08-03-2022, 04:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-03-2022, 04:53 PM by Eric the Green.)
(08-03-2022, 02:24 PM)David Horn Wrote:(08-02-2022, 06:22 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(08-02-2022, 04:46 PM)David Horn Wrote: Manchin and Sinema aren't the real story. The in-fighting is more local: the woke versus average folks. Calling the pregnant "birthing people" raises the hair on the back of more heads than it soothes with its political correctness. That's the real fight, and it's alienating people who have good intentions, yet find the hyper-woke insulting and antagonistic -- not a good model for gaining support.
I say that if some people are upset with some "woke" loudmouth people who make extreme statements or insist on "correct" language, that is their OWN fault. These hyperwoke politically-correct folks don't win elections, and it's elections that decide policy. Maybe there are a few hyper-woke representatives in congress, and they sound extreme sometimes too, but they have to cooperate with the rest of their Party to get anything done. And they do.
That's not what makes the WOKE so irritating. They act like spoiled brats, then the RW media turn their brattishness into propaganda. DeSantis is the real pro at making them the negative story -- their lack of consequence not to the contrary. It's theater and it works.
Eric Wrote:Manchin and Sinema ARE the real story. There are 48 center-left and left Democrats in the Senate who cooperate and make good proposals and vote for them, and about 217 in the House who do the same, and 2 senators who seriously water down the proposals or block them entirely by upholding the filibuster. Given that, there is no basis for saying that there is infighting in the Democratic Party. What counts is what comes out of the government and what the voters do, not what some extreme big mouths say who have no say.
The problem thus is in the middle of the spectrum, not on the left.
And the problem is anyone in the middle who is horrified by political correctness to the extent that they don't support real Democratic candidates, and fall to the propaganda like antifa and black lives matter causing riots and open borders and pronouns and critical race theory and welfare cheats and all that jazz.
You're talking policy and they're talking emotion. The theater aspect sticks, and the Right is really good at it. It's impossible to refute some video of a group of WOKE people protesting the use by others of the wrong pronouns. They are their own parody. It's silly, and it has major impact.
I'm just wondering what the electoral effect is. Knocking the woke people might raise the Republican vote, since that's all they have to offer: sensations, symbols, slogans. Make people upset about a few "woke" fanatics on the other side; blame them for everything; make black lives matter responsible for riots, denounce the caravans of criminal immigrants streaming across open borders, etc. There are always going to be angry people around across the political spectrum, and there always have been. I don't always like them either. Trump and his Republicans are focusing on them because they have nothing else to offer. Just arouse fear and point fingers at a few extremists who have no power and who sound mean. These Republicans are just like Nazis pointing their fingers of blame at Jews and Communists and exaggerating their threats.
So the Republicans are able to get power this way, because in this era of neoliberal cynical social breakdown, people mindlessly fall for these anti-woke slogans and symbols of fear and hatred, but I don't blame the leftist fanatics for this; I blame those like DeSantis making hay about them, and the voters who fall for the hay. But the result is what we've got, a stalemate between those who fall for the emotions and the slogans (and the Republicans voted into office by them), and those honestly interested in policy and solving problems (Democrats), both currently dominated by Manchin and Sinema.
George Monbiot describes the situation well:
https://youtu.be/jOuzABjrAo4?t=516