There are so many amazing things going on politically at the moment — amazing good, amazing bad, just plain gobstopping — that I figured, hey, let’s do an open thread before we’re all blown up in World War III or something.
No trolls!
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Politics Open Thread! Special Election O’Reilly Downfall Wandering Aircraft Carrier Edition
@Turtle
K
Once again, what does that even mean? Your word choice is not just bad out of dismissiveness. It’s also bad outta being vague and meaningless. What do you mean by apologism? How am I doing it? How’s the Dem party being ‘held back’? Put some meaning in your words…
No. Universal healthcare is not a part of Sanders’ campaign. Hillarycare preceded this election cycle by 2 decades. 50+% tax brackets on the rich existed before my mom was born. Sanders was nowhere near the 1st to call for a bank breakup
This is what I meant by the pandering I hate that we’re being asked to do. I, for one, refuse to canonize this guy as the either wellspring or arbiter of progress. I don’t want ‘his’ ideas, I want good ideas
Well, you call people who favor Clinton over Sanders establishment shills even when Clinton being better on gender and race issues is a big part of why they favored her, and then laugh at how Clinton supporters are mad, that’s exactly what you are doing.
Well they aren’t. Even if they were, it would probably not be a high wage. Not one that would compare to a career. So we’re back to abortion rights still being economic rights.
If you think Bernie Sanders could bring down neoliberalism on his own, you’re as deluded as the Trump supporters who think he’s going to single handedly “make America great again.”
Nobody here is objecting to progressive economic policies. Or at least I’m sure not. But they alone do not address that anyone who is a cishet white man is privileged over anyone who is not. Objecting to brocialism =/= objecting to socialism. It’s called brocialism because of the lack of intersectionality. It’s called brocialism because it’s about cishet white men talking over women, POC, and LGBTQ people and thinking they know what’s best for them. Does it not occur to you that there’s a reason that it’s mostly cishet white men are the ones who favor “egalitarianism” or think that fixing class issues will fix everything?
I just made you a decent sized post explaining exactly why social justice issues are economic issues and you didn’t listen. At all. That’s where the objection to brocialism/brogressivism comes from.
You said you were young and privileged so I think you’re being naive and have some pulling your head out of your ass to do. I went through a “fixing class issues will fix everything” phase when I was young too. Luckily it was brief and I grew up and got over it. Hopefully you will too. I’m not saying you’re a terrible person here. It’s just that you need to listen to people who are more knowledgeable than you about social justice issues here.
While on the topic of cishet white men not being to cope when absolutely everything doesn’t revolve around them: the more I learn about Chris Pratt, the more I dislike him
http://dlisted.com/2017/04/22/chris-pratt-felt-that-his-demographic-wasnt-being-represented-in-hollywood/#more-254016
Guys ! I just received the 2017 edition of those coloring books for adults that they drop in the mail !
Also known as election propaganda leaflets. Guess whose portrait I’m having fun with.
Also, TIL that Axe is a Democrat apologist. Coulda fooled me.
I love when “average” is used to mean “white,” don’t you?
… Said the guy who starred in a movie where the talking raccoon and the sapient tree were still given more screen time and deeper characterisation than the woman.
I mean, it would be nice to see more nuanced and varied portrayals of working class Americans of all races and genders and orientations (speaking as a bisexual blue collar woman), but I have a feeling Pratt wasn’t thinking so diversely.
Right now, Hollywood seems to think that working class folks are dangerously sexy and rebellious (straight white cis) teens who then pupate for a while and emerge creepy and middle aged.
@Turtle
This is a good read on Bernie’s problems.
Thanks all for your engagement with me, especially since my opening comments were needlessly antagonistic
@Axe I wasn’t aware apologist is not a well known term in US. It just means a person arguing on behalf of a third party, so for example in this thread I’ve been an apologist for Sanders.
@weirwood Ty for that brief intro re intersectionality, I’ll google for some longer reads about it.
I read a really interesting essay called ‘I am a woman and a human’ by Eve Mitchell. Eve argues that intersectionality theory and identity are one half of an equation – I am a woman.
But that it misses the other half – And a human. She goes on to comment on how this might translate to the goals of activism: ”we will struggle for a society that does not limit us as “bus drivers,” “women,” or “queers,” but a society that allows everyone to freely use their multi-sided life activity in whatever ways they want. In other words, we will struggle for a society that completely abolishes, or transcends, “identities.”
I think this rings true, identity is wholly relevant to our current condition, but it doesn’t have to end there, the limits our identities place on us can be overcome.
@Dalillama Ty for the link, some very incisive points on Sanders ‘politics. I’ve always known he’s far from a 10/10 progressive, but the piece undeniably raises even tougher questions of Sanders.
I know that I bookmarked a couple of “amuse bouche” recipes for dried fig and fetta loaf, but I must have put them into renewable energy or mental health or some other topic I had going at the time.
Searching anew, I haven’t found the ones I remember but I these appealed to me,
http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/fig-walnut-bread/982d6f47-14c6-44e7-9528-09679577ce40
https://souvlakiforthesoul.com/2014/03/fig-and-walnut-bread-recipe
And it’s almost impossible to choose from this google search result.
@Turtle
It’s known here. ‘Shill’ is also known here. I’m not unfamiliar with the term. It’s just not a good one. Case in point:
In what way was I arguing on behalf of the Democratic party? This is asserted but never explained. The word ‘apologist’, in a lay political context at least, favors assertion over explanation. That’s how snarl words work, and why they’re used. And why you shouldn’t, especially not without some clarification
So, my 1st question having been answered, let’s try for the 2nd if ya please. Explain…
Turtle
Your first port of call should be Clinton’s policy papers.
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/ (And it’s a lot of reading if you do it all at once. Some of those linked Fact Sheets are pretty heavy going on the details.)
It’s pretty easy to see where there’s been a bit of a push/ compromise/ argy-bargy in some areas. Basic wage, living wage, fight for $15 all merged into one very general, non-specific she will raise the minimum wage to a living wage. https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/an-economy-that-works-for-everyone/
Same thing goes for college costs … will make college debt-free, and she’ll provide relief for Americans with existing debt by allowing them to refinance their student loans. Not word for word Bernie, but obviously incorporating his input.
@ Axe & Mildlymagnificent
I’m just watching Washington Journal. They’re talking with some people who wrote a book, ‘Shattered’, about the inside workings of the Clinton campaign. It sounds pretty interesting. Some quite candid interviews with insiders. Including how the Clinton and Sanders camps liased. If you’re into that sort of thing it might be worth a read.
@Turtle
This stood out to me for two reasons. The first reason being, because Sanders was pointedly dismissive of “identity” especially of female identity as it applied to Clinton.
The second reason is because it echoes so many of the godawful statements made by my white women feminist peers to women and people of color and LGBTQ people who are all in pain and trying to get us to even SEE that pain – the clumsy and awkward assertions that “I don’t even SEE color” and “What we need is a true meritocracy” and “I’M not racist, I don’t care if you’re black, white, yellow, green, or polka-dot!”
Perhaps it is a good goal to reach for, and you clearly said we’re not there at the moment. But you have to be privileged to be able to “not see identity” at this time, and that is one of the issues I have with Sanders and his supporters. The white feminist woman that says she “doesn’t even SEE color” is only able to say that because she’s privileged enough to not have to see it if she doesn’t care to – she doesn’t have to experience store security following her around as she shops, she doesn’t have to worry about her children being in the “wrong” neighborhood and being arrested or outright murdered if they go out in the evening, she can afford to be color-blind, through her privilege.
It’s just another way to avoid having to listen to other groups and experiences, and to avoid having to face our own internalized racism and sexism. It’s a free pass for the privileged, because it’s almost not even a half-step from “We should strive for a society that abolishes ‘identity'” to “I am going to get the jump on things and just personally refuse to acknowledge ‘identity’ right now! Yay I’m so progressive!” You can only do that if you have the privilege to afford it.
It’s honestly getting embarrassing for me to see the lengths to which my peers will go to out-shout and stick their fingers in their ears to both avoid facing our own internalized and institutionalized racism, sexism, and privilege, and simultaneously ignore what people of color, trans people, LGBTQ, and other oppressed minorities have been dying and fighting to get us to hear for YEARS. It’s depressing and embarrassing.
I’m also not sure that transcending identity is a desirable goal anyway. Wouldn’t that make us basically The Borg? And when we transcend identity, whose identity do we assimilate with? The cishet white male identity, the one that is already seen as the default and not an “identity.” Right?
@wwth
Yeah, I’m not convinced, either. For the sake of argument, I threw in a “perhaps”, but in any case, we’re nowhere NEAR such a state, even IF we wanted to be.
I’ll stop identifying myself as gay when strangers stop attacking me in the street because they’ve identified me as gay. In other words, stick it and spin.
The only reason “I am a woman” places limits on a person who is (identified as) a woman is because society imposes those limits. There is no intrinsic reason why I can’t be X, Y, Z, and A, and also a human being, and for the lettered-identities to come with limits. Identities don’t impose limits, is what I’m saying. Society imposes limits, and chooses which limits to impose based upon a person’s identity(ies), which are also imposed, based in turn about how people in society perceive that person.
You are implying that the way to escape identity limitations is to give up the identities, but identities are more imposed than adopted. Even cishet white men have an identity imposed upon them, but it isn’t labeled as one, so they imagine that they are free of identity politics. When someone who isn’t a cishet white man is told to abandon their identity, what they are actually being told is to adopt the identity of a cishet white man, which is not only impossible (society doesn’t allow this), it’s insulting to imply that a person’s problems really boil down to a choice they have personally made. Such choices don’t exist.
So this may ring true for you, but it doesn’t ring true for nearly everyone, and if you’re intellectually honest you may ask if maybe that means other people don’t have the same experience existing in the world that you have.
I’ll share this here as simultaneously hilarious and horrifying:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2017/04/best-twitter-thread-week-goes-chicago-pds-billy-kid-find.html
The response that pretty much sums up my feelings is the one from Churse Gourmand 2/3rds of the way down.
Not politics related, but if y’all want some good books, Humble Bundle has a Save the Unicorns Book Bundle presented by Peter S. Beale, who wrote The Last Unicorn and lots of other amazing books.
Re: intersectionality and identity. Sorry for late reply, possibly no one is reading anymore.
Dreemr, absolutely in the here and now claiming you can’t ‘see’ identity and the reality that identity does in fact shape the lived experience of people would be as foolish as denying the reality of class. Where I think Eve is coming from is that capitalism is responsible for the oppression of many different identities, including the working class itself. If the working class can overcome its oppression by defeating capitalism, we have laid the foundation to live our lives however we wish to, and eventually identity in that sense would cease to exist.
Weirwood asked whose identity do we assimilate with? None, we become human beings fully free of capitalism and the boxed in identities it demands.
Scented, absolutely, no one could reasonably expect anything less of any member of an attacked identity. I don’t claim homophobia would cease to exist the day capitalism was defeated, but it would sure be a great milestone to that goal.
Policy, couldn’t agree more, identities are more imposed than adopted. You comment that society does the imposing, I think more specifically capitalism does. It boxes us in, Eve’s essay imagines humans fully free to live lives in whatever multiplicity of ways they choose. Wanting everyone to copy one identity, cishet white male, would be the total opposite of that.
This probably sounds like pie in the sky thinking given the actual reality of the world as it is now, but things can change quickly. 100 years ago one day there was a Russian monarchy that ruled with brutal impunity for centuries. The next day it was gone forever. That struggle unfortunately didn’t turn out great, but it does prove societies can be overhauled.
@Axe my view was that you did act as an apologist because your arguments aligned with those of the establishment of the Dem Party. Frankly though I can see that my current knowledge of US politics is not strong enough to hold up my end of this argument, I cede victory to you. Instead ill go read some more.
@mildly ty, I’ll start reading
Bigotry existed before capitalism. I see no reason why ending capitalism would end bigotry.
But sure. Continue mansplaining and whitesplaining about how the oppression other people experience isn’t really about anything other than capitalism.
This woulda been more useful last week.
We’re not actually in agreement here. Capitalism is not the cause of racism. Capitalism exploits racism, but racism is pre-existing. Misogyny is pre-existing. They won’t magically go away once working-class white men have class equality.
Your obsession (and the obsession of people like you) with class differences comes from your total blindness to differences of other types. You are on the wrong end of the SE axis of privilege, and that’s the ONLY axis of privilege where you don’t enjoy the privilege. I don’t think it’s any accident that coincidentally that’s the only axis of privilege that bites your muffin. Other people experience the wrong ends of other axes, and care about those other axes more sometimes and don’t agree with you that the SE axis is THE ONLY ONE THAT MATTERS. Because to them, other axes matter more. That doesn’t mean they are deluded by capitalism and need more convincing; it means they know something you don’t.