The Liberals Thread

[MacCruiskeen]

Sassy Sourstein:

[...]

It’s breathtaking to witness rich people — yes, rich, by any useful sense of the word — spit vicious hatred at desperate people suffering generations of poverty. Already there’s a preemptive theme on my social media that no, actually, urban liberals who care super hard about minorities and LGBT+ etc. actually are better than the backwater shitstains who only care about themselves, food on the table or no. We care! Like, a lot! And anyone who says anything else well that’s bullshit, and I don’t have to back it up because I’m literally paid to create the dominant media narrative of the world. Another friend posted that he’d get behind an Obama-led coup, because “democracy only works when the population is educated,” presumably to his level and above. If Clinton had won and a Trump supporter said something similar the ghost of Janet Reno would be dropping napalm while my friend here cheered at the aroma of crackling skin.

Some less vengeful liberals are posting things they consider uplifting — “the fight has just begun!” — but even these betray their biases. “Let’s organize to help those who will be most devastated by this election.” Fine, yes. But this is happening at the same time half the continent is dying the slow death of disinvestment. Even in their own backyards, during the Obama presidency, did they do much more than repost Black Lives Matter memes? Did they call for the massive redistribution of wealth within their own cities that would have made a true difference to black lives? Naw. This would have endangered their own comfortable financial position and frankly, aesthetic environment. These are the bringers and beneficiaries of gentrification, after all, despite their mild, occasional social-media handwringings. Too much hope and change is well, a little too far. And that’s why they vote Democrat, and for Clinton, and not Green, or WWP, or the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Because socialism and liberation is too much too soon, and they have 401ks to which to contribute.

Please explain to me this scenario. A Seattle-area friend who lives in the farther working-class suburbs came to work to his inner-city, wealthy liberal coworkers bitching that his neighbors “voted us into fascism.” In the same breath, this rich shit complained about the passing of a transportation bill that would raise their taxes: “If they want Trump so bad they can pay for their own buses.” Here’s someone who probably calls themselves a progressive attacking actually existing progressivism because their taxes will go up a split hair, and potentially benefit unworthy types, “deplorables.” Maybe these people wouldn’t feel the need to “shake things up” if they had had what they needed to thrive all along. But then your misty piney mossy café-flanked Seattle townhome might have to fit only one Subaru in the garage.

[...]

[JackRiddler]

[citations needed]

[MacCruiskeen]

Prescience, from an American liberal who was no fool:

- Richard Rorty, Achieving our Country, 1998

lisa kerr ‏@coleenlisa 9. Nov. 6.688 Retweets 6.595 Likes

[Belligerent Savant]

.

From the same source above --
https://cienflamingos.wordpress.com/201 ... in-charge/

A friend told me that today, the NY subways were silent. Good. I bathe in and relish your temporary tears you sniveling little brats. You’re sulking all the way to your gainful, benefit-saturated employment in a world-class city where you have the benefit of infinite opportunities and cultural activities. The cares of this world will not truly brush up against your plush existence outside of the pages of the New Yorker. That “evil” Trump voter, who on the flip side is enjoying this temporary glee, will wake up tomorrow still underemployed in a backwater with poor infrastructure and few prospects for advancement. They don’t even have free internships to complain about in these places. In many cases, your employment may literally be something that ensures their continued unemployment: an investment bank, a tech firm, an apparel company sending work overseas. So liberals: check your overwhelming fucking privilege, you whiny shitbags.

Don’t worry. You actually won, because you always win. It’s hard to take your play anguish seriously when you fail to see just how fabulous your life is, GOP control or no. And all the profitable wars Clinton would have continued and expanded? Don’t worry, a Trump administration will surely create plenty of opportunities to make a killing in defense stocks. Now get out there and do something meaningfully revolutionary or shut right the fuck up.

[MacCruiskeen]

#Liberals


(Helen Lewis is employed by the New Statesman.)


(Hadley Freeman is employed by the Guardian.)

^^The status quo will be televised.



*cough*

[OP ED]

I don't know what any of that means.

[JackRiddler]

.

From the same source above --
https://cienflamingos.wordpress.com/201 ... in-charge/

A friend told me that today, the NY subways were silent. Good. I bathe in and relish your temporary tears you sniveling little brats. You’re sulking all the way to your gainful, benefit-saturated employment in a world-class city where you have the benefit of infinite opportunities and cultural activities. The cares of this world will not truly brush up against your plush existence outside of the pages of the New Yorker.

Breathtaking reactionary bilge. Excellent example of the rhetorical tradition in which this thread unwittingly engages. In which white folk who imagine being insulted by some snooty-happy liberal culture project an objectively insane image back on to the imagined insulters. Culture war into hate war, one of those things you can't tell if they're laying it on this thick as parody for the lulz, wink wink. Author who in a truly Christianist universe (the kind where people go to hell) would be magically transformed into a homeless, barefoot person of color and be forced to ride the New York subway for a few years. (You know, the subway with all the rich people on it!) Or a lady going to her cleaning job at 5 am. Or have a spell at Rikers on a pot possession charge. Or just be any drudge enjoying that "benefit saturation" and paying $2000 a month for a rathole. Etc. etc. If I don't have benefits, I don't complain about the employers, I complain about the people who do benefits.

And there's no shortage of people who talk like this in New York, of course, though they are in the minority. The difference is that in New York, they think it's black municipal workers who are getting all the gainful, benefit-saturated jobs. Which in its way is a more honest form of bigotry, with no pretense on their part that they are "leftist."

The left is under attack by means of the right-wing culture war transmuting into a leftist guise. Exhibit A.

.

[MacCruiskeen]

Yeah, Jack, home in on those four profoundly stupid & ugly lines about the NY subway travellers (which I deliberately didn't quote). Completely ignore what I did quote from him, because it's apparently easier for you that way.

the rhetorical tradition in which this thread unwittingly engages. In which white folk who imagine being insulted by some snooty-happy liberal culture project an objectively insane image back on to the imagined insulters.

Excuse me. I am insulted by that "snooty-happy liberal culture". I didn't "imagine" it. It is the foul air we all breathe. It's the CO2 emitted by prominent "liberal" media-mercenaries like the Guardian's Hadley Freeman, whom you have quoted here with approval. And by Lena fucking Dunham, who - however much you may hate to admit it (or even to hear her name) - was one of the most prominent "liberal" voices in the disastrous, despicable Clinton campaign -- along with the smug and sated "liberal" millionaire Robert de Niro and the superciliously airheaded "liberal" millionaire Ethan Coen, who has (of course!) now been given prominent space in the "liberal" NYT to drip condescension on Jill Stein voters (Number One on his attack-list) and on the rest of the disobedient US electorate (note the - apparently inevitable - cretinous sidewipe at Evil Vlad):

2016 Election Thank You Notes

By ETHAN COEN NOV. 11, 2016

Such a surprise! So many people to thank!

1. Jill Stein voters: You helped elect a man who pledges that he will, in his first hundred days, cancel contributions to United Nations programs to fight climate change. If your vote for Ms. Stein did not end up advancing your green agenda, it did allow you to feel morally superior to all the compromising schmoes who voted for Hillary Clinton. And your feelings about your vote are more important than the consequences of your vote. So — thank you!

2. Gary Johnson voters: Thank you, for similar reasons. You, too, may now reward yourselves with feelings of warm self-approval, and your libertarian agenda will now be advanced (or not) by someone who admires the governance of Vladimir Putin. And to Mr. Johnson himself: Not only can no one blame you for this outcome — we’re all free agents, man! — but you can stop looking for Aleppo.

3. James Comey: Your publicity coup may have affected the outcome of the election. Or it may not have. But it will certainly breed speculation that it did. Such discussion will in some way serve the reputation of the F.B.I. Or not. You had to bravely contravene bureau protocols to make your contribution, so to you we owe a special thanks!

4. Anthony Weiner: You also found a surprising way to contribute! Thank you, sir — your act never gets old!

5. Jimmy Fallon: How did you manage to shine a nonthreatening light on someone who alarms so many women, frightens so many undocumented families and slurs so many minorities? Can’t have been easy! Thanks! Maybe now you could have the Grand Wizard on your show: He leans his head to you, you slip his hood off and ruffle his hair. Could be a cute bit!

6. All our media friends. Thank you for preserving reportorial balance. You balanced Donald Trump’s proposal that the military execute the innocent families of terrorists, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced pot-stirring racist lies about President Obama’s birth, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced a religious test at our borders, torture by our military, jokes about assassination, unfounded claims of a rigged election, boasts about groping and paradoxical threats to sue anyone who confirmed the boasts, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced endorsement of nuclear proliferation, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced tirelessly, indefatigably; you balanced, you balanced, and then you balanced some more. And for that — we thank you. And thank you all for following Les Moonves’s principled lead when he said Donald Trump “may not be good for America, but he’s damn good for CBS.”

7. The Electoral College. Thank you, for being you.

I cannot thank: Hillary Clinton. She is not a morally perfect person — her fault! She was not the perfect candidate — her fault! Misogyny may have magnified her failings so as to show them balancing the outsized failings of her opponent — and that might not be her fault. But she fought to the very limits of her ability to deny us Tuesday night’s surprise, so I do not thank her. Pooh on you, Hillary Clinton!

I do thank, lastly:

8. The American electorate. Because in the end, we all did it together. We did it! We really did it!

Ethan Coen is a filmmaker whose movies include “No Country for Old Men,” “True Grit” and “The Big Lebowski"

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/opini ... .html?_r=0

Ethan Coen's awful headline compares favourably with your thread-title, though both are written in precisely the same spirit.

-----------------------------------------------


Sojourner Truth

"Truth is powerful and it prevails." —Sojourner Truth

"You've got to rattle your cage door. You've got to let them know that you're in there, and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble. You may not win right away, but you'll sure have a lot more fun." —Florynce Kennedy

"I am deliberate and afraid of nothing." —Audre Lorde

Now guess who stole those words from those three black women and conflated them with her own desperate struggle, in a post entitled "Don't Agonise, Organise!"? Guess which oppressed "liberal" had the temerity to do that? Hint: She has a net worth of $12,000,000, and she has.5.09 million Facebook followers -- unlike the obscure leftist blogger on whose four raging incoherent lines you build your entire rickety hit-and-run argument.

The prominent and influential "liberal" millionaire you ignore and dismiss as unimportant and irrelevant; the obscure leftist blogger you home in on and elevate as a threat to... what, exactly? The planet? The future of socialism? Your thread?

Oh, and guess which other woman she quoted, as an equally inspiring participant in the same struggle? I'll leave you to find out for yourself. But I object to those shameless conflations, because I think they matter, and they are still going on, and the confusion they cause is deeply damaging, and that's why I started this thread.

[MacCruiskeen]

#Liberals #Vogue #NotMyPresident #BigTent

Behind Lena Dunham’s Hillary Clinton Campaign Looks: How a New Generation Is Reinventing Political Style
JANUARY 13, 2016 2:01 PM

by MARJON CARLOS

Not so long ago, when stumping for a presidential candidate, all it seemed to demand was a simple campaign button and bumper sticker. But within the context of the digital age, when you have more than 3 million social media followers and are rallying support for someone who also happens to be a style icon, you have to think visually. Which is perhaps why Lena Dunham chose to literally wear her support for presidential hopeful and former First Lady and Madam Secretary, Hillary Clinton, on her sleeve.

Before speaking with Iowan HRC supporters over a four-day stop, the Girls creator and actress and her stylist, Shirley Kurata, began devising customized “Hillary” monogrammed frocks and knits from a network of knitwear designers. Inspired by vintage silhouettes, centuries-old campaign paraphernalia, and, of course, the pantsuit savant herself, Kurata tells us how the patriotic looks all came together. And with the election just heating up, there is no telling what’s up Dunham’s “Hillary”-emblazoned sleeve next.



The Campaign Style Trickle-Down Effect

“Lena saw that Katy Perry had worn some Hillary-themed outfits for her campaign appearances, and that inspired her to have some special outfits made for her own appearances stumping for Clinton. She gave me full creative rein, so I immediately did some research on past campaign looks and came up with some ideas, and we narrowed it down to the five looks Lena liked the most. Ike Eisenhower in particular had some pretty amazing campaign pieces, like a ’50s allover ‘Ike’ print dress and ‘I Like Ike’ gloves. There was also a Nixon paper dress that we loved for its graphic typography and modified it to spell out ‘Hillary.’ ”

Red, White, and Blue All Over

“I also wanted to keep the patriotic flair by doing some looks in red, white, and blue. I found a vintage maxi dress with stars and stripes from the ’70s and modified it by shortening the length and having ‘Hillary’ knitted into the ...

http://www.vogue.com/13387157/lena-dunh ... -election/

[Joe Hillshoist]

With thinking like that how did they lose the election?

#dontaskmeIvenoidea

[tapitsbo]

she is a hologram - a psychic projection of the sick fetishes of normie-amerikkkan fascists - an inside job plant against Clinton the moderate

don't trip over the tulpas - none of this was real and if we double down hard enough we'll wake up from the bad dream

[JackRiddler]

Joe, stupid tools though they are, neither Ethan Coen nor Lena Dunham lost the election. (In fact, not even fucking Clinton lost the election, she's losing the vote of the Electoral College, not the people.) Both of them might as well be bloggers, for all their actual influence on making a difference. They are Clinton supporters, yes, who are now supposed to stand in for the vague category of "liberal" in the analysis of those who are normalizing the Electoral College selection of the proto-fascist.

In Culture War 3.0, we are being told that "poor whites" from "backwaters" felt so very insulted by these non-entities that they just had to vote for the guy who was telling them the inner cities are burning and he's going to unleash them coppers, round up that urban youth, deport those Mexicans and build a wall, and cut the head off ISIS and TAKE THEIR OIL (by military occupation, note), and block those Muslims from coming in.

You'd think with such dramatic and salient messages, people actually had a clear idea of what they were voting for if they voted for Trump? Maybe Lena Dunham wasn't the key influence?

Even worse than Sassy Sourstein's expression of intense hatred and mischaracterization of both the people of MY CITY, New York City (a traditional target of American fascist thinking), and apparently especially those of us stuck on the fucking subway -- no I'm not going to ignore that, I ride that subway every day and Sassy Sourstein should be strapped to the top of a car -- is her/his/its equally evident contempt for the people he/she purports to feel sympathy for:

That “evil” Trump voter, who on the flip side is enjoying this temporary glee, will wake up tomorrow still underemployed in a backwater with poor infrastructure and few prospects for advancement. They don’t even have free internships to complain about in these places.

This is not the Trump voter. Underemployed is a demographic lost nationwide by Trump. Sassy Sourstein is some Stimmungsmacher, not a reporter of facts, and I think about as important as Lena Dunham in the scheme of things, so let's finish up. The Trump voter makes a higher income on average than the Clinton voter, and is mainly the same old Republican voter as in past elections: white, middle class and up, but generally with fewer educational degrees. And absolutely angry at "liberals." Sure. That's got a long tradition in America, and historically "liberal" has meant university academics, teachers, municipal workers, artists, etc. (usually thrown in with "black" and "gay.")

[tapitsbo]

How much of a future will the Electoral College really save these people even if they pull off a "palace coup"?

Where would the electors who "crossed the floor" flee to, anyways? underground bunkers? Qatar?

Maybe the coup would last about as long as the one against Erdogan, who was more popular than Trump, but had a less loyal military on his hands.

...

I notice that NYC is not only a fascist target (like the time Nazi Germany supposedly almost nuked it) but the city itself is also a centre of fascist thinking and funding.

ISIS is already a transnational military occupying force. I guess their being not Western somehow makes them preferable to a Trump-controlled military in the minds of some.

...

What word should the far left call liberals since that one is tainted by "populist" (woops there they go again) rhetoric?

Calling them moderates and declaring war on moderates is the kind of crazy idea that just might work...

[MacCruiskeen]

Sassy Sourstein is ... I think about as important as Lena Dunham in the scheme of things

Bullshit, Jack. And you know it. Sassy Sourstein has about two dozen readers, and he she it (the pronoun you prefer, I guess) was in any case posting after the event, i.e., after the wholly unpredictable, unforeseeable, shocking, shocking Trumpocalypse

But forget LenaD, with her five million followers, her 12,000,000 dollars, herTV series, her photo-ops with Hillary, her stump speeches and her Vogue specials. Forget her. What about Robert de Niro? Ethan Coen? Katy Perry? Presumably they too are about as unimportant and un-influential as Joe LeftBlogger in "the scheme of things"? That scheme being the Spectacle, the all-pervading TV-and-advertising miasma that penetrates every US home, 24/7, every day of the year, with particular intensity in election years when everyone is being urged to Get Out And Vote.

Nothing is real.

The Trump voter makes a higher income on average than the Clinton voter, and is mainly the same old Republican voter as in past elections: white, middle class and up, but generally with fewer educational degrees.

"The Trump voter"... you're Orientalising him, Jack. Apropos, I read an old NYT article recently entitled, "Is the Turk a White Man?" Which raises several questions, including "Is there only one of him?" and "Is he all the same?" I think we should be told.

Anyway, before I go off and read up on The Arab Male, here's something else about The Trump Voter (that guy...):

Death predicts whether people vote for Donald Trump
By Jeff Guo March 4

A few weeks ago, following the Republican Iowa caucuses, I pointed out an eerie correlation in the voting data. It seems that Donald Trump performed the best in places where middle-aged whites are dying the fastest.

That wasn't a fluke. The relationship between white mortality and Trump support is real, as the fresh results from Super Tuesday confirmed.

[...]



[...]

Economic struggles have likely contributed as well. Case and Deaton also found that the increase in the death rate has been driven by people with less education. For those without a college degree, the economy in recent decades has been increasingly miserable. This may explain why some have turned to self-destructive behaviors, such as drug and alcohol abuse.

The people I've been describing — this distressed, dying demographic slice of America — are similar to the people who tend to vote for Trump, according to phone and exit polls. ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... ald-trump/

Remember Joe Bageant? The late lamented redneck? Bearing in mind all he wrote about liberals, and all he predicted earlier this century, I urge you to read this very recent article in full. I'll just post the concluding passage here:

UNNECESSARIAT

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Anne Amnesia (Blog Author)


[...]

So far, the quiet misery of the unnecessariat has yet to spark its own characteristic explosion, but is it so hard to see the germ of it in Trump’s rallies? In the LaVoy Finicum memorials? Are we, and I don’t mean this rhetorically, on the verge of something as earth-shaking as ACT-UP?

On primary election day, I wrote the following to a professor friend (edited):

I am despising myself for a coward today. I stopped for gas on the way to the polls, and noticed a hole in the frame of the car that you could push a parrot through. Dammit, I can’t afford a new car, and I don’t know if I can afford a welded patch- I don’t even know what would be involved, since so much has to be stripped off before you can bring a torch near a car body. I was in a pretty bad state when I got to the polls.

Let me explain my conundrum: all democratic primaries are proportional, among candidates who get 15% or more of the votes. The republicans have a whole slew of delegate procedures, but ours is winner take all. [I could contribute one fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a delegate to Sanders, or help push Trump over the top.]

What’s the outcome here? Sanders isn’t going to win. He doesn’t have the delegates- hell, he doesn’t have the votes. Doesn’t have the support. Clinton is the democratic nominee, and frankly she’s favored to win in the general election, even though in a head-to-head she gets trounced by Cruz, Kasich, or Rubio. Right now she polls ahead of Trump, but Trump is the one factor in this race that could completely kick the whole thing over. What happens if Clinton wins? For me, nothing- nothing good anyway. I still can’t afford car repairs, I still have to buy medication in cash raised by selling hay bales. No, I didn’t bale them, I trucked them across the county. If you bale them yourself, you make money at it, but I just had some extras to unload. That’ll still be the shape of things in a Clinton presidency.

Lets be honest- Clinton doesn’t give a shit about me. When Clinton talks about people hurt by the economy, she means you: elite-educated white-collar people with obvious career tracks who are having trouble with their bills and their 401k plans. That’s who boomed under the last president Clinton, especially the 401ks. Me, or the three guys fighting two nights ago over the Township mowing contract, we’re nothing. Clinton doesn’t have an economic plan for us. Nobody has an economic plan for us. There is no economic plan for us, ever. We keep driving trucks around and keep the margins above gas money and maybe take an odd job here or there, but essentially, we’re history and nobody seems to mind saying so.

And let me be honest again- Trump doesn’t have an economic plan for me either. What Trump’s boys have for me is a noose- but that’s the choice I’m facing, a lifetime of grueling poverty, or apocalypse. Yeah I know, not fun and games- the shouts, the smashing glass, the headlights on the lawn, but what am I supposed to do, raise my kid to stay one step ahead of the inspectors and don’t, for the love of god, don’t ever miss a payment on your speeding ticket? A noose is something I know how to fight. A hole in the frame of my car is not. A lifetime of feeling that sense, that “ohhhh, shiiiiiit…” of recognition that another year will go by without any major change in the way of things, little misfortunes upon misfortunes… a lifetime of paying a grand a month to the same financial industry busily padding the 401k plans of cyclists in spandex, who declare a new era of prosperity in America? Who can find clarity, a sense of self, any kind of redemption in that world?

Fuck it. Give me the fascists, I’ll know where I stand…

But I went ahead and took a democratic ballot regardless. And voted for Sanders. And as long as chumps like me keep doing that, we’ll keep getting the Clintons we deserve.

I am of two minds. On the one hand, Trumpism is unspeakable. On the other hand the status quo is silence and death. I had hoped that Trump himself would collapse and the populist movement he unwittingly inspired would find some less terrifying (and less racist) organizing principle, but now that the nominees are essentially decided, that seems unlikely. For the unnecessariat, what is to be done?

https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05 ... cessariat/

[82_28]

Voting for Stein had absolutely nothing to do with this. It was the same with Nader. People who voted Green Party were immediately blamed for the selection of dubya. Also, Clinton won the popular vote. Blame the electoral college. Clinton won in my eyes. Blah blah blah.