Another factor, tied into sales, marketing and “connecting.”

Symbols that trigger those connections. Tapping into sentimental attachments, especially to a “golden age” that never was. Flags, anthems, NASCAR, Wraslin’. Etc. etc. Sentimental triggers. Reducing fears of the present and future via references to the past — again, a past that never was, but is thought to have existed.

Right-wingers are masters at this, all around the globe. They draw voters in via that, distract them to no end, wind them up so they don’t see how they’re being screwed even more by the right-wingers than they ever were by the centrists.

And, of course, it often gets very, very dark. Whipping up hatred toward minorities, especially black and brown people, and women. We leftists can never go that route, not ever, and we won’t, and we should never align with those who do. But we can find other symbols, other points of connection, to draw in voters, and we can find people who have “it.”

That’s how we win.

Zooey wrote:

wv wrote:

Cool.

I prettymuch disagree with most of that. And i submit, the evidence is not just Bernie vs Biden. Thats just one example among hundreds. For starters there’s Bernie vs 99 Senators. These radical-progressive-anarchist-antifa-lead uprisers voted over and over and over for Corporate-Dem-Senators and Corporate-Rep-Senators.
Over and over and over. Its not just about Trump or voting for people that might beat Trump, etc.

If this country really had a large segment of progressive, informed, critical thinkers there would be evidence in the Senate. There aint.

Wanna look at the House of Rep? Whats ‘that’ look like. A smattering of progressives here and there.

So, no, I aint buying it. I think the bewildered herd will be baffled and confused and entertained and self-absorbed again, in a few weeks. And the very small number of committed critical-thinkers will be bashing on, relentlessly, as per usual.

w
v

But this is kind of tricky because people don’t vote for candidates who represent their policy opinions. (And there aren’t many progressives to vote for, and where they do appear on the ballot, the big money machine backs their opponent).

There is a disconnect between the things people want the government to do, and the people for whom they vote. People, as you well know, vote on slogans or whatever. They vote on gut feelings. Or name recognition.

People, by an overwhelming majority, want universal health care. And better pay. And a clean environment. And so on. Why they don’t vote for candidates who will work for those policies is a separate, baffling question. But we have a general idea of why.

So we have all those MAGAs who hate the government because they’ve been screwed, and they vote for a guy who is going to screw them even more, and they love him. There is a disconnect.

But the dissatisfaction is real. Even if people aren’t clear on the “underlying systemic-problem.”

What people need is a more convincing version of Bernie Sanders to lead the way. We need someone bold. Someone who could tell those crowds of people to go on strike. They would do it. And they would win. We’re “this” close to forcing real concessions out of the owners. I think this IS different. But I also think it won’t go anywhere unless somebody harnesses it. And right now, the only person who can is Sanders, and he long ago decided he wouldn’t.

I agree, Zooey. People don’t vote for policies, unfortunately. They vote for “charisma,” at least as perceived. They vote for the people they feel most connected to, for whatever reason.

And this works both ways. It’s why mainstream Dems have always been wrong to believe that “progressives can’t win cuz their policies are too extreme for America.” It goes without saying our policies aren’t “extreme.” But the real point is, again, voters don’t vote on policies anyway. They vote personalities. So . . . as you mentioned . . . find the right people to push a progressive or leftist agenda, and they’ll win.

Sanders really isn’t that guy — nor is Biden, of course. He has some of that “thing” needed. But not enough. And, sad to say it’s a factor, but it is. He’s too old. As is Biden.

And, of course, the disconnect isn’t just before the event. It’s there for a reelections too. It’s there for incumbents.

Trump has done everything in the world for corporate America and the super-rich, and not one damn thing for his “forgotten Americans.” He slashed taxes for himself, his family, the rich and corporations, stacked his cabinet with the most billionaires in American history, and tried to install even more that were denied confirmation. He’s gutted regulations on business, corporations, Finance, made it a hell of a lot easier to screw workers in the workplace and pollute our environment. And his bailouts couldn’t be more lopsided in favor of the super-rich.

His deeds shout out “corporate-lovin’, self-dealin’ sellout,” but his fans don’t see it, and they don’t see this is the pattern across the world for every “right-populist.”

IMO, yes, America would vote for actual leftists if they have the “it” factor, and at least nominal support from a party’s machinery. They routinely vote in right-wingers who aggressively screw them over. To me, it makes zero sense that they’d do that and not vote for people who truly work to improve their quality of life — unlike anyone on the political right.

From Robinson’s piece:

It’s a bad idea to listen to right-wingers who claim to be on the side of “the people.” Usually it turns out they want to crush the people by force. Nathan J. Robinson

All of which is to say: Right-wing populism seems like a terrible ideology that needs to be rejected. I disagree with nearly everything these people believe in. The kind of world they believe in is not one I wish to inhabit. They are in favor of reactionary cultural traditions, militarized borders, bigotry, and rabid nationalism. I am a leftist, meaning that I favor free movement of people and multiculturalism. I am anti-nationalist and anti-militarist. Donald Trump’s ideology seems to me to be monstrous.

I find it peculiar, then, to hear “right populism” and “left populism” discussed as part of the same tendency. Usually when this is done, it is by centrists, who subscribe to the “horseshoe theory” that fascism and socialism have a lot in common. (The idea is that the political spectrum, instead of a line, is horseshoe-shaped, meaning that the ends come together.) This is what led the Center for American Progress and the American Enterprise Institute (a “progressive” and “free market” think tank, respectively) to collaborate on a project about combating “authoritarian populism” from both the “right and left.” Their idea is that Donald Trump, Hugo Chavez, Bernie Sanders, Jair Bolsonaro, etc. can all be understood as part of the same tendency, because they all seek to overthrow “elites” and “the establishment” in the name of “the people” and use the power of the state to create justice.

But this idea is fundamentally wrong, because it fails to acknowledge the massive difference between the Left and the Right, namely that the Right’s brand of populism is a complete and utter swindle that involves scapegoating foreigners for social problems, while left “populism” is generally anti-racist and egalitarian. Right-wing populists do not actually care about “the people”; Trump and Bolsonaro may have pitched themselves as crusaders against “elites,” but neither actually cares about helping anyone but their wealthy cronies. Both want to privatize public assets, which in practice means simply giving away the people’s collective wealth to oligarchs. Both of them have been utterly indifferent to the socially unequal consequences of coronavirus, and both are accelerating their country’s contributions to the climate crisis, which will cause “the people” incredible suffering. Neither has any interest in deepening democracy; their ideal societies are characterized by massive wealth inequality. They are about as “populist” as the Nazis were “socialist,” meaning that it is a convenient label that makes them sound like something they aren’t.

WV,

Is this Round Two, or have I missed any?

;>)

After watching/reading this one, I give it again to Robinson. On points, if not a TKO.

To me, Ball went cheap-shot with the “comparing everyone on the right to Hitler,” which Robinson didn’t do . . . and the “ideological purity” dig, which is what I hear from Dems when I argue for leftist solutions/ideas. Either that or “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” or some such obnoxious variation. She should know better, cuz she’s probably been on the other side of that canard.

I completely agree with Robinson that there is no such thing as “right-populism.” Have always seen that as a classic oxymoron. It just goes against everything they say they stand for. They don’t want proactive, collective action for the greater good, at least not via the public sector, and since they love capitalism, which means they want “competition,” they don’t want it in the private sector, either. Every man for themselves, etc.

For centuries, they’ve supported elites and neck-breaking hierarchies as righteous, God-given or based entirely on “merit.” It’s the “natural order of things” for them. If someone is for taking direct action for the greater good, they’re not a righty. Righties honestly believe this is done via the capitalist system itself — again, “naturally.”

I’m also puzzled by the insistence that we leftists supposedly need to form coalitions with anyone on the right. Why? They’re what we oppose, and always have opposed.

Plus, we’re small. The populist right is small, too, but powerful. It has the backing of billionaires, and the often secret backing of all kinds of corporations. So if we were ever stupid enough to help them gain power, they’d betray us in a nanosecond, with backing, and we’d be worse off than ever before. We’d be helping a Wilders, a Bolsonaro, a Trump gain control, and they’d laugh at us and call us “antifa” and we’d never see the light of day again.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Billy_T.

In case I wasn’t clear: I don’t agree with Dems who think Sanders would have lost to Trump. I think he would have won in 2016 and again now. I agree with them for thinking that defeating Trump does mean real change.

Obviously, not as much change as we all desperately want. But it’s significant, given Trump’s record, his behavior, the way he’s successfully managed to create his own “deep state.” Recent articles tell us that it’s not just his cabinet/political appointees enacting dangerous change throughout the Executive. It’s filtered down to career management as well.

A War Against Climate Science, Waged by Washington’s Rank and File Efforts to block research on climate change don’t just come from the Trump political appointees on top. Lower managers in government are taking their cues, and running with them.

A Guy Named Craig May Soon Have Control Over a Large Swath of Utah By Bill McKibben June 13, 2020

wv wrote:

====================
Well, I dont agree or disagree with Taibbi, and i dont agree or disagree with Robinson. My brain just refuses to engage in ‘it’ and I ‘think’ the reason is this — I’ve been reading a lot of commie-memoirs this summer. I dunno why, but thats what I did in April and May. And over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, I read stories about leftists attacking other leftists. Groups forming and then factions and cracks and fissures tear the leftists apart. Heck even the FBI used to laugh about it. It got to where they stopped playing dirty tricks on the Black Panthers and some Commie groups, because the groups themselves were tearing themselves apart.

Thats been on my mind a lot. And i see Taibbi as one of us. And i see Robinson as one of us. Two fine leftists.

And i just do not have the will to pick one of them apart. It just seems like something the RIGHT would LOVE to see.

Now you could say “well Taibbi started it” — but i dont care. I just see Taibbi as venting a little bit about some shit that bothers him. Next week he’ll be back to writing great stuff.

w
v

WV,

I deleted various responses a host of times, trying to make this more Old Hacker size, while still effectively expressing my thoughts, and I just couldn’t do it. Things kept spinning away from me and growing and growing, etc. So I’ll just write this and then try again tomorrow or the next day to clarify. Or not.

;>)

I think Taibbi is doing just what you say we shouldn’t do. Attack our own. That’s kinda my whole point throughout this thread. I know you don’t want to get into “it,” but, for me, there’s no escaping that. I want “leftists” to deal with imminent threats, real threats, real crises, and nothing Taibbi wrote about rates as that, IMO, and most of it seems to be petty in-fighting. And it helps the right. It helps the right’s propaganda tropes that “the left” is intolerant and “Stalinist,” etc. etc. . . . and that it isn’t diverse, and can all be lumped in together, from the corporate Dems to we socialist/left-anarchists who read Kropotkin, Morris, Reclus, Nearing, Luxemberg, etc. etc.

It’s an echo of a quandary of an enigma of a dilemma, but Taibbi, Dore, Ball, Mate and company need to realize that their apparent reluctance to go after Trump seriously, dangerously helps the “far right.” Their belief that they can’t do it, that they have to concentrate on the DNC and the MSM, instead of the people actually in power, just makes it that much more difficult to mount an effective opposition. Hell, if leftists don’t fight against the “far right,” who will? And they aint doing that when they spend all their time going after “corporate Dems,” etc. etc.

I’ll leave it there.

Going back to the George Will example, which is my own, not Robinson’s or Taibbi’s. To make a case, one would have to show a pattern of “silencing” or “censorship” or “violation of free speech rights.” Without that, it really comes down to less than a tempest in a tea pot.

Given the fact that roughly 422 out of 423 outlets kept publishing George Will, the “pattern” was that, not the one outlet that cancelled him.

Taibbi failed utterly to show any kind of pattern of this sort of thing, via his examples, and could not remotely even suggest that there was some kind of movement afoot on “the left” to do so. Scattered, isolated, and rather dubious and easily contested examples do not make a pattern. But they do make a good day’s work on Fox News.

IMO, we have far, far bigger fish to fry.

Personally, I don’t see it as “censorship” at all to not say one word out of hundreds — much less ask for a bit of an explanation before making the decision to say it or not. My own take, for instance, on reading a literary excerpt to a class, if I were teaching it . . .

Say we’re reading Huck Finn or Beloved. Students are tasked with reading the entire book, as written. But if I’m going to read a part out loud, I find a passage that doesn’t contain the N word, if at all possible. And if it’s not, I choose not to say it in the midst of the rest of the passage. That’s not “censoring” the work, IMO. Students still see the word. They know it’s there. They have it in front of them. They just don’t hear me repeating it. Nothing/ no one is being “silenced.” The authors are not being “silenced.” Their words — all of them — live on in my classroom. I just choose not to repeat that word to them in my own voice.

It would, OTOH, be “censorship” if the books were banned. It would be a form of “silencing” if Cotton, for instance, couldn’t find any place to voice his views. But he’s a powerful senator, and he’s never had that problem. There is no lack of venues readily available for him to publish his various idiocies.

I remember the furor by some on the right when one newspaper decided to stop publishing George Will. He was, at the time, syndicated in more than 400 outlets, and just one decided no mas. I think it was over an article of his that dismissed the prevalence of sexual assault on campuses.

So he’s still got more than 400 outlets publishing after that one says No. But umpteen conservatives raved and ranted about how “liberals” were supposedly denying him his “free speech rights” and trying to “silence” him. If having a weekly column in more than 400 newspapers is being “silenced,” I’d gladly sign up for that.

To me, Taibbi, in his rebuttal to the rebuttal, tries to make it sound like Robinson skipped over any and all rationales for his (Robinson’s) critique of Taibbi. My take is that it was Taibbi who did exactly that. Robinson was detailed and, again, surgical in providing the whys and wherefores regarding that critique.

WV,

Have you read Robinson’s piece? Didn’t know he had responded to Taibbi until I saw your video. Thanks for posting.

The Current Affairs piece is excellent. He calmly, effectively, surgically destroys Taibbi’s (IMO) ludicrously broad-brushed complaints, and Taibbi should have quit while he was behind. MT’s rebuttal to the rebuttal was a big ol’ bust. He wasn’t able to adequately address a single point made by Robinson — well, at least not without twisting it like a pretzel.

Will quote a bit from the article tomorrow or later this week. Sad to see Taibbi choosing this hill — and The Hill — to plant his flag.

Has The American Left Lost Its Mind? No. Once again critics of the left are misstating the facts and distracting us from consequential issues.

Trump’s sadism and his bull-horn messages to white supremacists and other right-wing bigots seem to be escalating. Planning his MAGA rally, originally on Juneteenth, in Tulsa, where blacks were massacred nearly 100 years ago. Then announcing the end of health care coverage for trans people on the anniversary of the Pulse killings.

No way these things were “coincidences.”

Also, likely preaching to the choir here: But “neoliberalism” is such a tricky, ill-defined term. I think it often just confuses people.

My own take on the word is that it’s never been the exclusive domain of Dems, corporatist or otherwise. But it has always been right of center. I also think it helps to talk in terms of a hard version and a soft, which is how David Harvey deals with it. He sees the Republican version as hard, and the Dems’ as soft. I’m generalizing a rather complex thing here, of course. But that’s the gist of it.

Also, and I know you guys know this . . . it has nothing to do with “liberalism” as most people think of the word. It’s about “liberalizing” the markets, after the Keynesian era reined them in somewhat. Its main tenets, which are really far more compatible with Republican beliefs through the decades, are aggressive tax cuts for the rich and businesses, deregulation, especially Finance, and privatization of public goods, services and assets.

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Hey, WV,

I posted two articles about Seattle and Trump’s response earlier, in your thread What do we think, etc. etc.

Trump is committing political suicide, luckily for the world, with his insane, fascistic support for police brutality, for using the military to attack Americans in the streets, and he just recently showed his support for the Confederacy by saying he won’t allow the renaming of military bases, etc.

In my lifetime, we’ve never had such a despicable human being in the White House, and we’ve had some doozies.

=====================

Part of me agrees with all that. And part of me thinks we are all living out some kind of Twilight Zone episode.

If its a twilight zone episode, hard to tell how it all ends up.

w
v

Well, part of me agrees with all of that. And, um, then the other part wishes I could score some magic mushrooms.

Hope all is well, WV.

Hey, WV,

I posted two articles about Seattle and Trump’s response earlier, in your thread What do we think, etc. etc.

Trump is committing political suicide, luckily for the world, with his insane, fascistic support for police brutality, for using the military to attack Americans in the streets, and he just recently showed his support for the Confederacy by saying he won’t allow the renaming of military bases, etc.

In my lifetime, we’ve never had such a despicable human being in the White House, and we’ve had some doozies.

ZN,

Thanks for reposting those links. Will try to remember the chat option.

I know you mentioned there were obvious reasons for the inability to form effective coalitions on the basis of “class.” But I think the topic is still worth hashing out, despite the potential for stating the obvious.

It’s always struck me as baffling that when America and most of the West was far less unequal, economically — during the 1960s — it seemed easier to form those coalitions. Just three people today — Bezos, Gates and Zuckerburg — control more wealth than the bottom half of the nation combined . . . and CEOs routinely make hundreds to thousands of times their rank and file. That would have been unthinkable when MLK and RFK talked about economic justice for Americans, and the young, especially, demanded economic equality.

It’s complicated, complex, etc. etc. . . . but I still think it’s important to discuss. Why then, but not now? Today’s 99% has never been further away from the 1%. Economic hierarchies have never been this steep. The system hasn’t been this plutocrat-friendly since the first Gilded Age, etc.

Strange days, these.

No luck on posting the links, ZN.

One from the WaPo and one from Salon.

Forgot to mention this atrocity:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/detained-migrants-say-they-were-forced-clean-covid-infected-ice-n1228831

Migrant detainees forced to clean up Covid-infected ICE buildings in Arizona. Why isn’t this the subject of Congressional hearings/Inspector General reports, etc.?

The perfect, obscene storm of racism, the culture of cruelty and privatization.