@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

please. those are HER words. to me, she's the gold standard, and her 'Leftists Explain Things to Me' trademark.

#18.1.1.2.2 Not interested in creating moral superiority or bitterness. Am interested in telling the truth and not getting conned.

@Big Al

thing is, what if some us don't want to be where others want to be: is that shakespearean? dagnabbit, this old john prine song just pinged, gotta go score it then shut down soon. sounds about right to me tonight.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ6INAayEJI]

#18.1.1.2.2 Heh, ya that's progressivism. Just a little bit of progress here and there and sooner or later we'll have a little bit of progress.
Eh, what the hell, we got decades to solve this problem. Nobody'll get hurt, just give it a chance.

The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.

Eugene V. Debs

Well, it's different now. We don't have a Eugene Debs, but we've got a 28 year old democratic party bartender.

Rock on.

@Pluto's Republic What a goddamned straw man (straw woman?). I'm a radical and I'm not preoccupied with foreign policy to the exclusion of all else. She's just saying that so that every time somebody brings up foreign policy people can level the charge of obsession at them.

Foreign policy and domestic policy are intertwined. The extrajudicial assassinations abroad are linked to the surveillance of my activities here at home. The fossil fuel economy I desperately wanted out of is linked to the bloody wars destroying people and their cultures abroad. Our agreements (debts?) with countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia also have an impact on my life here. Games the CIA plays in Latin America have impacts on drug use and the imprisonment of large numbers of people here. These facts should be obvious.

There are some issues that are more purely domestic. Radicals take stands on those too. I'd like her to show me a radical who doesn't want those Wall St. fuckers put in jail, now, and restitution made to the people they defrauded. I'd like her to show me a radical that doesn't want, at least, a living wage and a unionized workforce, if not a universal basic income and the end of capitalism here in this country. Radicals usually are out there defending Social Security and Medicare, not because they are solutions, but because their continuance is the only thing keeping people alive until we get out of this mess--and pension programs are as domestic as it gets.

This is discursive dirty pool. People who think I'm a purist about politics had better hold onto their hats when it comes to fair rules of debate. Nobody has seen how purist I can get until they see me confronted with illogical argument based on character attacks, malicious framing, and lies.

#18.1.1.2.2

Hey, Wendy, thanks for linking that Rebecca Solnit essay dissecting the concept of voting for the lesser evil. Or not voting. It is really a masterpiece, regardless of one's stance. She moved me all around the board. I especially like this particular example of the dilemma:

Liberals often concentrate on domestic policy, where education, healthcare, and economic justice matter more and where Democrats are sometimes decent, even lifesaving, while radicals are often obsessed with foreign policy to the exclusion of all else.

I’m with those who are horrified by Obama’s presidential drone wars, his dismal inaction on global climate treaties and his administration’s soaring numbers of deportations of undocumented immigrants. That some of you find his actions so repugnant you may not vote for him, or that you find the whole electoral political system poisonous, I also understand.

At a demonstration in support of Bradley Manning this month, I was handed a postcard of a dead child with the caption: “Tell this child the Democrats are the lesser of two evils.” It behoves us not to use the dead for our own devices, but that child did die thanks to an Obama administration policy. Others live because of the way that same administration has provided health insurance for millions of poor children or, for example, reinstated environmental regulations that save thousands of lives.

You could argue that to vote for Obama is to vote for the killing of children, or that to vote for him is to vote for the protection for other children or even killing fewer children. Virtually all US presidents have called down death upon their fellow human beings. It is an immoral system.

(That was written after the 2012 election, so we also have the luxury of the years that have passed to evaluate the argument made and benefits received. Was there net slippage or gain?)

Solnit describes what I see as a natural split of social perspective. A necessary one. Some of us have Liberal ideals that take us down in the trenches for the long slog that moves the marker inch by inch to gain a morsel of redemption (a partial human right, for example) that makes life incrementally better than it was before. Most of us, in fact, are part of that and care about it.

But they need the keepers of the vision, the Radical idealists, to hold the beacon that illuminates that which is possible and just, so to remind the Liberals where they are going. And some of us are born to do just that.

A core group of engaged Americans has been voting continuously for the past 50 years. Simultaneously, the economic security of the middle class has steadily declined via policy decisions year after year. Was this because the Liberals insisted on voting regardless of their dismal choices? Or was it because there were not enough of them willing to make the dismal choice? Or did they lower their standards because they forget what the original vision was? Did the Radicals not hold the beacon high enough for them to see where they were going?

I don't think moral superiority is the issue here. With the numbers involved in the millions, people are more likely moved by despair.

@Pluto's Republic My anger's not at you, Pluto. Hope that was obvious, but I seem to be expressing myself badly these days. I place the blame on lack of sleep, produced by a combination of anxiety and puppy indigestion.

#18.1.1.2.2

Hey, Wendy, thanks for linking that Rebecca Solnit essay dissecting the concept of voting for the lesser evil. Or not voting. It is really a masterpiece, regardless of one's stance. She moved me all around the board. I especially like this particular example of the dilemma:

Liberals often concentrate on domestic policy, where education, healthcare, and economic justice matter more and where Democrats are sometimes decent, even lifesaving, while radicals are often obsessed with foreign policy to the exclusion of all else.

I’m with those who are horrified by Obama’s presidential drone wars, his dismal inaction on global climate treaties and his administration’s soaring numbers of deportations of undocumented immigrants. That some of you find his actions so repugnant you may not vote for him, or that you find the whole electoral political system poisonous, I also understand.

At a demonstration in support of Bradley Manning this month, I was handed a postcard of a dead child with the caption: “Tell this child the Democrats are the lesser of two evils.” It behoves us not to use the dead for our own devices, but that child did die thanks to an Obama administration policy. Others live because of the way that same administration has provided health insurance for millions of poor children or, for example, reinstated environmental regulations that save thousands of lives.

You could argue that to vote for Obama is to vote for the killing of children, or that to vote for him is to vote for the protection for other children or even killing fewer children. Virtually all US presidents have called down death upon their fellow human beings. It is an immoral system.

(That was written after the 2012 election, so we also have the luxury of the years that have passed to evaluate the argument made and benefits received. Was there net slippage or gain?)

Solnit describes what I see as a natural split of social perspective. A necessary one. Some of us have Liberal ideals that take us down in the trenches for the long slog that moves the marker inch by inch to gain a morsel of redemption (a partial human right, for example) that makes life incrementally better than it was before. Most of us, in fact, are part of that and care about it.

But they need the keepers of the vision, the Radical idealists, to hold the beacon that illuminates that which is possible and just, so to remind the Liberals where they are going. And some of us are born to do just that.

A core group of engaged Americans has been voting continuously for the past 50 years. Simultaneously, the economic security of the middle class has steadily declined via policy decisions year after year. Was this because the Liberals insisted on voting regardless of their dismal choices? Or was it because there were not enough of them willing to make the dismal choice? Or did they lower their standards because they forget what the original vision was? Did the Radicals not hold the beacon high enough for them to see where they were going?

I don't think moral superiority is the issue here. With the numbers involved in the millions, people are more likely moved by despair.

@Pluto's Republic

unless this is by debating tactics learned in HS, and you're 'furthering the discussion', though i suspect not.

“(That was written after the 2012 election, so we also have the luxury of the years that have passed to evaluate the argument made and benefits received. Was there net slippage or gain?)”

fuck that shit, what ‘gain’, ‘slippage’, and to whom? more kids insured by ObamaDontCare. (oh, yeah, the jury’s no longer out on the failure of that un) is compared to chirren killed lesser under obama’s wars in the middle east, libya, afghanistan than ‘our enemies would have killed in their home countries? or even here under his own dhs and police state run amok? bailing out wall street but not main street? no prosecutions of banksters leading to more and more immunity for capitalist fukkery? oh, i’d forgotten lanny breuer’s ‘deferred prosecutions’ (also 2012). what a fine immunization/indemnification that thing it was...for the fraudsters.

solnit’s ‘incrementalism’ (read baby steps we hear of soooo often) bullshit is 'a necessary social perspective', pardon me? please explain that more fully. unless as i'd wondered up yonder.

please remember that Obomba laid the fascist groundwork for fascist Trumpzilla: endless wars, nato encroachment of russia, unitary executive, the endless 'war on terra', fast-tracking big Pharma for bettah bidness, the 'Monsanto exception rule', jayzus, i'm too tired to remember more of his sort of facism.

as to your final questions, i’ll need to return later w/ responses; i need a siesta, been awake for far too many hours already today. be at peace when you're able. your NSA, DHS, and other monitors of the system...will be keeping your back, i mean...our backs.

#18.1.1.2.2

Hey, Wendy, thanks for linking that Rebecca Solnit essay dissecting the concept of voting for the lesser evil. Or not voting. It is really a masterpiece, regardless of one's stance. She moved me all around the board. I especially like this particular example of the dilemma:

Liberals often concentrate on domestic policy, where education, healthcare, and economic justice matter more and where Democrats are sometimes decent, even lifesaving, while radicals are often obsessed with foreign policy to the exclusion of all else.

I’m with those who are horrified by Obama’s presidential drone wars, his dismal inaction on global climate treaties and his administration’s soaring numbers of deportations of undocumented immigrants. That some of you find his actions so repugnant you may not vote for him, or that you find the whole electoral political system poisonous, I also understand.

At a demonstration in support of Bradley Manning this month, I was handed a postcard of a dead child with the caption: “Tell this child the Democrats are the lesser of two evils.” It behoves us not to use the dead for our own devices, but that child did die thanks to an Obama administration policy. Others live because of the way that same administration has provided health insurance for millions of poor children or, for example, reinstated environmental regulations that save thousands of lives.

You could argue that to vote for Obama is to vote for the killing of children, or that to vote for him is to vote for the protection for other children or even killing fewer children. Virtually all US presidents have called down death upon their fellow human beings. It is an immoral system.

(That was written after the 2012 election, so we also have the luxury of the years that have passed to evaluate the argument made and benefits received. Was there net slippage or gain?)

Solnit describes what I see as a natural split of social perspective. A necessary one. Some of us have Liberal ideals that take us down in the trenches for the long slog that moves the marker inch by inch to gain a morsel of redemption (a partial human right, for example) that makes life incrementally better than it was before. Most of us, in fact, are part of that and care about it.

But they need the keepers of the vision, the Radical idealists, to hold the beacon that illuminates that which is possible and just, so to remind the Liberals where they are going. And some of us are born to do just that.

A core group of engaged Americans has been voting continuously for the past 50 years. Simultaneously, the economic security of the middle class has steadily declined via policy decisions year after year. Was this because the Liberals insisted on voting regardless of their dismal choices? Or was it because there were not enough of them willing to make the dismal choice? Or did they lower their standards because they forget what the original vision was? Did the Radicals not hold the beacon high enough for them to see where they were going?

I don't think moral superiority is the issue here. With the numbers involved in the millions, people are more likely moved by despair.

@Pluto's Republic

as far as incrementalist libruls (now calling themselves ‘progressives’ so often) needing “...the keepers of the vision, the Radical idealists, to hold the beacon that illuminates that which is possible and just, so to remind the Liberals where they are going”, i’d say any moral/ethically honest and caring person who wasn’t radicalized by obomba after even one year will never be radicalized...at least as far as the Radical Left. trump can’t radicalize the left, save for the #fake left like Jacobin (at lest almost always). it’s issues, not partisan teams that matter, and at root: Capital Rules, which requires imperiaism, meaning now...endless war.

we on the radical left don’t even have our beacons seen, much less acting as reminders to the duopoly voters and MSM, save for being branded dissidents and terrorists, trouble-makers, thrown in jail, beat up by the po-po, surveilled, etc., but in the end most social movements get herded, coopted back to the D team, whether with shiny promises by the political class or Rockefeller, Soros funding. now i suppose one could make a case that the Bernie contingent was radicalized in a way, but then he’s also an imperialist and zionist (those killings were tragic, i think the IDF overreacted), and ran on both, which ain’t very radical left to me, just a bit left of center. the greens are labeled political spoilers, of course, but there are a hella lotta reasons they’re even shut out of solnit’s ‘rotten system’. (‘all presidents kill people...but....but...but’ slayed me’).

anyway, i’ve honked on longer than i should have, but allow me to say that i disagree heartily w/ your formulation/analysis, smile. oh, except to say that 'oh, rancid left' solnit looks as dour as her words are uninspiring and uber-compromising.

oh! not dour hopeful, lol! 'Rebecca Solnit on What Makes Her Hopeful in the Age of Trump from #MeToo to Anti-Gun Protests', DN!

#18.1.1.2.2

Hey, Wendy, thanks for linking that Rebecca Solnit essay dissecting the concept of voting for the lesser evil. Or not voting. It is really a masterpiece, regardless of one's stance. She moved me all around the board. I especially like this particular example of the dilemma:

Liberals often concentrate on domestic policy, where education, healthcare, and economic justice matter more and where Democrats are sometimes decent, even lifesaving, while radicals are often obsessed with foreign policy to the exclusion of all else.

I’m with those who are horrified by Obama’s presidential drone wars, his dismal inaction on global climate treaties and his administration’s soaring numbers of deportations of undocumented immigrants. That some of you find his actions so repugnant you may not vote for him, or that you find the whole electoral political system poisonous, I also understand.

At a demonstration in support of Bradley Manning this month, I was handed a postcard of a dead child with the caption: “Tell this child the Democrats are the lesser of two evils.” It behoves us not to use the dead for our own devices, but that child did die thanks to an Obama administration policy. Others live because of the way that same administration has provided health insurance for millions of poor children or, for example, reinstated environmental regulations that save thousands of lives.

You could argue that to vote for Obama is to vote for the killing of children, or that to vote for him is to vote for the protection for other children or even killing fewer children. Virtually all US presidents have called down death upon their fellow human beings. It is an immoral system.

(That was written after the 2012 election, so we also have the luxury of the years that have passed to evaluate the argument made and benefits received. Was there net slippage or gain?)

Solnit describes what I see as a natural split of social perspective. A necessary one. Some of us have Liberal ideals that take us down in the trenches for the long slog that moves the marker inch by inch to gain a morsel of redemption (a partial human right, for example) that makes life incrementally better than it was before. Most of us, in fact, are part of that and care about it.

But they need the keepers of the vision, the Radical idealists, to hold the beacon that illuminates that which is possible and just, so to remind the Liberals where they are going. And some of us are born to do just that.

A core group of engaged Americans has been voting continuously for the past 50 years. Simultaneously, the economic security of the middle class has steadily declined via policy decisions year after year. Was this because the Liberals insisted on voting regardless of their dismal choices? Or was it because there were not enough of them willing to make the dismal choice? Or did they lower their standards because they forget what the original vision was? Did the Radicals not hold the beacon high enough for them to see where they were going?

I don't think moral superiority is the issue here. With the numbers involved in the millions, people are more likely moved by despair.

@arendt I share your bottom line.

#18.1.1.2.3

Well, if that's the case, that eliminates about 80% of elected Dims and at least 50% of current Dims running, including a bunch of BernieBros. Hell, my BernieBro candidate bought the R-gate nonsense!
So, R-gate just isn't a deal breaker for me. As for R-gate ties to WWIII... pffff.

Russiagate is McCarthyism on steroids. Its about the climate of fear and scapegoating being whipped up over NOTHING by the corporate media at the behest of the Clinton/CIA crowd. If they get away with making this shit up, they will turn around and do it again and again.

If you don't remember what McCarthyism did to the left in America, I suggest you read about it. BTW, that closeted gay bum J. Edgar Hoover passed a lot of tips and smear material to McCarthy. With McCabe, Strozak, and Page, its deja vu all over again in the corrupt FBI.

Bottom line: If you don't think that playing along with Neo-McCarthyism a deal breaker, then you and I are going to disagree about everything.

@Linda Wood You put it very well. I am daily horrified by the fact that other people in my generation and the Boomer generation, who were born into, grew up in, and came to adulthood in the Cold War era, are willing to entertain these ideas and this political framing, based on almost no real evidence. For God's sakes, when your independent investigator cites 13 people taking out ads on Facebook as his big reveal, the shocking truth uncovered by his investigation, you know you're in a discursive shitshow and that logic has been removed by the bouncers.

#18.1.1.2.3

I agree with arendt in this exchange, while I respect you. I agree with Michael Moore in his warning before the election that Trump could win because he was a Molotov cocktail being thrown at the system. The Democrats saying to the people of Michigan, OK, so your family has been unemployed for 2 generations and your community is drowning in drugs, OK, so you can't afford a home and you have no healthcare and your kids are in the military because there's no employment, so what? Be glad we're not racists! Be glad we're not misogynists! Be glad we're not breaking into your car! That's just horse shit.

For me, the Russiagate thing is not just a sign of not being pure enough. It has to do with what you said so clearly:

Maybe those R-gate Dims consider a nuke or two no big deal.

That's exactly it! If these lightweights don't know the difference between the slaughter they are inflicting on the people of Syria and thermonuclear war on the planet, then they're too dangerous to have in our neighborhood councils much less in Congress. There's a limit.

Either they don't consider a nuke or two a big deal, or they don't understand mutually assured destruction, or they don't get it that Putin would not back down. OR THEY JUST DON'T CARE. That's not the lesser of any two evils. That's more dangerous than anything I've seen in 50 years of watching the issue of war, the industry of war, and propaganda for war. It's the air-headed assertion that a well-intentioned nice person with a nice ethnic identity and a female gender couldn't possibly be dangerous, even if she blundered us into nuclear war!