Here is this for those of you who want to get more info about your political bearings: http://PoliticalCompass.org/... I was surprised that I was rated 8.88, 8.66 It is the most radically ”minus” numbers that I have run into when people tend to use them on sign off to their comments at DK. That drove me nuts for about two months until I found out what that meant. I thought that I was about as far from a Gandhi type as you can get.
Anyway, it is a fun exercise, not a badge of courage. It explains why I perceived some comments on DK as being extremely conservative. It also may explain why some people say that we have lost our political compass; meaning, “Why doesn’t everyone agree with me.” I wonder that myself sometimes, until I realize how ridiculous that is.
Politics, as exercised as an institution in the US, no longer serves democracy. It could, but for the inability to struggle against conservatism that by its nature is nihilistic.
By conservatism, I mean ANY establishment that seeks to perpetuate itself.
That is the right side of the political spectrum; among the usual suspects that are grossly over weighting this side of the ledger in the US are the two political party establishments. That spectrum is only valid academically because a democratic spectrum, not a political spectrum, would be balanced to cover an egalitarian mix of people not institutions and establishments only.
Just recently, someone referred to these disenfranchised voters in a comment to a blog by Pluto, as whiners.
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The parties' hatred of each other produces a sham rhetorical war. The R’s will never run out of ammunition because they can make up their attacks out of thin air and hurl back the anger they instigate by the impotent
Liberals who insist on being ”correct” rather than just.
What does ‘just’ look like? It means helping your community without reservation. Alternatively, these strategists, pundits and apparatchiks are only helping themselves, not even helping their candidates, who are usually virtual marketing products; so many plastic money bags.
The obvious truth is, that a struggle for human rights and social justice is a much different looking animal than a rhetorical war for political domination.
D’s should not be in a war that they cannot win, do not have enough ammunition for and are only in it to profit from by collecting money from sympathetic dupes. That, is the only logical explanation for this behavior that I see. I do not think it is cynicism when I compare the strategies of both parties and conclude that they are the same. But, I do not lose sight of my project, which is, democracy, not party. Should the Democratic Party interests align with democracy, they will have my enthusiastic support, rather than my reluctant tactical acquiescence.
Another way to look at this is that a victorious political coalition feels that it has the right to unfairly influence policy in its favor because when the previous regime did it, it was immoral. Is a coalition of labor unions, rights organizations and professional lobbies going to distribute justice fairly? Never mind what the other side did.
Did not John Kerry say after his 2004 loss that, ”we should have been more like the Republicans”. If you worked your ass off for Kerry, how did that make you feel?
When Obama received unprecedented “progressive” support (meaning non-partisan, that is different than bi-partisan) by appealing to hope and change and turned around after the election and surrounded himself with establishment figures in and out of government and at the same time muffling and ignoring pleas from his progressive base.
When Gibbs retorted that, “He said that he was going to do these things during his campaign.” That was the oldest presidential switcheroo in the book. Only this was an unprecedented emotional betrayal on a personal basis.
The loyal Obama supporters would have us believe that was rough and tumble politics as usual. No, no, no, no. That was emotional betrayal on an unprecedented personal level. People do not expose their hopes in this way. This was no different than marketing sub-prime mortgages with liar loans and exotic balloon payments at the end. Corporate marketers behave like that but individuals are the ones that get hurt. This was a new low in political manipulation, for Democrats, anyway.
They cannot claim to be desperate for ideas when they are so willfully corrupt.
I have had my heart broken by the results of political conflicts that I have voted in for fifty years. I can go through the five stages of grief in forty-eight hours flat. But to a self styled loyalist tough that exposes one’s heart needlessly, stupidly and naively.
Apparently, the Democratic loyalists do not want to accept the existential reality of the new cynicism; maybe they are stuck in the first stage of grief for their abandoned ideals, which is denial, similar to their Republican counterparts that did this for most of the Bush era.
For me, this was spiritual failure on a personal level and is why people get divorced. This is where data becomes bullshit.
A health insurance plan that was not even remotely a health care plan, and was not competitive much less, national. It was a precooked deal, which was a comfortable accommodation to the establishment, not a compromise.
We are about to repeat this exercise with financial reform, climate change legislation and energy.
DADT might be repealed at the cost of thousands left twisting in the wind for most of a year.
Staying in Afghanistan was unacceptable; the Iraq effort is feeble. We continue a hegemonic foreign policy different in style only.
Executive orders that should be a given for a Democratic President are doled out like scraps of food to hungry chicks.
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Humans believe that they are mortal because of their biology but it is the destructive gravity of cynicism that seals their mortal fate; it prevents them from thinking or feeling. Their emotions have become sentimental tripe. Because of that, they cannot, have not, evolved.
If we have not mentally and emotionally left the environment of the savannah, we do not have modernity and denial no longer serves humanity as a survival mechanism. The only way to overcome that and evolve is to confront denial.
What I describe to you is slavery. Progressives need to solidify their struggle for human rights and distill their purpose to conveying this message. I would like to do it peacefully. The current accommodating politics is not peaceful because there are too many victims.
Conservatism is a plague, a virus and a curse. Conservatism is cynicism, a gravitational vortex of denial. No wonder conservatives claim that this is a conservative nation; on that score, they are correct. Eventually, they will destroy themselves by destroying everything. All will return to balance after that but the brief opportunity of humanity will evaporate without a trace.
Pluto wrote about plutocrats, the conversation at DK typically broke out into the typical ‘Obama saved us/ he did no do enough’ song, then into name-calling. They are both right as far as that goes. The system was stabilized and was marginally better than conservatives would have done. The margin, of course, being focused on how far the economy descended into chaos. The arguments raged about unemployment figures and job creation.
The loyalists are saying that we have been saved from disaster and claim positive employment numbers. They do not reveal in numbers what it really means to help people a la Paul Krugman and even then, that does not change who counts the money and determines what is valuable.
A shitload of people lost their jobs and are still out of work. Many civil service jobs were protected temporarily, which arguably would have reduced our social order into a conservative nightmare or wet dream, depending on who is telling the story.
So far, we are still scraping bottom, our load is a little lighter but we are still under water.
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Well, shit. Have at it. I have to go drink lemonade on a patio and be as polite as I am here.