Two things showed up in my Facebook fed this AM that speak to this.
The first is from author Michael Z. Williamson
The second is a comment on the above from Kevin Priggle
If just one more person had told me…
No. You pointed out nothing but your own faulty opinion. By your criteria Louis Brandeis, Earl Warren, William Brennan, Oliver W. Holmes, both Marshalls (John and Thurgood) and even perhaps Felix Frankfurter were unsuitable for the court.
You’ll probably deny this. (A conservative is someone who recognizes change is for the better — after the successful change has been staring him in the face for three decades.)
And that, right there Shayna, is everything wrong with movement progressives. Where some here perceive a reality where if only we were more empathetic and validating to people who voted for the guy who enshrined every aspect of classic fascism into his platform, others are stuck in a reality where “that woman” and her supporters, aided by a corrupt DNC stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders and doomed the world to Donald Trump because, apparently, we preempted the hordes of Republicans who would’ve otherwise flocked to the Bernie bus.
Just like many Trump voters (the ones who didn’t vote for him because they wanted to subscribe to the white supremacist features), there are way too many progressives clinging to unsupported or downright insane perceptions, because those are the perceptions that ping all of their most valued assumptions about the world.
Empathy doesn’t cure willful ignorance, although it definitely helps in getting all sides through the long process of trying to cure it. Understanding is key to starting that process, but it alone ain’t enough either. We have to replace misinformation and bad reasoning with better stuff.
Sanders supporters need to look beyond the insults and aggrievements they feel (HRC supporters got it too, but winning the primaries took the sting out of it. Know why we won, by the way? There are more of us.) that come after every hard-fought primary season. Bernie gave a great example, even in the face of doubts from some Hillary supporters, and in the face of pressure from his own supporters. Because he broadened his view outside of the wounded bubble he could’ve crawled into.
The kumbaya progressives need to realize there’s no monolithic group of Trump voters who must be recognized and respected for their differing views; there’s a smaller group of Trump voters who recognized Trumps flaws and loved them and didn’t get two shits about the Democratic platform, assuming they didn’t despise it going in. And then there’s a large group of voters who thought they were choosing between a) the straw Trump they saw at his rallies, where they enthusiastically heard all the “drain the swamp” and fight-the-system stuff and glossed over the minor fascist overlord pussy-grabbing stuff, and b) the straw Hillary they’d been trained to see over the last two and a half decades, reinforced daily by every Republican politician and most media outlets.
Neither one of those groups was choosing between actual political factions, they were choosing between competing manufactured perceptions. I guaran-damn-tee you that most of rural America never encounters an actual sustained explanation of the liberal point of view about any policy topic. Certainly they don’t hear it about social issues. They watch the news and listen to their clergy and their neighbors and what they hear is the straw liberals spouting their usual garbage, and then they go to bed secure in their perception of the world as it “is”.
You don’t fix that with hugs and fake interest. You have to say what you actually believe and what you actually propose and why you believe and propose those things, over and over and over until some very small percentage begin to look outside their information bubbles and start to see things differently. And that has been the failure of modern progressives. We too busy assuming our better policies and inclusive rhetoric are persuasive without bothering to make sure those policies are even talked about outside of our circles.
The criticism that progressives don’t hear and see middle America is bullshit. The problem is middle America doesn’t see and hear progressives. But they know what their friends on the tv and the church bulletins say about those lefties. Which, getting back to the OP (if anyone remembers it) speaks to the real failure of the unbearably smug political press corps.
Doesn’t matter how a message is tailored if it’s a different one that actually gets to your intended recipient.
The word “unsuitable,” is one you’re using to characterize what I said – it’s not a word I used to describe the candidates.
I said they were not great choices, from my perspective, although both were qualified.
And I certainly agree that Earl Warren was not a great choice, for precisely the same reasons. I don’t want the Supreme Court to see itself as a force for social change; Earl Warren certainly did just that.
I’d be happy to discuss my views on Brandeis, Brennan, et al, but I think those are secondary to the main point I’m pushing here: I don’t oppose Obama’s picks for Supreme Court because I am racist. In fact, this example helps prove that point: I’m opposed to Earl Warren’s jurisprudence also, despite the fact that he’s white and was appointed by the white Dwight Eisenhower.
Now, a secondary consideration is: do I favor the actual changes that can be laid at Warren’s feet? Sure, some of them - perhaps most. But merely because I favor a particular policy does not make me happy if that policy is imposed by judicial ruling instead of legislative vote. I agree with some of Sotomayor’s and Kagan’s policy directions, too, but I don’t want them creating policy either, even if I agree with it.
That is about as fine a job of goalpost-moving and grand-scale obfuscation as I’ve yet seen from you – I think at this point the goalposts are over in the next county!
I remind you that what you tried to claim was that conservatives turned to Trump because “… they were tired of being bullied on social media for conservative beliefs, mocked for conservative feelings, called racists when their critiques of Obama were policy-based.”
Are you seriously trying to suggest that they were called racists and mocked for advancing the policy criticisms that you just gave? Are you seriously suggesting that it was because he tried to improve health care that Obama was accused of being an impostor, unqualified to be president because he was born in Kenya (as I said earlier, a major stepping-stone to Trump’s ascendancy); that he was Muslim; that he was going to establish Sharia law, declare martial law, and send all conservatives to detainment camps? Really? Or was it because a certain ignorant and gullible demographic was conned into believing that Obama was a traitorous socialist trying to establish “death panels” and bring socialism to America – a belief made credible in the minds of this demographic because he was (gasp!) black, and had a funny name?
And you seem to be seriously suggesting that they were called racists and mocked because they criticized Obama’s Supreme Court nominations. A disagreement on ideology is NOT why Obama has endured the worst level of disrespect of any president in living memory, and perhaps ever, and was hated, as I said, with such venomous passion by right-wing rednecks incited by a torrent of lies from talk radio and Breitbart and Fox. Most of those fuckers don’t even know what the Supreme Court is, or any other branch of government. Are you trying to tell us that any significant number of these ignorant haters could actually articulate the judicial philosophy of Sotomayor or Kagan?
And make no mistake, the criticisms you cite are indeed pure ideology; I vehemently disagree with them, but they represent the kinds of issues on which liberals and conservatives can have honest disagreements – precisely the kind of dialog that has been lacking because there are enough ignorant rednecks on the conservative side that the debate has simply degenerated into the kind of hate propaganda I mentioned above, and that Trump exploited so efficiently.
That said, for the record, here’s why I disagree with both of your criticisms, though that is totally a side issue here. The influence on social policy of high court decisions is a fact whether you like it or not, and reflects the fact that the Supreme Court is in the front lines of changing social norms. Both conservative and liberal justices have been influential in doing so, and in recent years the Roberts court has been doing it in spades, mostly in favor of conservative principles, all the while claiming to be following the letter of the Constitution. Liberal justices are at least more honest about the role of the court, not just in the US, but throughout the world. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada in fact explicitly articulated that principle, and the country seems to be doing just fine, and moreover, the Supreme Court there has no discernible politicization at all despite what you allege to be some kind of horrific misunderstanding of the purpose of the judicial system.
Your criticism of Obamacare is equally wrong in my view because it embraces the conservative fallacy of regarding health care as an optional commodity in which there are “consumers” who should have the “freedom” to make “choices”. In reality there are actual human beings who, unfortunately, don’t have the option of not getting sick. The mandate and the elimination of useless crap health care plans are just small elements of an attempt to move health care toward a more universal and affordable system of the kind that people in every industrialized country in the world believe is the moral imperative of any decent society.
I, personally, have been called a racist, and then a Hispanic Uncle Tom, on this very message board, in the wake of advancing pure ideology criticism and argument.
So… Yes, I am seriously trying to suggest that.
As to the substance, your rebuttal is also ideology and a superb start to a good conversation. I’d like to start a GD thread on the point, if you’ll participate.
Being called a racist here on this board isn’t much of a litmus test. There are many times flames are posted. BFD.
I think it was said about the House of Bourbon, between the first defeat of Bonaparte and eventually Waterloo. “They learned nothing, and they forgot nothing.” Same here.
Regards,
Shodan
To be fair, if you are taking about the flak you have taken in the ID thread, you did not make your motives very clear. You just seemed to spend alot of time justify actions making it harder for minorities to vote.
That messaging does come across as either racist, or at the very least, apathetic to the struggles of minorities.
If it happened in other threads for other reasons, then that may be less justified, but it was quite some time before an alternative to racism could be attributed to your motives, and you did little to dissuade.
And that was like what 2 or 3 people, one of which isn’t even here anymore?
But I did so by making pure ideological arguments, did I not? The very thing that, according to the discussion above, should insulate me from attacks.
Now we’re moved to discussing messaging, and you suggest that if my ideological argument does not take enough time to assure my opponents that I am not indifferent to the struggles of minorities, then the attacks are justified.
So I can’t just make an ideological argument – I have to also emphasize that I care about minority struggles. Even if that’s not at all what I am discussing.
That was absolutely not the only time. And if two or three people do it, and no one objects, how is that more welcoming?
And you still don’t get it. Pity.
The masses do listen to Progressives, it’s the establishment Democrats who don’t. You think because Hillary’s message didn’t resonate that people don’t hear the progressive message. You’ve got that backward: Hillary isn’t a god damn Progressive! She’s a Right-Wing neoliberal with an elite isider problem!
This attitude will be the death of the Democratic Party. Good riddance, I say.
Not the GOP. They’re* in *now. Now is the time for craven authoritarianism and blind eyes to all sins of other Republicans.
I get the idea that it’s not necessarily smart to call people stupid, even if the pointy hat fits.
I was listening to a Trump voter interviewed today on NPR (yeah, I know) and he expressed that one of his prime concerns was illegal immigration. The interviewer pointed out that deportations had increased under Obama. The guy says, “Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t…”
How do we get through the the fact-resistant folks who cast real votes with real consequences based on half-truths, distortions, and downright lies?
Stop nominating bigger liars who refuse to even adress the concerns of misinformed people, but instead denigrate them as Clinton did.
It’s an unnecessary personal attack. And it stupid to think it will help win an argument all it does is provoke a fight.
This is such a good point. As has happened so often, many Trump voters–perhaps most of them–were voting against their own economic interests. They valued the confirmation of their biases that Trump’s lies supplied, above their own financial safety and welfare. (Which, unless they have income and/or assets above a million dollars, will almost certainly be diminished by his presidency.)
When lies confirm cherished biases, many will eagerly believe the lies.
Your desire to believe that the reporting shows bias has blinded you to some obvious facts:
The ‘chanting video’ and the ‘swastika graffiti’ each contain the evidence of bigotry being expressed–the kids really do chant ‘build the wall,’ and the graffiti really is of a swastika. But the ‘attack’ video does not contain the evidence of bigotry being expressed. It contains the evidence that one girl attacked another girl. That the attack was motivated by bigotry has to be guessed—the motivation is not evident in the video itself. All we see is an attack and all we hear is squealing and beeped words (presumably curse words).
In the first two cases, reporting that bigotry was expressed was reasonable as the bigotry is visible or audible. In the case of the attack, the bigotry has to be inferred from other evidence (interviews with the girl attacked, with school officials, etc.). That information is not in the video itself. Thus “appears to show an attack on a student who voiced support for Donald Trump” is more in line with journalistic standards than would be whatever you wanted the News Hour to say (“shows an anti-Trump attack on a Trump supporter” or such).
That the third incident was reported with qualifying language, does not provide evidence of bias. It provides evidence that good journalistic standards were being followed.
(Note, too, that the third incident depicts assault, with potential serious legal consequences to the perpetrator. The other two incidents are either not illegal (the chanting) or do not show the perpetrator (the graffiti). Thus there are fewer likely legal issues involved for media outlets who make the chant video or graffiti photos available; outlets don’t need to use as much care with their language about those incidents, than about the attack incident.)
I think you’d have a point if the writer didn’t know about the video of the chanting, or if the attacker was screaming at the girl about the election while hitting her. All we can be sure about is that she was attacked, apparently due to her support for Trump. We don’t *know *what lead up to the fight, though.
This is one of the weirdest claims I’ve ever seen on a message board. To begin with, I don’t think “ideological” means what you think it does.
But let’s suppose the distinction you try to make is valid. Suppose hypothetically that obstructing the votes of poor people is “ideologically” driven but obstructing black votes is not. In many counties or precincts obstructing the poor is almost the same as obstructing blacks. And in counties dominated by poor white trash who vote for the GOP? Why then the locals would be free to apply different “ideology” to their voting procedures and policies! All you’ve outlined is a plan to pursue partisan motives while pretending that you are “purely ideological” — whatever that means.
And of course the distinction you make about “ideological” is wholly without merit. I don’t wish to Godwinize the thread nor relate “bad ideologies” to any particular Doper. The sole purpose of the following quotations is to demonstrate that the English word “ideology” does not mean whatever you think it means. The simplest way to demonstrate this is to cite references to governments which were …, well, very ideological:
There! I’ve helped you learn a new word today, Bricker, by excerpting several scholarly usages of the word ideology. You’re welcome! Do yourself a favor and find a new word to employ when you want to brag about racist vote-suppression programs by the Party you admire.
Sure it does. I’m a precise person, generally, and given to careful words choices. None of the examples you cite of the word ideology bother me in the slightest, in the sense that they are in fact all examples of political ideology. I certainly am bothered by their use in applied government, but not by calling them ideology.
You’ve just done it again. You have ascribed a motive to me that isn’t there. You say I pretend to be ideological but am in reality seeking to advantage a particular political party – that my support for these rules arises from some factor other than I think they are wise rules for a society to follow.
But the reason I support the rules is: I think they are wise rules for a society to follow.
That’s what I mean when I distinguish the ideology from any partisanship concerns, I would support Voter ID even I were to learn that the effect would be Democratic candidate victories.
I believe Voter ID provisions to be wise and prudent.
You attack my motives and not the substance of my argument.
And here comes the mocking.
Ok, everyone who denied that mocking is used against people who are arguing fact and substance…this is your chance. Anyone like to weigh in now?
Or are we back to the usual SDMB state of affairs?