|
Kilroy posted:This is especially infuriating among people who got tons of help from social programs but either didn't really process the role that played in helping them out, or think it helped them but most people are abusing it, or both of these things. Which is most people. I want to go into their homes and break all their stuff. A lot of this has to do with how we process the events of our lives. We're pretty much hardwired to see things in a narrative context, which in turn makes it difficult to understand that our lives are mostly just a pretty random, meaningless sequence of events. It's hard to pull signal from the noise of everything that's ever happened to you, so it's easier to believe that your hard work led you to where you are today. That awful, minimum wage job that you were I really don't know how you break through this. Leftist policies all but demand that people accept that life is far more out of their control than they'd like to believe. You're trying to sell safety nets to people who believe that they aren't ever going to fall down.
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2017 23:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 06:55 |
|
|
I highly recommend you guys read Nixonland by rick perlstein btw, if there is one precedent for president Trump in living memory it was Richard Nixon
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2017 23:47
|
|
|
Typo posted:I highly recommend you guys read Nixonland by rick perlstein btw, if there is one precedent for president Trump in living memory it was Richard Nixon Seconding this, I can't recommend that book highly enough. Just... realize it's portable depression, and maybe read it in small doses in between bouts of sunshine and exercise.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2017 23:48
|
|
|
it turns out that liberals care more about moral purity and superiority than any normative values. the far left and far right are equally bad because i'm more moral than both at the very least the trump regime will stave off the war between liberals and the left for a while (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2017 23:50
|
|
|
The choice was always socialism or barbarism. I will never forget liberal economist Thomas Picketty essentially proving mathmatically that Marx was right and could only offer a technocratic bandaid "solution" in a global wealth tax that will never exist. Liberals need to take the lesson to heart and radicalize themselves or remain chained to a dead ideology.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 00:03
|
|
|
Mantis42 posted:The choice was always socialism or barbarism. I will never forget liberal economist Thomas Picketty essentially proving mathmatically that Marx was right and could only offer a technocratic bandaid "solution" in a global wealth tax that will never exist. Liberals need to take the lesson to heart and radicalize themselves or remain chained to a dead ideology. I think we all agree on that, the question is how to help them do that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 00:05
|
|
|
Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I think we all agree on that, the question is how to help them do that. Pithy but useless answer: replace the Protestant Work Ethic. Specifically, shatter the virtue-yields-money-yields-virtue loop that prevents people from wrapping their heads around the notion that capital/the rich does not actually deserve the absurd returns it gets under the current system. The system is failing so many people, but the kind of liberal apathy we are talking about can't make the logical leap that it's those people who are being failed, not the other way around. We can feed everyone, clothe everyone, tend to the illnesses of everyone, with the money we have Right Now. We have it, no joke. But we don't think of ourselves as a wealthy society, we think of ourselves as a society with wealthy people because we've been fed the notion for hundreds of years that wealth is made by rugged individuals and belongs to them and them alone. Liberal apathy is a shell that people grow around themselves because they know that we can and should help the suffering but can't reconcile that with the lie that we can't afford to. We need to make people as angry about that as they were (quite rightfully) about civil rights, immigrant rights, and gay marriage. Their humanity is the way in; the message starts with "We can afford these things, anyone who tells you otherwise is loving robbing you of your dignity and birthright to live in a caring society."
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 00:48
|
|
|
Mr Giant Man posted:In terms of how liberalism will move forward, I'd bet the short term (2-4 years) future is bright. The idenity politics police is will probably just be split across both camps. The problem with the identity politics thing isn't really the identiy polics at all - it's more about those that are content to just support that and feel they've done their part to be "good liberals", without addressing the economic or class root-causes. There will be plenty that want to address both problems.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 01:13
|
|
|
Tiny Brontosaurus posted:How do we radicalize your mom? You don't. bag em and tag em posted:I think the key here is how do we radicalize someone who is comfortable? I know the point has been beaten to death elsewhere but I think it is, in fact, going to be easier to find common ground with a subset of Trump supporters than with older, comfortable, white liberals. The common ground is specifically economic distress. Many Trump supporters feel it and voted Trump out of a sort of hopeless despair. All you have to do is show that Trump has not actually helped their day-to-day situation (or made it worse), which shouldn't be the most difficult thing in the world. As an aisde, the really scary scenario to my mind is if the Trump government actually manages to caugh up enough social programs (primarily targeted to his base and disguised as tax cuts with job-creating conditions and PPPs and god knows what else) that it actually improves the day-to-day situation of a large part of his base. I don't know how the left comes back from that, I really don't.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 01:28
|
|
|
Typo posted:The Black Panthers appeared after the civil rights act was passed, MLK was killed only 2 years after its founding My mother inevitably slips into calling protests "riots" by like the third sentence and wept when I told her that I participate in peace marches because "the people who do those things are trouble-makers and they don't care who they kill." She self-identifies as a moderate.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 01:43
|
|
|
Jack Gladney posted:My mother inevitably slips into calling protests "riots" by like the third sentence and wept when I told her that I participate in peace marches because "the people who do those things are trouble-makers and they don't care who they kill." Tamping down my  here because it's not like she's unusual. Have you had any success changing her mind on anything political?
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 01:45
|
|
|
Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Tamping down my Never. She believes that she's reasonable because when she was in her 20s there were some race riots in her town and she was open to listening to Those People explaining why they did it, but still believes that the only acceptable possibility for Those People resolving their problems is to sit down at a table with "the other side" and compromise. But they have to listen too and not just make demands, you see. To her this is a moderate position because apparently my father and her parents believed that the national guard should have blown up the rioting neighborhoods. Segregation is a hell of a thing. I'm convinced it ruined all the boomers by making them all crazy. But I can't even convince my mom to stop watching Dr. Oz, and she's a loving nurse. Also Those People are just using me to get legitimately but only care about getting what they want.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 01:58
|
|
|
Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I think we all agree on that, the question is how to help them do that. It's not exactly easy but as I said before I don't know what else to do. If they're a milquetoast liberal and they think some form of socialism could maybe work but it would never get past the electorate so better triangulate, triangulate, triangulate, then it might be as simple as pointing out that this is exactly what centrists have been fiddling with since Reagan at least and in the meantime the government has moved steadily to the right despite the population moving steadily to the left (so I'm told, anyway - not sure how much I believe this). If they continue to balk at it then just say you're also tired of compromising on your ideals with people who have none, and who can't really win elections anymore anyway. And if socialists can't win elections either then at least you're voting for the people that you would want administering the government even if they're never going to get the chance. The truth, in other words. There might be a less grim way to put it but that's the gist. A little "rather die on my feet" sort of spirit is what the left needs. If they're holding on to capitalism a little tighter than that, then at that point you have to actually sell socialism. I think a lot of people who like capitalism do so out of a desire for economic self-determination. But in truth capitalism doesn't deliver on this so make that case. Stuff like democratic workplaces can be an easy sell and you don't even have to mention the word socialism in the first place. I tell people I'd like to see the charter for public corporations reworked so that half the board is elected by the employees, and the other half by shareholders. I've also brought up mandatory profit sharing as well but that's a lower priority for me than democratic workplaces and more abstract than "you'll vote on the CEO and determine what he's paid". (It would likely be a consequence of democratic workplaces anyway.) It's also a good answer to shipping jobs overseas, since if workers are playing a big part in the management of a large company they're not going to vote themselves out of work unless they're voting on a fair severance at the same time. Finally, if they're low information and easily swayed by bullshit (and maybe even voted for Trump) then appeals to emotion and conscience. That's how you get people to give a drat as well.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 03:04
|
|
|
Jack Gladney posted:What caused the world to abandon Keynes and capitalism with a robust safety net? I keep hearing about stagflation and oil crises as the prods that rose neoliberalism out of the muck, but were those crises inevitable? Blyth gives a nice overview here (18:30) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1108s This whole talk is great btw
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 03:49
|
|
|
Jack Gladney posted:My mother inevitably slips into calling protests "riots" by like the third sentence and wept when I told her that I participate in peace marches because "the people who do those things are trouble-makers and they don't care who they kill." left-wing protesters are thought of as bad because they are seeing as attacking the nation and patriotism and the police/military, all of which are considered core good things in America. They aren't just attacking specific issues or problems in America: they are seeing as attacking America itself. when you have protesters holding up signs like "patriotism is racism" it inevitably alienates people who live in key electoral areas. Patriotism, nationalism and petty tribalism are very strong forces and I think the left and liberals have a tendency of optimistically believing we moved past it. Also there's no particular reason why fiscal liberal economic policies are attached to socially liberal political parties, for all we on D&D mocked the dogmatic and unshakable faith the Republicans have in the free market, Trump just won the presidency with the two key ideas of repudating free trade and use heavy state intervention on preventing firms from moving capital freely. It's not exactly free market, but it could be sold from the right and not the left. What I'm basically getting at is that Trump is prob only person in America who can sell UHC to the American people. National Socialism is a lot more appealing than left-wing socialism.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 05:22
|
|
|
exmarx posted:Blyth gives a nice overview here (18:30) I thought blyth is dead on the money when he says that central bank inflation targeting is being gamed and we should raise inflation levels to alleivate the debt burden and gently caress over the creditors good luck ever selling that to an electorate though they think 100000000% hyper-inflation any day now.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 05:23
|
|
|
Typo posted:left-wing protesters are thought of as bad because they are seeing as attacking the nation and patriotism and the police/military, all of which are considered core good things in America. They aren't just attacking specific issues or problems in America: they are seeing as attacking America itself. If it has to be national socialism then let it be a national socialism divorced from the idea of skin color. Let us promote the nation based on being American . Let us make Americanism an idea and attack filth like the Devoss's as traitors to our nation. Let us make being the worker the national idea and portray our enemies as the enemies of our country.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 05:42
|
|
|
Can we maybe not advocate actual literal nazism in here, people?
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 05:51
|
|
|
Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Can we maybe not advocate actual literal nazism in here, people? lol I cant think of a more fitting conclusion to a thread about liberalism.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 05:53
|
|
|
Mr. Wynand posted:
With Paul Ryan in charge of congress I think we are very safe from this
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 06:33
|
|
|
I feel the need to point out that the idea of people falling on an ideological spectrum, while occasionally useful, is utter bullshit. Liberalism isn't the halfwaypoint between Nationalism and Communism. It's an independent set of class values, in this case those shared by the professional classes (Middle management, doctors, coders, etc). This is why conservatives want to keep the government out of their medicare. Looked at as an ideological stance it makes no sense. However when you look at where in society the people making these statements sit suddenly their positions make all the sense in the world. This is important to understand because people don't actually vote based on ideas but on who they think represents their tribe. And once you understand that the true stupidity of neoliberal triangulation as a campaign strategy becomes clear. Yes, you can obtain short term gains by quietly switching allegiance from one tribe to another while pretending to represent both. However in the long run this is self-defeating because you can't represent two tribes with opposing values forever. Eventually the side you've abandoned will realize you're working against them and abandon you forever. Which is exactly what happened to Clinton. Now, let's look at this question with this in mind: Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I think we all agree on that, the question is how to help them do that. Getting people to change political allegiances is incredibly difficult because, again, it's not really about the ideas themselves but how a movement helps a voter's tribe. For this reason a lot of neoliberals would probably go Republican if the Bernie Sanders wing took over because right now the Democrats are basically the party of the top %30, and that tribe is much closer to the top %1 than the tribes at the bottom %60. Fortunately this logic works both ways, which means progressives can win over Republicans by showing how a progressive agenda would help them. Don't think in terms of changing people's minds because you won't. Instead think of showing people how they and their communities would directly benefit. Talk about how Medicare for all would mean never dealing with an insurance company again or how a public ownership of a company could force it to stay local. You'll get some hemming and hawing about hippies and communists but at the end of the day a lot would support you because they'd understand on an instinctual level that you're on their side. readingatwork fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Jan 21, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 06:34
|
|
|
readingatwork posted:I feel the need to point out that the idea of people falling on an ideological spectrum, while occasionally useful, is utter bullshit. Liberalism isn't the halfwaypoint between Nationalism and Communism. It's an independent set of class values, in this case those shared by the professional classes (Middle management, doctors, coders, etc). That's such a great point and one I've never seen put quite so well. I think you articulated what I found so annoying about that guy's letter in the OP readingatwork posted:the Democrats are basically the party of the top %30, and that tribe is much closer to the top %1 than the tribes at the bottom %60. Tiny Brontosaurus fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Jan 21, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 07:24
|
|
|
So the question of 'how do you radicalize liberals' sort of presupposes that liberals as a group aren't going to shrink. We're quickly entering an era where the sort of liberalism that's been espoused, is proving incapable of delivering what it's promised. It's only possible to ignore reality for so long, eventually the 'mom liberals' have to bleed off, and they can either go left or right. This being politics, more = better than, so ideally you want them to go left. The optimal strategy is:
For conservatives, you're better off appealing to ideas of 'common sense', because they tend to be attracted to the familiar - so even if you have a 'radical' idea, you want to actually make it look less radical than it is. rudatron fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Jan 21, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 08:14
|
|
|
BrandorKP posted:For what it's worth the Chicago school and Friedman at least tried to have an empirical foundation. But that is not where we are now. rudatron fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jan 21, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 08:23
|
|
|
Crowsbeak posted:If it has to be national socialism then let it be a national socialism divorced from the idea of skin color. Let us promote the nation based on being American . Let us make Americanism an idea and attack filth like the Devoss's as traitors to our nation. Let us make being the worker the national idea and portray our enemies as the enemies of our country.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 08:32
|
|
|
rudatron posted:This won't work and you're a moron. Tribalism needs an enemy, and that enemy is always present both inside and outside. Tribalism can't stay, it can and has to go. I did give an enemy. Big Money makers like the Devoss's. I mean I am also open to making nazis, Wahabis and members of the CATO institute on that list too. For external enemies I think we need someone who will never go way. Like China.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 08:43
|
|
|
Race and racism still exists and is not going to just magic itself away, just because you decided to say mean things about bankers - if anything, that will simply re-express itself as anti-semitism. Point is that the 'internal' enemy is perpetual, it acts as a symbol of internal failings, whatever the cause, and since the real causes are never actually recognized or addressed, you're in a mode of perpetual witch-hunting. The better approach is recognizing that the world is complex, we live in a system, that system has flaws. China is not the eternal other, it's just another country filled with idiots.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 08:56
|
|
|
Honestly I'm not really worried about the fate of the neoliberal center-right wing of the Democratic Party. What I'm worried about is if we can take enough control back long enough to make meaningful headway on mitigating what we still can of global warming before they do too much damage. Given how much easier it is to destroy and tear down than to fix or repair, I suspect we won't be able to. Otherizing and perpetuating hatred against the Chinese isn't going to help when the real, impending problem economically is automation and the obsolescence of our old economic order.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 08:57
|
|
|
Openness, honesty and consistency are not luxuries, to be discarded because you think you can win more votes, they're essential qualities of the better future. The problem with employing 'deceptions' or 'convenient lies' like tribalism, is that you actually end up with people who believe that poo poo, who buy their own propaganda, and it always ends up getting out of control. Once something is released into the wild, you can't predict what it's going to do, and you can't correct it if it all goes a way you don't want it to. Look at the experience of the 'reagan' conservatives, who peddled for so long to their base the same bullshit over and over again, despite not really believing it themselves - now, their lies have taken on a life of their own, and they're unable to rein it in.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 09:01
|
|
|
rudatron posted:Openness, honesty and consistency are not luxuries, to be discarded because you think you can win more votes, they're essential qualities of the better future. The problem with employing 'deceptions' or 'convenient lies' like tribalism, is that you actually end up with people who believe that poo poo, who buy their own propaganda, and it always ends up getting out of control. Once something is released into the wild, you can't predict what it's going to do, and you can't correct it if it all goes a way you don't want it to. I mean this is basically the story of both the Tea Party and the rise of Trump in a nutshell. The Tea Party is essentially a group of middle to upper-middle class white suburbanites who legitimately believe in movement conservatism and took on enough political power and had enough monetary backing to primary Republicans who didn't satisfy their purity tests, while Trump usurped power by playing to the disaffected anger of lower and middle class white people who felt burned and lied to by the Southern Strategy of Reagan era Republicans, having been promised that minorities and foreigners would be hurt while they would be exempt or prosper but now realizing that only the ruling class had benefited from trickle down economics. Now there's a large bloc of angry people wanting to cash a bad check the Republicans of yesteryear wrote them, and Trump used that to take over the Republican Party and ride it right into the White House - where he will do exactly what Reagan did 30 years ago. Lightning Knight fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Jan 21, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 09:04
|
|
|
rudatron posted:Openness, honesty and consistency are not luxuries, to be discarded because you think you can win more votes, they're essential qualities of the better future. The problem with employing 'deceptions' or 'convenient lies' like tribalism, is that you actually end up with people who believe that poo poo, who buy their own propaganda, and it always ends up getting out of control. Once something is released into the wild, you can't predict what it's going to do, and you can't correct it if it all goes a way you don't want it to. Well it is honest that most of our problems are from people like the Devosses. Also I can make them a perpetual enemy based on how many people have received their money. So their can be a constant hunt for them as "agents". Plus most of that family, and the Kochs would flee. So they can both act as our eternal and external enemies.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 09:13
|
|
|
rudatron posted:That's not true anymore either. Milton Friedman and the monetarists have all been proven wrong by the great recession, in a fairly spectacular way. Quantitative easing did exactly jack poo poo. I don't disagree that they are wrong. All I'm saying is that they looked at data when then made the arguements. The freedom topics research crowd has axiomatic conclusions and doesn't give a poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 09:21
|
|
|
Crowsbeak posted:Well it is honest that most of our problems are from people like the Devosses. Also I can make them a perpetual enemy based on how many people have received their money. So their can be a constant hunt for them as "agents". Plus most of that family, and the Kochs would flee. So they can both act as our eternal and external enemies. This is incredibly creepy and inappropriate and not on topic for this thread. Stop.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 09:23
|
|
|
The only long term, effective leftist action would be diving this country into Republistan and Democravia. Let's say some miracle happens and someone like Bernie wins back the WH in 2020. 45% of the country is still deeply conservative and getting more extreme as the years go by. That "meet at the middle" bipartisan bullshit didn't work. Republicans have zero interest in cooperation. It's their way or they shut the government down. So how long do you guys and girls think this "One America" facade has before it crumples to the ground and everything goes to poo poo?
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 09:42
|
|
|
Scent of Worf posted:The only long term, effective leftist action would be diving this country into Republistan and Democravia. It's appealing to draw corollaries to the Civil War, but I think our current state of affairs is weirder than it was back then. We aren't divided on clean geographic lines, but generational and cultural ones. Not "rural" so much as people who think of themselves as good old-fashion country folk, despite living in the suburbs and driving a 60k pickup truck that's never had anything in the bed. And because it's so generational, really the over-45s vs. the under-45s, I think it's hard to make long-term predictions because we don't really know what the country's going to look like politically when that generation is gone. Even if we could divide into two countries they wouldn't be contiguous. It would be a swiss-cheese conservative state dotted with islands of progressives.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 09:49
|
|
|
Tiny Brontosaurus posted:It's appealing to draw corollaries to the Civil War, but I think our current state of affairs is weirder than it was back then. We aren't divided on clean geographic lines, but generational and cultural ones. Not "rural" so much as people who think of themselves as good old-fashion country folk, despite living in the suburbs and driving a 60k pickup truck that's never had anything in the bed. And because it's so generational, really the over-45s vs. the under-45s, I think it's hard to make long-term predictions because we don't really know what the country's going to look like politically when that generation is gone. It's weird that we Americans try to put the center of gravity of our society out in the hinterlands and the outskirts of cities - that has never been a thing in the history of civilization as far as I know. It's always been about cities.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 10:39
|
|
|
Kilroy posted:It's cities vs everyone else, and all else being equal the cities would win. All else is not equal though: the rurals and suburbans have the apparatus of the nation-state at their disposal, and the cities have... their city governments. If there was an actual civil war the outcome would be some weird 21st century America version of city-states, like maybe a rewrite of the Constitution with cities having a more dominant role as actors in that, instead of the anachronistic union of "states" we have now, which are not in fact states in any real sense at least not anymore. That's if the urban areas prevail, of course, otherwise it's just economic paralysis and social chaos until we're mercy-invaded by the Canadians or the suburban and rural areas forget what they were so pissed off about. I never thought of that before, but you're right, that's really weird. Maybe it's because a lot of colonial americans were people who didn't succeed in the cities of europe and felt alienated by them.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 10:47
|
|
|
Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I never thought of that before, but you're right, that's really weird. Maybe it's because a lot of colonial americans were people who didn't succeed in the cities of europe and felt alienated by them.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 10:55
|
|
|
Mr. Wynand posted:
What you should really worry about is the candidate that replaces Trump, because it will be another nationalistic populist, and you better have your own populist to run.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 12:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 06:55 |
|
|
The current distrust of cities is purely economic - firstly, it's not all cities, secondly, it's because they have benefited from the two speed economy while everyone else has been poo poo on. NY is fine, LA is fine, but everyone else is sort of hosed? It's not like everyone has the capital for their own start-up, but they're the only guys actually making it. But historically, protestantism has had a thing against cities because they're seen as dens of vice/decadence, while the countryside live simpler lives and are therefore more virtuous (see "salt of the earth"). Which probably has something to do with cities historically having negative growth rates, because of diseases and such, that only ever 'recently' (read: in the last hundred years of so) changed because of things like sanitation systems. Now, your economies of scale generally mean you're better off living in cities.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2017 13:11
|
|