|
Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I don't want to rehash Mean Mommy Hillary's failings and imagined failings in here - please don't do that, or spam "Bernie Would Have Won" bullshit, but I think this guy inadvertently points out why liberalism, at least as it exists in modern American politics, is doomed to fail. This is what the young leftists hate about the old liberals. You have to be for something. You can't just wring your hands and go "well, both sides are bad, let's not be too extreme here" and pretend that a molehill of flaws on one side is equal to a mountain on the other. It's okay to be against things. The election wasn't decided by a great swell of idiots who thought Trump had answers defecting from Democratic ranks because they hate 'social justice' or whatever dumb thing. It was decided by rank and file Republicans deciding enough red meat and had been thrown to them and turning up to vote, while Democratic voters just stayed home because they felt the Democratic party didn't speak to them. Being against things doesn't drive turn out. At best it depresses the vote on the other side if you manage to activate their shame (not a good strategy, shame is dead, all shaming and calling people out does anymore is make them angry and double down). You need something positive to motivate people, something to aspire to. Obama won on the strength of 'Yes We Can' and 'Hope and Change' (also campaigning in person across the country and working his rear end off to connect to voters across every demographic - but the message he conveyed when he stood face to face with the out of work auto-plant worker was 'Yes We Can'). Neither of those slogans *means* anything, but they sound very positive and inspirational. Positive messages drive turnout. You have to tell them you will make things better. Or at the least that you are willing to listen to them and make a token acknowledgement of their issues. And of course if you abandon people they will abandon you. Its also important to remember that the vast majority of people are incredibly self centered. They only care about things in relationship to themselves. This is pretty much universally true. Liberalism, or at least the pretense of liberalism, has had successes in the past, when real effort was put into coalition building with *all* interest groups. quote:The slate's nearly wiped clean. The older generations are all going to die off from lack of medical care now that ACA is gone. We don't have to listen to milquetoast boomers anymore. So what are we going to do? What's a liberal now? The boomers that hosed us the hardest all have private insurance and corporate retirement packages. They arent going anywhere any time soon. Also the younger generations are incredibly disillusioned with politics in general and 'politics as usual' in specific. Whatever liberalism is now, its not the milquetoast poo poo we had for decades. Unless no one has learned anything and everyone in power decides to double down on their failures. Nix Panicus fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Jan 19, 2017 |
#
¿
Jan 19, 2017 04:19
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 12:33 |
|
|
TomViolence posted:I think the problem with liberalism as it exists right now is that it lacks a material, economic dimension and is too often a sort of abstracted politics-lite, where as the OP says, civility is the watch word. You can be literally dying from economic hardship, poor access to healthcare and police violence, but what matters to liberal sensibilities is that you're polite and civil in stating your case. Before Thatcher and Reagan destroyed the existing economic order in the 80s there was something of a social-democratic concensus in western countries that, while far from perfect, salved the worst economic woes for a lot of people and provided a basis upon which they could build a politics of mutual respect and civil debate. It's clear that that foundation, however decrepit and blind-spotted it may have been, hasn't existed for some time and it's allowed buried grievances to emerge and cracks to show and has ultimately left us with a derelict, collapsing husk to show for it. The liberal establishment, more than anyone, has done a poor job of addressing this rot, opting to add a fresh lick of paint to the crumbling house rather than renovate it as is sorely needed. This is reflected too in the frankly bizarre grin-and-bear-it kayfabe attitude of everything being fine, we'll just tinker here or tinker there, that things are flawed but fixable rather than broken and in dire need of rebuilding from the ground up. The establishment and its hangers-on, along with true believers still clinging to the dream, just tick away through a predefined narrative, ignoring everything that doesn't fit like the robots in westworld. To build on this theres an idea that 'fairness constraints' have fundamentally broken down in America. The income gap between CEOs and the lowest paid person in their company has grown out of control, and everyone seems cool with this. Tax dodgers are lauded as sticking it to the greedy government instead of being yelled at for stealing bread from the mouths of the hungry. We've lost 'robber baron' from our national vocabulary (and the historic robber barons were no where near on the same level as the modern corporate overlords). The wealthy are unironically worshiped as 'Job Creators' and really loving stupid people literally have a 'Prosperity Gospel' that equates the favor of some god to getting rich. Where did it go? Why did the basic constraints of fairness break down?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2017 04:27
|
|