Trump Won-Time for an Alt Left?

Because of other commitments, it actually took me roughly a day to finish writing the post until I reached a point that I wanted to get it over with and hit the “Submit Reply” button.

What is this in response to? I certainly don’t support mass deportations or closing the borders-indeed I support a path to citizenship for most current illegal immigrants. That said, immigration has both pros and cons and the left should be realistic in discussing the effects of immigration on wages, social cohesion, and the like.

You get similar gripes from the usual suspects already. But the thing is, straightforward programs where most people can expect benefits from such as Social Security and Medicare are much more popular then programs which benefit only the most needy such as food stamps or AFDC especially once they are established. Indeed polling suggests such programs such as single-payer healthcare (which I don’t actually support ftr since I prefer the German model of universal healthcare) or paid leave for mothers are quite popular since again they are easy to understand unlike limited programs which have extensive prerequisites for eligibility.

Again conservatives and libertarians already complain about that. But appeals to patriotism provides a stronger defence against such attacks.

Some of these aren’t immediate goals obviously, but I think we definitely need to put the question of reforming the Electoral College in the national conversation especially since it was originally made to give an advantage to the slave states in Presidential elections. And the Electoral College doesn’t really give smaller states an advantage if they are solidly partisan one way or the other-they only give an advantage to a handful of swing states who actually determine the outcome. Given that, I think if a strong-enough campaign was mounted we can get a concerted push to reform or even abolish the Electoral College.

You seem to think what is a feature in the system is a bug. The Founding Fathers (with some exceptions such as Thomas Paine) indeed opposed democracy because most of them were part of the commercial and planter elite of the 13 colonies who feared that the triumph of the common man would bring about expropriation of their property and the like. Indeed they may well have approved of Donald Trump’s electoral college victory over Hillary Clinton despite her losing the popular vote since it allowed property owners to select the President over the heads of the landless urban masses. Now, I do recognize that the Founding Fathers were quite historically progressive for their time and that they indeed left a respectable legacy of continuous constitutional government with a fairly robust set of individual rights but ultimately they envisioned an America that would be an aristocratic republic in form and an Anglo-Saxon Protestant agrarian commonwealth in character. I don’t see why modern Americans who live in an utterly different nation should be at all beholden to their intentions and wishes.

I admit that when I wrote this, I had many of your previous statements regarding democracy in mind. That said, I don’t see why populism automatically leads to lunacy given that populism is ultimately a strategy that can advance many different ideologies not a body of doctrine in and of itself. Indeed history has shown time and time again that a rule by a self-satisfied, segregated elite can just as often lead to lunatic policies that result in disaster. It wasn’t the popular will but rather the consensus of the cosmopolitan elites in the developed world that have led to deindustrialization, declining life expectancies, and other problems I’ve outlined above. What can be more “lunatic” then that?

Identity politics is not limited to the left-American right-wingers have appealed historically either explicitly or implicitly to white identity in many election campaigns. Obviously, identity politics is not a be all and end all, but it does maximize turnout and Democratic support among marginalized communities such as blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals who have group-specific grievances.

That’s actually what “integrity” mean. Doing what is right, regardless of how much power you have.

No radical philosophy is a problem until people start acting on it. I don’t care what people think, it’s what they do that’s the problem. Let’s have policies that address actions and leave thougtcrime in the pages of a book where it belongs.

Besides, we all know that extremism begets extremism. IF we kill a lot of non-involved parties, every one of their relatives will hate us and some will invariably pick up arms.

Yeah, the far left found out that their arbitrary rule that white-cis-hets are not allowed to play along at identity politics doesn’t actually stop it from happening. But, hey, fueling recreational outrage at a white guy with dreadlocks or Miley Cyrus doing a booty dance is really more important than winning elections anyway.

What’s especially bizarre about the Democrat’s stated unwillingness to do this, and the hostility that it gets on this board (and in this thread) is that they ALREADY sacrifice principles routinely. Just look at Hillary’s track record - she and a lot of other Democrats voted to enable the Iraq war even though it was supposedly badly against their principles. And well, Republicans were bullying us after 9/11 and would have called us unpatriotic and that would have lost elections’ is a common justification for it. She was opposed to gay marriage during her whole elected tenure, and only supported it when it gained enough popularity not to hurt her election chances. She opposed the TPP in the primaries but her supporters were confident she’d reverse that promise once she got elected.

It boggles my mind that supporting a war that cost more than $2 Trillion dollars and killed half a million people and denying equal rights to gay couples are areas that are OK to compromise principles on, but calling radical Islam “Radical Islam” is just a bridge too far.

Most of us on the left believe that we can defeat the monsters without becoming monsters ourselves.

You have a peculiar definition of monster.

Over all, what I’ve observed in the American politics I’ve seen for the last six decades, is that ideals and principles are all well and good, but if you can’t translate them in to understandable solutions to the problems directly facing the majority of voters, you’ll lose. No matter how “right” you may be about anything.

I think that’s why Trump won, more than anything else. He didn’t argue from principles, he argued for direct action against what both parties had been telling the American people for decades, was why they couldn’t have what they wanted.

In a general way, I saw the Democrats rise to power in the sixties, because they told the American People that we could have higher pay and benefits, while the Republicans were saying that we couldn’t afford it. Then in the seventies, as the larger unions (which the Democrats were lockstep blindly supporting by then) were in the news almost daily, as the reason why our cost of living was steadily rising, and inflation was going nuts, the Republicans promised to reign in spending on “people who were getting a free rise at the expense of everyone else,” and swept Reagan into two terms.

Clinton only got the Dems back into the Presidency by finally dropping the idea that the economy had to be “spendy” in order to promote freedom and justice, and more than that, because the Republicans made the mistake of raising taxes when the economy wasn’t doing all that well. Remember, his most successful political soundbite, was “It’s the Economy, stupid.” While Republicans were harping on patriotism, the Democrats were back to showing loyalty (at least in speeches) to seeing to the best immediate interests of the bulk of the American people.

The Republicans got back in, because by then they had arranged to have a few core constituencies that the Democrats explicitly declared to be horrible people, and appealed again, to the middle and lower classes, by saying “no, we DON’T have to give our stuff to THOSE people, just because we feel sorry for them.” Very pragmatic.

The Republicans are very divided right now, more than ever before.  However, the divisions are not helpful to the Democrats, because they aren't divided in THAT kind of way.  I think that the reason why the election went the way that it did, more than anything else, is because although the Republicans as a party STILL have no intention of helping working class Americans, they've managed to avoid annoying them by telling them (as too many Democrats have done) that they need to feel sorry for other people instead of looking out for themselves.

I’d suggest that if the Dems want to get things going the other way again, what they need to do is stop speaking esoterically about sensibilities of minorities, and telling people that they can’t have whatever it is they might want, and go back to coming up with ways to directly help them.

That will take a complete overhaul of the Democratic agenda. They need to work to take burdens OFF of the working class, not add to them, as the ACA did.

And they need to completely change the WAY they express their ideas. Americans want a POSITIVE sense of security from terrorism and so on, not a vague declaration that we have to be “secure but fair.” Americans DO want affordable health care, but not something based on requiring them to be penalized for what they can’t afford.

The thing about so-called “identity politics” is, I think, a bit misleading. For too long, second and third rate Democratic strategists have taken short cuts to “fighting for justice,” by declaring various subgroups to be victims, and the rest of us to be “bad guys.” When you declare that the majority are the Bad guys, it’s not a great way to get them to vote for you. The CORRECT way to fight for justice and equality, is to fight for justice and equality. Not to give in to the lazy people (and your opponents) who want you to QUANTIFY everything, and give them statistics to make their job easy.

Some REPUBLICANS have learned the value of saying a loud NO, to people who are trying to be a part of their constituencies (they don’t do near enough of that, but that’s for another thread). The Democrats need to learn to do that too.

As for Hillary Clinton, the Democrats need to learn the RIGHT lessons from her loss. Not the wrong ones. The GOP spent TWENTY YEARS building steadily on their collection of lies about Clinton , and the Democrats mostly stayed quiet, only rarely addressing the actual behaviors and bad habits Clinton had that made the lies believable to so many people. Then they blithely ignored the fact that her candidacy had been heavily undermined for two decades, and pretended they could campaign the old fashioned way, with a minor flub Trump here and there.

Not to mention, Clinton’s people had failed to learn from her much earlier loss to Obama, eight years before. That was also due to Obama not having the GOP laying deep groundwork, but it was also due to the simple fact that Hillary Clinton is lousy at delivering a serious political speech. She’s never been good at faking sincerity, even though she really doesn’t lie even slightly as often as the Republicans pretend she did. She just SOUNDS like she’s fibbing, or putting on a show, when she’s not. Obama, on the other hand, had a deep melodic made-for-radio voice, and an ability to deliver a serious sounding message in a dramatic and confident manner.

Trump benefited from the same basic thing. He gets away with lie after lie after lie, in part because he SOUNDS sincere while he’s lying. Confidence men and other schemers the world round, have always taught that the way to make a lie “win,” is to repeat it confidently, loudly, and even rudely, over and over again. If you want to fight against lies, you can’t do it by simply saying “nope, Snopes doesn’t support that” calmly, and then sitting down.

Trump won because he was the ONLY candidate presenting a POSITIVE (as indirect action-based) program. The fact that most of it is dead wrong, is beside the point. The democrats need to stop talking about what CAN’T be done, because it might upset someone, and start talking about what CAN be done, and what MUST be done.

Racism alone is sufficiently monstrous to answer the purposes of this thread. You’re asking that liberals condone racism in order to get more votes.

Not gonna.

Please quote me to that effect. I think you’re projecting.

Stop viewing the other side as monsters and treat them like people. That is how Donald Trump, of all people, handed your ass to you.

The Ds got destroyed this last election. The reason is, as far as I can tell, the feeling of smug superiority that many Ds seem to get from running around calling anyone who disagrees with them racist/sexist and just pure evil is more important than actually changing things.

But I suspect it ain’t gonna happen. It is much easier, and more satisfying apparently, to wallow in moral outrage.

Hell, I don’t like Trump but it is rather funny watching all the liberals lose their shit and double down on the stupidity.

Slee

Aside from the fact that he hasn’t actually asked for anyone to condone racism, was it racist or at least monstrous to kill half a million Iraqis in a war in order to get reelected? Because the candidate the Democrats ran against Trump (along with a lot of other Democrats) voted to allow that war, and the explanation I’ve seen most often is that she felt that she wouldn’t get reelected if she stood up against Republican bullying about the ‘patriotic’ war. Is it homophobic to oppose gay marriage in order to get reelected? Because, again, the candidate the Democrats ran against Trump was consistently opposed to gay marriage in every election she ran before the most recent one.

Trying to hide behind a cloak of virtue and claiming that any kind of compromise on rhetoric in order to get elected is Just Plain Evil doesn’t work all that well when you consistently abandon principles to to win elections.

Says the party that consistently says "ALL LIBERALS BELIEVE <bullshit accusation>’

Perhaps you guys should look in the mirror on that one.

You advised the left to ditch identity politics. The only way to do that is to condone racism, as the opposition to racism is what defines identity politics.

You might want to stop digging.

Nope; he won (in part) by invoking racism as a mainstay plank of his platform.

The current alt-right is monstrous. It’s also viciously misogynist, and religiously bigoted as well. Also scientifically illiterate, and dangerously isolationist.

If you don’t like being called a monster, stop acting monstrously.

Maybe the left should stop defining things as ‘opposition to racism’ that aren’t actually opposition to racism. I mean, when Trump explicitly used identity politics to get votes from cis-het-white people, was that really ‘opposition to racism’?

I don’t think so. When MLK Jr. said, “I want my children to be judged on their character, not on the color of their skin,” that was fighting racism by *opposing *identity politics.

Today it’s the political left that keeps pitting black vs. white, women vs. men, etc. and dividing people on that basis. Whereas MLK’s idea was that people would look *past *such things as race, etc. but the political left wants to make race even *more *of a thing.

Good try Qin, A for effort, but it ain’t happening. No one’s saving the American social fabric. There’s no money in it. Pour out a 40.

When I come across articles from “alt-left” writers I think ooh, so that’s what happened to all the liberal Republicans. I jest, but only a little. The alt-right was a right-wing reaction to the Republican business establishment, so to keep the symmetry shouldn’t the alt-left be a left-wing reaction to the Democratc business establishment? Or is the idea that since America is inherently conservative you have to chase Republicans to the right? I’m getting flashbacks to the Bush years when liberal blogs were in perpetual circular firing squad mode over Blue Dogs.

The remarkable thing is just how fragmented the left is generally, and how much primacy these newer splinter groups place on distancing themselves from the dreaded “regressives” and SJWs. I don’t think this frenzy is particularly relevant to real world political events (it’s mostly an internet thing), but if they are such a beast dragging the American left down then it won’t be so easily slain. Like cultural warriors say, you’d have to purge the universities and the major media.

The linked blog author is against UBI. To quote his comment:

I don’t think you’d like Dr. King as much were he alive now.

What makes you think there’s no money for it?

Not really, much of the “alt left” are old New Deal liberals or socialists.

The “intellectual” alt left like the intellectual core of the alt right are fairly small and limited to Internet circles. But I would suggest that there is wide support for many of the “alt left”'s views as suggested by the strong performance of the Bernie Sanders campaign last year.

Yeah 1) I don’t necessarily fully agree with everything said with the blog which sometimes overly obsesses over political correctness and 2) I’m not entirely sold on UBI either although it may be necessary in the face of increasing automation.

Firstly, let me note that there are (at least) two different definitions of populism. There’s the first one, where a person advocates for greater inclusion of the populace into the political engine (e.g., campaigning for direct democracy). And then there’s the second one, where some political occurrence happens due to a popular movement by the base (e.g., the rise of Communism, the Satanic Panic, the election of Donald Trump, the Arab Spring, etc.).

If we go back to the United States Revolution, there is an argument to be made that it was broadly similar to the Russian Bolshevik revolution. There were a few elitist scholars (John Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Engels, etc.), who had their messages turned into populist works by less philosophical men (Samuel Adams, Lenin) who were political demagogues that turned the people to violence. Had men like Sam Adams and organizations like the the Sons of Liberty not been supplanted by wiser men and organizations, like Sam’s cousin John and the Committees of Correspondence, there is every chance that the American Revolution could have been not much different from the French Revolution.

Had the American revolution gone with the populist leader and continued to be lead by popular demand, Loyalists would have been tortured and murdered in the city streets. Europe would have looked over at the US and panicked over the monstrosities occurring in the new world, just as they would end up doing a few decades later, when France’s revolution failed to follow the wisdom of men like the Marquis de Lafayette.

Enlightenment-era philosophy wasn’t taken in whole-cloth by the founders of the nation. Most of them were smart enough and persuasive enough to reach a compromise between the idea that we all have equal rights, but we don’t all have the right to everything that everyone else has. Government exists for everyone and must be measured by that standard. But so long as the individual is selfish, direct democracy is not the same thing as government for everyone.

They didn’t want popular rule. But they also didn’t want rule by an unchanging, uncaring elite with no ties to the people.

During their time, most of the men who rose up in society were men who had been voluntary busy-bodies in the small towns that dotted the Eastern Seaboard. They published newspapers, ran the militia, ran the fire brigade, attended town council meetings, etc. Everybody in town knew these guys and volunteered them for things like the Continental Congress because they trusted that they cared about the welfare of people in general, and of their home town in particular.

When those men would go off to Congress, they might not come back for months. The people weren’t going to be looking over their shoulders and quarterbacking every little thing they did. They were entrusted with the future of their communities and their power to make law was bound up in that trust.

But that’s not populism, in either sense. That is Republicanism. It’s Democratic Republicanism, to be sure, but still Republicanism. You’re finding people who are to be entrusted with the full power of law and given the freedom to be discerning, compromising, and philosophical because those are the individuals that we trust to have such power.

If you’re in there quarterbacking them, that’s not a good thing for the nation. That’s not what was meant by “government for the people”. Government for the people means just that, that the government is meant to be working for the people, and so we should hire people that we trust to do that. And then trust them to do that.

If we’re not getting politicians that we trust, the problem isn’t that we need to get more know-nothings in there bullying the politicians around to do what we say. It’s that we’re electing people that we don’t trust. And that lack of trust, itself, mostly comes down on populism. If you put up a fireman who says, “I have no idea about any of this stuff, but I’ll learn and do my best for everyone”. And then you put up a second guy who wears a suit, has nice hair, etc. and says, “I’ll go out there and wrestle a billion dollars out of them corrupt Feds and put that into our school system, to make our beautiful babies the most successful group of children ever.” Well, who do you think is probably more trustworthy? Who do you think is going to get the job? I’m thinking that guy #2 is more likely to get it, and that’s a result closer to populism than it is to Republicanism.

I, personally, agree with enlightenment era philosophers. I think that the government has a duty to everyone in the country, to serve their interests - at least to an extent that a reasonable, wise, and compromising person would agree to. I don’t think that we want an elitist group to rule the country. But that’s different from having an elite group leading the country. Just because someone is smart and capable doesn’t mean that they are not trustworthy. It doesn’t mean that they no longer care about the common man.

It’s just a fact that some people are more caring than others. Some cry at the drop of a hat. Others are narcissistic psychopaths. It’s also a fact that some people are smarter than others. Most people are in the middle. Most likely, both of these scales fall on a bell curve, and almost certainly there’s no relationship between them. You can have sensitive idiots and geniuses, and sociopathic ones as well. You can find and elect smart and caring people. They’re a smaller percentage of the population, and that makes them an elite group, but part of the definition of that ‘eliteness’ is caring for the people they are working for. That’s not a horrible thing.

And everyone outside of that elite group is, by definition, overly or under caring of their fellow man, and overly or under intelligent to be very helpful to their fellow man. When you look back and you see the Bolshevik Revolution, the French Revolution, the Moral Panics, the Race Riots, etc. none of that speaks well for mob intelligence. To be sure, the mob knows when it’s unhappy. But if we’ve got a bunch of people leading the government who genuinely care about us, they’re going to genuinely care about our unhappiness. That’s why we elect those people instead of electing psychopaths and liars willing to sell us on whatever it took to get them into power.

Will populism always lead to lunacy? Maybe not. But it will certainly lead to stupidity. Ant intelligence may be pretty cool, when we consider that they’re just ants. But they still walk themselves to death if you make a circle of their scent. Mass intellect can handle things like equalizing flow along all paths from where people live to where they work, during rush hour. You don’t need to build in anything to guide people away from the paths that are slow. They figure that out themselves and adapt.

But can we collaboratively balance a budget? Can we collaboratively look inside ourselves and decide whether it’s philosophically reasonable to require that a cake maker bake marriage cakes for a homosexual couple? Or whether it’s philosophically reasonable to require that a carpenter build a cabinet that pronounces support for the KKK?

Here on this site, there’s majority support for nuclear energy. Among the greater public, and particularly not on the left, are you going to get much support for that. This site might be a Liberal bastion, on the whole, but it’s a very different Liberal from all the Liberals that would be running things with greater populism.

I would suggest to anyone who wants a more populist government to go hang out in a mall, listening in on conversations about who’s dating who and who should be shot and who is going to ‘get it’. Leftist populism doesn’t turn it into government by the SDMB’s great debaters. It turns it into government by the people who are dumping money into casino slot machines and going out to watch Saw and read Fifty Shades of Grey. By the definition that ‘normal’ is not crazy, I suppose it’s unreasonable to class the choices they would make as being ‘lunacy’. But I’m not sure that I agree with that definition of crazy.

Ah, the old “NO U!!!” argument that it is the left who are the true racists. :smack: