Which groups do you think should be sacrificed in the name of winning these voters over?
And are you a member of any of them?
Your premise is broken. I’m saying some groups are going to keep being sacrificed, either short term or forever, and short term is better.
Your second sentence is irrelevant because it is built on an assumption that my suggestion is against those groups’ interests and I don’t agree.
Which groups?
But the answer is still “none,” isn’t it?
I already said.
Your strategy is utterly transparent - you want me to name certain groups then point out I’m not one of those groups and that I’m being cruel to them. And then pillory me for that so you can ignore my point.
It’s BS and I’m not playing. I’m not the one being cruel to minority groups. I’m talking about a strategy for stopping cruelty to minority groups long term.
Attack my argument ie that short term pain may result in long term gain or fuck off.
OK, so why should the minority groups actually believe you when you say that the “long term” change that will set them free will actually come if they just sat down and shut up and let the Republicans kill them for a while?
And for that matter, something I’ve always wondered: what exactly does letting those social issues go mean? Like, obviously Democrats should say something if Republicans propose a federal transgender ban bill (right?), but under this paradigm, what would Florida Democrats, for example, say (if anything) about the “Don’t Say Gay” bill? If asked about hot button social topics, what should they say?
This entire notion that ‘wokeness’ (a term almost exclusively used now by conservatives as a perjorative) is what is holding back the Democrats or progressives is a kind of victim-blaming; “if not for you people we would be winning”, e.g. bigotry and excluding people from society is what made our nation really great, and now trying to claim some place in it is really bringing everybody down, man!
Meanwhile, the Democratic party has en masse abandoned its roots as representing the interests of working middle class voters in order to court that delicious corporate campaign financing, and only react in being shocked, shocked that these people respond to being exploited and left behind by abandoning the Democratic party. That Joe Manchin is the best they can do in West Virginia—a state that was for so long a stalwart citadel for Democrats but that can now only elect a Democrat-in-name-only that is so far right that he puts conservative Republicans to shame—tells you everything about how the Democratic party has and continues to fail. Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan should have been an instant sell to a nation that has lost so many working class jobs to de-industrialization and off-shoring (despite the shitty name) and yet it can’t even get enough traction to get sold to the Democrats as a whole.
Quite frankly, no thinking person gives a genuine fuck about what homosexuals do, or who uses what bathroom, or any of the other culture wars nonsense beyond it being an excuse for outrage; it is just a means to stir up resentment in people who feel some vague sense of being left out or left behind, and the “War on Christmas” nonsense is just a hook to rest their hat upon. The idea that we can just work things out if we continue to keep all of these people in a dark closet somewhere is the same kind of dissonance that is now feeding the absurd outrage over “Critical Race Theory”, an academic hypothesis of the legal basis of socioeconomic inequalities that isn’t taught or studied below the graduate level and certainly not in primary schools to impressionable children.
Stranger
Let me answer your question by quoting from above:
Because today is far from perfect it’s easy to forget that it is far, far better than last week. If minority groups can’t see that - when it is beyond fucking obvious - there is little I can do.
As to what letting these issues go mean - it means letting them go. Do you think powerful R’s actually want, personally, to spend their time being assholes to the oppressed minority de jure? No, they just keep stirring the pot because it tempts Dems into talking about it, and wedges Dems’ working class base away. Let them go and it will stop.
Well, speaking as a member of a minority group that’s a favorite target of the right, may I humbly suggest you take your strategy for our long term future and shove it so far up your ass it starts oozing out your ears? Gutless, milquetoast “allies” like you have stood in front of every single civil rights advance in the history of this nation. If we listened to you pack of useless cocks, we’d still have separate water fountains.
“Attack your argument.” What fucking argument? You won’t put forward an argument, because you know as soon as you put your vague alarmism into actual policy, everyone’s going to recognize what an asshole you actually are. What specific issues do you think the Democrats should cede ground on? Should we start pushing bills that ban teaching about the Civil Rights movement, so we can court the anti-CRT crowd? Should the Biden administration not fight any challenges to Obergefell, so the religious bigots will back our tax plan? Stop fighting for abortion rights? Pass a couple bathroom bills of our own, as an olive branch to the right? What actual policy are you advocating here, and who gets thrown under the bus to enact it?
OK, here is the fundamental point of disagreement, I think. It even answers my “letting it go” question. Glad to see it on the table plainly.
“Just ignore them, and they’ll go away.”
And people try to tell me privilege isn’t a real thing.
I’m not going to attempt to sort that pile of straw (up to and including your last dishonest, misquoting piece of assholishness).
Your country is at severe risk of becoming fascist. One of the two largest parties in your country, supported by far too close to 50% of your populace, openly supports a fascist, and that fascist has the open support of his party. He tried to get democracy overthrown after the last election, and still hasn’t lost support. The person who comes after him will likely have the same morals but more competence and may well not fail.
In other contexts, I’m pretty sure you’d agree with me about that.
Think about some examples of fascist nations in recent times and their record on gay rights.
IMHO every single non-fascist in your country needs to have a laser focus on nothing except steadying the ship. If the ship goes down, you will look back on these as golden days for minorities.
Tell me I’m wrong in my analysis of the US political situation if you will, but don’t tell me I’m not looking out for you.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that one “lets it go” permanently. I’m suggesting that one chooses one’s battles. There has been steady progress in improving minority rights over the last 50-odd years. Now is not the same as the last 50 years in US politics and treating it as such is kidding yourself IMHO.
Dickhead, I don’t need you to lecture me about the fate of queer people under authoritarian regimes. I’m well aware of how precarious my rights are, which is why it’s especially alarming to see people who are allegedly on my side suggest letting the right use me as a chew toy out of political expedience.
This isn’t a game. Racism and homophobia aren’t things the American right plays with. They hate us, and they will come for us the minute you give them an opportunity. If we “let it go,” like you suggest, they will not. We are at an unprecedented place for queer rights at this moment, and it is incredibly precarious. If we don’t defend it, it will end. You don’t defeat fascism by appeasing it. You don’t oppose it by acquiescing to it. You fight it, and you don’t give a fucking inch. If you’re not willing to fight, the least you can do is sit down, shut up, and stay out of the way of people who will.
You’re not looking out for me. You’re stabbing me in the back, and pretending you’re doing me a favor.
I wish you well in your fight Miller. Hopefully your current strategy of:
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becoming abusive towards those who argue for strategy for helping minorities that you disagree with while not engaging with their point;
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strawmanning, and
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proposing to passionately and heroically fight battles without apparent consideration of the overall goals of the war
will stand you well.
Whoa! You’re all squabbling past each other.
Look, for damn sure minority rights are at a precarious place right now. And it’s because of the hate and outrage that right-wingers are drumming up. And they are using that to embiggen and entrench their electoral power. Once they accomplish that, it’s all over.
As it stands now, there is little we can do to protect LGBTQ people, pregnant women, Blacks and other minorities. The Republicans have enough power to obstruct all that, and in some states (Florida, Texas, Idaho, e.g.) they have the power to enact ever more repressive and regressive laws.
@Miller, just what are Democrats/liberals/progressives supposed to do to counter that? Sure, 1960s-style marches and demonstrations won’t hurt.
But first top-most priority must be to enact protections for voting rights: We must utterly overcome all the things Republicans are doing to suppress voting, commandeer election administration, intimidate voters, gerrymanders, etc.
Without that, what else can we be doing immediately? Once we get honest and fair elections established, THEN we can go to town on all the other issues: Discrimination of all sorts, climate change, enlightened abortion laws, gun control, worker protections, the whole works. Without that, we can’t get any of that done.
So, all @Princhester is saying is, we have to get our battles properly ordered.
When the Allies landed at Normandy and captured the beach, they couldn’t march on Berlin the very next day. They had to fight through all the battles in between Normandy and Berlin on the way, in order. And that is what we have to do here.
What other plan would work?
Yeah, wishes are about as much help as I’d expect to get from you.
Cool. How do we do that? Sit around and send thoughts and prayers to Joe Manchin? How does throwing minority rights under the bus help with that?
Yeah, “prioritize voting rights,” whatever the fuck that means in practice, but Princhester’s saying we should sideline social rights issues “for a decade or two.” That’s not prioritizing, that’s abandoning.
…America is in the middle of an asymmetric war between the Republicans, who have strategically taken control of the courts, have the Police Unions in their pocket, and are churning out bills and legislation through operations like Project Blitz, they are taking over school boards and local government…and the Democrats, who for the most part don’t have a clue what is going on.
One side has been planning this for decades. One side has learnt how to weaponise propaganda in the digital age using tactics learnt from the likes of g#mergate and Alex J$nes. One side is fundamentally corrupt, seeking money and power. One side seeks white, male supremacy. One side would be happy if trans people no longer existed.
And the other side thinks that the reason why they are going to lose the midterm elections is because a few people once said “defund the police”.
That other side is outgunned. They are out-flanked. There is no real leadership. They are trying to fight a conventional war in the face of a blitzkrieg.
We really can’t, at this stage, make the assumption that the Democrats will “get another chance at this.” Which is why it is more important than ever to fight back on absolutely everything.
I said this in Feb last year:
My position hasn’t changed.
That simply isn’t good enough.
There isn’t a “single priority right now.” This should absolutely be a priority for legislators. But you aren’t going to overcome all the things Republicans are doing by pretending that getting this one thing done is all that needs to be done.
The OP asks “when will enough be enough?”
That time happened long ago. The time to fight back is now. If you aren’t sure what to do: then think local. School boards. Governorships. The Mayor. The Sheriff. City Council. Talk to your local activist groups and find out where you can help. Hold the line. Don’t give them anything.
Excellent post. I agree. My question is what is the best way of doing so, and why won’t / haven’t the strategies that worked in the past work now? The closest comparison I can think of is the 1960s Civil Rights movement, which had significant, though obviously not complete, success. Yes, there was legislation that passed after LBJ strong armed congress, but there was also change in the way a lot of ordinary people think as well. I wasn’t around back than, so I have no direct experience as to how that change was made, but one way or another it was. The response from the right wasn’t the current Trump style MAGA actions. Yes, Nixon and Reagan were in some ways a step back compared to Kennedy and LBJ, but they weren’t fascists and they didn’t take us back to the days of Hoover, Wilson, or even worse, and while they may have been worse personally than LBJ, the country itself kept making progress in spite of them. Then we had the era of the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama, where we continued to make progress here and there, all the while with ordinary people seemingly becoming more progressive as a whole. Now Trump and the MAGAs have shattered my previous conception about how things were supposed to go. What I don’t get is why this happened now, and what people from earlier times did to prevent it from happening then. Is it simply a matter of MLK, LBJ, Malcolm X, etc. being smarter than today’s leaders? Have the ordinary people become softer in some sense compared to people in the 1960s? I honestly don’t understand exactly what happened.
Given that I don’t know why we ended up here, I don’t know what, if anything I can personally do differently. Yes, I’m going to vote straight ticked D this fall. No, I’m not going to run for office because I’d suck at it and would likely just make things worse. What else is there? Obviously there are other things that could be done, and if MLK and LBJ were around today they might have some sage advice that could help defeat the MAGAs or get them to change their minds. But they aren’t around, and I’m not smart enough to figure out what they would do if they were.
Funny thing to bring up in response to the suggestion that Democrats can be complicit in the failure to achieve material progress, and that that’s the result of what is tantamount to bribes. I would bet that you knew exactly what Occupy Wall Street was about, and thought its basic premises were not only things you agreed with, but were inarguable, when you first heard about it. When we all first heard about it, it was like “yeah, of course that’s right.” Put the executives who ruined people’s lives in jail, reform and regulate the banks to prevent this from happening again, get those banks’ money out of political spaces so they can’t buy their way out of these changes, fix the tax code, share the wealth. Purpose wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that after a year-plus of seeing and hearing about how “unproductive” they were because they hadn’t somehow passed legislation right there in Zuccotti Park, and how nobody could understand what “economic inequality” means or how the government could possibly do anything about it, and how they must be criminals because the cities decided that was enough and was arresting them by the hundreds, liberals (by and large) decided Occupy was a big joke, and that was what explained that nothing had happened. It’s a perfect example of how Democratic leadership can be complicit: pay the goals lip service, and quietly fail to represent those interests. If there is fear, uncertainty and doubt there, it isn’t because it’s being maliciously planted. The Democrats were not “the enemy” of Occupy in that the Republicans literally are Wall Street, the actual enemy, but in terms of accomplishing the goals of Occupy, a lot of Democrats were more enemy than friend.
I mean, it just happened again, in 2020, with policing. Same exact arc. It happens a lot. “What are you going to do, a big strike?” is a fine thing for one plebe to say to another about the fact that we’re all fucked. It’s a little bit of a different thing to say as a defense of the Democratic Party’s uh, occasional failures of revolutionary ambition.
…I mean, you don’t have to do anything.
But the thing you (and everyone else) needs to get your head around is that nobody is coming to save you.
This thread from Scott Hechiner paints a picture of where America is right now.
More at the link, with citations.
This is already broken. This is already bad. This is already a dystopia nightmare.
And it’s about to get worse.
If you can’t imagine what more you can do though, then that’s fine. You aren’t alone. Millions of others are in the very same boat. Millions of others won’t really be that much worse off. And if you can live with that: then that’s fine. I don’t know what else to tell you.
But if you don’t want things to get worse?
Then you need to figure it out. Because nobody is coming to save you. If you want to protect trans students then find your local activists and help them out. Same with abortion. Help educate your family and neighbours who to vote for for local council, or the Sheriff, or the school board. Think local. Do what you can.