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POLITICS EXPLOSION [Liberal Strategies and Methods]
Gigazombie Cybermage
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Registered User, __BANNED USERS regular
Okay, I can't be the only "liberal" starting to become extremely pissed off can I? The insansos have complete domination in the media while the corporate shills play them like puppets on a string. If there ever was a strong case against democracy, we're seeing it. I can't believe these people, after 8 long painful years under the thumb of conservative rule (Dems were ineffective and spineless, as usual) they're ready to vote in the people that got us into this damn economic mess!? Because Obama couldn't undo 8 years of bullshit in one term? I hate the dems, but we lack a real Liberal party, and we've admittedly had good times under them, while conservatives are constantly on the wrong side of history. For thirty years, conservative policies has been wrecking this country. I'm seriously about to blow a vein here. My patience is worn thin from trying to deal with these teabaggers and faux conservatives on a daily basis. (I live in TN...) Logic, Reason, or facts do not work on these people. They could argue that the Earth was flat, and no matter how much you show them they're wrong they'll never accept it. Their idol worshiping of our founding fathers is disgusting, mostly because the founders would find modern conservative policies abhorrent (At least, I believe they would. Could you imagine what Thomas Jefferson's reaction would be to that one ((admitedly good)) painting where everyonein DC is cowering before the messiah? Not that they'd approve of dems' policies either...)
Yet people are VOTING THESE MOUTH-BREATHERS IN. Why!? Do they not see they are completely incompetent, even compared to the DNC and GOP? As a man of reason and logic, it confounds me to no end. Why... why can't they see reason!? Just look at the facts, that's literally all I ask them, but it doesn't make a difference!!! ARGH. I'm so god damned mad! NERDRAGE POWER ACTIVATE. And here on the other side of the aisle? We have a bunch of pussified democrats afraid to play politics like the big boys and getting their hands dirty. I don't like it, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. All the hope I had when Obama was elected is now completely replaced by anxiety and anger towards these morons who don't even know who they're supporting. Do they know how the GOP defines "small business?" Do they know taxes are actually low? Why do they always vote against their own interests? It makes me wonder how much the judges got paid off to declare corporations an actual "person." Did they not see how that would be abused? Now the Astroturf Party gets funded by the Fed Reserve and their corporate allies and set loose the lemmings that make up the rank and file of the conservative bloc.
But hey, where are all the freethinkers and liberals who believe in the principals that this country was founded on? Why is everyone still so apathetic? Is it laziness? I KNOW there are people out there just as angry as I am about all this. Why don't they ever stand up and say something!? Mother fuckers, open up your mouths and raise your fists! Declare that that they'll never turn this country into a theocratic, police-state, plutocracy! Make them see that WE'RE the ones in the right, that we represent the freedoms that symbolize the American ideal! That we'll never disappear and even though they have the money, we have the power! Because we do, fuckers! Let the media ignore us, let them discount us and tell us we're not "real americans" because we grew up in an urban area, or because we dared to call for compassion, and want to use the government to help our fellow man. Because Karma is a bitch.
So they're the new "Great Awakening", then fuckers, let's be the new "Enlightenment!" We CAN do it! Show them that this is a country of reason, logic, pragmatic solutions, AND compassion, not demagoguery, jingoism, nationalism, xenophobia, or fascism! We have the fucking internet you neckbeards! All we have to do is organize! If those morons can, then we certainly can! Even if we don't have the money, if we have enough people we can direct this country back on the proper course!
All we need is a name. "The (New?) Liberty Party." There fuckers, that sounds good. Now let's spread the word.
God dammit, this won't do a bit of fucking good, will it?
Yet people are VOTING THESE MOUTH-BREATHERS IN. Why!? Do they not see they are completely incompetent, even compared to the DNC and GOP? As a man of reason and logic, it confounds me to no end. Why... why can't they see reason!? Just look at the facts, that's literally all I ask them, but it doesn't make a difference!!! ARGH. I'm so god damned mad! NERDRAGE POWER ACTIVATE. And here on the other side of the aisle? We have a bunch of pussified democrats afraid to play politics like the big boys and getting their hands dirty. I don't like it, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. All the hope I had when Obama was elected is now completely replaced by anxiety and anger towards these morons who don't even know who they're supporting. Do they know how the GOP defines "small business?" Do they know taxes are actually low? Why do they always vote against their own interests? It makes me wonder how much the judges got paid off to declare corporations an actual "person." Did they not see how that would be abused? Now the Astroturf Party gets funded by the Fed Reserve and their corporate allies and set loose the lemmings that make up the rank and file of the conservative bloc.
But hey, where are all the freethinkers and liberals who believe in the principals that this country was founded on? Why is everyone still so apathetic? Is it laziness? I KNOW there are people out there just as angry as I am about all this. Why don't they ever stand up and say something!? Mother fuckers, open up your mouths and raise your fists! Declare that that they'll never turn this country into a theocratic, police-state, plutocracy! Make them see that WE'RE the ones in the right, that we represent the freedoms that symbolize the American ideal! That we'll never disappear and even though they have the money, we have the power! Because we do, fuckers! Let the media ignore us, let them discount us and tell us we're not "real americans" because we grew up in an urban area, or because we dared to call for compassion, and want to use the government to help our fellow man. Because Karma is a bitch.
So they're the new "Great Awakening", then fuckers, let's be the new "Enlightenment!" We CAN do it! Show them that this is a country of reason, logic, pragmatic solutions, AND compassion, not demagoguery, jingoism, nationalism, xenophobia, or fascism! We have the fucking internet you neckbeards! All we have to do is organize! If those morons can, then we certainly can! Even if we don't have the money, if we have enough people we can direct this country back on the proper course!
All we need is a name. "The (New?) Liberty Party." There fuckers, that sounds good. Now let's spread the word.
God dammit, this won't do a bit of fucking good, will it?
Gigazombie Cybermage on
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Posts
The political process is messy because it's hard to keep a society of 300+ million people all relatively happy at the same time (especially when they get to pick whoever they want to enter the death pit of Congress and jump right into the fracas)
Then again given the performance out of the Democratic Party over the last 2 years given a majority in all 3 branches of government I question why anyone would vote for them in the coming elections. When the best excuse you have for why you are unable to enact your agenda is "Well the other side who diametrically opposes our ideal refuses to compromise so we are completely worthless without 60 guys."
I mean seriously, you do not walk into a room full of Republicans and say "Ok guys, we are in charge. Now I know you are opposed to baby killing. However we need dead babies. Lets compromise, how does 8 dead babies sound? Now either play ball or the government will appear completely ineffective and you can use that as a tool to regain power." Hell it does not even help that the Democratic party has to start negotiating with its own base. Hell they pretty much walk into the room saying "Ok our party will agree on a maximum of 4 dead babies. Any more and we lose votes. So how can we get you guys on board the dead baby express?"
Moreover it does not help that as much as everyone wants to rant and rave about how horrible the Republicans are in ramming 8 years of crap down our throats when you ask them why they were not as obstructionist toward all this horrible shit as the Republicans are toward the current batch of horrible shit all you get is a bunch of hand wringing, and half hearted mumbles of compromise.
The reality is we do not have a two party system. We have a one party system solely concerned with keeping itself in power, and two talking heads playing red vs blue and using Capitol Hill as Blood Gulch. The democrats can barely get along with their own members which all to often seems to ideologically be based around nothing more than being pissed at the republicans. The republicans on the other hand seem hell bent on hating everyone while thumping the bible at everything and working extra hard to driving themselves into being the retarded christian extremist party.
Want something that blows my mind? There are republicans out there, right now, who honestly believe if you do not worship Jesus then you cannot possible be republican. Fiscal conservancy, states rights, smaller government. All this crap takes a back seat to Imaginary Sky Dad and his list of shit not to do.
And yet they are STILL more effective as a party than the Democrats.
Toss the dems away since they're so ineffective.
Then I remembered that their main opponent's platform is "We'd do that, except, no, we can't do that because X...."...good luck with the election US!
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I think that's a marginal part of it at best. The organizational structure of the legislative branch is fucking insane, with an incredibly bad incentive structure. That's why politics is fucked up. That why you can have (rationally ignorant) Obama voters know that "their people" got in and "those other guys" lost, and yet still nothing gets done.
Of course, part of this is that the GOP knows how to play politics--even as they are grossly unfit to govern--while the Democrats obsess about procedure. The GOP is persistently willing to play the hell out of a weak political hand, while the Democrats aren't.
Also, no matter how incompetent you may think the Democrats are, that does not make them worse then the competently evil.
Right now the Dems are pushing a platform and is incompatible with the ideals of the republican voter base. By fighting tooth and nail to stop it from passing they not only do the Republicans please their voter base, but also demoralize the Dems voter base who seem to expect Obama to wave a magic wand and fix everything. Sadly it also appears at times that Obama expected to wave said wand and the republicans would fall in line. Yeah good luck on that one.
Really though the problems of the democrats seems to stem from the fact that as the Republicans become more hard line they are bleeding moderate members. Who then join the Democractic party while maintaining their centrist, and right leaning ideals. The hard line approach to membership is serving the republicans well, whereas the Dems at time could often seem to be two parties fighting to get along.
Really though until the American people begin to demand more from their elected officials in actually working to address their concerns nothing is really going to change. My biggest fear is that people will demand accountability before educating themselves enough to understand exactly what they do want, and how it actually effects them.
That's a problem of the convoluted system. Peoples' ignorance is understandable and rational.
1) Repealing the Bush tax cuts for the top brackets.
2) The pretty awesome elements of the health care bill that kicked in today.
3) Fuck off, Citizens United
4) Senate reform.
1 they failed already.
2 they might bother with.
3 not a chance in hell
4 even less of a chance
SIGH.
That said, it's better than the alternative, as the alternative is 2000-2006.
It's understandable as long as they are too lazy to end their ignorance.
In reality, most of the problem is not "Democrats not trying hard enough".
1) is sadly not as easy as it sounds, since in many peoples minds the top bracket you are referring to are middle-class peolpe just like them! http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/09/22/is-250000-a-year-wealthy-only-if-you-are-a-democrat/
The real problem is that most of the Congresspeople are in that bracket and they're greedy, short sighted assholes.
Most people have shit to do during the day, most of which is more relevant to them and gets more visible and important returns than does paying attention to the nuances of politics.
I don't think it's a matter of Democrats "not trying hard enough" and I didn't say that it was. I do think they're playing a game of process though, whereas Republicans are more concerned with using that process as a means to an end. I'm not sure what what Democrats "trying harder" would look like, but I think it would just be more of the same.
This isn't the individual's fault. Education in this country has been steadily repurposed as daycare and then a jobs training program that ultimately leaves many students unable to meet any qualification of citizenship other than place of birth.
So it isn't really surprising when people like the tea partiers in the videos linked in the other thread turn out to have literally no idea whatsoever what the policy they are protesting against actually does or what they would change about it.
Or that people like our OP, who have educated themselves well enough apparently to recognize the problem, can't come up with any better solution than raising their fists and taking back the means of production (which is a solution I might even endorse if I thought everyone who ever advocated it would actually come along) or possibly attending a poorly organized and usually nonspecific protest.
Which is not to oversimplify things or minimize the challenge in front of us, but god damn let's try to address it more seriously than this.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Those people with other shit to do wouldn't be posting here though. If they've gone through the trouble of coming here to post about a subject they obviously are partially educated in, I will point out the areas where they don't know WTF they are talking about.
Per your second paragraph, the Republicans have simply stopped playing by the "rules" (ie- traditions) of the political system. Turns out the system wasn't set up to stop people from shutting the entire thing down. The reason it's worked before now is because neither side was interested in grinding it to a halt, not because it couldn't be done.
I'd argue that it was previously due to a lack of ideological coherence in either party more than tradition. But the point stands, it's a new thing.
I think we might be talking about different groups of people.
Well, good for the Republicans. I just wish their agenda wasn't so awful. They certainly know how to fight for it, and by "know how to fight" I mean they use tactics that actually work. Their tactics have changed with the political and media environment, and I would argue largely successfully so.
For some definition of their "goals" I guess that's true. But those goals and what their voters say they want don't seem to match up so it gets a little weird here.
I think that's true. They're largely serving their moneyed interests and poking minorities with sticks to signal that they're the only people willing to stand up for the interests of scared white people.
Well, sorta. It's more they lacked the desire to enforce a strict ideological coherence to the expense of everything else.
Here's an interesting article I read recently on the subject: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/09/broken-washington-201009
It's about Obama trying to deal with these issues, but alot of it is focused on the changes that have happened in DC to create this situation.
And the main one is that before now, there was still a belief in actually DOING SOMETHING. It was expected that when you were the minority, you'd push for as much as you could get, but in the end you'd give in and let the majority have some of what they wanted.
And mostly this was kept up by a sort of ... comradely among the political players. They may have been opponents on the Senate or House floor, but outside that they still talked and were even friends. They didn't just see each other as "the other evil guys" and thus they were willing to cooperate.
But the past decades have seen political and demographic shifts and shit loads of gerrymandering that have essentially cut all ties between the 2 sides. Democrats are from here, Republicans are from there and never the two shall cross paths except on the floor. They don't come from similar or close together places and thus don't need to ever work with the other guys.
Alot of these guys don't even live in DC anymore. They don't communicate with one another. They don't see one another as people beyond the political position. They don't see each other as anything but "the other guys".
Now the other guys are the enemy and there's nothing to temper that. The GOP whips it's members like no ones business and the members see no reason to fight back just for the faceless amorphous other guys who are their "enemy".
Yeah, I think it's more like the process I was talking about above has been waiting like an unarmed bomb. It's sitting their, just waiting for someone to flip the switch.
And the Republicans have flipped it by switching to caring about ideological purity over everything else.
I think that's largely a tactic. They do it because it works. (Though the Tea Party thing seems to be a bit out of control.)
You're right in a long-term view, the fact that it's so hard to get things passed compared to other countries with a single sovereign legislature is a good thing. While on the one hand good policies are harder to pass, so are bad policies. We get to use other countries and individual states as testing grounds for the viability of new policy, and end up with (for the most part) what works for us.
There's this assumption that every progressive policy idea (carbon trading, stem-cell research, any of the various systems of public healthcare, etc.) with any modicum of public support is worth passing. The world is a lot more volatile than you think, and situations can and do change rapidly.
I could Godwin this thread so easily right now...
Fixt.
How many different Tea Party candidates this cycle got on the ticket because they weren't afraid to loudly shout their bat-shit crazy ideology?
Dems need to sack up, stop worrying about losing votes in the center, and be proud of what they've accomplished and want to accomplish.
And the base needs to quit mincing around, whining about the weak effort put forth by their local congressmen. Their reluctance doesn't mean that you gotta let the horrible bastards on the other side win, does it? Go out and vote, if for nothing else than to cancel out a Tea Partier's vote.
It's a little early to credit the Tea Party with any kind of success. Being on the ballot just means they get to run. From what I've heard seats the GOP thought they had in the bag are now tossups because a teapartier knocked off a mainstream republican for the election.
Yeah, maybe, but the Tea Party definitely has the media attention and the momentum right now. The narrative on the Left is mostly negative carping about how they're not campaigning enough, and while that's largely true, negativity is just going to suppress turnout.
Oooh, the Dems are acting spineless and shy during an election . . . what's new about that exactly? Go vote. We've got an opposition party that's openly telling voters they're going to make things as draconian as possible . . . . there's your motivation.
Not much of a sales pitch.
I'm not your target audience though... For a number of reasons.
Also, I've encountered a number of people who don't seem to understand how tax brackets work. I find it baffling. I mean, they do pay taxes every year don't they?
That's pretty much it. The economy sucks and people are out of work. And George Bush is back on his ranch clearing brush, so blaming him (and the out of power Republicans) comes off as a pathetic case of passing the buck.
All of the other stuff discussed in the OP? Maybe it's of interest to political junkies and other nerds. But the average voter doesn't care- he's pissed off and he's going to punish the party in power.
Rigorous Scholarship
People who voted for Obama need to understand that the president can't summon lightning bolts from on high. If there's a cause out there that you're passionate about, you have to be the one to go out everyday and fight for it. Don't expect things to just happen because you cast a vote. If you thought that voting for Obama would cause the clouds to part, rainbows to emerge, flowers to sparkle with morning dew, and unicorns to reemerge from hiding, you were sadly mistaken.
I'm angry about ineffectual Dems and Republicans getting away with murder as much as anyone else (probably more so), so the question is what to do about it? To their credit, the teabaggers got off their asses, started making angry noises and rattling cages, and got out to vote. Yes, they were ginned up by moneyed interests and slick salesmen, but they managed to direct their anger to a constructive end for their cause. Why can't we do the same on the left? We keep standing on principle and refusing to resort to the tactics that the GOP are successfully using against us. The right saw the good shit that the activist left did right and emulated it; when are we going to get off our high horse and do the same?
One thing I'll admit is that, as a supporter of the Democratic platform and the progressive movement, I dropped the ball these last two years. We all did. We got the Dems into office and thought we could sit back and they would solve everything. We forgot that their spines are flexible and that the opposition was pissed. We got complacent and disconnected. We complained on the sidelines but didn't get out there to counter the teabaggers. We failed to remember what got us the majority in the first place. So now we're at a point where all that hard work will probably be undone. I, for one, don't plan to let that be the end of the story. And I have no qualms with taking the right's tactics and shoving them back in their face. It's past time for us to stop playing nice and to start playing to win.
Personally I would like to see us go to a parliamentary system, where the executive is chosen by parliament. It forces compromise in many cases and allows things to get done. Our system is so arcane that it is near impossible for anything to happen ever. I say fix it. Unfortunately that would take probably multiple constitutional amendments and good luck getting half of congress to vote themselves out of existence.
but they're listening to every word I say
On being one of the rich:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/09/in-which-mr-deling-responds-to-someone-who-might-be-professor-todd-henderson.html
cuz i'm not going to waste my beautiful mind reading what looks like a chain letter