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Higsian posted:You should keep reading past the hunter-gather point as I drop the point very quickly because I don't give a poo poo about it and only address it because the post I was replying to asks specifically what existed before work for pay. One problem - you don't understand what democracy is and seem stuck at a 4th grade level where you think it's individual freedom and empowerment and 'having a say' or whatever when really the best case scenario is that no one (including you) is happy.
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Dec 13, 2016 05:21
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I said nothing about democracy. Literally nothing. I don't give a toss about the definition or purpose of democracy beyond that it's a step better than what came before it and I'll defend it from anything that tries to regress from it. Also just want to point out that there's nothing inherently wrong with incremental change. Incrementalism only becomes a problem when it's used to shut down or spit on calls and movements for more ambitious change. If you believe that incrementalism is the best way to help people then go ahead and do that I see nothing wrong with it. Just don't use your belief to belittle the efforts of others. That's when it crosses over to centrism. EDIT: Actually I think that's an important point for people who are still sticking up for centrism. If the centre was properly allied to the left they would do their part pulling left in the ways and to the extent that they think are appropriate. But you see the establishment Democrats and others of their ilk (eg. Labour right in the UK) are doing is fighting against the left. You can say you believe in incremental leftism or getting what you can for the left if you're doing your thing alongside other leftist doing theirs. But you can't say that if what you're doing is saying your way is the only way and blocking the efforts of others and failing to stand with them when they need some support. The way the centre is reacting to the left saying "okay we've stood behind you for decades and you hosed it up let us take the reigns of this partnership" speaks volumes. Also note that both the Labour right in the UK and Labour in Australia have attacked their left counterparts (Labour left in UK, The Greens in Australia) with claims of anti-semitism much like some centrist Democrats are doing with Keith Ellison. The Labour right in the UK in particular is so loving blatant in what they're doing and where their allegiances truly lie it's kinda breathtaking. Take a look into that if you haven't. Futuresight fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 05:26
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General Dog posted:There's a folly in expecting leftism to take hold in the US that's akin to those who think that democracy would take root in the Middle East if they just had the chance. It's not a lack education or opportunity- the people understand leftism, and largely they reject it. It's not our cup of tea. Ignoring the weird implication that there's something special about Middle Easterners that makes democracy just not work for them, you aren't even right. Americans support a wide range of policies, some of which are drastically farther to the left than mainstream political discourse. The problem is that the well has been poisoned so badly for certain terms that the support only really shows up in polls where you describe the actual policy rather than use terms like "socialized medicine" or "universal healthcare." There's also the problem with trying to gauge public reaction for political policies that haven't been seriously advocated for within the living memory of most voters. Republicans have largely controlled the narrative here, which in turns influences public opinion. Most Americans support voter ID laws which are almost always racist in intent, so should we just accept that Americans are racist and push for racist policies? Most Americans support drug testing for welfare recipients too, so should we accept the idea that Americans enjoy literally setting taxpayer dollars on fire? Point being, public opinion is not a static thing and democracy as practiced in the modern world is as much about molding the will of the electorate as it is about following it. FULL SOCIALISM NOW will never work, but you can absolutely push and enact leftist policy by selling it correctly.
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Dec 13, 2016 05:54
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Paradoxish posted:The problem is that the well has been poisoned so badly for certain terms that the support only really shows up in polls where you describe the actual policy rather than use terms like "socialized medicine" or "universal healthcare." This is an excellent point too. Leftists really don't understand how deep in poo poo they are and how much they need to win back trust in American politics, American government and leftism itself. For that they need all the allies they can get, and not do silly poo poo like burning bridges with potential supporters. Even if they are centrists or neoliberals. If you want to replace supremely useless employees like DWS, okay that is a point. But going after people just cause they're not left enough, especially when they're politically active and have experience, is foolish. If you really want an American left, you need to do the following: 1) Stop with your neoliberals!NEOLIBERALS!NEOLIBERALS! bullshit. Allies are allies. If you cannot accept this, give up right now you have already lost. 2) Run educational campaigns about how great Universal Healthcare and poo poo is without using the exact words. Call it All Access Healthcare or something and drive home how good it is before Republicans can try to corrupt the term. Same thing for other leftist goals. 3) Decouple leftism from its perceived negative ties. Talk about actual socialist countries like Sweden and how great it is there. 4) Getting rid of FPTP would be ideal. Republicans have a strong and consistent voting base which Democrats/Glorious True Leftists won't have for the forseeable future. We need to go hard on an alternative. 5) Use campaigns to emphasize Republican failures to attack them and their Nazi allies. These have to be public and perceived failures. We need to do it as much as the right wing did it with Benghazi. Your much beloved True Leftism simply doesn't even fit in the current national dialogue. When it does, then you can talk about how the real problem is actually centrists.
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Dec 13, 2016 07:37
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Your entire post with the arguable exception of 1 basically describes a "True Leftism" platform in America. It's a perfectly solid plan to serve and empower the American people. A lot wouldn't agree that it goes as far as needed, but nobody would fight against doing those things. If you actually pursued those goals with the added caveat of "support where possible, and absolutely do not undermine, other leftist movements and activists" then I don't think anyone should hit you with a no true leftist stigma (until you at least hit those goals). The problem a lot of leftists have is that we don't think the centrist politicians and journalists will actually pursue those goals with anything approaching conviction because it's not what they actually want. If they had pursued those things rigorously we wouldn't be having this argument. The left can't afford to give the centre the benefit of the doubt any more and needs to say gently caress the centre if it's not going to actually pull to the left. I don't think it will and many other leftists feel the same and we can't afford to wait and see. We need action whether or not the centre will come with. If we're proven wrong and centrists suddenly decided to pursue what you outline in your post, and the equivalent in other countries, we'd all be very happy.
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Dec 13, 2016 07:54
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Al-Saqr posted:By the way, if you guys want to watch an amazing documentary about how much of a disasterous Plague Centrism and Feaux-Liberalism is, I highly, HIGHLY reccomend you watch Adam Curtis's 'Hypernormalization' Related, on the latest Chapo Trap House they interviewed him, and it was depressing/fascinating Even if you don't like them, which I totally understand, this one is low key on the "problematic" stuff, and worth hearing. Famethrowa fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 07:59
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SSNeoman posted:I give you a year before it stops being so hollow. Tops. Considering that I voted for Trump over the third term of Obama and I voted for Rubio over the possibility of being stuck with Patrick Murphy* for multiple terms before an even more extreme republican toppled him...I doubt it. I'm done kicking the can down the road. Centrism is the scenic route to ruin. (*both of those are hyperlinks) SSNeoman posted:This is a bullshit right wing talking point and I hate, hate, hate that the True Leftists spout it. It's really not. I can't tell you how many times (even in D&D) I've been told that because I support labor or that I think that the Democratic party shouldn't exclusively be the party of identity politics, that I'm somehow trying to oppose or silence minority groups. The sad reality is that a large number of the left don't give a gently caress about what's going on as long as whatever social issue they rally around is getting lip service. If Jeb Bush had a come to jesus moment on social issues, I bet the Democrats would try to run him in 2020 and people would go along with it because 'think of all the undecided voters and disillusioned republicans we could pick up  'boner confessor posted:not every day, but working there plenty of volunteer groups, church groups, youth groups like boy scouts etc. came through to spend time with the residents, especially around the holidays. they'd probably do so even more if they didn't have to spend so much time just working to survive Wouldn't call it a dim view of humanity. Most of those people do those things as a communal activity or a way to pay penance for their good fortune. It's a bit idealistic to believe that if people were freed from having to earn a living, that they would replace their jobs with volunteering. That's why I originally said that people without strong family/community ties to occupy their free time would be miserable in a basic income world. I agree with you that people's capacity for leisure isn't infinite. SSNeoman posted:If you really want an American left, you need to do the following: 1. Then we lost. Because neoliberals are not allies. They're snakes in the grass that try to hobble progressive causes behind the scenes while their opponents call them communism personified. 2. It's called medicare for all and it didn't work. Not that the third way democrats ever pushed for it anyways. 3. Doesn't work because our so-called allies say poo poo like '"We are not Denmark … I love Denmark. We are the United States of America and it's our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so it doesn't run amok." 4-5. Good luck with that. We couldn't even get Obama to make a stink over the congress refusing the confirm his supreme court nomination (which is a whole other can of worms but whatever) Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 08:09
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OK but what would you think if someone described themselves as a Radical Centrist?
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Dec 13, 2016 08:11
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Call Me Charlie posted:Considering that I voted for Trump oh word
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Dec 13, 2016 08:13
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Aryu Kiddimeh posted:OK but what would you think if someone described themselves as a Radical Centrist? I would think that they believe the systems we have are exactly the systems we need and that all we need to do is double down on what we're doing and at best tweak the very margins. I'd expect them to be someone that thinks that current interventions in the Middle East are ultimately working we just need to keep boots off the ground and stay droning and we'll see the glorious fruits of that effort. That extreme capitalism is the path to utopia and we just need to find the right tax brackets to make it all work, no need to tear down protections and absolutely no need to add new ones, just tweak it, little tweaks here and there. Etc.
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Dec 13, 2016 08:29
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Higsian posted:Your entire post with the arguable exception of 1 basically describes a "True Leftism" platform in America. It's a perfectly solid plan to serve and empower the American people. A lot wouldn't agree that it goes as far as needed, but nobody would fight against doing those things. If you actually pursued those goals with the added caveat of "support where possible, and absolutely do not undermine, other leftist movements and activists" then I don't think anyone should hit you with a no true leftist stigma (until you at least hit those goals). The problem a lot of leftists have is that we don't think the centrist politicians and journalists will actually pursue those goals with anything approaching conviction because it's not what they actually want. If they had pursued those things rigorously we wouldn't be having this argument. The left can't afford to give the centre the benefit of the doubt any more and needs to say gently caress the centre if it's not going to actually pull to the left. I don't think it will and many other leftists feel the same and we can't afford to wait and see. We need action whether or not the centre will come with. If we're proven wrong and centrists suddenly decided to pursue what you outline in your post, and the equivalent in other countries, we'd all be very happy. Yeah I guess I can agree on this, sure. holy poo poo and you were calling me defeatist jfc
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Dec 13, 2016 09:02
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SSNeoman posted:holy poo poo and you were calling me defeatist jfc Just because I think we need to drive a stake through the heart of Clintonism/Third Way doesn't mean I'm a defeatist. Please click any of those hyperlinks and tell me how those are the actions of people on our side. Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 09:15
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I'm not sure "our side" includes trump voters.
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Dec 13, 2016 10:09
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Call Me Charlie posted:Just because I think we need to drive a stake through the heart of Clintonism/Third Way doesn't mean I'm a defeatist. Please click any of those hyperlinks and tell me how those are the actions of people on our side. ...seriously? very well. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/whos-killing-the-public-o_b_334372.html a 6 year old article from some HuffPo True Leftist parroting your points. This is exactly the sort of poo poo I'm talking about when I warn leftists about not burning bridges with allies. Obama realized his mistakes and he tried to work within the confines of the system. Obviously it failed, though we did get the ACA. BTW, why exactly did it fail? Oh yes, Republicans demonized the poo poo out of it for years. Who was the previous major proponent of the public option? Why none other than she-witch and n-n-n-neoliberal scourge Hillary Clinton. Though if you plan on taking out your frustrations on Obama's legacy and do not consider him an ally then 1) lol and 2) within a year Obama will be remembered as one of the most honorable, charismatic and effective presidents of the last 2 decades. You are not winning friends or political power by spurning him. http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/14/clinton-and-sanders-why-the-big-deal-about-denmark.html It was a debate between her and Sanders. Sanders went for his usual (correct) talking points while she went for pretty much the same sentiment but using nationalism to make her seem more right. Maybe not the best source for supporting your points? Do note I specifically talk about their comments on Denmark, not their comments on taxation.
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Dec 13, 2016 10:21
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boner confessor posted:yeah, my first job was in the laundry of a hospice and i also assisted the CNAs with menial tasks for dinner. tell me all about my own life experiences, friend
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Dec 13, 2016 10:58
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wow, gently caress, a faux leftist who literally voted for the cheeto calling anyone else a snake in the grass, this world, this forum, your intense autism, should have sent a poet.
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Dec 13, 2016 11:06
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boner confessor posted:why do you believe that people would sit around doing nothing forever unless a taskmaster gives them a pupose Much like Rossum's Universal Robots, poors have no will of their own and need to be given a task by their owners or they will not do anything because how can they?
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Dec 13, 2016 11:14
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SSNeoman posted:...seriously? very well. So the Republicans are responsible for Obama making a deal with lobbyists in 2009 and for the White House refusing to twist any arms to get the votes needed to include a heavily neutered public option that Obama promised those lobbyists wouldn't be included? Ok. Next tell me how the Republicans are really responsible for Obama's (one of the most honorable, charismatic and effective presidents of the last 2 decades  ) Administration being the one to suggest sequestration with automatic triggers in 2011 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...7c314_blog.html (I hate linking the Washington Post but it's really difficult to try to find live links to stories from 5 years ago) I hope it's as good as Bill Clinton being forced to reform welfare and sign the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. (And I assume that it's also the Republicans' fault that Obama and the entire DNC decided to back Patrick Murphy - a person with one of the most conservative records in the House Democratic caucus - in my senate race.) SSNeoman posted:http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/14/clinton-and-sanders-why-the-big-deal-about-denmark.html It was a debate between her and Sanders. Sanders went for his usual (correct) talking points while she went for pretty much the same sentiment but using nationalism to make her seem more right. Maybe not the best source for supporting your points? You literally posted "If you really want an American left, you need to do the following: (...) 3) Decouple leftism from its perceived negative ties. Talk about actual socialist countries like Sweden and how great it is there." He tried that and she discredited that by saying that we aren't Denmark (explicitly implying that those policies wouldn't work in America) Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 11:36
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Call Me Charlie posted:So the Republicans are responsible for Obama making a deal with lobbyists in 2009 and for the White House refusing to twist any arms to get the votes needed to include a heavily neutered public option that Obama promised those lobbyists wouldn't be included? Ok. If you read Hillary's goldman sachs speeches you can pretty easily identify her real positions on issues and she basically only wants Wall Street to have to follow rules that it makes up for itself and will only couple taxes with some give-and-take. And inevitably i'm going to get someone saying that's the pragmatic take, but here's a more pragmatic take. Present yourself as the only thing keeping the people from hanging Wall Street, then tell them that if they want that kind of relationship to continue there are going to be new rules, and if you don't like it, well, tough. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 11:41
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OwlFancier posted:I'm not sure "our side" includes trump voters. I definitely wouldn't have voted for Trump nor do I think it's a good idea to have done so but I don't think it's worth trying to exclude people for having ideas we think are bad. The problem with establishment Democrats and other centre politicians is not that they make bad decisions, it's that they make bad decisions because their hearts are in the wrong place. The whole purity argument the left is going on about is entirely based on where you stand. The left is raging at Clinton and Obama and friends not just because they hosed up but because what we see in them from the particular way they hosed up, the way they responded to their various fuckups, and their rhetoric. You can be with the left if you make bad decisions (just please not in power) but you can't be on the left if you don't have the right intentions. We can work with someone who voted for Trump because they were sick of centrist Democrats and voting for the lesser of 2 evils; we can't work with people who don't actually believe in supporting and empowering the people.
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Dec 13, 2016 12:33
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Higsian posted:I definitely wouldn't have voted for Trump nor do I think it's a good idea to have done so but I don't think it's worth trying to exclude people for having ideas we think are bad. The problem with establishment Democrats and other centre politicians is not that they make bad decisions, it's that they make bad decisions because their hearts are in the wrong place. The whole purity argument the left is going on about is entirely based on where you stand. The left is raging at Clinton and Obama and friends not just because they hosed up but because what we see in them from the particular way they hosed up, the way they responded to their various fuckups, and their rhetoric. You can be with the left if you make bad decisions (just please not in power) but you can't be on the left if you don't have the right intentions. I'm not sure I think the terminally stupid are a better proposition than the terminally selfish, or that they are necessarily different from each other. If you are politically aware enough to dislike liberalism on the basis that its promises do not match its performance, and then vote for trump, you're dumb on a pretty staggering level. Someone who tries to critically assess a situation and reaches the decision "gently caress it I'm voting for the worst guy burn it all down" is not what I would call a fountain of potential. There's people who are misled and there are people who have access to the information and just don't care to make a rational decision and don't consider the people they know will suffer as a result of their irrational decision making. I don't think they're good prospects for a united left front. Someone willing to throw everyone else under the bus for their own sense of spite is not someone we can work with. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Dec 13, 2016 |
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Dec 13, 2016 13:25
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I don't think it's terminally stupid to vote Trump and I don't think making a terminally stupid decision would forever paint a person as terminally stupid if it was. It's not like people are uniform in how good they are at making decisions in every decision space. *cough* engineer libertarians *cough* I don't think accelerationism is a good idea but if a person buys into the idea then voting Trump is exactly the kind of thing you'd do when faced with this election. Keep in mind I think people who have repeatedly supported centrist politicians and organisations are responsible for the state of the world in which a vote for Trump is even a possibility let alone a thing that could have consequences like Trump becoming President of the United States of America (and have also collectively thrown the left under the bus for decades). If we can forgive them for their choices as long as they're willing to work to fix it we should be able to look past one vote during an insane election. If you didn't get a little existential and panicky when Trump won the GOP nomination you either bought into the liberal can't lose bullshit or you're crazy.
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Dec 13, 2016 14:17
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"If someone is an idiot then they do idiotic things." I am prepared to accept that people can change but someone who last month thought that accelerationism is a good idea with full understanding of the damage it will do to everyone in the world, is not someone who is part of a leftist platform. They can go make the nihilism party or something but I see no reason why I should want someone whose response to difficulty is to become politically suicidal, such a person is at best unstable support and at worst actively counterproductive, such as voting for the polar opposite of your desired policy position.
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Dec 13, 2016 16:17
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Higsian posted:I would think that they believe the systems we have are exactly the systems we need and that all we need to do is double down on what we're doing and at best tweak the very margins. I'd expect them to be someone that thinks that current interventions in the Middle East are ultimately working we just need to keep boots off the ground and stay droning and we'll see the glorious fruits of that effort. That extreme capitalism is the path to utopia and we just need to find the right tax brackets to make it all work, no need to tear down protections and absolutely no need to add new ones, just tweak it, little tweaks here and there. Etc.
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Dec 13, 2016 16:51
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I would think that after the terrestrial embodiment of pragmatic, status-quo liberalism was electorally pounded into the dirt by a candidate that was supposed to be crushed himself, to usher in Eight Years of Perfect Centrist Liberalism Just Like the Nineties, that the people who were most vociferously defending this fantasy scenario would not now think they have any ability to tell others what Americans ~really think~ about leftism.
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Dec 13, 2016 17:13
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You were all proven wrong in the most hideously embarrassing manner possible and now expect people to take you seriously?
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Dec 13, 2016 17:14
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Higsian posted:I've been following American politics very closely since the mid 90s to the point that I'd say I was more familiar with American politics than Australian politics until a couple years ago actually. I don't really care about national borders and America has a huge influence on the rest of the world (and our Liberals are unfortunately prone to follow in your footsteps) so American politics are very relevant to me. So I'm not completely ignorant of how things are over there. And yet you thought that being pro-welfare was a centrist position in the US, so I suspect that you don't know US politics nearly as well as you think you do. Again, centrism is not an ideology or a movement, it's the intended result of the compromises that are supposed to be inherent in all modern systems of representative democracy. Your arguments lose a lot of power because you insist on arguing against a strawman you built yourself for the specific purpose of this argument, one designed in the form of an imaginary enemy that doesn't exist. Higsian posted:Also note that both the Labour right in the UK and Labour in Australia have attacked their left counterparts (Labour left in UK, The Greens in Australia) with claims of anti-semitism much like some centrist Democrats are doing with Keith Ellison. The Labour right in the UK in particular is so loving blatant in what they're doing and where their allegiances truly lie it's kinda breathtaking. Take a look into that if you haven't. Wait, what do you mean by this? Where do you think their allegiances truly lie? Please, enlighten us And since you've already demonstrated your ignorance of American politics, let me clear something up for you: the anti-Semitism accusation hurled at Ellison has nothing at all to do with "centrist Democrats", "establishment Democrats", or any other kind of Democrat. That's just something cooked up by people whose worldview is incompatible with the idea that establishment Dems might support a leftist, and therefore they rationalize it by ascribing any criticism of Ellison at all to the establishment Dems.
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Dec 13, 2016 17:41
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Main Paineframe posted:Wait, what do you mean by this? Where do you think their allegiances truly lie? Please, enlighten us Apparently ideologically bound to centrism regardless of whether it does anyone any good or whether it wins votes, very strange tbh. Possibly also their own careers.
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Dec 13, 2016 17:43
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So Haim Saban isn't part of the establishment, then?
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Dec 13, 2016 17:43
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All you need to know about centrist establishment Democrats is that up the page there's a whole thread full of them furiously masturbating to the idea of a CIA lead coup in the US. Our guy didn't win? gently caress it, lets have a dictatorship.
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Dec 13, 2016 18:49
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The electorate? Oh, they're racist. That's why we lost. We're the pragmatists.
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Dec 13, 2016 18:51
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Rent-A-Cop posted:All you need to know about centrist establishment Democrats is that up the page there's a whole thread full of them furiously masturbating to the idea of a CIA lead coup in the US. Eh, the US has a constitution because the people who set it up didn't believe that democracy would always produce good outcomes, the idea that a state should have methods of protecting itself against the results of its democratic processes is not a bizzare one. If anything, the idea that executive power in the government rests in the hands of one person is kind of dictatorial in the classical sense.
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Dec 13, 2016 19:04
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Fiction posted:So Haim Saban isn't part of the establishment, then? He's a pro-Israel lobbyist, opposing Ellison because of very specific criticisms Ellison made about pro-Israel lobbyists. Nothing to do with the "establishment".
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Dec 13, 2016 20:11
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Call Me Charlie posted:You literally posted "If you really want an American left, you need to do the following: (...) 3) Decouple leftism from its perceived negative ties. Talk about actual socialist countries like Sweden and how great it is there." He tried that and she discredited that by saying that we aren't Denmark (explicitly implying that those policies wouldn't work in America) And as usual, people who say this poo poo don't understand political optics. Higsian posted:We can work with someone who voted for Trump because they were sick of centrist Democrats and voting for the lesser of 2 evils; we can't work with people who don't actually believe in supporting and empowering the people. These people are exactly the sort of dipshit centrists you're railing against though.
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Dec 13, 2016 20:15
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Higsian posted:I don't think it's terminally stupid to vote Trump and I don't think making a terminally stupid decision would forever paint a person as terminally stupid if it was. It's not like people are uniform in how good they are at making decisions in every decision space. *cough* engineer libertarians *cough* I don't think accelerationism is a good idea but if a person buys into the idea then voting Trump is exactly the kind of thing you'd do when faced with this election. So we can work with people who voted for Trump but not people who voted for Clinton, is what you're saying.
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Dec 13, 2016 20:17
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OwlFancier posted:Eh, the US has a constitution because the people who set it up didn't believe that democracy would always produce good outcomes, the idea that a state should have methods of protecting itself against the results of its democratic processes is not a bizzare one. The US Constitution has a process for removing an executive and it didn't involve paramilitaries.
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Dec 13, 2016 20:27
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Turning over the government to the Keystone Kops of torture is not an outcome preferable to a democratically elected government you don't like. The US as a state, however, was sort of founded on using paramilitaries to remove an executive you don't like. The idea that the modern incarnation of democracy is infallible and nothing could be better ever is kind of strange, it's quite vulnerable to corruption of its purpose.
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Dec 13, 2016 20:47
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Turning over the government to the Keystone Kops of torture is not an outcome preferable to a democratically elected government you don't like. "Elected government you don't like." is putting it a tad mildly. Jeb Bush, would be someone most "don't like." Openly corrupt, racist human avatar of mammon itself Donald Trump, along with his absolute lunatic cabinet picks, are existential threats to the future of the United States. These men are so brazenly horrible, that some TV Executive in the 90's thought "Nah. Captain Planet wouldn't be nearly as believable with people like them as the villains."
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Dec 13, 2016 22:57
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Main Paineframe posted:And yet you thought that being pro-welfare was a centrist position in the US, so I suspect that you don't know US politics nearly as well as you think you do. Again, centrism is not an ideology or a movement, it's the intended result of the compromises that are supposed to be inherent in all modern systems of representative democracy. Your arguments lose a lot of power because you insist on arguing against a strawman you built yourself for the specific purpose of this argument, one designed in the form of an imaginary enemy that doesn't exist. Welfare is the natural consequence of centrist positions in the US, not a central plank they campaign on. Centrist politicians do not particularly like welfare, but they resort to welfare because the entire philosophy is built around patching capitalism to soften the worst effects of it. But because they don't understanding why it should exist you get welfare that doesn't really act to empower people against their employers and instead just acts as a way for people not to starve. Like every time I've brought up welfare it's been in the context of how the centre doesn't really get it. I never implied that welfare as an idea is the brain child of the centre. You'll also note that I only link welfare and the US when I'm talking about the rust belt. A big argument from centrists on this forum was that the rust belt is never going to recover, that the jobs are never coming back, and the rust belt needs to get over the idea of jobs and accept that welfare is their future. You can't bring the jobs back because free trade and even if we changed change policy it wouldn't work because automation so lets just throw welfare at them and go back to pretending they don't exist instead of learning from Trump's win there. I figured addressing points people had made on this forum might be useful in bringing it home for people. I guess everything looks like a strawman if you're not willing to dig below the surface or draw lines. The whole thesis of the OP was that centrism IS NOT "the intended result of the compromises that are supposed to be inherent in all modern systems of representative democracy" that it claims to be, but is instead a corrupt form of right wing politics formed by people who don't like the natural consequences of the systems and policies they support. Like the whole point is this. Everything is about why the centre is not what it claims or appears to be on the surface. If it is a strawman then this thread would be about building it. You don't have to agree with me just because it's the thesis of course, but I don't know why you think I'd abandon my entire position cause you said what amounts to nuh-uh. Plus if we're talking US politics, and thus centrism is the position of compromising with modern Republicans by your argument, I'm really not certain that would be anything even approaching an improvement. Also the anti-semite thing was never about the entire establishment descending upon Keith Ellison, "like some centrist Democrats" is what I specifically said. The Australian example was also just one politician using it to fight against a Greens candidate for their electorate. Only the UK example was an actual organised movement. The point was to show this strange link between centrists in 3 different countries using anti-semitism to attack the left. It's interesting to see the same arguments come out when some centrists feel pressure on the left, especially when those arguments have nothing to do with centre vs left. Almost like it's not a sincere concern but is used instead of "gently caress this leftist for being left" because that might not go down well with the left voters the centre relies on.
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Dec 14, 2016 00:02
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OwlFancier posted:The US as a state, however, was sort of founded on using paramilitaries to remove an executive you don't like. Democracy is preferable to autocratic rule by a bunch of guys whose chief contribution to the world has been the discovery that if you put enough stuff in a dude's butt he will lie to you about where terrorists are.
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Dec 14, 2016 00:44
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