Og, “Bob” and Allah, lefties! Quit bringing a casserole to a gunfight! “The Revolution is not a dinner party!” The only way to deal with an in-your-face evangelist is to denounce him right back, in moralistic terms, and to tell him the spiritual truth that he is not merely wrong but damned! (Well, another way is to ignore him, but that has no advisable application here.) And the only way to deal with RW Eliminationism is to raise the stakes! Organize and turn out like the Tea Partiers only louder and fiercer! Picket the very homes of the most outrageous capitalist assholes! (Thanks to What the … ?! for bringing this to my attention. We could start a list by selecting the worst offenders from the Buffalo Beast’s “50 Most Loathsome Americans of 2010.” Giving Barack Obama a pass, for the moment, for good intentions, and for that fact that picketing the WH is so old-hat anyway.) If it matters, you probably will find there are more of us than there are of them. But don’t let it matter, except at the polls on e-day. When they shout, shout them down twice as hard! Get up in their faces and tell them in loud and clear and unambiguous terms how idiotic and evil they are!
We also need a movement smarter than the Tea Party, etc., but that requires no particular effort in this case. At least, not at the grassroots level. Meeting the think-tank brainpower of their MBA stringpullers definitely will take some doing.
I was wavering on whether to post this in GD or the Pit. It really is, essentially, a GD topic, so I’ll leave it to the Mods to move it Pitward when it heats up.
If folks like Alan Grayson had won re-election based upon this strategy, you might have a point. For some reason, his ads featuring lines like “Religious fanatics try to take away our freedom, in Afghanistan, in Iran and right here in Central Florida” didn’t carry the day. In fact, he lost by 20 points.
Have you noticed that when MoveOn was pushed to the sidelines after the 2004 election, the Democrats started winning elections?
I read that as resulting from insufficiently energized base, not insufficient raw numbers of those who see it like Grayson. But, I’m thinking America-as-a-whole here; strategic calculations for winning any particular district would require more localized data.
No, I did not. Was it really? Thought it had always been on the sidelines, and that was the problem.
N.B.: I do not say lefties should respond in kind to the extent of using, or threatening to use, guns in any of this. (Whether lefties should make sure to have guns, just in case, is a different debate.)
In order to whip up crowds, and inspire vitriol, you really need to be able to paint issues as black and white. Good vs. Evil.
I see the majority of the left as being more “centre-left”. These folks tend to take a nuanced view of issues, and would (I think) be difficult to whip up. They would be more prone to say “hold on, lets step back and look at this issue more thoroughly”. They are, I believe, less likely to get really angry about things.
Because of their political leanings, they are less likely to follow an authority figure.
They are less likely to listen to a media figure who is more than happy to tell them what to think, where to go to protest, and how to behave. They are more prone to examine things in more detail, and not simply believe what they are told.
Sure there are some on the FAR left who are more willing to be led by a vitriolic leader who wants to push them to confrontation. Not enough though. I see the far right as having more numbers than the far left. Plus, the far right demagogues are able to whip up those who may not be “right” per se, but are actually simply ignorant and unwilling to examine an issue factually.
Responding to an evangelic moron by telling him he’s “not merely wrong, but damned” is idiotic. Who cares if he’s damned in the first place? A movement with good aims can still stoop to moronic and counterproductive tactics, and that appears to be just what you’re suggesting. A more energized left is one thing. A more vitriolic one - one that, like Beck, does random pointless crap to boost his ego - is not necessary. I probably shouldn’t bother arguing against this because this stuff is guaranteed to increase over time anyway. It’s natural historic escalation. It looks to me that your response to eliminationism involves accepting the terms of eliminationism: your opponent is evil and somebody has to be eliminated. You really can’t govern a society this way.
The type of confrontational activism you’re asking for just isn’t compatible with nuance, or compromise, or with reasoned consideration of other viewpoints, or really with appreciation of the nonideological aspects of any political issue. So you’d get different close minded attitudes and positions and different egotistical charismatic leaders, but it sure doesn’t sound like an improvement to me, just a worsening of an already bad landscape.
But hey, don’t put that torch down just because we’re worried about our houses and shit…
He got blown out. That’s not a problem with motivating the base, that’s a problem with the candidate. You can’t simultaneously argue that liberals need to fight fire with fire and throw more red meat out there to get people motivated and win elections; and then say that the guy who was more responsible for left wing incendiary rhetoric than anyone else just failed to motivate the base.
Grayson should have been the poster child for the kind of campaign you want. But nobody showed up to vote for him. Why did Grayson’s divisive campaign fail to get his voters out to the polls? If Grayson can’t do it in his swing district, why should we take seriously the suggestion that we should roll this strategy out nationally?
That is something of a point . . . but, remember, we’re supposed to be players here, not fans. (Not that it’s any more sportsmanlike when a player or coach does it; but if the other team does it first, what else can you do?)
