Ah, but the corporate pocket Democrats have the money needed to slander their primary opposition into oblivion.
Process, Ethics, and Justice: An Inauspicious Note Regarding the Politics of Rape Culture
- Thread starter Tiassa
- Start date
Ah, but the corporate pocket Democrats have the money needed to slander their primary opposition into oblivion.
Bells
Staff member
What do you think?
Even Bernie Sanders, one of the most progressive elected Democrats in the country and usually no coward when it comes to ideological stances, has been guilty of ambiguity on abortion. When he and Perez drew fire for campaigning for Heath Mello, an Omaha mayoral candidate with a spotty record on choice, he had the chance to explain Mello’s stance had evolved and to draw the distinction between “personal views” and the desire to codify said views into law. Instead, he muddied the waters, saying that Democrats must support candidates like Mello in red states “if we’re going to become a 50-state party”.
Sanders went on to defend his support of a pro-life candidate, because you know, it's about winning:
Mello has co-sponsored several bills in Nebraska's unicameral legislature that would restrict abortion rights, including a 2009 measure requiring doctors to inform women seeking abortions about the availability of an ultrasound.
Sanders pushed back against the criticism. "The truth is that in some conservative states there will be candidates that are popular candidates who may not agree with me on every issue. I understand it. That's what politics is about," Sanders told NPR.
"If we are going to protect a woman's right to choose, at the end of the day we're going to need Democratic control over the House and the Senate, and state governments all over this nation," he said. "And we have got to appreciate where people come from, and do our best to fight for the pro-choice agenda. But I think you just can't exclude people who disagree with us on one issue."
Sanders pushed back against the criticism. "The truth is that in some conservative states there will be candidates that are popular candidates who may not agree with me on every issue. I understand it. That's what politics is about," Sanders told NPR.
"If we are going to protect a woman's right to choose, at the end of the day we're going to need Democratic control over the House and the Senate, and state governments all over this nation," he said. "And we have got to appreciate where people come from, and do our best to fight for the pro-choice agenda. But I think you just can't exclude people who disagree with us on one issue."
Hey look, sound familiar? This type of selling out for the sake of "winning" is dangerous.
And that's not what Sanders is saying the left should do. He's saying that the Democrats must embrace candidates like Mello, just in order to win and apparently the rest, such as women's rights, comes later.
Selling out to win, is not a winning strategy. If the party goes back on its fundamental principles of what it stands for, then it will continue to fail.
In the 2016 postmortem, it seems Democrats came away believing “social issues” had been their downfall and they should stick to a narrow economic message. As if ignoring the needs of people who aren’t them is the key to winning back a relatively small number of white working-class swing voters they’ve assigned inordinate importance to, and as if issues like abortion don’t have profound economic implications.
What they fail to grasp is it wasn’t social issues or “identity politics” that many voters objected to, but the cynical way the party detached them from the many ways unfettered capitalism compounds the oppression of working-class people. What’s more, picking off Republicans is a failed strategy, but there’s reason to believe the 45% of Americans who don’t vote – a group that skews young, poor and non-white – will show up for Democrats if they offer them something to vote for.
As we’ve seen with the rise of leftwing leaders like Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, it is both morally correct and politically effective to insist that basic human rights – food, shelter, healthcare, education, bodily autonomy, using the bathroom – are not up for debate, and follow through with policy as needed. Contrast the technocratic tinkering of Schumer’s editorial with the inclusive, inspirational gauntlet-throwing of the Labour manifesto.
What they fail to grasp is it wasn’t social issues or “identity politics” that many voters objected to, but the cynical way the party detached them from the many ways unfettered capitalism compounds the oppression of working-class people. What’s more, picking off Republicans is a failed strategy, but there’s reason to believe the 45% of Americans who don’t vote – a group that skews young, poor and non-white – will show up for Democrats if they offer them something to vote for.
As we’ve seen with the rise of leftwing leaders like Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, it is both morally correct and politically effective to insist that basic human rights – food, shelter, healthcare, education, bodily autonomy, using the bathroom – are not up for debate, and follow through with policy as needed. Contrast the technocratic tinkering of Schumer’s editorial with the inclusive, inspirational gauntlet-throwing of the Labour manifesto.
Bullshit, we don't need their money, Bernie managed over 200 million with small private donations in a primary being a unknown candidate fighting against the queen of corpratecrates. We have teh technology now to use the masses to finance politians without having to suck at the tit of big donars and have private launch in and speech and what nots with them.
Some mayor in Nebraska is going to have fuck all for abortion policy. Yeah I been over this with you before: replacing a few red county republicans with pro-life democrats is a worthwhile improvement: It is not like the president or the party's stance goes pro-life or that we lose pro choice seats: it does not add more pro-lifers in the legislator and we gain so much more in every other way. You would rather pro-lifer republicans win those seats? Because if democrats control the legislator those pro-life democrats are not going to be pushing pro-life legislation with the republicans, the republicans will have no power to push bills, but if the republicans control the legislator they will be pushing pro-life legislation.
My highlight for what proves my point. The author is clearly playing word games, economic message is precisely about NOT selling out to the rich, sell-outs like Hillary were highly demotivating candidates. All we need is a candidate that people actually believe will be anti-corpitists, as long as the people believe that, the candidate can be pro-choice, pro-transbathrooms, pro-BLM, what ever, does not matter. Rather SJW like you demanded we elect unelectables like Hillary, that is what fucked us. People like you that have no stake in this, who demand no compromise, not even a mayor candidate in Nowhere Nebraska, who rather have the republicans rule just so you can complain about the rights they will strip.
Yes, yes he did. And he lost - not because he didn't have the money to pull it off, but because Hillary and her Campaign had taken over the DNC and its financial flows for months before she was even the presumptive nominee.
Because she had the money to keep the DNC afloat, they let her do as she wished, and so she just took over.
See, that's a big part of the problem - for these people, there can be no progress nor compromise unless it's exactly the way they want it... so there will be no compromise, and they will continue to lose to a Republican subset of America that is willing to do whatever it takes to cling to power. It's almost like they'd rather lose so they can complain about things rather than win and have to actually start fixing things. Huh... sounds rather like what just happened, actually.
#rapeculture | #sameasiteverwas
A different joke: Click because I don't think I can explain the one about the momonga with a pickup line.
When we take a moment to consider that we have come all the way around to eight months ago, at least↗, well, we ought not be surprised at this obsession. Remember, we're dealing with arguments that, as I highlighted↗, find reality itself unsuitable for particular political aesthetics; it is uncertain all this time later to what degree the argument recognizes its own problem with demographic facts.
But I do find it remarkable enough to make the point that instead of any actual argument about due process, we're back to this. And while it is dangerous to presume any sense of rhyme and reason about some of our neighbors' priorities in post and retort, it's a pretty futile circle. Friday (PST) saw our neighbor respond twice about due process, one mixes his uninformed political pitch against human rights↑ with his latest appeal for civil rights, and the other demanding due process↑ for alleged sex offenders who successfully evaded due process, and continues to argue the point about going to police without ever really giving substantial consideration to problems already put in front of him.
And this comes days after the proposition↑ that at no point does he appear to understand what the term due process actually means; he responded to the proposition↑ by refusing to address it: "Oh by all means do tell. Explain what due process actually means then." And even still, he was whining about Hillary Clinton.
His apparent lack of any substantial understanding about due process is an easy point to reiterate↑; by the time we get to Friday, he's back to bawling about due process and #WhatAboutTheMen. However, Friday is also when I explicitly dropped a punch line↑ about how Congressional supporters—and civil rights leaders, at that—bawled for due process on behalf of their Congressman despite the fact of his due process being the reason he was resigning.
And in the days since we're essentially back to April and before. Questions of due process fade for the moment, we witness begging for attention↑, a pretense of desperate ignorance↑ we ought to accept as genuine, more angry ignorance↑, and now people have granted, it seems, a shift back to politicking↑.
It is a really easy hit to remind someone like ElectricFetus they have nothing to say. It is also rather quite strange to witness his months-long effort to not simply prove the point, but inflict it against others.
These gathered voices that can only focus on electoral politics do so because they don't actually know how to discuss the underlying issues. This can sometimes be internal disruption, but it's also hard to figure how many other days any particular person might actually recognize what are otherwise well-known facts. Like the idea that members of Congress choosing that such allegations should go through the Ethics Office does, in fact, represent due process, regardless of what we think about the secrecy recently exposed. Forced arbitration? At-will employment? In recent days I've found myself obliged by circumstance to choose whether or not to believe various people who would prefer to focus on electoral politics are actually so ignorant about subjects they pretend significant passion toward. (Or, perhaps, we should split the hair about times when it might be apathy, because the problem with the subject matter has to do with disrupting other political priorities; but at the same time that consideration might be its own side issue because the particular meta-analytical valence in question has little use for such details while surveying their effects; that is to say, there is a political focus by which pretentious ignorance about the American workplace doesn't come up.)
As I read through early pages of the thread, I recall another thread in which I suggested hairsplitting by proxy↗ in order to make the point about why I wouldn't split the hair. Here's another fun one, and we can skip enumeration; there is a post in which one of our neighbors is repeatedly asked↑ what his argument has to do with rape culture, and there is actually an answer, but it's best to not split that hair because our neighbor never got around to that answer, which is in itself ironic, since the answer is that he never closed the circle. And that answer only stands out in this context because it is worth noting why it is futile to split the hair. That is to say, this is why. Look where the discussion is. If we want an inauspicious note about the politics of rape culture, our neighbors have provided. The reason he couldn't close the circle and reapply the argument to rape culture is because the argument subsumes any question of rape culture: We are back to questions of a rising tide↗ lifting all boats drowning the question of sabotaging particular vessels.
And it is almost unbelievable to me that a cynical point↑ about the Gay Fray, about how doing away with homophobia includes helping white men, should have such appearance of validity and reliability; nonetheless, it seems an arguable point as the politics of rape culture now move into a seemingly inevitable phase of American discourse, otherwise known as blaming Hillary.
Which reminds that it's also another really easy political hit to say it's always about a girl, which in turn seems a specialized enough statement starting with ostensible liberal males at the intersection of women and human rights that it really should just be a grim joke. Then again, the end of so much ostensible liberalism is so often about a girl that we are no longer outside the range of colloquialism.
Pre-Harvey refers to which storm? In either case, it seems a cheap line; we're dealing not quite with now-more-than-everism but, rather, the same as it ever was.
That we are back to electoral politics ...―
Actually, no, and that would seem to be its own inauspicious note about the politics of rape culture. We're not back to electoral politics, and it's not quite fair to call it pre-Harvey, because this is just the latest iteration of the same as it ever was.
You literally have said nothing in your screes and then project that on me. You have presented no counter argument other then slander, off handed slander at that. I have presented solution after solution, even Bells has presented solution (although to a different problem) you on the other hand present nothing other then your own sophistry and paragraphs of wasted skin on keyboard buttons.
Also if I see Crest of the Stars in black and white I swear to non-god I will scream.
There is something to be said for being succinct and to the point, isn't there
i usually like tiassa's thoughtful prose but the last one i would have preferred the cliff note version, probably because whatever could be said has pretty much been said already on this threead repeatedly.
Bells
Staff member
Except for any in his district, and for women who live in his district. But we'll just ignore those, right?
And the descent into madness and embracing policies that would harm women continues.
What else, or more to the point, who else are you willing to sell out for the sake of winning and politics?
Well, you'd be supporting pro-life candidates, while trying to assure a national platform that 'hey, don't worry, this is just for politics and to win!'?
Except on a local level, where those pro-life candidates you endorsed, will do the real damage. But hey, it's only about winning!
No, I'm your worst nightmare. I would demand that my party not endorse or run with candidates who sexually harass and molest people and who do not hold beliefs that would directly impact on women's access to healthcare. But I'm strange that way.
But he did present solutions. Perhaps he forgot that you can only understand things in picture form and big words tend to throw you off? Then again, considering how you have ignored everything presented to you and you have trolled repeatedly by demanding more and more while refusing to acknowledge it, your current behaviour should not be unexpected.
Your solution = more harm to victims while ignoring where the problem lies. Then again, your sociopathic tendencies could leave little else by way of "solution", because you are willing to sell out women and even their access to healthcare, just to win.
And there is something to be said for you, a moderator, embracing a known misogynistic troll for the sake of politics.There is something to be said for being succinct and to the point, isn't there
Then again, he is embracing your trolley car flick switching ideology when it comes to women's health and their fundamental human rights.
And it will not change so long as men like EF and our 'colleague' are willing to flick those switches on the trolley cart for the sake of winning and politics.
How? ... do you know how a mayor functions in a town?
How would it harm women, letting republicans win harms women.
A few red county democrats is selling out nothing, that is territory we don't even have.
a handful of pro-life candidate replacing pro-life republicans, yes. There is no lose there.
What damage how? If they sign off on universal medicare or higher taxes on the rich, more good is done then any potential damage, and any damage done would have been done by a republican pro-lifer anyways.
So would this one count: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...-run-after-she-is-accused-of-sexual-harassmen
The whole problem is in defining and proving "who sexually harass and molest people" in the first place.
Oh, then present it again. So far all I have seen is hand waving and very long paragraphs that say nothing of substance.
and where does the problem lie?
How are a few pro-life democrats replacing pro-life republicans selling out anything?
So if you had to flip a switch that ether sets a rapist free or runs over thousands of people, you would rather it run over the people?
In your posting here, all of that was, yes. And that's not even a complete list. Essentially everything you have posted here in response to me could be included.
All of that was, is, and will remain another repetition of the dishonesty I labeled in the first place - "lies, slanders and misrepresentations".
You can't post honestly in response to me in this thread.
Latest:
Dishonest.
The question here is why that is the case, and the immediate specific relevance to my concerns is the influence of that faction's media presence on the upcoming Minnesota elections.
None of the "strategy" that the Republicans use will win for any Party reliant on reason and reality, as all representation of liberal (left libertarian, especially) ideology must be.
Adopting the rhetorical approach of Breitbart and Fox (as, say, Bells does here), for example, will not work for liberals. Neither will the adoption of reactionary responses and ad hoc betrayals of principle intended to be temporary. The situation is not symmetric, "both sides" is a wingnut meme.
Nonsense. It's not an assumption but an established fact, dealing with it does not require authoritarian control of "culture", and the backlash is well worth withstanding - something adults just have to handle, in the real world. All civil rights matters present those difficulties - we enforce and protect them anyway.
Do you recognize the form and role of that question? Hint: it's bullshit.
Bullshit doesn't work for liberals, left libertarians, or anyone representing them politically. If you deal in bs, money and power will win.
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this is getting very boggy with lots of tangents to obfuscate the issue.
isn't this the core of your position and reasoning as to why you think everything is being thrown off it's rocker? or you are off your rocker?
how are you justifying this statement as it's vague? in light of your core position which you assume is the majority of the liberal faction? or do you consider the views of women who have spoken out not an important aspect of the voter demographic and those in support?
you insinuate that your position is in line with the lefties on this issue or representing them, but then contradict yourself that this is all mishandling equal to bullshit. whose position? fellow seat members or the voting liberal faction? to put it bluntly, whose views do you think you are representing? there is a difference between public opinion on an issue separate from politics and how politicians handle the issue. you seem to be equating that they are the same.
are you saying that voters such as yourself would switch parties based on your perceived mishandling of the sexual harassment issues by democrats? that's the underlying threatening tone to justify your point that i'm picking up. a type of summation that liberals should "not" vote or the democratic party does not deserve the vote unless it's handled your way. or you really believe the accused and not the accusers in these cases have been wronged even more.
that's the message i'm getting.
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Oh civil rights you say, and what change to civil rights are you proposing?
That is not an answer but an evasion.
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I know, for my wife and I, that we vote after research and consideration, not based on the letter by someone's name. Case in point - when Hillary won the nod, we had to think long and hard about voting our conscience or voting to try and stop Trump. Ultimately, we voted for her, because the compromise was simple - lesser of two evils. Had the tables been flipped, I can't see anything that would have convinced us to vote Trump - we'd have crossed the aisle first.
Our neighbor is unable to see past the buzzwords and highlight reels to face the reality that, while a pro-life minority in the Democratic Party would be capable of going along with freedom of choice laws with minor qualms, a "pro-life" majority in the Republican party will quickly relegate women to the roll of incubator and kitchen staffer.
It isn't a matter of making progress; rather it seems they just want something to whinge about. It makes engaging with them an effort in masochistic futility.
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... but I am a masochist!
Not from me.
Recast (if you can) any or every one of those questions without the presumptions not found in my posting, especially the false "either/or" choices not found in reality, and I will attempt answering.
Maybe start here: there is no such thing as "the liberal faction" in this context.
This can be answered:
I'm not justifying it, here. I'm simply stating it - and not for the first time - as an underlying assumption of my posting. You are perfectly free to disagree with it, and reason accordingly from a contrary stance. If you want to.
Meanwhile, you know as well as I do that it is not really all that vague, in current application. It's even a bit too pointed in its implications to confront, a bit too little vague for comfort, apparently.
Which is why sending messages is not one of my goals.
Right. But as we have seen, such reliances are often crippling to political parties in today's society. Again, the decision democrats may have to make is to pursue reason and reality and lose, or adopt some of the odious methods the right uses and win. It's not right, and it's not good, and it's not the way things _should_ be - but it's the way things are.
I agree that it is transparent. However, you may be overestimating the ability of the typical voter to see through such strategies.
I haven't seen that, actually. I've seen abandonment of such reliances do more crippling of the Democrats than firm holds, say - with banking, Iraq war, security State, etc, merely the more dramatic examples.
My contention is that the odious methods don't work very well for any Party that relies on representation of liberal and left-libertarian voters - the voting majority of Americans.
It's not just that it's wrong, it's that they lose.
That may be true. In which case there is no way for liberal candidates to win in the current political environment. Hence our energies would best be spent adapting to the new political realities.