If you’re going to bring up examples of things to make liberalism look silly, it would behoove you to bring up an actual example. If you just make something up, chances are it’s going to look a lot like a strawman.
with voter ID laws, if liberals wanted to actually get something done, or prove the intent was to stop Democrat votes, they’d make a counter proposal; free IDs for people who can’t afford them and easily accessible ID places in minority areas, rather than just dub requiring an ID to vote (something needed to buy alcohol) as “racist.” If the GOP were opposed, you could argue the race angle. Also, I’d have the gender/sex debate with you, but it could get ugly here, and its better in the pit. People here know what I think.
[QUOTE=Stringbean]
I think liberalism changed when it stopped seeking to correct overt injustice and instead focused on preventing implied injustice.
For example, denying a student admission to a college based solely on his or her gender, versus asking your friend who happens to be Asian if the two of you would like to work on your Physics homework together.
To a modern liberal, these are both seen as exemplars of injustice. They have won so many battles since the 60s that they now conjure new, foolish ones to wage. It destroys their credibility.
[/QUOTE]
Touche! They’re grasping at straws now, both to live past glory and to whip up their voter base. That’s why Democrats, at least excluding the hard-left, would’ve been better off continuing the DLC color-blind policies of Bill Clinton rather than the version of intersectional liberalism you describe that Obama, particularly in his second term, epitomized. People forget the big Dem primary split of 2007-2008, it was a revenge of the anti-DLCers vs the DLCers, and since Obama got the nomination and then won the election, the anti-DLCers thought they’d won, when in reality, given how Bush II’s job approval was sub-30 (Carter and Bush I were sub-40 when they lost re-election), any Dem should’ve won. Had Hillary (who was far more conservative in the 2000s) not have faced a primary candidate whose loss would’ve alienated the blacks and won the nomination, she’d have beaten McCain by more than the 7% Obama beat him by. MoveOn.org, DFA, etc. all were virulently anti-Clinton back then for all who remember.
I think one could liken the grasping for straws on the part of liberals similar to what Republicans did in the 2000s, making stem-cell research and living vegetables like Terri Schiavo issues of the pro-life movement.
Well, there was HR3321, the Voter ID Accessibility Act, which died in congress. Part of the problem is that such programs, even when implemented, don’t actually work very well.
Read 'em and weep. Completely racist, and plain to see. Hence the court shutting down the law with prejudice (pun intended).
NC is a Republican-controlled state which, when they sneaked in the bathroom bill, caused Democrats to walk out of the state house before the vote. Counterproposal? How about not trying to solve a manufactured problem that doesn’t exist and not passing it in the first place?
Fuck the Pit. I wouldn’t waste my time in there.
I was reminded of this thread when I read this article in Salon.
I see many articles like this now; progressives may have learned a lesson. It’s a huge tragedy they didn’t learn it some months earlier, but … Is it too much imagine a magnificent political activism arising to counter right-wing devastation with the Democrats retaking the House of Reps in 2018?
Only if the Democrats can retake the populist position they abandoned with their focus on identity politics.
Yeah you need to quit fighting for the rights of people I don’t identify with. Amirite?
The Democrats were somehow amazed to discover that telling people what evil bigots they are isn’t the way to gain enough votes to get candidates in office. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s succeeded because enough northern whites were tired of the injustice and absurdity of segregation- and in fact this cost the Democrats their traditional “Dixiecrat” vote and sent conservative and rural voters into the arms of the Republicans.
In fact, historically the Democrats and the Republicans seem to take turns wearing the populist hat. The Republicans first came to power in the 1860s by being anti-slavery and Unionist. But they became ossified as the party of Big Business and Big Finance, and by the early 20th century the Democrats took advantage of the populist backlash and became the party of standing up for “the little guy”. This worked through the 1960s but by then rising living standards had muted that appeal, and the Democrats refocused on progressivism- which worked with Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation, but then as time wore on alienated the middle class. The progressive movement traditionally thrives by thinking of themselves as David to the conservatives and reactionaries Goliath; but increasingly the middle class saw the Democrats less as liberators and more as conquerors, and themselves as the victims, not the increasingly marginal minorities the Democrats championed. The Reagan-era Republicans were clever enough to cast the economic stagnation of the 1970s as the fault of a quasi-socialist progressive agenda, and have succeeded in painting themselves as the new party of the little guy, against an increasingly out of touch and ideocratic Left.
Let me put it this way: OK, so a large percentage of Americans are bigoted and intolerant- what are you going to do about it? The Democrats have run out of enough non-minority “true believers” to carry the day, and now they’ve gone back to crying in the wilderness. They can either indulge in the self-pity of martyrdom- “the world is just too evil for our righteousness”- or they can try to find some way to make themselves relevant again.
You can write entire books about how fighting for the rights of disadvantaged people amounts to calling you a bigot, but in the end it is still telling people to stop fighting for justice.
Welcome to politics, where you have three choices: sell out, be so idealistic that you’re ineffectual, or find some optimum coefficient that actually accomplishes something.
Or, welcome to 50 separate political systems, where you can run progressives in California and gun-hugging hunting Democrats in Missouri, without direct compromise between them, resulting in a diverse, locally successful bench from which to draw, then going for the top in 4 years by picking whomever is most charismatic with the issues of that year.
Black culture is a thing in the US. There is a shared history of oppression and segregation, there are distinct musical, culinary, fashion and language uses that grew out of or are associated with it.
When you separate out the distinct immigrant cultures within it (German, Italian, British, etc) and the parts that overlap with black culture (liberty, patriotism, driving fast cars, drinking, baseball, etc.), White culture is basically left with a history of virulent racism as its only defining aspect.
If anybody wants to take a stab at describing a non-racist form of “white culture” a generic non-racist white person can be proud of, go ahead. I’m a white person who’s all ears. The only things I can think of are my Italian heritage, family traditions peculiar to my family (or shared by most races or ethnicities in the country), or else celebrating cultures other than my own (English history, Baroque music, Indian food, Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick’s day, jiu jitsu, etc.).
Maybe there is a white culture growing in the US, though. Are we supposed to be proud of the “let me speak to your manager” haircut, yoga, pumpkin spice lattes, farmer tans, energy drinks, and similar things that other races make fun of us for? I don’t really participate in much of that, though. I consider it mostly to be jokes and stereotypes.
So the blacks can claim Louis Armstrong and chicken fried steak but the whites can’t claim Leonard Bernstein, Emerson, or clam chowder?
Ooooookay.
What does “claim” even mean, and who is saying any group can’t do it?
DrCube made the silly argument:
Yes, if one siphons off all the redeeming features of something, what’s left is dregs. It’s not a useful argument because every culture has negative aspects.
The actual problem with “White Culture” is that many of those advocating the use of that term are racists. They make the term denigrating because they’re the ones using it.
I’m not sure I agree that the argument is silly, but in any case I don’t see how this relates to the post I responded to.
If any damn thing that anyone who can even vaguely described as liberal has ever said to anyone in any context is going to be held up as an example of a “problem” that liberalism must address before it can become politically successful then liberalism will be trapped in a never-ending cycle of apology, self-policing, abandonment of one justice issue after another, and recalibration toward the right.
It’s a trap.
So, no, I’m not going to adjust my politics based on some half-remembered, likely imaginary complaint about what some supposed liberal once said that pissed someone off on the advice of someone who seems to be hostile to those justice issues.
Also, liberals can be very self-righteous and defensive.
And I’m not going to accept the counsel who uses the term “identity politics” in that bullshit propagandistic derogatory manner.
So can conservatives and individuals from literally any group or philosophy ever.