Sex, untold fortunes of money, Liberal achievement, ill gotten gains, thank you for this idea, scoundrels, vote for (your candidate here), I agree with you, but.., Kos, Dante Atkins, Angry mouse, Devil's Tower, mcjoan.
Just a few words and names that get a lot of comments on DKos and my way of opening up the right side of the brain and getting some progressive, Liberal, Left Wing, attention to my opinion that is derived from reading the DKos as my primary dependable news source.
By the way, I fully agree with and support the direction and rationale behind DKos.
I believe that movement conservatives are waging a desperate war of annihilation against the Left, in order to achieve complete domination of politics in the U.S. This also includes indiscriminate factional fighting on the Right. They will use any tool at their disposal to win. To the people that are waging this war it is a moral and just war and it is conducted in order to vanquish their enemy. The idea that they are being dishonest is not even a minor consideration for them if using reason or honesty is a losing tactic.
''I honestly can't believe... '', Should be the Democratic anthem.
''It is hard to believe that anyone would fall for that,'' is another of the all too common themes seen in comments and stories. We do not have to look far to find this.
*Gah! It's hard to believe that a sitting governor would say those words, isn't it?
by Jed Lewison
Mon Apr 12, 2010 at 09:30:03 AM EST re: Haley Barbour on celebrating Confederate History Month. I am not picking out this author, who I admire, I am pointing out an idea that has become too brittle a barrier to effective strategy.
*"Why Confederate History Month can't not be about slavery"
John Meacham NYT Week In Review Sun 4/11/10
Guess what? People are falling for that. Why they fall for that is very important, because it should determine what rhetoric the Left responds with. And what responsibility and discipline of message the Left uses.
When the conservative right lies, inflames passion and obstructs progress, they see it as simply using rhetorical weapons. When we accuse them of lying, inflaming passion and obstructing progress, they are proud of fighting dirty in a moral war. Their supporters are proud of them for fighting a just war by any means possible. When anyone points out a rational, logical, fact based argument to him or her; this will only convince them that they are being tempted to turn on their own by some deceitful wisenheimer. Which one of them is going to be swayed by the opinion of the Tax Policy Institute that in order to cover our future obligations, taxes have to be raised 50%? Who is going to persuade people that taxes, in and of them selves, do not inhibit growth? I am sure that this is just a reminder to readers of this diary.
Both Clinton and Reagan (who was more or less forced to) raised taxes and the economy grew.
Conservatives turn on one another as naturally as breathing; our job is to point out the harm that they do to their own supporters. Our job is to make their supporters who are refugees from their merciless conquest feel safe. That does not mean agreeing with them, it does not mean shaming them either.
Shaming started the civil war and is the reason why Southerners acted against their own best interests and supported the Confederacy. Is there is one of you who is not aware of that same confounding dynamic occurring now with conservative loyalists?
If we fight a war with them, we are not struggling for our cause or being strong enough to realize what needs to be done for the sake of progress. They must be made to struggle with their hypocritical strategy of dominance, we must explain to their own people why and how conservatives are materially hurting them. Most of what I read is resentment about how they are hurting us. It is up to their supporters to call them names, not us.
*Via Balloon Juice, Matt Taibbi cracks open the hollow shell of one of conservativisms greatest cons, which also happens to be one that's eagerly spread by too many villagers: the myth that the wealthy deserve their spoils and breaks because they work so much harder than the rest of us:
Most of the work in this world completely sucks balls and the only reward most people get for their work is just barely enough money to survive, if that. The 95% of people out there who spend all day long shoveling the dogshit of life for subsistence wages are basically keeping things running just well enough so that David Brooks, me and the rest of that lucky 5% of mostly college-educated yuppies can live embarrassingly rewarding and interesting lives in which society throws gobs of money at us for pushing ideas around on paper (frequently, not even good ideas) and taking mutual-admiration-society business lunches in London and Paris and Las Vegas with our overpaid peers.
I love reading Matt but his beef in this piece is not my beef. It does not get me any closer to smothering conservative rhetoric; that is my job, it is different than his job. David Brooks is a waste of my time.
It is important for us to use our righteous anger as a motivation to achieve social justice. Every time we resort to name calling or even pointing out what is logical, intellectual, honest or reasonable, we are simply applying logic and reason only to ourselves and feeding their dissociated hate machine. We make then stronger.
We make them stronger. We make them stronger. Did you intend to do that? Is anyone prepared to tell me that venting your righteous emotion of anger is the same as expressing your deepest feelings?
I love reading news, opinion and comments here. I love it here. But, it does not do anything but reinforce my false sense of superiority; that is a failing political strategy. It is time to stop indulging ourselves in righteous temper tantrums and riding the intellectual hobby horse of moral superiority. It is not that it is just a waste of time and talent; it does not offer a concrete comparison of results to their supporters as a non-judgmental story inserted in a community newspaper would. That is called buzz.
Get over it; get over yourselves. You are all wonderful people but if you are not organized with a purpose, then you wonderful people are lost. The very first thing that progressive supporters must do is work to enact public funding of elections. That is a shitty solution to financing elections but the only way to make politicians accountable to their constituents and stop merciless corporate manipulation of constituents. We need to free the political parties from polarizing ideologies that can never reconcile and we need to allow for debate on issues. We cannot continue to debate about who should rule. We are either a democracy, which is a liberal concept, or not.
Dig in and do the right thing. You elected Obama, is anyone qualified person here a cabinet member?
I am not going to fight their war, on their terms on their battlegrounds. I am not going to feed content hungry paranoia with angry responses that allow them to point out how much we hate them. That is just dumb. I am not going to write an article on any subject involving policy that screams, in a low-key passive voice, ''I'm smarter than you are.''
It took a hundred years to get a shitty health care bill, financiers financed our Liberal president, and he has gone for support to the establishment in and out of government. The Republican Party is wholly owned subsidiary to an ideology whose purity changes according to which faction is in ascendency. Republicans may be self-destructive but why oh why are some of us saving them from themselves? Why do we let ourselves become willing targets to ridiculous claims by responding to them instead of keeping to our knitting and working locally for social justice for everyone? That means everyone, that is progressivism.
There are thousands of social justice organizations that are apolitical in their intent, are grassroots and populist. They are often helpful to causes dear to conservative supporters and often are the targets of viscous attack by rabid conservatives. I do not see liberals supporting small town conservatives.
Instead, I hear a lot of tsk, tsking, harumphing, pontificating and resentful rhetoric. Keep it up folks; you are pissing in he wind.
Get over it; get over yourselves. You are all wonderful people but if you are not organized with a purpose, then you wonderful people are lost.
Speaking for myself, (-8.88, -8/66 for those of you who keep track of such things, more on that another time) I am in a struggle for human rights and social justice. That is what democracy is all about for me. But, I think that only the ones who accept it historically as a struggle understand that.