The Liberals Thread

[guruilla]

Personal request to not shorten my username from guruilla to Guru; it may seem trivial but it actually inverses the intended meaning of it, which was something like fighter for freedom from gurus (leaders).

Luther's model pretty much says it all, so far as the abyss between a psychological view and a political one, dropping in scapegoating at the very bottom as if as more or less an afterthought.

@slomo: If psychological principles precede and largely determine social & political factors, might not a lived experience and internalized appliance of those principles lead to an understanding of society & politics without too much specific or detailed knowledge of them? Turn that around however, and it wouldn't apply the same way (i.e., even the widest & most sophisticated grasp of sociopolitical principles can't make up for a lack of psychological insight). Maybe there's a similar case of this with biological principles, kind of a fractal view in which, once you have a workable idea of the template, you can extrapolate all subsequent forms that grow out of it? I see Girard's scapegoat mechanism in these terms, as well as other psychological principles such as the Shadow, and whatnot. Sure, they won't satisfy a lot of people at this forum (maybe even the majority), but I'm not in it for the "likes." On the other hand if no one gets it enough to do more than garble it and repeat it back at me in unrecognizable forms, then I guess I am in the wrong place (again). I had thought the purpose of the thread was to explore what went wrong with liberalism.

@dada: I haven't made any subtle put-downs I'm aware of on this thread, or seen any from slomo either; it may just be a question of different sorts of intelligence & communication styles. (Half the time I don't even understand Wombat gnomic phrases.) Chalk it down to neurodivergence?

[Joe Hillshoist]

So what to do? Appeal to our common ground with the entitled white racists, homophobes and Christian soldiers and at least try to ameliorate our ever accelerating economic inequality? Or keep allowing our 0.1% overlords to split voters down the middle strictly on the basis of their differing social identities?

I honestly don't know, but I suspect that common ground will be hard to find because I get the impression that the white working and upper middle class racist types don't disapprove of shooting black people in the street. they might not approve of it but I suspect the don't really object to it, and while that attitude exists any common ground will be hard to find.

Maybe they are upset about the guy that got killed at the Bundy thing. if you could draw parallels between between that killing and the black people killed it might be a good starting place.

Dunno what those parallels are but i'd guess they are in there somewhere.

[slomo]

Personal request to not shorten my username from guruilla to Guru; it may seem trivial but it actually inverses the intended meaning of it, which was something like fighter for freedom from gurus (leaders).

Luther's model pretty much says it all, so far as the abyss between a psychological view and a political one, dropping in scapegoating at the very bottom as if as more or less an afterthought.

@slomo: If psychological principles precede and largely determine social & political factors, might not a lived experience and internalized appliance of those principles lead to an understanding of society & politics without too much specific or detailed knowledge of them? Turn that around however, and it wouldn't apply the same way (i.e., even the widest & most sophisticated grasp of sociopolitical principles can't make up for a lack of psychological insight). Maybe there's a similar case of this with biological principles, kind of a fractal view in which, once you have a workable idea of the template, you can extrapolate all subsequent forms that grow out of it? I see Girard's scapegoat mechanism in these terms, as well as other psychological principles such as the Shadow, and whatnot. Sure, they won't satisfy a lot of people at this forum (maybe even the majority), but I'm not in it for the "likes." On the other hand if no one gets it enough to do more than garble it and repeat it back at me in unrecognizable forms, then I guess I am in the wrong place (again). I had thought the purpose of the thread was to explore what went wrong with liberalism.

@dada: I haven't made any subtle put-downs I'm aware of on this thread, or seen any from slomo either; it may just be a question of different sorts of intelligence & communication styles. (Half the time I don't even understand Wombat gnomic phrases.) Chalk it down to neurodivergence?

Sorry guruilla.... Um, my short answer is that the barriers to understanding are often emotional, not intellectual. Put another way, in classes I teach I often have to oversimplify with very strict definitions and strong statements that are not actually 100% true, otherwise students will be utterly confused by nuance. In this context: when you're dealing at a certain emotional level, the strict boundaries help to contain energies. When you're dealing with another level (deeper? higher? dunno what directional metaphor to use) then I think it's better to acknowledge the nuance. We've been down this path before, you and I, about the difficulties in using language to express certain emotional/spiritual concepts and related complexities.

[JackRiddler]

Joe, a response to you here.

[coffin_dodger]

small scale, pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things revenge violence porn - white male being beaten - for Jack & AD - thought you wouldn't want to miss it:

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=55829

[Morty]

White women were the only women who favoured Trump over Clinton as a group. Kind of strange given Hillary is a white woman, and given feminism, and whatnot. So there are obviously factors other than race and gender which have guided their choice. Their political affiliations for one, as I think Jack would argue. Must go look for some stats on the political affiliations of US white women...

Dear Fellow White Women: We F**ked This Up
Exit polls show 53 percent of white women voted for Trump — compared to only 43 percent for Clinton.
10/11/2016 3:39 AM AEDT | Updated 10/11/2016 6:28 AM AEDT


Fellow white women, I’m done with you.

After all this talk of allyship, you didn’t show up to the polls to push back against the openly racist, xenophobic, misogynistic now-President-elect Donald Trump.

The exit polls from the Nov. 8 election show that 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump, compared to only 43 percent for Hillary Clinton. It appears many white women are not moved by Trump’s sexism, and instead would rather applaud the candidate for his lack of political correctness.

After all the supposed progress we’ve made, painstakingly trying to change a white feminist movement into an intersectional one (and for that we have only the hard work of women of color to thank), white women didn’t show up to fight back against a man whose rhetoric and policies directly attack women of color, immigrant women, Muslim women, LGBTQ women and more.

And the worst part is: By the end, he had come for you, too. For many it wasn’t enough when he came for Muslims, Latinos and Black people. The real “pearl clutch” was the “grab ‘em by the pussy” moment, one that threatened all women but specifically white women. All of a sudden, everyone was appalled, and the endorsements started dropping like flies ― as if, to paraphrase Maya Angelou, he hadn’t already shown us who he was.

To quote one of my favorite lines from Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist: “And yet.” And yet you still didn’t show up to the polls to elect our first woman president ― a white lady, no less. When the demographic split for the exit polls came out, showing the divide between Trump and Clinton supporters, my eyes immediately jumped to one group: white women. Tell me we came through for our sisters of color, I begged, at least this one time. We didn’t.

So I am ashamed. I am ashamed of my country. I am ashamed of white people. But more than anyone else, I am ashamed of white women. Is this who we really are? Clearly ― and it is who we have always been.

So take a good long look in the mirror this morning, and instead of blaming others for this nightmare we’ve woken up to ― no, we’ve chosen ― make an active choice today: The buck stops with you.

This is what an ally looks like. Be one. Because in the next four to eight years, our sisters of color will need one ― though who knows if they will trust us now.

[dada]

I have this thing called intuiton. It isn't rigorous. What it's telling me is that this thread has really got under some liberals' psychological skins. I think this is productive. The right likes to attack liberals with a chainsaw. The critique from the left needs to use a scalpel.

Liberals like structure, hierarchies. It's the liberals job to protect the status quo. Anything that challenges it is frightening to them.

Build a social movement, and liberals will try to hijack it. They fancy themselves the 'intellectual vanguard.' And this is their rightful place. It isn't, they belong in the dustbin of history, with the words they'd like to throw out.

Gotta go work for twelve hours again. See ya'll later.

[2012 Countdown]

I have this thing called intuiton. It isn't rigorous. What it's telling me is that this thread has really got under some liberals' psychological skins. I think this is productive. The right likes to attack liberals with a chainsaw. The critique from the left needs to use a scalpel.

Liberals like structure, hierarchies. It's the liberals job to protect the status quo. Anything that challenges it is frightening to them.

Build a social movement, and liberals will try to hijack it. They fancy themselves the 'intellectual vanguard.' And this is their rightful place. It isn't, they belong in the dustbin of history, with the words they'd like to throw out.

Gotta go work for twelve hours again. See ya'll later.

White supremacists urge trolling Clinton supporters to suicide
Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States has emboldened white supremacists to target Hillary Clinton supporters and others with online harassment.

The neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer published a list of more than 50 Twitter users who had expressed fear about the outcome of the 2016 election, urging its readers to “punish” them with a barrage of tweets that would drive them to suicide.

“You can troll these people and definitely get some of them to kill themselves,” wrote the Daily Stormer’s publisher, Andrew Anglin.

Experts who have studied hate groups say white supremacists see Trump’s election as a victory for their ideology and a repudiation of multiculturalism. The outcome of the race has emboldened those who lurk in the Internet’s dark recesses to step up their attacks.

“We’re going to be hearing more about this — many different kinds of harassment of women, of people of color, of Muslims, linked directly to either Trump’s rhetoric or the alt right,” said Sophie Bjork-James, a post-doctoral scholar at Vanderbilt University’s anthropology department.

The Daily Stormer urged its readers to accost Muslim women, and “yell at them, tell them to go home.” At least two women whose Twitter names were circulated by The Daily Stormer said they had been subject to violent tweets.

-
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... li=BBnb7Kz

[OP ED]

This is awesome. I can't wait for January. This is going to be the best thing that happened to America in a long long time. I am so excited.

[bks]

stickdog wrote:

So what to do? Appeal to our common ground with the entitled white racists, homophobes and Christian soldiers and at least try to ameliorate our ever accelerating economic inequality? Or keep allowing our 0.1% overlords to split voters down the middle strictly on the basis of their differing social identities?

This is the crucial question, and there is only one answer.

If anyone is squeamish about the racism of those to whom appeals must be made: I get it. It cannot be tolerated at the level of policy, and won't be in any socialist or radically left political organization. But please understand that for many Trumpists, their racism is not a fixed, invariant, quantity but something that, in terms of its POLITICAL valence, can fluctuate enormously. If some white racist entertains his racism in a world where deep structures exist to shield his targets from the political EFFECTS of racism, his racism becomes HIS problem. That's the goal here as I see.

Working for economic justice will begin to undo the conditions that allowed a pig like Trump to put enough lipstick on himself to appear credible - conditions that were jointly created and managed by the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties.

Liberal elites are my class enemy. They might be yours too.

[Luther Blissett]

stickdog wrote:

So what to do? Appeal to our common ground with the entitled white racists, homophobes and Christian soldiers and at least try to ameliorate our ever accelerating economic inequality? Or keep allowing our 0.1% overlords to split voters down the middle strictly on the basis of their differing social identities?

This is the crucial question, and there is only one answer.

If anyone is squeamish about the racism of those to whom appeals must be made: I get it. It cannot be tolerated at the level of policy, and won't be in any socialist or radically left political organization. But please understand that for many Trumpists, their racism is not a fixed, invariant, quantity but something that, in terms of its POLITICAL valence, can fluctuate enormously. If some white racist entertains his racism in a world where deep structures exist to shield his targets from the political EFFECTS of racism, his racism becomes HIS problem. That's the goal here as I see.

Working for economic justice will begin to undo the conditions that allowed a pig like Trump to put enough lipstick on himself to appear credible - conditions that were jointly created and managed by the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties.

Liberal elites are my class enemy. They might be yours too.

Exactly. Progressive reforms and the seizing of and redistribution of power to the people lifts all boats. Not many Trump supporters would expect this but that's just how it is. Universal basic income? Universal healthcare? Redistribution of wealth out of the $32trillion+ hidden offshore by a handful of elites? Drug legalization and the end of mass incarceration? Prison abolition (fuck it, I'll just go all the way)? The end of fossil fuel exploration, water air and soil poisoning, foreign oil crusades, and rape of natural resources? These are all drastic wins for white working and non-working poor people the same as they are wins for everyone else except for a small number of power elites.

There's a lot of common ground to be gained.

[tapitsbo]

Look how persuasive what you just said sounds, and genuinely positive. A lot of the stuff you write here sounds positive.

For the past four years or so the loudest messaging most people were getting from the media and institutional left was drastically different from what you just wrote.

Ideas like "common ground" were ridiculed and in practice shouted out of the realm of possibility, in fact. In fucking fact.

This isn't down to you personally Luther as I see you as a genuine person even if I've disagreed with you, either in ill-judged paranoia or a genuinely completely different perspective and CONTEXT.

But even you sound a little different now. You've conceded the idea of common ground which includes representation across demographics if not some sort of fluid pluralism (to think the left was advocating rigid segregation and trying to make half your country's population just "sit down" from politics! Talk about a crazy tactic, and one you'll see mirrored against you now from angry people who you can conveniently keep calling "fascist" while they use your tactics.

And you have the perfect enemy now in the new administration, and the boon of the phoney liberal left having been discredited.

Funny how that all works

[Luther Blissett]

I think I've long said that Marxist and anarchist ideas like those above are specifically for the 99.9%. Now I know they ideally shouldn't be framed as Marxist or anarchist, even though both are useful shorthands to convey "common ground for working and non-working poor and working class people of any race" because there's a lot of cultural baggage and distaste at the terms. Marxism is really just a way of saying "the progressive developmental step that will happen after capitalism."

I do think Sanders was almost there, but the campaign was way too much about a cult of personality than about "us." It could have so easily have been shifted a bit.

A younger figure that runs a campaign more about collective people power will help the revolution - one for 99.9% of us. The time is now, no more illusions about it with Trump as President.

[brekin]

White women were the only women who favoured Trump over Clinton as a group. Kind of strange given Hillary is a white woman, and given feminism, and whatnot. So there are obviously factors other than race and gender which have guided their choice. Their political affiliations for one, as I think Jack would argue. Must go look for some stats on the political affiliations of US white women...

Dear Fellow White Women: We F**ked This Up
Exit polls show 53 percent of white women voted for Trump — compared to only 43 percent for Clinton.
10/11/2016 3:39 AM AEDT | Updated 10/11/2016 6:28 AM AEDT

Wow. But that is white women I guess, and not women overall.

Women supported Clinton over Trump by 54% to 42%.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... education/

Check out the Latino vote.

Hillary Clinton wins Latino vote, but falls below 2012 support for Obama
November 9, 2016

By Jens Manuel Krogstad and Mark Hugo Lopez5 comments
Hillary Clinton won 65% of Latino voters on Tuesday, according to National Election Pool exit poll data, a level of Democratic support similar to 2008, when 67% of Hispanics backed Barack Obama. However, Clinton’s share of the Latino vote was lower than in 2012, when 71% of Latinos voted to reelect Obama.
While Clinton underperformed among Latinos compared with 2012, Republican Donald Trump won 29% of the Latino vote, a similar share to 2012, when Mitt Romney won 27%, and to 2008, when John McCain won 31%, according to exit polls.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... for-obama/

Trump won 29% of the Latino vote. Think about that.

[MacCruiskeen]

This question has been asked a few times, and it's always baffled me too: How on earth do the pollsters perform this racial profiling? I mean, what's the method? How do they acquire the information?

And I'm baffled as to how they manage to classify and categorise voters so cleanly. White / Black / Latino - and that's it.

It baffles me especially when most Americans I've met will happily tell you they have "Cherokee, Irish, Dutch and Spanish blood" or whatever. (And that includes most of the black Americans I know.)