wv wrote:

Well, i could only stomach it to about the 12:15 mark. Thats where she said we should “start looking at Iraq as a business opportunity”.

Honestly, that statement says more than all the other words
she could possibly say. It sez it all.

w
v

Oh, go back.

The 12:00 minute mark is where the shit hits the fan. {I am not guaranteeing you won’t throw up}.

I have no idea whom Hillary will name. I hope it’s not Sanders, or Warren. That just takes one of the few good senators out of the game.

wv wrote:

Zooey wrote:

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism

———————–
I passed that “smug liberal” article on to a young grad-student friend of mine.
Just thot I’d pass along here spontaneous reply to it (for those that read the article) (…i also mentioned to her that i hate the word ‘neoliberal’ coz i think it confuzes the peepulz)

===============
Yeah… I wasn’t sure what to think of it at first either. But I think I figured out why something about it seems off to me.

I think he’s absolutely right when he says it’s misguided to blame poor rednecks. I think where he goes wrong is in saying we should instead blame the smug liberals. The problem isn’t “smug liberals,” just as it isn’t “poor rednecks.” Blaming the individual is the problem. Blaming the individual is…. neoliberalism.*

See, this is why I think we need that word. I don’t think this guy understands the big picture — the system, the ideology. This dude would have written a much better article if he had that framework to work with. Maybe he wouldn’t have had to use that word you don’t like, but certainly if he could write this piece, he could use the concept of neoliberalism to frame his criticisms and communicate essential parts of the concept. But he doesn’t see it, he’s too stuck in it to see it and misses the point entirely. That’s why he blames those smug liberals for their misguided blaming of dumb rednecks, when he should really be blaming the system.

If I could rewrite this whole article, I would say, “Rich educated people who vote Democrat like to smugly blame poor people for voting against their own interests. But the reason they blame poor people is because that’s what neoliberal ideology trained them to do so that they won’t question the fucked up neoliberal economic system that produces poor people.” But maybe that article wouldn’t have gotten on Vox. (I don’t know who owns Vox.)

I don’t think we can get out of the mess we’ve created for ourselves unless more people can “see” the ideology for what it is, and have some way of discussing/communicating it. I don’t know if your preferred term “corporate-capitalism” quite covers it or not. It’s just a part of the puzzle. Another part of the puzzle is that there is a very problematic over-emphasis on individual effort and “freedom.” Pointing the finger at corporations breaks it down into something more concrete and real, but I think maybe it does that at the expense of understanding how ideology shapes the way we think about the world and about things like individual freedm. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s late and I’m tired.

*If you would like to stop receiving emails containing variants of the word “neoliberal,” please send youtube videos of baby animals doing cute things. No neoliberal baby animals, please.
====================

I agree with her. The article seemed off to me, too, but I tell you what part of it is on: rednecks don’t like the fact that liberals insult them and belittle their beliefs.

That part is just true. Blaming liberals may not get anybody anywhere, but what it does is identify the biggest obstacle to winning that voting bloc back.

Here is a somewhat related piece…it is on the stone-age brain and its influence on voting decisions. There is a lot in this interview (Moyers interviewing a historian) that I found interesting, but one of my main takeaways is the idea that politicians have a meta-narrative that they campaign on, and this is how I see those meta-narratives now.

Trump: You are getting screwed by brown people who are undermining your lifestyle, and your entire way of life is being attacked by the muslim variety of brown people. Furthermore, the government is completely corrupt and screwing you over, and I will fix all that.

Sanders: We are getting screwed by corporations and the finance industry, and we need to level the playing field and make the rich contribute their resources to fixing the country.

Clinton: Things are slowly getting better, and I am the most experienced and competent leader to continue down this path. I have all the connections. I am the answer, and by golly, my time has come.

Clinton’s story has the least emotional appeal partly because her story is about herself rather than us, and partly because she isn’t playing to fear or anger. The only Anxiety card she can play is anxiety about crazy Trump. Clinton supporters, naturally, are drawn to this narrative because they are basically doing okay, even in this economy, and they are the sane, rational actors in this storyline as opposed to the naive, immature, and impatient Sanders supporters, and the contemptibly low-information, bigoted Trump supports. Her ability to win in November depends entirely on how many people she can convince that Trump will make things even worse. She already has all the voters who think everything is basically fine. She has to appeal to voters who think something is drastically wrong. So far, she’s been completely tone deaf to that perception, so I dunno know how she is going to craft a message to appeal to those people other than “Trump is psychologically unstable, and unfit to govern.”

So we are going to have Corrupt Hillary vs. Crazy Donald.

Anyway, here is the article. Interesting stuff about the brain, interesting bits about political lying – Grover Cleveland, JFK, and LBJ anecdotes – and the appeal of myth to voters as shorthand for facts.

http://billmoyers.com/story/voting-with-their-stone-age-brains/