limits
of it's ideology, they can use the far right to it's advantage. The democratic party does need to control the outer limits to keep real change for the people from happening.
We can't allow everything to be defined within these two political parties.
@Big Al Yes, and the one
Yes, and the one thing that both parties passionately agree on, is that the left MUST be stopped. It's a bipartisan, shared goal. I remember after Obamas first election he met with every faction of both parties by invitation......except the Left. They had to repeatedly ASK for a meeting. Don't know if it ever happened.
All big money, and therefore all big power,
is devoutly capitalist. How could it be otherwise? Is there any conceivable system by which the small could rule the large? I'm not sure they would want to, or be able to.
native
Perhaps in this era.
All power is conditioned by history. Capitalism, as Patel and Moore remind us, is a product of the 14th-century crisis of feudalism: the famine of 1315-1317, followed by the Black Death of 1348-1351, reduced Europe's population significantly, creating labor shortages, and then after that there were peasants' revolts in which the return to subordination afterward had to take on more of a business model than that granted by the manorial system. Later the 15th-century Reconquista in Spain was accomplished by (among other things) the kingdoms of Castile and of Portugal going into debt to Genoese creditors, who were paid off by money gotten through the production of sugar in Madeira and, later, by the exploitation of the New World. (Earlier loan payoffs of such scale had been achieved through conquest loot: the creditors who financed the Fourth Crusade in 1203-1204 were paid off by the loot of the conquest of Constantinople, thus for instance the Horses of St. Mark.)
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
@native
That's why an actual democratic government acts as the united power and arm of the people in protecting the public interest against all predatory self-interests.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
That's a beautiful answer, thank you.
It seems to me that it might form a good basis for the platform of a New Party.
native
This part, I mean:
native
@native
Well, it does kind of cover the basics, doesn't it?
The artificial construct of 'a country' essentially consists of its people, as much as it does the boundaries which contain it, as belonging as a Commons to these people; the interests of the country and people are mutual, that being good and sustainable for one being so for the other, the health and safety of the people being dependent on that of the natural environment; the welfare of the country and people must be paramount to remain within the bounds of sanity/sustainability and therefore must be the purpose of any efficient and effective government.
Clearly, some form of social democracy or other system placing the health, rights and happiness of the public and environment as the priority, and having the ability to protect the public good in all ways, would be the only manner in which we, as a species within the interdependent whole of planetary life forming the life support system, can survive.
We cannot long survive the suicidally murderous fascist state being imposed by the universally destructive and polluting corporate-serving economic and military means used by a relative and psychopathic few incapable of realizing what they are also doing to themselves.
Therefore, as stated, any legitimate democratic government must act as the united power and arm of the people in protecting the public interest against all predatory self-interests.
The parasites who poison, murder, control and drain their fellow-people and the environment kill not merely their Golden Geese but their hosts and must be eliminated from the body politic and isolated, like the disease-packed shits they are.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
The predatory self interests
involved are very large, and deeply embedded within the culture itself. Allowances for the anti-establishment Right would need to be made... if a more reform-oriented third force were to seriously challenge the reigning duopoly. A purely Leftist-oriented movement would not be able to prevail over the Center and the Right.
native
@native
Well, I personally figure, might as well aim high and toward this as a goal because it's pretty obvious that negotiating with the
terroristscorporate interests and those brainwashed against their own won't work.But if that ideal isn't going to be even recognized as necessary and possible - despite the US Bill of (guaranteed, inalienable) Rights generally hinting (for its time) at such an ideal, ponies are going to go as extinct as unicorns would have, had they existed, around the same time we do. And that route is our only hope of anything better than a miserable, short-term survival on a murdered Earth.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Obama had a meeting with five “Left-ish” bloggers
http://www.correntewire.com/blogger_meeting_obama_missed_opportunity
So much for that; the only noticeable effect seems to have been co-optation. As time went on, the invitees and similar blogs just became more and more pro-Dem-party establishment, revealing themselves as not really ever having been that “Left" after all.
@Big Al
That's because neither is an actual political party, just corporate interests pretending to offer voters a 'choice'.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
@Ellen North Ding ding ding
Ding ding ding ding ding--we have a winner!
"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
Pages