I’ve touched on this before, and you all had a lot of interesting things to say, so I’ll just ask outright: how do you talk to other liberals about politics?
Here’s what I mean. Most people I talk to are about as far left as me on the issues. But they still think some combination of the following: (a) liberals like Liz Warren are too shrill and should just be more polite, (b) both sides are too partisan and need to compromise, and (c) David Brooks/Tom Friedman/Fareed Zakaria make a lot of good points about how we should be more like China and make the middle-class suffer more.
I tell them that (a) you have to fight hard in politics, not just bend over all the time, (b) it’s strange they think Democrats are too far to the left when they themselves are way to the left of the Democratic party at the national level, and (c) that our pundit class consists primarily of know nothing sociopaths.
But I rarely make much of a dent. How can we convince other liberals to adopt a worldview that is more in line with the reality of contemporary American society? I don’t know.
Yutsano
Stop being totebaggers. NPR is not the liberal bastion of news they think it is.
Soonergrunt
Ask them what their beliefs and values are worth? Ask them why they’re so willing to compromise on their values and if civility is more important than protecting people from the excesses of the conservatives?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Create a vast and overreaching media network to blast and repeat these points til they’re run into the ground?
Because that’s what it’s gonna take at this point. Labels over policy, Doug, labels over policy. The VSPs and hippies are already cast, and reinforced, even if the labels are almost 180 degrees of reality.
Dan
Hit them upside the head with a frying pan. Then say “Like I said, … .”
Cassidy
It’s all about the “both sides do it” nonsense. Most people I know who are as liberal as I am usually fall into two categories: 1) the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans, both sides do it, and we need a multiple party system to break the paradigm….blah, blah, blah. They refuse to grasp the pragmatism of voting for Democrats. 2) They are generally happy people who have liberal beliefs but are more focused on their “energy” and loving life and being above the fray, etc.
schrodinger's cat
Aren’t left wingers supposed to be fire breathing? Why are they so wishy washy? My guess is because the liberals that you talk to are comfortable and well off themselves, so for all their liberalism they are happy with the status quo and don’t want to upset the apple cart.
Restrung
keep saying: that aint liberal, that’s just.. and threaten with a frying pan.
RalfW
Non-snark answer: In my work, we use story.
The Ganz’s strategic storytelling model makes sense to me. Give people a narrative that they can hang on to. A problem, a choice and a decision.
Logic often fails but story frequently can connect. And for sure, saying “look you dorks, you’re doing it wrong” rarely works. I don’t think DougJ is suggesting that, but I think humans have a tendency to stray that direction when discussing.
Storytelling works because we’re talking about ourselves and what we decided, so it avoids any lecture-y-ness.
David Fud
I agree with Soonergrunt. The way to make other liberals stop being polite roadkill is to ask them questions and make them come to their own conclusions about what is truly effective in politics. “How is that working out for the Democrats so far?” would probably be my favorite question for these folks.
Arguing with them is only going to set their current attitudes even more as they defend them. Make them question them without making them defend their position is probably the best way to get a re-consideration.
gnomedad
DougJ, what does “far left” mean? Thinking capitalism is evil? I don’t, I think it needs intelligent regulation to prevent its being taken over by oligarchs. In that sense, I’m a centrist. That doesn’t mean I think “both sides do it” or that the GOP isn’t batshit insane. Like it or not, elections hinge on swing voters who are turned off by far left rhetoric. (I’m also an Obot, BTW.)
JD Ryan
I don’t know any liberals who think like that, as they must be real liberals, or something.
MattF
An example: I remember, some time ago, my brother-in-law was starting to argue that Pelosi was too confrontational, yadda, yadda. Then there was a 60 Minutes segment on her, and he saw right away that Pelosi is your basic effective, hard-working leader– and presumably that was why the wingers were ranged against her. So… there’s a need to get people through the conventional-wisdom fog and bullshit– and get them to see for themselves what’s going on.
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat: Calls for more comity, and less shrillness, are symptoms of the actual problem.
You’re dealing with people who don’t, au fond, actually believe in politics. They want all the jockeying and elbowing to just go away, and for them to be left in peace, with their beautiful minds, and tasteful possessions.
gnomedad
@RalfW:
Very interesting; thanks for the link.
existential fish
I find a lot of Zakaria’s comments to be trite, but putting him in the Brooks/Friedman league is a bridge too far.
At least Zakaria’s show has reasonable, mostly substantive discussions about topics.
Restrung
cat, as a middle income liberal mf, I’m offended.
The status is NOT quo. Because it could change bigly quickly. And that’s just me. If it happens to everybody, wow are we f’d.
schrodinger's cat
I can’t support the GOP not because I am particularly liberal but because the current version of GOP is bigoted, mean and stupid. Their rabid anti-science dogma is just totally off putting. On the other hand Democrats are not saintly but clearly not psychopathic and insane. Our choice is binary, and
Democrats are certainly far better than Republicans.
Aaron S. Veenstra
1. Understand that they haven’t been swayed by Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin, they’ve been swayed by David Brooks and Wolf Blitzer.
2. Be able to quickly counter the misinformation they think might be true with concrete information. It’s not enough to say, “No, that’s not correct,” you have to be able to say what is correct.
3. Be able to question the premises that they pick up from Village media. This is especially important when talking with dispositional “moderates,” who might hold all the same beliefs and issue opinions as “liberals,” but want desperately to believe in the centrist wisdom of splitting the difference.
schrodinger's cat
@existential fish: Zakaria, is like a one eyed man in the land of the blind. It is easy to be smart when your competition is MoU and Bobo.
ETA: The MSM is the problem here, that’s where many people get their information from and that information is not reliable.
schrodinger's cat
@Restrung: Sorry no offense implied and I agree the status quo is not a stable equilibrium and could easily be upended if the Republicans win the Presidency and the Senate. Unfortunately most people fail to see the precipice we are currently teetering on.
BrklynLibrul
I’m thrilled you’re raising this issue, DougJ. A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with an old liberal friend of mine, Ivy League-educated, extremely passionate and well-informed about politics. She started in on the “both sides refuse to do it” argument — if anything, she blamed the Dems more than the Republicans for intransigence. I was like, “what the hell?” I asked her for a specific example and she said “Nancy Pelosi.” I said Pelosi has no power in the current Congress. She said that the problem with the GOP is the Tea Party. I asked her how Olympia Snowe’s voting record differed in any way from Jim DeMint’s.
I confess I got fairly upset — I couldn’t believe I was hearing this stupid crap from a high-information, reliable liberal. But here’s the deal: this woman is mid-fifties, unmarried, with a high-paying job. She has no skin in the game — zero, zilch, nada. And therein lies the Democratic dilemma. The Republicans have brilliantly realized that they can wedge off well-educated, well-to-do Democrats who simply don’t give a shit about the poor, the elderly and disabled. As we’ve seen over and over and over since the Dem waves of ’06 and ’08, its party’s leaders loathe their own voters, and identify more with the Chamber of Commerce than they do with that mythical family of four living on a salary of $50K. I don’t know what you do about this, except to let the party wither. Maybe more primary challenges?
jrg
So, I guess next time we have a Republican president, we can expect the FBI to investigate every liberal blogger that doesn’t think we should spend $1 trillion invading Equatorial Guinea?
Lieberman is a moron.
Hal
This sentiment keeps popping up everywhere and it irritates me to no end when it’s said by Liberals. I always want to ask; “How is not doing what the GOP wants and getting nothing in return compromise?” Because that’s exactly what the GOP demands.
pete
The dynamic has been around for a very long time (I cried when they shot Medgar Evers …) and I think it’s based on a deep failure either to identify with the oppressed or to accurately characterize the oppressors. They up there are oppressing them down there, and it’s a damn shame and surely Reagan would have given the last coin in his pocket to some bum on the street if he happened to see one and some of his assets were liquid at that moment.
It may also be connected with identifying with the oppressors, as in “we are who society is really about.” So perhaps the most constructive way of opening up minds is not to focus on the damage done to “them down there” but on the absurd and amoral attitudes and goals of (at the present moment) the congressional Republican leadership, specifically that they do not have the best interests of “folks like us” in mind. Unless of course your acquaintances have seven-figure incomes, in which case, back away quietly. Maybe drink their booze and eat their canapés first.
Raenelle
Back in the 60s I hung out with a lot of Marxist-Leninists. The one thing that I could never understand was their absolute disdain for liberals who, they said, would stab you in the back in a heartbeat. I really get it now. The sensibilities of bourgeois liberals are too delicate to embrace full-throttled lizard-brain conservatism. They appreciate intelligence, refined culture, and in their noblesse oblige way sympathize with the plight of the huddled masses. BUT, here’s what they don’t get, here’s where they shrink away and turn all wobbly: class struggle. They don’t understand it, they don’t like it when they’re forced to look at it, and every instinct in their compromising, debating, can’t-we-all-just-get-along bones tells them that the class struggle is wrong. When the issues get defined along class lines, they are not friends. That’s my M-L view, at any rate.
Hunter Gathers
People, in general, watch way too much cable fucking news. It’s all bullshit, every fucking channel, and you’re better off without it. Christ, even the so-called ‘liberal’ network has 3 hours of conservative and centrist bullshit channeled thru Joe The Scar and his sidekick Mika, who does the worst Gretchen Carlson impression. Then we get Tweety, who thinks the only right course of action is doing things that would appease his asshole uncle from 30 years ago, and getting tips from his shit-head GOPer councilman brother. It’s all garbage. Most of the people I know that get their news from the telly are horribly misinformed and will always kowtow to the conservative worldview, because they consume it everyday, masked in the cloak of ‘centrist moderation’.
Centrism – noun; the political philosophy that espouses a middle path between two political parties; a political philosophy that repackages conservative monetary and budgetary practices and cloaks them in the language of moderation. example – We’re going to cut government programs that help the poor and minority population and shift that money to the upper class, we just won’t call them niggers and spics while we do it; a political philosophy taken up by politically gutless Democratic politicians – politicians that know they will never be President, and therefore take out their frustrations about that by going on TV news and criticizing every policy that their party espouses, in order to become a member of good standing among members of the press that make up the well connected and overfed group known as The Village.
schrodinger's cat
I don’t know about liberals in general but I think minorities and immigrants get it. Perhaps because the GOP’s demonization of these groups is not subtle at all.
cat48
Fareed is not like Bobo & Friedman. He’s the only one with a respectable show that I can tolerate. He doesn’t have wild mood swings like the other two. Bobo/Friedman are famous for writing columns about how great the Kenyan is and within a week are praising the Teapublicans for their great ideas.
After watching the Dems for yrs., I’ve lost all hope. Dems are basically Independents with far left to far right views. As long as Dems fight their own as viciously as they fight the GOP, they will be ineffective.
I have no hope.
The Bearded Blogger
I think people (specially liberal-minded people) like to think of themselves as centrist. It makes them feel reasonable and possessing some sort of high moral ground. Maybe it’s a matter of pointing out the un-reasonable and immoral consequences of centrism in america (where the political center is somewhere between center-rigt and insane far right).
Maybe a meme to the effect that Washington is way to the right of America (true) could help?
The Bearded Blogger
@schrodinger’s cat: But the GOP is screwing the rest of the 99% just as much. How to point this out?
gogol's wife
This isn’t the problem I have talking to liberals. The ones I talk to are more FDL types, Obama doesn’t fight enough, blahblahblah. Then there are the “centrists” who watch Fox News and think the New York Times is a far-left newspaper.
Ben Cisco (mobile)
I haven’t been a member of any party in over 20 years. I’ve found that disclosing that fact gives me a way to start the conversation. Admitting that the Ferengi media snowed me on a number of things prior to Bush II is also helpful. Finally, taking apart the myth of the “liberal” media does more good than any of the above. Get them to quit taking Brian Williams at his word and realize that he and the rest of the blow-dried bobbleheads are just as much a part of the problem as the NeoConfederates.
Cassidy
The other thing is ego. Liberals trend toward higher education , higher intelligence, etc. The intelligent sounding position is the middle. It makes them feel like deep thinking liberals in the face of their reactionary conservative relatives and co-workers.
Me, I don’t talk politics at work. But if someone insists on starting, I tell them straight out that I’m a liberal, damn near a socialist and I am that way because I like things like facts. It’s assholish, but it puts them on the defensive right from the start. Now they feel the need to defend their beliefs to me and, predictably, they try.
Gex
I actually just try to get people to read this blog for a week or two.
I find that I am better informed than most around me, and this is my primary source for information. The FPs and the commenters provide plenty of links to other analysis and source material.
Not trying to suck up, just telling it like it is.
kurosakih
But here’s the deal: this woman is mid-fifties, unmarried, with a high-paying job. She has no skin in the game— zero, zilch, nada.
I don’t actually think the problem is the lack of skin in the game. The problem is that most people aren’t that interested in politics, don’t obsessively follow the structural shifts in media and reporting that those of us who’re here are so aware of, and have not even begun to internalize the degree to which the mainstream press and Village pundits fail to report, and effectively misrepresent, enormous swathes of key information.
These folks are in a closed ecosystem in terms of information. They want a fast, useful precis of what’s going on so they know how to vote, and they still believe they’re getting it when they read Friedman, et cetera. The Times, they still believe, is a reliable news source with a stake in accurately representing the world; surely its reporters and its selection of editorial-page voices provides a good guide to reality?
The problem is how to wake them up, and get them to really internalize the fact that the mainstream media, even the outlets they think of as “liberal”, no longer even think it appropriate or professional to give their readers an accurate picture of the world. And since they’ve been marinating in the Friedman-verse for decades now, it’s hard to get them to wrap their heads around the way they’ve been led off course. It would be a difficult thing even if they wanted to believe it, which they mostly won’t — accepting the truth means that they have to cast off a comfortable mental routine, and it also means they have to pay a lot of attention to things they were never interested in to begin with.
I wish I knew of a simple, comfortable way of doing it. Short of setting up our own alternative mainstream news-delivery system, at least: if we could buy the New York Times and run it under guidelines that made informing the readership its principal mission, I bet we could fix a lot of it right there.
Cassidy
The other thing is ego. Liberals trend toward higher education , higher intelligence, etc. The intelligent sounding position is the middle. It makes them feel like deep thinking liberals in the face of their reactionary conservative relatives and co-workers.
Me, I don’t talk politics at work. But if someone insists on starting, I tell them straight out that I’m a liberal, damn near a social1st and I am that way because I like things like facts. It’s assholish, but it puts them on the defensive right from the start. Now they feel the need to defend their beliefs to me and, predictably, they try.
Re-post. Damn d1ck drugs.
gogol's wife
@Gex:
I try, and I send them links, but I find they won’t get on the bandwagon. Maybe the name of the blog puts them off, it’s not “serious” enough.
Judas Escargot
@Davis X. Machina:
Yes, sadly, this. To most ‘normal’ people who’d otherwise lean left, knowing/caring too much about politics is a weird kind of fetish.
The educated/professional/well-off demographic tends to be pretty insulated from the fray (or are at least in a position to fool themselves into believing this). Someone who makes six figures and drives to/from their desk job on heated leather seats isn’t likely to realize that we’re never more than 5-10 days away from a food riot at any given moment in time, or that they too are only a few paychecks or one court judgement away from that cardboard suite under a bridge somewhere.
The Bearded Blogger
@Cassidy: See my post at 27. I tend to classify co-workers and relatives between hopeless and persuadable. With the former I try to change the subject to sports.
Linda Featheringill
Questions. “What do you think about . . . . ”
You know you have something going on when they bring questions to you.
And, very important, you can revisit the same question tomorrow. And the next day if you want to. What you are trying to do is become a part of the process of the evolution of point of view.
Cassidy
@Gex: Can’t do it. I’ll occasionally post links to here, but this is “my place”. I don’t want to share it.
Gex
@Raenelle: I bet the study showing that a majority of whites see things as a zero sum game plays into that. That is, a study showed that a majority of whites think that if things get better for black people, they will get worse for them.
@Cassidy: Seriously? I spend so much time wishing that the people I talk to knew more about the issues. I’m viewed as being extremely well informed by my peers, but that’s only because what they learn comes from the MSM .
Schlemizel
@Aaron S. Veenstra:
On #3 I have given examples of D/R positions that highlight what it is they are trying to do and often use the analogy
“The Republicans want you to eat a ton of shit, the Dems don’t want you to eat any – are you saying we should compromise and all eat half a ton of shit?”
Usually by that time they understand this is really not too far from the truth.
Baud
Well, here’s my two cents: You aren’t going to convince anybody to vote Dem if you’re not confident about your own decision to vote Dem. That means none of the “lesser of two evils” crap you see on the Internets, or pining over the absence over of a “real” left-wing party.
ETA: Didn’t mean to suggest you do this, Doug–just commenting on the types of things I often see on the tubes.
Davis X. Machina
@Judas Escargot: Throw in ironic detachment as the default approach to everything — I’m looking at you, Jon Stewart — and you have people who don’t even need to be chained to the wheel, they’re so busy looking at the on-line The Wheel section of the Times
The Bearded Blogger
@BrklynLibrul: Oh yeah… some wealthy liberals tend to sort of care about social issues, but are closet goopers on economic issues. Saw this up close with health care reform.
schrodinger's cat
@The Bearded Blogger: A good way to start would be by pointing out that the liberal media is not liberal at all with a few concrete examples to prove your point.
Cassidy
@The Bearded Blogger: Yeah. Even while on active duty, both Bush and Obama, I didn’t talk politics at work. One of my fellow Reservists recently tried to tell me how everything would be better if we all just followed God (the right one) and eliminated taxes on businesses, etc. Same guy prides himself on his “man of the house” schtick and that he instills the right kind of ethics in his children…two of which got pregnant as soon as they left daddy’s home. He doesn’t see the connection between his beliefs and the real life consequences. Of course, he did everything himself; he’s an immigrant from Nicaraugua. I told him he’s full of shit. He went to public school. His whole life was subsidized by taxpayer money. He used the GI Bill and he just got 10K in student loan repayment from the Reserves.
Chrisd
“As liberal as you” may not in fact be the case. I’ve found that moderate Democrats like to be seen as more liberal than they really are, and liberals like to go along with the illusion. Obama comes immediately to mind. Differences couched in pragmatic or tactical quibbles are a way of hiding that you have less in common with them than you may think.
schrodinger's cat
@Davis X. Machina: Did you see how rude he was to Nancy Pelosi and how he fawned over Condi Rice, for example.
Davis X. Machina
@Baud: Especially when there are left-wing parties. It’s a simple thing, but otherwise intelligent people somehow can’t wrap their brain around the fact that you don’t have to vote for the same party you belong to, or vice versa. I don’t. Hell, I can’t — they don’t slate candidates.
The Bearded Blogger
@Cassidy: You don’t need self awareness if you follow the right God.
Cassidy
@Gex: It may sound dumb, but this is my place to discuss things with similiar minded people. As I said, most of my “liberal” friends view the world through a different lens. And when we discuss issues, it’s usually the “both sides do it” crap. Here, I can talk, whine, cry and be unmanly (which I’ve done a couple of times) and generally, not deal with the baggage that me and my friends have. This is my br’er patch in a way.
And part of it is ego. I’m a more alpha male amongst my friends. They know I’m scrapper and very assertive. But, tbh, when I was feeling depressed, and crying everyday, and considering eating my pistol, this place is where I came. I can’t do that with my friends. So this is my place.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF:
Men are great leaders.
Women who exhibit the exact same traits as great leaders are ball busting bitches.
That’s the sad reality of perception when it comes to women (who happen to be pretty good leaders) like Nancy Pelosi.
Citizen_X
@Cassidy:
Hmm, I run into this a lot, too. So, what’s needed, so to speak, is some…(looks both ways)…hippie punching.
Lee
I live and work in red meat republican Texas.
The few other liberals that I work with we point and laugh at the insanity of the current batch of Republicans. It really pisses everyone else off and we love it. As for the Dems we all agree that they should exhibit a bit more backbone with the rhetoric. It does not work well when you START the negotiations with giving your opponent most of what he wants knowing that he is not negotiating in good faith.
As for home I just plant my Obama/Biden sign in my front yard (the only one in the entire subdivision) and wait it out.
Steve LaBonne
@Davis X. Machina: Bingo. And these NPR-totebag people, sadly, are THE key problem with this country. If it were not for their self-centered complacency and their inability to empathize with those less well off than their well-upholstered selves, the plutocrats, and the viciously looney 25% whose votes they control, would have much less power to do harm.
When, not if, everything still left standing in this country turns to shit, they’ll be confronted with the ugly truth up close and personal, but too late. Schadenfreude will be the appropriate response.
R Johnston
Sometimes people like that just need to be mocked if there’s any hope of getting them to see the light, and Balloon Juice has already provided the best form available with which to do so:
With some “liberals” you really just need to be a condescending prick who drills home the points that Republicans are completely insane and you can’t negotiate with insane people, over and over again, until it finally sinks in, at which point you can get rid of the scare quotes.
Cassidy
@Citizen_X: Heh. You know, I’ve always thought about how to get through to these people. They are liberal as anything, but they “don’t focus on negative things”. Well, dammit, some negative things need focusing on so we can fix it.
Baud
@Davis X. Machina:
The thing that gets me is that “otherwise intelligent people” can’t understand that it is legitimate to vote for a candidate even if you don’t agree with every single thing he or she stands for. I keep seeing these arguments that protesting is more effective than voting as if they were mutually exclusive options. It’s a vote — not a marriage.
Suffern ACE
It takes a long time for people to understand how much they have been lied to, especially if they like the person who has been doing the lying. (Queue a few of our trolls). The liberals who like those sensible centrists, but would deplore Rush or Robertson if they listened to them, don’t see how Rush and Robertson are more like Bobo or MoDo than different from them. They will see through Rush right away, but don’t see that that latter just try to get hold their attention by meandering them down trivial paths, pretending that the political lines are trivial and don’t matter.
It’s not cool to spend 1,100 words writing about Romney’s hair. Or Perry’s cowboy boots. Or Bloomberg’s height problem. But if we follow that path, it is just another way of saying that the politics are boring and the issues are trivial. Whether or not schools are public or private, whether someone who is sick and poor should be considered a loser in life and cast aside, when can someone retire, who gets to vote, how big or small the navy should be, who wields power and how are all very important questions. But then the representatives of the serious centrism want to talk hair, probably because they don’t have the chops to talk about anything else. Politics is just a matter of taste if all consequences are ignored. It’s a big problem to realize that Romney’s hair is as big of a problem as the “fear of rabid gangs of Feminazis” when it comes to getting people’s attention and feeding them a another line of bull wholesale.
Steve LaBonne
Oh, and re Pelosi- every Democrat worthy of the name should be overflowing with gratitude that she agreed to stay on in the thankless role of minority leader. I shudder to think where we’d be without her, and I worry that, given her age, she must surely be thinking about retirement.
Schlemizel
@Davis X. Machina:
Yeah, I never really thought Stewart was on ‘our’ side. He probably is a centrist mostly status quo kind of guy. But we live in an environment where one party is so far off into the right wing weeds you can’t see conservative from there & the other is just slightly to the right of center. Jon is smart enough to not fall for all the anti-science anti-intellectual crap being spewed by the Rs and decent enough to know that the Dickensian economic model they are offering is death on a stick. But my guess is he is fairly conservative & in an ideal world would not appear as a raging liberal.
I am not so sure about Colbert. I assumed he was more conservative also (particularly on religion where he seems to be a committed Catholic). He gets a lot of props for his Bush take down at the press dinner but that said more about his courage & commitment to reality than his politics.
Davis X. Machina
@Baud:
Hell, I married the lesser of two evils — Hi, dear! (waves across room….)
MikeJ
I’ve started making a dent with one person I know because damn near every day I can point out a ridiculous example of both-sides-do-it-ism. At first he was skeptical. Day after day, he’s come around to see the truth. NOt even a long drawn out conversation every day, but a new example of the same thing every day.
Repetition. Stay at it. Don’t let up. Do it again. Repetition.
Gex
@Cassidy: I can see that. I suppose even with an anonymizing screen name, they might find you out by your comments.
gnomedad
@The Bearded Blogger:
You got that right. I think some of the “both sides do it” temptation stems from a desire to be as unlike this as possible.
johnsmith1882
a couple of other commenters have already pointed this out: make it clear to them that the media from which they receive their information is anything but ‘liberal’. if a center-left (maybe) organization like npr is defined as ‘hard-core, far-left liberal’, the rules of the game are jury-rigged. also, i suspect the people you are calling ‘liberal’ are more likely ‘centrists’, if they can’t stomache someone like pelosi actually fighting for liberal values. there’s nothing wrong with that of course, but the skewed terminology, which maybe you yourself have absorbed?, needs to be pointed out.
gogol's wife
Has anyone identified the post title yet? It’s usually happened by now. I have no idea. It’s not Jerome Kern.
Davis X. Machina
@Schlemizel: Some of your fiercest critics of economic injustice and violence at home and abroad are committed Catholics — these people, for starters. (Proud member…)
MikeJ
@gogol’s wife: Funky Town.
eta:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CImrIKNmBo
about 25 seconds in
Baud
@gogol’s wife: Funkytown.
gogol's wife
@MikeJ:
(And Baud, I don’t know how to put both names). I see no one identified it because it’s supposedly so obvious. Not to me! Thanks!
Kane
Focus the discussion on issues of substance that really matter in our lives rather than neverending debates about politeness, partisanship, compromise, and Brooks/Friedman/Zakaria. The more that you steer the conversation to issues, the more likely that you will find agreement not only with most liberals, but with many conservatives.
Cassidy
@Gex: I’m not anonymous. Cassidy is my last name. And when i say I can’t go to my friends, it’s not an alpha thing. It’s simply that they don’t understand where I’m coming from. How I feel and how I view the world is foreign to them.
Gex
@gogol’s wife: Funky Town by Lipps Inc.
ETA: I just now, while writing this comment, discovered the little joke in the band’s name.
MTiffany
I have never heard any liberal agree with a, b, or c; self-described “progressives” however…
parsimon
My first impulse was to reply incredulously, They do??
On reflection, though, yes, I am hearing more of things along these lines from seemingly liberal friends, and I’ve been stunned and fairly upset. On questioning, these friends reveal that they actually haven’t been paying that much attention: they say things like “Occupy Wall Street has turned into street violence without telling us what they want” and “At this point I’m willing to throw any and all incumbents in Washington out of office.”
Hrm. I mostly respond to this by refusing to concede any of it, insisting e.g. that OWS’s seeming violence is actually police violence; and that the breakdown of the Supercommittee or the debacle of the debt ceiling debate was almost entirely of Republican doing.
I couple this with reminding my friend of what he or she does actually believe in: gay marriage (say), or workers’ rights, both of which most Republicans are not only against but actively work to undermine.
This mostly gets me a wary acknowledgment from these friends, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. My chief impression is that they’re not used to having their expressed views vociferously challenged. I did get my brother to promise to look into Elizabeth Warren more closely.
JWL
What the hell? Do your friends all sip tea with their pinkie fingers angled a certain way? It sounds like they could use a good pepper spraying to help straighten their heads out.
MikeInSewickley
Quick comment.
Liberals have been successfully emasculated by 30+ years of the Wingnut Wurlitzer.
When are we going to learn that when you have your opponent down (as this so called failure of the Super Committee is for the Republics), you don’t quit and apologize for winning. You keeping punching him in the throat until he spits blood and teeth.
I really think we may be getting near some kind of tipping point as we move along our lost decade – at least I sure hope so – but I’m the eternal pessimist and figure most of the country will be content with eating scraps from the table.
Davis X. Machina
@MikeInSewickley: That’s me, you, Las Vegas, and St. Augustine: Take the fundamental depravity of mankind and give the points.
amk
What libruls ? What world view ? The spaniards, being as clueless as americans, just last week, voted out a leftist government and overwhelmingly voted in a rabidly right gobinment who openly advocated for all kindsa cuts so that they could achieve the nirvana of a “balanced budget”. Really europeans ? A cameron, a sarkozy, a berlusconi aren’t enough of a pain for ya?
Michael Bersin
Over the decades I’ve found that the hand wringers are the folks that talk the talk but never quite get involved in the hard work of a campaign (planting a yard sign counts in their view) nor do they pay attention to the nuts and bolts of governing once the election is over.
I covered Senator Claire McCaskill’s (D) health care town halls in Hillsboro, Kansas City, Warrensburg, and Jefferson City in 2009. On a scale of one to ten, where one is sit politely and nod, and ten is empty your AK47 into everyone, Hillsboro and Jefferson City were sevens.
In August of this year I covered Representative Vicky Hartzler’s (r) town halls in Clinton and Warrensburg. Vicky Hartzler is the Michelle Bachmann of Missouri, only dumber and crazier. There was significant pushback on her batshit crazy assertions at those town halls. On the same one to ten scale, Clinton was a two and Warrensburg was a three.
Sure enough, there was hand wringing among those peripheral Democrats that people were just too rude and pushy with Vicky Hartzler (r) and that it didn’t reflect well on Democrats.
I keep doing what I need to do to hold the republicans (and, yes, Democrats) in office accountable and I don’t let hand wringing concern trolls dictate my tone. If they had any juice they’d be doing, not talking.
MsWimey
Our pundit class may be know nothing sociopaths but they are generally accepted as conventional wisdom. I think this is primarily due to the fact that there is no mainstream alternative (there are voices like maddow and krugman but they are whispers compared to the main chatter that people hear) And I also think this is what happens when you get 80% of the media owned by a mere handful of conglomerates as opposed to 20 or 30 companies in the 1980s.
Most of my friends are liberal and we agree in principle on the issues but all they hear is the mainstream chatter thus the Warren/Pelosi is shrill and Democrats need to work more with Republicans bullshit whenever we talk about specific items. I’ve also noticed that they usually cant counter any factual information I bring to their attention but the conventional wisdom of the punditry class is reinforced in their heads all the time. So I don’t feel that I’m making much progress. I actually prefer straight out arguments with rabid republicans nowadays
ornery
Who are these ‘Liberals’ of whom you speak?
All we can be in this nation is positions along the phony spectrum from extreme Right (fascists) to extreme Left (commies).
Liberals have been disappeared. With their own ignorant consent, sorry.
gumbo
Of the tactics I’ve been reading about here, two work the best for me – focusing on a couple of key issues (that can vary depending on who you’re talking with) and asking questions so they can feel like they are coming to their own conclusions.
So, for instance . . . economically, I might ask my friend how much of the nation’s wealth do they think the top 1% should own, both for our economy to function well as a whole and for the 1% to be adequately compensated? How much should the bottom 50% own. Then I let them know the facts of wealth distribution in America, and they are invariably shocked. That leads to a discussion of how tax rates on the wealthy have plunged from a high of 90% under Eisenhower to 35% today and how the Republican position is not a penny more and the Democratic position is reverting back to a very reasonable 39%.
It’s the same thing with social issues like the assault on women’s reproductive health. Ask your friends if they think hospitals should be able to refuse medical care to a woman who needs an abortion to save her life or if the Catholic bishops should be able to decide that birth control should not be covered by insurance policies, and most liberals will be horrified at those ideas. Then let them know that Republicans at the state and national levels have introduced laws allowing both of these things.
Real world examples of what we are fighting against, when given often enough, eventually get through. Sooner or later, most reasonable people will say “hey, you know what, these people are radical, and fighting back against them is the right thing to do.”
Emma Anne
I tend to bring up one argument they can agree with rather than try to convince them of my entire world view. If OWS comes up I talk about what student loans are doing to young people. If ObamaCare comes up I talk about the fact that our kids can stay on our health care until they are 25 (you can probably gather the age and socioeconomic class of me and the people I know from these examples).
Brandon
I was thinking Big Me would have been more apt here than Funkytown. But I hate the Foo Fighters and understand not going there.
parsimon
@Kane:
grandpajohn
hell, living in smalltown SC, the only other liberal I know is my wife.
Sly
The perennial dilemma of American liberals is finding a way to effectively articulate the benefits of a modern liberal state without scaring the shit out of people who might lose some perceived privilege(s) that they have from living in a non-liberal state. This proves difficult, because there are people who will definitely lose many real privileges in a modern liberal state, and these people have enormous reserves of economic and social capital that they can employ to convince and coerce others into accepting whatever status hierarchy liberals seek to mitigate or overthrow.
And their most effective tactic is convincing people that struggle, particularly economic struggle, has nothing at all to do with politics. That the outcomes of struggle are determined purely at the individual level, with little to no input from social or institutional forces. Those who internalize this framework have, essentially, given up on genuine civic engagement. They may think they are participating, but their participation is passive. Like watching CNN or showing up every once in a while to vote. And because its passive, its meaningless.
It’s easy to wonder why people don’t get along when you have no skin in the game. So point out the obvious answer: people do not get along politically because they want different outcomes. Point out those desired outcomes, and let them make a decision on where they fit into those outcomes.
Rihilism
@Schlemizel:
I keep hearing the idea that Colbert is conservative. I don’t actually know, but I find it hard to believe that any of the cast members of “Strangers with Candy” hold conservative views, though I suppose anything is possible.
IMO, Colbert’s congressional testimony regarding migrant farm workers suggests a significant devotion to social justice (not unheard of among Catholics). He may or may not be a devoted Catholic, but I’ve never understood that to be a absolute stand-in for conservative political views…
As for Doug’s question, I’d have to go with the “uninformed” and the “comfortably cocooned” as others here have suggested. What’s most important, IMO, is convincing people they have something to lose, that they have skin in the game as BrklynLibrul suggests.
People have little reason to become more informed, or active for that matter, when they assume that election outcomes will have negligible impact on their immediate well-being. You need to try to convince them that their understanding of reality is flawed and that their clinging to what I call “malinformation”, can have a dramatic and negative consequences to their person as well as to their professed “liberal” goals.
Make it personal…
dww44
Interesting topic to see on my first return to the internet and this blog for several days. My brother-in-law, who lives in Portland, Or., is here visiting family in this red red Southern state. While he’s quite liberal in his views (he’s gay by the way), he said last night that he found Rachel Maddow to be as partisan as anyone on Fox News;that he just didn’t like the tone of those sorts of shows and that they don’t inform. I could not convince him that while she might be partisan, her shows are often quite informative and that she’s always truthful.
Truth is, all the 18 family member who were here for Thanksgiving yesterday mostly fall into the liberal category but to a large degree are not really committed to progressive causes. Many have just been driven away from the Republican brand by the sheer craziness and extremism. They fall into the category of “both sides are to blame”. I truly don’t and have never believed that meme. It’s a cop-out, quite frankly.
bonkers
“Divide and conquer” has been one of the main strategies of the Repub/MegaMoney cabal for decades now. Lee Atwater and friends used to publicly boast about how they can find perfect “wedge issues” to split Dems and get them fighting amongst each other, which has been especially successful for them in the South, which used to reliably vote DemocratIC. We know Repubs and the MegaMedia have also worked this strategy in promoting and financing Green Party candidates, and are currently doing this with the “Occupy” mess, and unfortunately so many supposed Liberals play along unknowingly.
So you ask how to get Liberals to work together more? How about following the lead of the most successfully Liberal President in generations, who also happens to be America’s first melanin-enhanced President, and has consistently and loudly led with a message of “there’s more that binds us than divides us.”
You would think any actual Liberal could find enough to be excited about in following such a President given that he already is the most Liberal President in modern history, which is quite a feat given his skin pigmentation and has far less Congressional support compared to LBJ and FDR. Perhaps a man who has accomplished such incredible historical feats might actually know some things, and perhaps Liberals could learn from following his lead?
Fortunately, most Liberals do get this and President Barack Hussein Obama polls extremely well with those who identify themselves as Liberals or Democrats, and President Obama is shattering his fundraising and volunteer records so far this year that he shattered in 2007-2008. Seems like most of the supposed lack of support is in the largely anonymous “liberal” blog world. Hmmm…anonymous…divide and conquer…nah, Repub operatives would NEVER think to infiltrate “liberal” blogs anonymously and sew dissent, would they?!?
So for those genuinely interested in accomplishing actual progress and unifying Liberals, and good place to start is here:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/become-a-volunteer?source=homepage-cta
Rihilism
@Kane: You said it far more succinctly and eloquently than I was able to….
AA+ Bonds
As a non-liberal, I suggest that you treat left-wing ideas as objectively correct (they are at the current time) and right-wing ideas as objectively incorrect (ditto), and never pass up an opportunity to vocally challenge right-wing ideas in a mixed group of people.
Americans view discussions as battles, especially male Americans, and you need to not be afraid to piss people off offline as thoroughly as you might online.
I’ve successfully won over four or five friends to the left this way. Who knows if they’ll stick, but they’re right there with me right now.
AA+ Bonds
@bonkers:
^ also, ban all Koch-funded anti-OWS trolls like this as soon as they post.
AA+ Bonds
Seriously, at a bare minimum, police your blog for obvious Republican plants like bonkers because Balloon Juice is getting mobbed by them
Linda Featheringill
Speaking as a soshulist, I would like to point out that many who call themselves “liberal” are not really class warriors. They believe in the present system, if only it were adjusted a little bit here and there. Actually, I would place Obama into this category.
One thing that is so encouraging about the Occupy movement is that they are just bluntly stating that the present system is not working. And yes, they clearly complain about class issues, although they don’t use that terminology.
I for one, am very grateful for the OWS folks. For decades, I have suspected that reform would not do as much good as revolution but was afraid the US could not accomplish that without a real civil war. I was afraid we would just destroy ourselves. But the Occupy people are showing a way to stage a peaceful campaign. Maybe, just maybe, we in the US could do it peacefully and effectively.
Maybe. But that is more hope than I’ve had for a long time.
AA+ Bonds
@Kane:
This is step two. Step one is attack, attack, attack, attack.
Attacked by a right-winger? Hell, just aware of a right-winger spewing bullshit? Your best defense is attack. Attack conservatives on patriotism (they don’t like America succeeding as a society, it’s true). Attack conservative figures as dopes (this is a gimme). This is how you win in America – fickle fence-sitters will side with you if you look like you’ve cleaned someone’s clock on the other side.
A lot of liberals have personalities that recoil at this. Too bad. You can win by putting stress on your opponent, or you can lose and try to console yourself with how low you kept your heart rate.
Carol from CO
Here’s the first problem: you’re not talking to liberals if you are hearing what you wrote.
DougJ
@AA+ Bonds:
I agree, Always Be Attacking.
MsWimey
@Linda Featheringill:
Oh I hear ya on that point! The OWS movement was the first time I’ve felt genuine hope for our future in a while. They also finally managed to bring economic inequality into the mainstream discussion which was long overdue.
bonkers
@Linda Featheringill:
I’ve never had a problem with actual Socialists or Green Party-types who have been consistent over the years in not supporting Democrats. I typically agree on many policy issues with them, and we usually just part ways on issues of enacting Change.
Now supposed Liberals or Democrats who have worked for and voted for Democrats in the past, who are now, NOW, when the most Liberal and sweeping laws are being enacted at a rapid pace by America’s first melanin-enhanced President, who is fighting one of the most obstructionist Congresses in history, are saying they’re bailing on the DemocratIC Party…well, that I have a problem with.
To say these last three years of the most successfully Liberal Presidential Administration in generations is “the last straw” makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
No, no, and no. Wrong question – balloonbaggers are not liberals. And nor is their Idol.
.
.
bonkers
@MsWimey:
OWS brought inequality into the “mainstream discussion”?!?
Interesting in that the weeks before the MegaMedia gatekeepers decided to let OWS become a story, President Barack Hussein Obama was beginning his “Pass This Bill” effort to get the Jobs Bill passed, you know, the Bill that has all this stuff in it that OWSers apparently care about? Oh, and I’ve seen clips and articles of President Obama over the years, some going back into the 1990s, where he’s talking directly about “economic inequality,” such as this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLd5dIoQpmM
Seems mostly what OWS is talking about now is “F- the Po-lease!!” Imagine if the same time and energy going into trying to get a small college chancellor fired was going into getting actual Liberal laws passed.
Joel
You don’t just state your conclusions, you lead people to them.
henqiguai
@gogol’s wife(#69):
Can’t remember the group or song title right now, but it’s from the disco era. Think it’s probably “Funky Town”.
ETA: And I see MikeJ and Baud already got there.
Chris
@amk:
I feel like American liberals have a tendency to look at Western Europe through rose-tinted glasses sometimes. Their main virtue is that the foundations of their systems have been laid far more to the left than ours (universal health care and powerful unions, most obviously). But as you pointed out, in terms of leadership the Old Continent’s a right wing freak show right now. I’d far rather have the most powerful office in my country belong to an Obama than a Merkel, a Cameron, a Sarkozy or a Berlusconi (finally gone, thank God, let’s see if his successor’s any better).
Yutsano
@Uncle Clarence Thomas: Beautiful haughty judgmentalism there. But you’re not a liberal anyway.
Steve LaBonne
@Chris: Hell yes. I have my issues with Obama, but he looks awfully damn good compared to that crowd.
MsWimey
@bonkers:
I’m probably phrasing it inelegantly but the key word is ‘discussion’ which was partly a consequence of the ‘We are the 99%’ slogan. Of course the OWS movement were not the first to mention income inequality and Obama has talked about it from his bully pulpit (for all the good that it did..not necessarily his fault but that a different debate).
But the MSM/pundit class would just give it a sneering reference and move on to whatever Obama/Dems had to do to ‘work’ with republicians.
With the OWS movement some time be spent (not nearly enough) on income inequality and it has actually begun to resonate with the general chatter such that even centrist types are familiar with the basic statistics
Dr.BDH
Those ain’t liberals, Sparky. Find yourself a better group of leftists to talk with than the DCC’ers, unless your head likes the feeling of concrete walls.
BC
@gogol’s wife: Yeah, my family is all tinged at least a little red around the edges. They are upset with Obama for trying to compromise – they want a liberal to be as staunch as the Republicans have been. The Democrats in Congress to them are a worthless bunch, folding at the sight of Republican obstinacy. They were this way in 2006 (when they wanted the Dems to defund the Iraq war) and have been this way up to now.
Donut
@BrklynLibrul:
You build a new structure and a new way of talking about the issues. You get beat up and chemically hosed-down by cops. You draw attention to your point without worrying at first if you are properly organized. It takes a long, long time to create new ways of framing issues. In this country, it started in Wisconsin and Ohio, and it has spread to Occupy Wall Street.
I hate to say this, because it may end up sounding age-ist to some of you, even though it’s not intended that way…but, here goes: we won’t be able to move past the current issue frames employed by our media and pundit class until Baby Boomers are mostly dead and gone. It’s just the way it is. There are still far too many people around who lived through the Nixon era, and either a) hate the DFHs passionately (the modern GOP), or b) desperately don’t want to be associated with DFHs any longer. So they accept Brooks/Friedman/Zakaria “centrist” framing as correct. The Left will be framed as equally intransigent and equally to blame for the country’s ills because “Vietnam-Watergate-Jimmy Carter sucks-Reagan was mega awesome-Clinton was a low class redneck who got his dick sucked by an intern-Al Gore invented the Internet-Bush didn’t steal the election-the WMD were moved to Syria-and Obama is an uppity Kenyan soshulist Negro and gives Republicans a sad.”
A lot of “liberals” do not want to be associated with that shit.
Something along those lines…
arguingwithsignposts
@Rihilism:
He teaches Sunday School at his Catholic Church. But I’m pretty sure he’s no conservative.
Lysana
The kind of liberal I have the harder time with are the ones Voltaire meant by “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” The ones who insist he failed because he didn’t succeed enough. But the Chait article from a few days back is one I cherish for that struggle now.
gnomedad
@Donut:
I’m a Boomer who doesn’t buy any of that shit and I’d really prefer not to wait until I’m dead for things to get better. Just sayin’.
Chris
@Raenelle:
Very few people, practically no one who’s not a political junkie, seems to realize that liberals and the left are not the same thing. The working class activists produced by the Paris Commune and the class conflicts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are one thing, the bourgeois outlook equally derided by soshulists, conservatives and fascists are quite another.
Look, liberals are saps. I say this as someone who still embraces a ton of their belief system, but they fundamentally believe in things like the importance of fairness and universal rights. As it translates into political power, they believe it’s every politician’s role to serve everybody and listen to everybody, without making any distinctions like “did this guy vote for me or not.” If someone disagrees with you, you listen to him anyway and if enough people agree with him, you have to take that into consideration. That makes them ill-equipped to fight against winner-take-all, fuck-the-other-guys-by-all-means-necessary movement conservatives who don’t balk at vote suppression, merciless gerrymandering, holding an entire economy hostage, and other things unthinkable to a lib.
In short, the left understands politics as war (between classes or otherwise), and the liberals refuse to subscribe to that. A hundred years ago, Progressive activists, be they urban union/machine voters or rural W. J. Bryan/Huey Long voters, were totally cool with taxing the shit out of the rich: not because of lofty “economic fairness,” not because their economics textbooks said it would make the economy more efficient, but because fairness and justice be damned, this was war and fucking the capitalists was the whole point these days. I don’t see that kind of sentiment from today’s libs, and it makes a huge difference.
Raenelle
@Chris: That’s the difference I was referring to all right, but it’s not just that liberals don’t get it. Liberals have a different self-interest. They are invested in the process itself. Whatever the outcome, they loves them some parliamentary debate, some senate rules maneurvering, give-and-take, the process as a thing in itself. The content doesn’t matter; it’s the form by which you arrive at that content that arouses them. They will never see the point of class war, and they as sure as fuck are incapable of understanding the difference between fascism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Unless, of course, it’s in a foreign country. Then our ruling class is unerringly capable of understanding the difference between fascism and the DOP, and the proof of that is that they invariably invest in and militarily support fascist dictatorships and invade and occupy and undermine and terrorize any form of government redistribution. Then they seem to get the difference–that it’s not about democracy and human rights and never was; it’s about protecting the private accumulation of capital. Fascism does that; and the various forms of socialism (democratic or otherwise) don’t.
Donut
@gnomedad:
It’s not about whether or not things are getting better or worse. It’s about how we discuss issues in this country.
You’re missing the point (or I’m not explaining it well, or both, I will admit) if you focus on policy outcomes.
We have had some terrific policy outcomes on the liberal/democratic (sic on the small “d”) side of the fence in the last 40-odd years.
The problem is, the GOP has been absolutely outstanding at demagoguery.
Our side sucks at it – and we have since Johnson clobbered Goldwater.
Whether you want to “buy” it or not, it’s true that the memes and frames developed by the right in the Nixon era have absolutely defined political discussion in this country.
All I’m saying is that we are stuck in that paradigm until Boomers and everyone who actually remembers living through the Nixon era dies off.
Like it or not, that’s the way it is, in my opinion.
Rihilism
@arguingwithsignposts: Hmmm, I did not know that. Knew he was Catholic, but not the Sunday School thingy. I’m surprised he has the time. Shit, had Colbert taught my Sunday school, I might have paid attention during catechism. Wonder if any of the kids ask about “Ambiguously Gay Duo”?
Just thinking about that, I decided to quickly scan his Wikipedia bio. In his “Other Work”, I noticed this:
If the man is conservative, he’s a very strange one…
Rihilism
Ah, he’s one of the “good” Catholics:
Chris
@Raenelle:
Well then, at the risk of being a liberal, I’ll ask the following:
1) What, exactly, do you mean by DOP? I’m aware of the concept, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it actually being applied in the real world. All we have is either the Social Democratic successes like (to some extent) the West, where the proletarians don’t rule but acquire a voice in the system via unions, a measure of security via the welfare state, and some protection from their enemies via regulation – or Communist (or “Communist”) revolutions like Russia, China, Cuba, or what-have-you, where the proleteriat doesn’t end up in charge, you just get a new dictatorship.
2) Assuming that by DOP you mean the latter – then what is the difference between that and fascism? Yeah, I understand the technical differences between the two systems, but at the end of the day what’s the moral difference between a fascist system like Pinochet’s and a communist one like Castro’s, both of which jail or kill political opponents, suppress democratic and civil rights, concentrate power into a few hands, and keep the majority of their people poor and unrepresented? Is there any reason why I’d pick one over the other?
Raenelle
@Chris: Moral difference? Already we’re in different universes. But, here goes. The difference: cui bono? The banksters would not have gotten off scot-free in any communist country. That’s another difference.
I don’t have any particular love for dictatorship of any kind. But, here’s the thing. Our capitalist system of democracy and human rights has for at least 70 years depended for its existence on the exploitation of peasants and workers in other countries. We do NOT allow land redistribution or nationalization of foreign-owned companies from democratically elected reformers. They are opposed by any means possible. We haven’t cared about human rights overseas for over 7 decades, but we will move heaven and earth to prevent reform that hurt the profit margins of United Fruit or US mining or timber interests. Assassinations and torture–they’re all new to us here in this country. Only a decade or so. But overseas, the CIA has had those and other deadly and, yes, immoral, tactics in their tool box since the 1950s.
Now, we’re seeing it here. Look around. We are living in a police state, and the veneer of human rights/democracy is getting very, very thin. BTW, in terms of the morality of what those dictatorships engaged in, how does what the USA currently does differ? Well, there’s a quantitative difference, sure–IF (very big if) you don’t count the rest of the world. But, qualitatively? What did they do that we have a clear line against. And really, look at the direction things are going. We’re losing rights, at an every increasing speed, not restoring let alone expanding them. Hell, they’re destroying the safety net, taking away collective bargaining rights, and eroding voting rights. And, when we do vote, they ignore us. E.g., the Democrats.
I don’t know what I want, though I do think that the information we have about conditions in Cuba and China might be a tad fox-ified. The lack of success in those countries might be partially due to sustained subversion from the most powerful country in the world. But maybe not. I really, really don’t know.
But here’s what I do know: which side I’m on.
moderateindy
The problem with trying to refute the “both sides do it” meme is that both sides do it. Both sides take what the other side said or did out of context. Using procedural tricks to stop legislation, or keep appointees from being confirmed has always been done by both sides. Most importantly both sides are unduly influenced by Corporations and other big money.
The difference comes in the idea of to what degree does each side “do it”? This is often to subtle a concept for folks to embrace. Thus, an analogy might be a better way to focus on the problem. Maybe something like this…
If you had a plot of land that had a lot of weeds, the Dems would be the guy using a bottle of weed killer. The current Repubs would spray the area down with Agent Orange, followed by carpet bombing with Napalm, and finish by salting the earth.
Cause both sides may do it, but that doesn’t mean that significant differences don’t exist.
Chris
@Raenelle:
Dude, you’re acting as though I’m the U.S. government or defending the U.S. government. I’m not. I have no brief for any of the thugocracies we set up in the third world and no brief for what’s going on over here either. I’ll even say that I’m weirded out by your “new to us here in this country” statement – violence, murder and lawlessness applied to reformists both by the U.S. government or by private militias like the Ku Klux Klan have been with us for ages. You don’t need to convince me of any of the things you just listed.
What I’m asking is simply why communism would be better. The banksters would never have survived in a communist system? Please. They may not have “banksters” as we understand the term, but of course they have rich and powerful people who get to rig the system in their own favor and escape the consequences even if that fucks the public completely. Doesn’t matter if they’re Communist Party chieftains rather than private elites. Cui bono? The same people: the rich, powerful and connected. Maybe they didn’t make their fortune, power and connections the same way, but who gives a shit?
And if you don’t like “moral difference,” fine, make it material difference: what does the average Cuban, or even the average working-class Cuban get from Castro that’s better than what his Chilean counterpart got from Pinochet? At the end of the day they’re both poor and they’re both powerless. If communism as it exists in Cuba and countries like it is DOP, why shouldn’t I just stick with the current crop of assholes? I’ll be in exactly the same place as I would be in that world, and I’ll have spared myself all the chaos of a revolution.
dcdl
@gogol’s wife:
I also send links from this blog and other blogs. I have a horrible memory on every little fact. Usually, if I have an email from someone that I’m talking to I send them a whole bunch of links backing up what I say. If they are interested they can read it and make up their mind if not, whatever.
By now people know that I know what I say even if I can’t remember every detail. I’ll send it to them. Hardly anybody tries ‘debating’ me anymore who knows me. Also, if they send me links normally I can refute it with actual data and point out who is funding their source.
Raenelle
@Chris: Sorry, Chris. I have problems with my writing style, I think. I was really just enjoying the debate. Really.
But what got me assuming that you didn’t know about our anti-communism jihad, or the police state, was that you were talking morality. So I assumed that you, like most people I’ve ever discussed shit with, thought that the US had something going for it that it could brag about in the morality department. Please, please, if I offended you, that was really the last thing on my mind. Honestly, I am emjoying this.
Rich and powerful people in communist countries? Yes. But there is nowhere near the gap. The Chinese just executed some guy who they caught ripping off consumers last year. There may be two sets of rules in Communist countries, or maybe even the CP decides to whom the law applies and to whom it doesn’t, but that’s true here. Truer every day.
I’m pretty much an envy and hate the rich type of person anyway, but I’d say 99% of the 99% movement don’t resent the rich and merely want to return to the income distribution we had after WW2, to the responsiveness of government to the majority that we had after WW2. Our political system is enslaved. It’s just a subsidiary of the very, very rich, and I know, I know, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But there is a HUGE difference in the wealth spread between American rich v. the rest and communist rich v. the rest.
I don’t know enough to defend any communist country. I just know that anti-communism is the lode star of the US, and seizing on that as a policy, it’s seems fair to me to ask cui bono from virulent anti-communism?
No dictatorship is complete or iron. There are always areas over which the dictator doesn’t, but is trying to, have complete control. Here, we’ve lost control over our country, and the one thing that freaks our owners out is communism. That alone earns it a hearing, in my book.
As for why shouldn’t I stick with the current assholes–that’s what I’m saying. I don’t think I’d mind it a bit if we had some kind of despot who’d kick their asses and try and make things fairer. We’re losing our rights anyway, and without any economic compensation.
I’ve got something of a health crisis right now. I had to quit work to deal with it. Plus, my husband, like a lot of people in this country, has seen his wages and hours go down and down, and the cost of our benefits up and up. Even with pretty good insurance, my health is on the verge of putting us in debt to pay medical bills. Universal health care–like they have in Cuba–doesn’t sound that horrible to me. Pinochet? We supported him, because he opposed nationalization and land redistribution. He was a very good friend of US business. The price was that his country stayed poor. Cuba–I don’t know. It sounds horrible, but I worry because of our huge anti-communism hard-on that some of the stories may be of the bayoneting babies and burning hospitals variety, i.e., fox-ified. And, again, Cuba, unlike Chile, was subverted, not helped, by the US. But, for sure, the elite in Cuba are nowhere near as elite as ours, and I don’t think they have any more control over their country than our elite has over ours.
Why a dictatorship? I’m not sure that income redistribution demands it. I vacillate all the time between socialism and communism. It’s just that Marx (damn that guy has been right a lot of times) said that if you give the bourgeoisie an inch, they’ll take a mile, that their resources weight the game in their favor, and you have to ride them very, very hard, or they will take it all. So, dictatorhip; he saw it as necessary because of the strength of the bourgeoisie.
Bnad
There’s a popular current of wingnut thought that views unfortunate people as “lucky duckies.” This, and probably other clearly nonsense claims, offer a chance to use cognitive dissonance as a lever. I’m afraid of becoming homeless as I would bet are most people, so if I can get them to admit to having that same fear, it’s not too big a stretch to admit that the homeless aren’t that lucky really.
nastybrutishntall
The problem with my liberal friends is that they spend too much time breaking their own teeth over Amy Goodman and Glen Greenwald’s Obama failure du jour, overlaid upon the liberal syllogism that 1) if Obama is a smart, logical liberal like them then 2) he could not possibly in any way countenance one more hour of injustice anywhere in the world, so the fact that 3) he hasn’t put an end to all injustice already means that 4) he isn’t a liberal and They’reAlltheSame(TM). Ergo, Nader/Paul/Kucinich/Grayson/the last guest on Democracy Now.
They generally have no concept of the whole horsetrading aspect of our tidy little democracy, and feel that nothing will change until society falls apart and hemp grows in every victory garden and our homes are 100% solar powered from organic silicon bought at the farmer’s market. Plus, they’re all steamed about cannabis raids and that a predator drone killed some child somewhere a few weeks or months ago. Which will totally get better when the GOP controls everything because they jerked off into the voting booth or stayed home and reread the Emperor Wears No Clothes again.
I generally make no headway, because no matter what I say, they bring up Tim Geithner, or cannabis, or whatever, and the conversation is over because I’m obviously smoking Hopium and have bought into the Big Lie…It’s conspiracy defeatism, an easy cop-out with utopian roots that values purity over the filthy truth of incremental progress. I don’t know how to change it.
Mike S.
I too experience this general problem and I believe it doesn’t arise from being a liberal per se, rather it is rooted deep in the human psyche.
People desperately want to believe that things are going to work out ok, regarding a wide variety of issues. In part that desire manifests itself behaviorally as the avoidance of conflict (in many ways, not simply adversity to confronting someone).
They don’t want to hear things that would upset them, even if entirely true, as this undercuts the “it’ll be ok” delusion. Thus it is difficult to discuss policies and their future negative implications, let alone actions already taken in the past.
The call to tone down the discussion for more centrism or civility or what have you is a natural response. It carries the implication that if everybody works together then “it’ll be ok”. Admittedly this is frustrating, but the request contains a kernel of truth.
Generally, getting across to the many requires (at least) one of two things. Either you dial back the intensity, or have the message delivered by a very charismatic person.
OTOH, if crisis time has already arrived, they are already terrified, and intensity itself may carry the day (seemingly imbuing the speaker with charisma).
‘Course if crisis time has arrived, it’s too late for this discussion to be of much use.
Mike S.
@nastybrutishntall
Can you justify the near total lack of criminal prosecution on wall street for history’s greatest fraud with “the filthy truth of incremental progress”?
You dismiss Greenwald, whose biggest beef is probably “rule of law” evaporating as we speak. This is a foundational issue for our society.
I agree that progress is incremental, and that horse trading occurs, yet trading to get what you want requires one to want something…
When one is unwilling to take a stand for foundational principles such as this, it is difficult to argue that one has meaningful goals to work toward incrementally.
Will
The first thing I do is make sure they aren’t operating on false information. I can’t tell you how many of my very liberal friends don’t know a damn true thing about PPACA, and “know” a lot of things about it that are completely false. Same goes for the stimulus package, the auto industry rescue, TARP, etc. These are people who don’t spend nearly as much time as I do obsessing over political news, but they do hear a lot of bullshit on a regular basis, from the office, their family, their friends, etc., and it just filters in. I try to correct them on that initially. I also try to correct them that no, a 3rd party movement would not work in our winner-take-all system of government, and yes, they are going to have to change the existing Democratic Party from within if they want it to more firmly embrace progressive values.