It has been quite a week here in the good ol’ US of A, what with lawyers and meetings and emails and all going on. There is a lot to digest in the latest round of the reality drama “1600 Penn”. Our president is still a caricature and the GOP is still looking to repeal the ACA while providing tax cuts to the .01%. Like many of you I have been all over the social media this week. (In my case I get to lie to myself that it is for research for this weekly diary.)
The reason for this week’s title is that I have made myself delete more than my usual amount of FB comments before sending. I try very hard to comment outside of the Great Orange Sandbox with the same rules that guide us here: e.g. does it need to be said, now, by me? I will admit to firing a little more freely outside of DK but I try to stay respectful in most things.
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I will assume that most are familiar with the saying that discretion is the better part of valor but how many of us know from whence the saying came. Like so much of the English idiomatic lexicon, it comes from the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon himself, William Shakespeare.
Falstaff:
To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of
a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying,
when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true
and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valor is
discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life.
Henry the IV Part I Act 5 scene 4
Here’s one explanation of the passage:
Claiming that abstractions like "honor" and "valor" will get you nothing once you're dead, Falstaff excuses his counterfeiting as the kind of "discretion" that keeps a man from foolishly running into swords in order to cultivate a reputation for heroism. If counterfeiting keeps you alive, well then, it's not counterfeiting, but an authentic "image of life."
Here’s what I draw from my recollection and a quick google search. Falstaff is one of Shakespeare’s great trickster characters. He is capable of just about anything as long as it serves his purpose. His purpose in the final act of this play is to stay alive. The bit about discretion is a poetic explanation for pretending to be dead in order to survive. Yet his purpose is not to live to fight another day. His purpose is to live for the very sake of living itself.
So I’m out there on the interwebs trying to discourse with my fellow denizens of the toobs. As I said, I work to keep it civil and I try to foster discussion. There is enough shouting past each other that I don’t need to add to the tumult.
In addition, it isn’t very hard to trace me from FB to DK. I use the same photo and my real name in both places. The last thing I want is for some snide comment to turn off anyone to the things we believe in and work for around here.
Again, for those in the back, that would be:
MORE AND BETTER DEMOCRATS
So where does that leave me this week? It leaves me with the reminder that there is a lot of work to be done. I believe that my political philosophy brings the most good to the most people. I believe that my government representatives have to listen to me. I believe that this nation has a long way to go to live up to its founding ideals and all the statues and bunting that comes out around the 4th of July every year.
This week I am going to look at a few things that might just help us elect more and better Democrats because I don’t see any other way out of the situation in which we find ourselves. On to the week’s roundup of stuff that I wanted to highlight.
Companies like Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, have a long history of monitoring employees’ online activities as workers move to unionize. Meanwhile, more and more workplaces exist remotely or at home, whether you are a homecare worker supporting a person with disabilities in their independence, a gig worker in an Uber or Lyft car, or a salesperson for Amazon or Etsy.
In this economic climate, net neutrality has a huge impact on your ability to build community, solidarity and unity in your workplace. Big telecom companies, in their never-ending quest to make more money from workers, will use any cutback in net neutrality rules to put tolls along the internet with extra charges and fees. The impacts are going to be acutely felt, making it costlier for remote workers to do their jobs and connect with others on the job. We know who benefits from employees feeling strapped and isolated: the boss.
The Internet is the most democratic communication platform in history, largely because we’ve had network neutrality rules that make sure all web traffic is treated equally, and no voices are discriminated against. Because of network neutrality rules, activists can turn to the Internet to bypass the discrimination of mainstream cable, broadcast and print outlets as we organize for change. It is because of net neutrality rules that the Internet is the only communication channel left where Black voices can speak and be heard, produce and consume, on our own terms.
Say what you will about Naomi Klein, she is smart and she is a strong critic of the president. And I will also add that her diagnosis of Trump as a brand is spot on.
According to writer and activist Naomi Klein, Trump is more of a "brand" than a politician, whose product is an "aspiration".
"His brand really is impunity that comes from tremendous wealth," says Klein, author of No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics. "This has been what he's been selling and there is a market for it, particularly among men, who feel that their power is diminished on various fronts."
And, says Klein, the only way for Trump's opponents to truly get the upper hand is to provide a viable alternative.
"The only thing that's going to beat him is an alternative that speaks to the fact that people are hurting, but isn't selling these cheap promises of power over other people," she says.
VICE interviewed Sean McElwee, an analyst at Demos and Demos Action this week on the subject of voting. This is not your average “The Kids Aren’t Alright” piece. McElwee talks about things like same day registration as well as states, red and blue alike, who don’t suitably enforce the Motor Voter laws that were designed to make it easier for citizens to vote.
Long term, there haven't been concerted efforts to remove registration barriers, even at times like after the 2008 elections, when Democrats had a lot of power at the state level and could've invested energy in automatic voter registration or increasing the implementation of already existing laws. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), passed in 1993, requires the DMV and government offices that provide public assistance to give people the opportunity to register to vote. What Demos has found and what other research has found is that these laws are enforced differently, depending on the state. Partisanship plays some role in that, but it's also that states just haven't taken the mantle up to make it easy and accessible to register at the DMV. That's a huge problem because one-fourth of people are registered at the DMV.
"There's an idea called moral foundations theory that hypothesizes that liberals and conservatives prioritize different values," says Asheley Landrum, assistant professor of science communication at Texas Tech University. "Research has found that liberals tend to place a higher value on compassion and fairness, while conservatives favor purity, obeying authority, and loyalty, so you can't keep targeting conservatives with liberal tropes—talking about caring or compassion with them will likely be ineffective."
I know that it is tempting to take a tribalized us-vs-them approach to national politics. It is ingrained in the very political fabric of the nation. I am in the trenches as quickly as anyone but I am also the first to admit that in order to govern you first need votes. After 2016, I have been disabused of the notion that logic is the way to win political disagreement.
A study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology reported that when conservative participants were presented with messages about how a pro-environmental agenda maintains the purity of America or how taking responsibility for yourself and the land you call home is patriotic, they were more likely to support that agenda.
I know this sounds crazy. Maybe it is but the Right has been making considerable gains in local and state races enough to gerrymander their way into a Congressional majority with a President none of us can figure out. Meanwhile, Democrats have lost to Dubya twice and Trump once in this century.
We can’t sit back and hope for someone with the charisma of Barack Obama to come along every 8 years. And before you accuse me of tilting to the middle, I am not saying that we moderate one damn thing in the platform. If anything, I think the 2016 Democratic platform that was undoubtedly the most progressive in history didn’t go far enough.
I don’t have all the answers. Like you, I am an armchair political operative. I’m just tired of losing to a party of oligarchs who have figured out how to appeal to just enough people to push their agenda on all of us. At the end of the day all I have is this political North Star, working for the common good has to be both a real thing AND communicated properly in order to win elections.
Otherwise we wind up with a Kardashian presidency and a Congress of the 1% for the .01%.
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TOP COMMENTS
For some reason I couldn’t access my kosmail today. If you submitted and its not here, apologies.
from your humble diarist:
Flowergirl77 starts a great thread in the late night OT about answering unknown calls from telemarketers.
from mopshell:
From Trix's always wonderful Sunday Talk -- this week cleverly subtitled "All The President's Mens Rea" -- came this comment by 88kathy, a gem for its brevity and humor!
Another from Trix's Sunday Talk weekly column is this comment by eeff which features a classic-in-the-making image plucked from Twitter
TOP MOJO
Top Mojo for yesterday, July 15, 2017, first comments and tip jars excluded. Thank you mik for the mojo magic! For those of you interested in How Top Mojo Works, please see his diary on FAQing Top Mojo.
Top Pictures for yesterday, July 15, 2017. Click any picture to be taken to the full comment or picture. Thank you jotter!