@Socialprogressive

I could use a good sci fi/fantasy or gaming convention about now.

How sad she sold out faster than a comic con convention.
Until she starts fighting to pass the legislation she campaigned on, her snappy tweets are just empty words.

@AverageJoe42 Rumors flew she was a "plant" even during her run for office.
She is the most articulate party line advocate bartender ever.

You can't change a corrupt system while playing by its rules. I think AOC's lack of experience and maturity made her an easy target for old hands like Pelosi and the Dem Party as a whole to "bring her around." She and the rest of the Squad have been talked into settling for crumbs and become apologists for the system they were elected to change. Same as it ever was. Sad and sobering that it only took one term in the House for this to happen.

@Dr. John Carpenter

into plain english sounds more like
"puts me in a bad light"
which is good
get up on the stage
and show your stuff
either deliver or you
get booed

It is not about substance so much
anymore as appearance...
massaging the message for the masses

Yeah, I know who on the left looks like they’re making bad faith critiques. (Hint: they’re using IdPol as a shield to deflect criticism of old, white Joe Biden and the Democrat Party and gaslighting people who look at Biden’s long history of hurting BIPOC and predict, as Joe had promised, we’re in for more of the same.)

To address your question, let me paraphrase an old bumper sticker: if you’re not cynical, you’re not paying attention. This isn’t a position of privilege or my white privilege or whatever. This is just paying attention. There are plenty of BIPOC people who share my cynicism and I’d argue they have even more entitlement to it.

I could be missing the point, but it really feels to me like what they’re talking about is believing the Dems have the ability or even the desire to “do the right thing”, if you will. If someone can’t look at their actions, not their words, and get why someone on the left might be cynical about the Dems intentions, they’re straight up lying to themselves.

The Democrats have consistently done the wrong thing, when give the chance. Not only, but they’ve shown open contempt for people who care about the things I do, cynically (there’s that word!) using them to try to coral votes when they need them, otherwise explicitly stating they’re not going to happen and giving them dismissive contempt (ala Pelosi).

Frankly, I owe the Democrats nothing. But if they expect my votes and support, they’ve got a lot to prove. That’s not cynical. That’s getting something for your vote, which is the point. Just because the Dems occasionally wrap themselves in kente cloth and kneel doesn’t mean they’re doing anything to make anyone’s life better. Merely paying lip service to the problems while not fundamentally changing anything (which has been literally true so far, AOC) solves nothing and only wokewashes the decline.

And my $64,000 Question: If the Dems are planning on doing all this progressive stuff, why did they rig the primary for Joe Biden? No one ever has an answer for that one.

Thanks for the analysis. I don’t know a ton about the DSA but in passing it seems like there’s a growing struggle between emphasizing the D and emphasizing the S. I think you kind of spoke to that here. You’ve got the same concerns I have about M4A and Green New Deal.

(Edit: I made a couple of additions. I’ve read this interview already, but this gave me the feels all over again. Hah)

@CS in AZ

That's what all that Don't Think of an Elephant and Moral Politics stuff by George Lakoff was about, back in the day. Also Jeffrey Feldman, in his Framing the Debate.

The problem is transmission. We can try to invoke the frames we know people have, tell stories that activate those assumptions and stir the accompanying emotions with language and image. We can get smart about marketing and stop trying to convince people to be logical. But then we're essentially like John Henry racing against the steam drill. Goebbels was right in that repetition is one of the essential keys to manipulating people. We can't repeat our stories as often as the elites can. It was bad enough that they owned the mainstream legacy media, and plenty bad enough that the intelligence community, the military, and even the private sector pay people to come online and influence conversations in one direction or another--or destroy them. But now they have non-human "people," the number of which they can expand more or less at will, who can do everything from rate a video up or down to make a #MeToo allegation. For those who like #MeToo, I'm not saying that every story is false or every person who makes an accusation lying. I am saying that it would be easy as pie to program one or more of the many non-human personalities online to make one or multiple accusations against someone. It would also be easy as pie to have different personalities run by the same person argue on both sides of an issue to create a flame war that burns a site or a YouTube channel down. Even if most of such attempts failed, the sheer number of attempts that can be made by software per day is far more than most people, especially unpaid amateurs (in the old sense of "doing it for love) can match.

The only way to counter the flood of lies is to be where it's not. So the first order of business would be finding those who already know it's a flood of lies, and making a place where the lies are, for the most part, not allowed to take hold. Preserving the culture of reason and finding its advocates are the first goal--gotta be. The next step would be creating some alternative media infrastructure. We were on the verge of doing that--or at least doing an alpha version of it, and setting up some beta tests--during Occupy. But most of that ground to a halt when Occupy was removed from the public square.

The only chance we'd have to use our better stories in a strategically sound way involves spending a significant amount of time talking to each other, preferably face-to-face in person, but certainly, at least, voice-to-voice. That's one reason Occupy had to be taken down. Too many Americans talking to each other about their lives. And across party and ideological and class and gender and nationality and age lines, too. Not so much across racial lines, unfortunately, for reasons I totally understand (I remember one black guy in NYC said "I'm not giving the cops any reason to come after me.")

I would like to respond to the closing part of your essay.

Rather, what should truly matter to you is whether or not her argument about the Left holds up to logical scrutiny. A proactive argument would avoid the disparagement of cynicism while looking to dispel what cynicism can be found. That isn't the argument pursued here -- not by McIntosh, nor by Ocasio-Cortez.

I agree with your observation here, she's not making a logical argument. But as to why that should be the thing that matters, I am not sure you've made that case. Because the thing is, she is not trying to make a logical argument. She is not citing anything factual to make these statements, she is telling a story.

She's telling the story that essentially, there are people at the bottom rungs who are marginally better off with Joe Biden as president, and so if you criticize Joe Biden, somehow you are hurting those people.

It's such a stupid argument that to even call it an "argument" from a logical standpoint is laughable. It is pure storytelling. And it is a story specifically designed to shut down criticism of the Biden administration.

This kind of thing is the basic bread and butter of politicians and the entire career of being in politics. Telling the best stories is how they win, or try to. I think you are suggesting that facts and logic should be emphasized because such an analysis would potentially overcome such storytelling as a power for getting people to change their behavior in supporting such politicians. That logic would help voters to stop acting based on the stories and start using logical analysis instead to make decisions? But what about if stories, pathos, is actually more effective and powerful? Then it seems what we need would be better stories, not better use of facts and logic.