U.S. Politics: A Request to Address the Cleft on the Left

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, r'hllor's red lobster said:

give me a fucking break, and come back with this bullshit when we start bombing trailer parks in south carolina and dropping white phosphorus on subdivisions in indiana 

If everyone hops on board the punch a Nazi hype train I'm not at all sure something akin to this isn't a non-negligible possibility (how many negatives can you fit in a sentence?). And it doesn't take such extremes of violence (especially when between groups of citizens rather than military vs populace) to drive people to these safe spaces of hate. How many images of a multi-ethnic gang of people taking baseball bats to a group of white folks before more and more white folks' necks get a black swastika overlay on their already red hue?

Since violence begets violence and violence always escalates and responses to violence are commonly disproportionate (indeed disproportionate response is pretty much the recommended playbook in conventional warfare) then this bloody conflict people advocating can certainly lead to some severe unintended consequences.

I'm hoping that the few voices advocating for forthright, determined, non-violent opposition to the pernicious evil of racism will have some moderating influence over those who are determined to commit acts of violence in the name of tolerance. But maybe that other truism will have to play out: people learn from their mistakes. Hopefully the learning will happen quickly.

[Week]

1 hour ago, GAROVORKIN said:

On the 3 pillars , that I didn't know. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/opinion/dont-blame-wahhabism-for-terrorism.html

yeah, on a number of points- I'd sit a couple plays out there, killer, not sure that you have any idea what you're talking about.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

6 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I'm hoping that the few voices advocating for forthright, determined, non-violent opposition to the pernicious evil of racism will have some moderating influence over those who are determined to commit acts of violence in the name of tolerance. But maybe that other truism will have to play out: people learn from their mistakes. Hopefully the learning will happen quickly.

Thankfully there is one aspect of this that I've found to be an extremely moderating experience just so long as you're not a sociopath or a psychopath or just naturally inclined to violence. That's actually experiencing physical violence first hand. And I don't mean just taking a beating. This also includes administering one. It is no easy thing to seriously injure another human being physically. It leaves mental scars that in my experience tend to linger much longer than their physical counterparts. I have to imagine that quite a few of the posters here who are advocating violence have not experienced a serious incidence of physical violence first hand. I'm sure that some have, but I'd bet good money most of them haven't.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 I like Tina Fey's solution. Sheet Caking!

 

 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 8/21/2017 at 2:54 PM, GAROVORKIN said:

Please don't kill me for saying this but one of the perceptions of the Democrats is  they love to spend lots of money which is  irksome to a fair number of voters.  Having a leader with a bit fiscal conservatism.  might be helpful the Democratic Party come election time. It's just a thought. 

Democrats have moved too far to the middle and alienated left leaning voters. Hence the surge toward a left leaning candidate (labeled as independent) in Bernie. Democrats likely want to vote for a democratic candidate. A real one, not a centrist, and the more centrist things get, the more disgruntled the base gets, and the Dems aren't stealing any votes from the Republicans. They aren't getting any independents either. They need to stick to their ideas and make their ideas seem worthwhile again. Instead of being reactionary.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 8/21/2017 at 5:51 PM, Shryke said:

It hasn't even been a year since the 2016 election. I would hope we have not forgotten it already.

A large enough portion of the Democratic base wasn't gonna come out for "centrist devil" Clinton in order to get rid of Trump. And you think they'll come out for fucking Bloomberg?

And you think giving Republicans a "safe harbour" is gonna work? Clinton fucking campaigned on that and it didn't do shit where it mattered. I mean, come on.

I think y'all are vastly vastly overestimating the appeal of Bloomberg while vastly vastly underestimating the extent to which a lot of left-wing voters hate him.

I do think the degree of Trump has changed a lot since November. How much? It's not worth the risk to find out--that's my argument.

I also don't think he'll be running again. I think he is resigning soon. But that's a little bet I have with my son.

[Shryke]

Just as another point on this issue, I think left-wing Democrats talking about how the party is "moving right" or "too centrist" or whatever are really missing what's going on with the party. Cause the party, policy wise, is demonstratively moving left and has been for quite a while now.

I think what's going on is people are missing how they and their peers are moving while this happens.

https://www.vox.com/2016/4/27/11511136/democratic-elite-age

Quote

 

Well-educated Americans hold views that put them far to the left of those without college degrees, a divide that has widened over the last 20 years, according to a new study published on Monday by the Pew Research Center.

To be sure, it's true that those with less education have also moved to the left — but not nearly as much as those with postgraduate education.

 

This was from back during the primaries and there's a lot of nice graphs in there to look at but the main point of the whole thing is that educated Democrats have gotten substantially more liberal over the past several decades. Even as compared to only 2004. The base as a whole has moved left but the high school or lower portions have moved a bit left and the college degree and up portions have moved a ton left.

I suspect a big part of what's happening is that while the party is moving left, a lot of the more vocal parts of the base, especially the white portions of it, are moving left even faster.

[lokisnow]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 I like Tina Fey's solution. Sheet Caking!

 

 

For a piece that subtly attacks fence sitter equivocating centrists like yourself for a "let them (me) eat cake" attitude, I find your posting of this... deliciously ironic.

[lokisnow]

32 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I do think the degree of Trump has changed a lot since November. How much? It's not worth the risk to find out--that's my argument.

I also don't think he'll be running again. I think he is resigning soon. But that's a little bet I have with my son.

Trump filed his paperwork for a reelection bid on the day of his inauguration--that is why he has been conducting campaign events and rallies.

and it also was years ahead of when any prior president had done so.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

10 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

For a piece that subtly attacks fence sitter equivocating centrists like yourself for a "let them (me) eat cake" attitude, I find your posting of this... deliciously ironic.

I can laugh at myself. And she's brilliant.

Seems some folks failed to find the humor in it though...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/tina-feys-eat-cake-strategy-after-charlottesville-is-bad-advice

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/let-us-eat-cake/537294/

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Thankfully there is one aspect of this that I've found to be an extremely moderating experience just so long as you're not a sociopath or a psychopath or just naturally inclined to violence. That's actually experiencing physical violence first hand. And I don't mean just taking a beating. This also includes administering one. It is no easy thing to seriously injure another human being physically. It leaves mental scars that in my experience tend to linger much longer than their physical counterparts. I have to imagine that quite a few of the posters here who are advocating violence have not experienced a serious incidence of physical violence first hand. I'm sure that some have, but I'd bet good money most of them haven't.

Ultimately I believe in the triumph of the human spirit, i.e. peace and love will prevail, eventually. But I also think there's a lot of trouble ahead, and exorcising the demon of racism from our society is one of more serious and intractable of the troubles ahead. But it will be overcome. 

I found this article interesting https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/08/23/after-backlash-espns-president-explains-why-broadcaster-robert-lee-was-taken-off-u-va-game-in-charlottesville/?utm_term=.d9c136373987

Quote

Why Robert Lee was taken off Charlottesville broadcast, according to ESPN president

“There was never any concern — by anyone, at any level — that Robert Lee’s name would offend anyone watching the Charlottesville game,” Skipper said.

Lee had been scheduled as a play-by-play announcer in the University of Virginia home opener against William and Mary on Sept. 2

ESPN production staff spoke with Lee about their concerns that he would be exposed to “social hectoring and trolling,” among other potential fallout from participating in the game, according to the note. Lee “expressed some personal trepidation about the assignment” and then accepted the opportunity to work another game.

Now assuming all that is true and not just post facto spin, this to me is an expression of fear of the anti-WS&N movements like Antifa. And that is just fear of verbal / online harassment. Is such fear blown out of all proportion? Probably. Is that fear going to be dialed up to 11 if there are actually attacks on the streets? It seems like it might. People thought ESPN was pandering, but what they were doing is cowering. Incredible that things have got to this point already.

[lokisnow]

15 minutes ago, Shryke said:

Just as another point on this issue, I think left-wing Democrats talking about how the party is "moving right" or "too centrist" or whatever are really missing what's going on with the party. Cause the party, policy wise, is demonstratively moving left and has been for quite a while now.

I think what's going on is people are missing how they and their peers are moving while this happens.

https://www.vox.com/2016/4/27/11511136/democratic-elite-age

This was from back during the primaries and there's a lot of nice graphs in there to look at but the main point of the whole thing is that educated Democrats have gotten substantially more liberal over the past several decades. Even as compared to only 2004. The base as a whole has moved left but the high school or lower portions have moved a bit left and the college degree and up portions have moved a ton left.

I suspect a big part of what's happening is that while the party is moving left, a lot of the more vocal parts of the base, especially the white portions of it, are moving left even faster.

What's also happening is that the current largest cohorts of democrats have personally experienced only pain and suffering from republican policies, and generally never experienced pain nor suffering from democrat policies. (Since most living voters were not voting during the stagflation of the seventies)

so for a lot of democrats the centrist horror show of the nineties is literally unthinkable, in their personal experience, the more left the policy the more better the personal outcome, the more right the policy, the less good it is for them.

given that experience set, I would expect them to push for more of what works for them. And this push policy goals relentlessly leftward until it blows up in their faces. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

7 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Ultimately I believe in the triumph of the human spirit, i.e. peace and love will prevail, eventually. But I also think there's a lot of trouble ahead, and exorcising the demon of racism from our society is one of more serious and intractable of the troubles ahead. But it will be overcome. 

I found this article interesting https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/08/23/after-backlash-espns-president-explains-why-broadcaster-robert-lee-was-taken-off-u-va-game-in-charlottesville/?utm_term=.d9c136373987

Now assuming all that is true and not just post facto spin, this to me is an expression of fear of the anti-WS&N movements like Antifa. And that is just fear of verbal / online harassment. Is such fear blown out of all proportion? Probably. Is that fear going to be dialed up to 11 if there are actually attacks on the streets? It seems like it might. People thought ESPN was pandering, but what they were doing is cowering. Incredible that things have got to this point already.

This is simply bizarre. 

[Kalbear]

13 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Ultimately I believe in the triumph of the human spirit, i.e. peace and love will prevail, eventually. But I also think there's a lot of trouble ahead, and exorcising the demon of racism from our society is one of more serious and intractable of the troubles ahead. But it will be overcome. 

There aren't a whole lot of examples of this being overcome without a lot of bloodshed. The human spirit has been shown to consistently be nasty, brutish and short.

And the discord chat logs for Unite the Right were released, and...man, it's like people planning for a cosplay convention combined with the worst elements of humanity ever. But please, do explain to me how that kind of violence should be simply taken, and who you're volunteering to be beaten to death. 

 

[Shryke]

7 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

What's also happening is that the current largest cohorts of democrats have personally experienced only pain and suffering from republican policies, and generally never experienced pain nor suffering from democrat policies. (Since most living voters were not voting during the stagflation of the seventies)

so for a lot of democrats the centrist horror show of the nineties is literally unthinkable, in their personal experience, the more left the policy the more better the personal outcome, the more right the policy, the less good it is for them.

given that experience set, I would expect them to push for more of what works for them. And this push policy goals relentlessly leftward until it blows up in their faces. 

The idea that stagflation was the result of "democratic policies" is not really established at all and is mostly just a piece of conservative propaganda.

The idea that a "relentlessly leftward" move in policy goals must inevitably blow up in everyone's face is also completely unsupported.

[Kalbear]

Also, to go back and explain why I'd be okay with Bloomberg:

I think that without a uniting force in politics the US is going to descend into authoritarian, one-party rule, and do so quickly. It's becoming apparent that previous rifts in political viewpoints were sustainable largely because Republicans and Democrats didn't disagree strongly on the Big Issues of the time for the most part - war and how to prosecute the cold war, industrialization, the role of government, and even things like civil rights. Even taxes were largely agreed-upon; people forget how Reagan led the biggest tax reform in a century with a Democrat majority congress. 

But now we have fundamental disagreements on essentially every single point, and fairly large ones at that. We are at the point where we cannot even agree what basic facts are, much less what to do about said facts. The Republicans and Democrats are very, very different parties - and having different parties works fairly well in a multiparty system that allows for coalition rule, but it doesn't work well at all in a two-party system where majority wins. 

A possibility of saving things is to go back to a centrist system that everyone gets something back with, and most people can at least begrudgingly be okay about. That'll take time and someone focused on fixing certain issues, but in the meantime we can bandaid it by putting in centrist government at the executive level. I do think there are a fair amount of people who when presented with a reasonably smart conservative will vote happily and enthusiastically for that conservative, even if they're running as a Democrat. And while it'll turn out fewer democrats, it'll hopefully win a majority of centrists, and push to the fringe the people on both sides.

If we keep going this way - where we go from one Republican-led disaster to a Democrat cleanup that is faced with massive obstruction every 4-8 years, it won't be long before the system just fails from apathy and rigging, and Republicans simply take over for good - and they've shown that as long as they get a few of the things they want, they will allow for any manner of corruption, destruction and institutional harm. I don't want that. And I don't believe that simply putting a Democrat back in office - especially a very liberal one - will make things better in the long term. 

[karaddin]

I can see why you'd choose to hope for that, I just can't see it happening. But I don't really see any way the system can pull itself back from where you're at now, so I guess my opinion on how the system could save itself is largely irrelevant.

[OldGimletEye]

On 8/23/2017 at 10:52 PM, Shryke said:

At the same time though I think it's not really as useful as you think for understanding what is going on. Because as Trump aptly demonstrated, movement conservatives only had a hold on the politicians themselves and not the voters. The voters don't give a shit about it and never have. Trump's entire ascendancy was essentially a demonstration that, no, the "intellectual" conservatives had not managed to use dog-whistles to attract a base they then convinced to accept conservative ideals. The base was always just in it for the white supremacy.

One can perhaps look at their organizing to get their shit together the way, say, the College Republicans have but as an intellectual movement, movement conservatism was an abject failure. It's just always been a thin creamy topping of politicians and think tankers and the like wanking each other off while riding a wave of racial resentment.

Okay lets say say the voters vote mostly over racial resentment issues. Most of them are not going to say that’s why they vote the way they do. Instead they’ll usually give conservative policy reasons ie “pro-growth conservative policies” or whatever.

It’s useful to demonstrate and expose their reasons as having little merit. Because most of them or many of them aren’t going to show their cards about their real reasons. And some of them may even fool themselves into believing it, even though their real reason are different.

And I’m not sure why you wouldn’t think its not useful to understand how conservatives operated beginning in the 1970. Sure they exploited racial resentment, but there is more too it than that, I think.

On 8/23/2017 at 10:52 PM, Shryke said:

.There is I think an extent to which conservative views on economics have dominated the way americans have talked about government policy since the rise of conservatism but I don't think it's actually been a change in the way people feel about the issue and where they do seem to it's because race-based politics tend to line up to some degree with the conservative view. (eg - The republican leadership hates the welfare state based on conservative principles, the base only hates the welfare state because it also helps black people and are supportive of the idea otherwise. Hence, the welfare queen argument.) Populist economic rhetoric remains powerful, as Trump demonstrated, and the public has always polled more "liberal" on these issues then is showcased by the political class.

Several threads back I posted a paper that showed economic policy would be more liberal if it were not for racial resentment. It was written well before the Orange Monster ever got elected. So I’m not under any illusion how the racial issues affect policy making.

That said, conservative arguments often give people with resentment intellectual cover. And, I think, it’s important to show that those arguments often don’t hold water.

When Paul Ryan goes out and misrepresents other people’s research about the effect of various welfare programs on labor supply (which he did) people with racial resentments will use Paul Ryan’s “reasons” to in order to avoid showing their true reasons. It’s useful to show exactly why their reasons are nonsense.

When conservatives go around saying the Community Reinvest Act caused all our troubles over the last 10 years, it’s extremely important to show that claim has no merit, empirically or theoretically, as it’s the sort of thing that many people will use to justify their resentments or generate resentment.

Also, there are people who do fall for conservative arguments. Now some of these people might be somewhat racist. But, not so racist that they’ll vote against their own interest. The thing about racism is that it’s not a discrete and binary variable. It’s more like a continuous variable. These people can be turned in a more socially liberal direction, if conservative arguments get shown to be fraudulent.

And with regard to Trump, it’s important I think, to point out that Trump was always full of crap. When Trump was running, one only had to look who he got as advisors (fuckin’ Stephen Moore and Larry Kudlow, the two biggest idiots around) to know what his policies would really be like, despite the rhetoric. I know why a lot of Trumpsters voted the way they did. But, I certainly won’t allow them to give other “reasons” why they voted they way they did.

[OldGimletEye]

On 8/24/2017 at 1:21 AM, Kalbear said:

snip

I get what you’re saying, but I’m so ragingly pissed off with Republicans, it’s hard for me not just want to take the gloves off at this point and have it out.

Secondly, I worry that if the Democrats go the more centrist route, the Republican response will be just to go more to the right and crazier.

And lastly, a lot of the policy stuff, particularly from the center left is simply better from a technocratic perspective, than the stuff coming from conservatism. I’d hope real centrist could see that.

[GAROVORKIN]

7 hours ago, Week said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/opinion/dont-blame-wahhabism-for-terrorism.html

yeah, on a number of points- I'd sit a couple plays out there, killer, not sure that you have any idea what you're talking about.

Apparent;y , I should do a bit more reading on this one.