We only have what we remember

 I think that Aaron actually makes a good point, that the progressive movement could be doing more to broaden our reach.  We need to coach things as being less about, say, race and religion (or the lack thereof,) and more about class and justness.  We ignore disenfranchised people at our peril, even if their ethnic and religious group is part of the majority, particularly when media streams like Fox News are good at playing up their resentment against minority ethnic and religious groups and turning them against them.  

See, I actually think this is why Aaron’s argument fails. How exactly are we supposed to make it less about race and religion and more about class and justness? Progressives talk about unions and economic justice and reducing income inequality and the poor whites hear “help those people”. The Right captured the poor white vote, especially in the South, by appealing to racism and other forms of bigotry. Now anything that the Left says is run through a bigot filter. How do you propose that we fight that, short of dropping the Left’s entire social justice agenda?

Even if I was willing to do that, which I most definitely am not, I don’t believe that dropping the social justice agenda would actually work. It would just get chalked up to the Dems being inauthentic and not having the courage of their convictions and all the other contemptuous things that already get said about them. 

I think the Left needs to do a better job articulating it’s economic values. I think it would help a lot if we had someone leading the party who actually believed in those values, instead of what we’ve had for a while now which is center-Right men who have largely bought into the core of “free market” economic liberalism. (Not to be confused with being a Liberal). That’s not going to solve the problem though. 

Aaron claims that the Left has abandoned ”his people” to their ignorance. The fact is that “his people” are guarding their ignorance with every weapon they have at their disposal. I see no indication that there’s anything we can do to get them to drop those weapons and come out of Fort Bigoted Ignorance and join the 21st century in time to save themselves and the rest of us. 

See, I actually think this is why Aaron’s argument fails. How exactly are we supposed to make it less about race and religion and more about class and justness? Progressives talk about unions and economic justice and reducing income inequality and the poor whites hear “help those people”. The Right captured the poor white vote, especially in the South, by appealing to racism and other forms of bigotry. Now anything that the Left says is run through a bigot filter. How do you propose that we fight that, short of dropping the Left’s entire social justice agenda?

Dropping the social agenda is what got the Republican and Democratic parties to flip-sides on social issues in the early part of the century and get the Republicans playing off white resentment under Nixon, so I agree that is a bad idea.  However, Sun Tzu said that rather than attacking the enemy themselves it is best to attack the enemy’s strategy.  The right’s strategy is to force a wedge between the left’s outreach and the people who can be incited to resentment, creating the impression that the left has abandoned them.  Aaron has demonstrated that their attempts to create such an impression have met with success.  

I feel like one of the big failings of the Obama administration has been an inability or unwillingness to communicate its accomplishments.  This leaves it with the impression of having done little or nothing, and the right are masters of spinning that to their advantage.  However, I think that this is indicative of a wider issue with the progressive movement in general to be modest about what it has accomplished.  Abolition, women’s suffrage, the New Deal, the civil rights movement, counter-culture, modern feminism, etc.  These things become common place, absorbed into the mainstream, and it becomes easy to forget that they were not always this way.  They blend into the background that everyone has adopted, and people lose sight that they were the result of progressive social reform over many years.  

So what do we do to remind people of this?  We market.  There is a tendency on the left to favor substance over style, action over message, but we need to accept that style and message can be a form of substance and action all its own.  We go on a counter-offensive against the right’s propaganda machine, not by trying to duplicate its success (we cannot nor should we) but by attacking its strategy.  This means that whenever they try to make some crazy spin, we should not hesitate to call them on their bullshit, loudly and without pulling the punches.  Too many of our political leaders on the left seem interested in placating the right, which just lets the right walk over them.  I get the feeling that a lot of the people that the right count on for a base would respect the left a bit more if they, in the words of Captain America, plant ourselves like a tree by the river of truth and say “No, you move!”  

Poke enough holes in their advertising zeppelin, and the hot air should spill right out.  

To hear a progressive tell it, of course, Rick Perry’s named after a mountain range in Eastern Europe. This is one reason I am no longer a progressive.

I don’t think he’s the Anti-Christ (nor does any progressive except the ones in your head, I bet).  But do you deny that he is a murderer?

You never saw his old posts on the old Slacktivist, then, did you?

 But do you deny that he is a murderer? 

Haven’t you heard? Perry is just really tough on crime. Why he even protects the good citizens from crimes that aren’t crimes at all. 

ETA: I don’t believe that Aaron every was a Progressive (if he had been he’d probably know how to use the term correctly).

Well, before you return … let me add a little more to your todo list. Hope the head gets better soon – I’ve been absent due to a knee that really flared up. Pain is never good – err, except for those for whom it is …

Anywhose …

Dave wrote a lengthy comment that really cut to the core or something important – granting those who lack certain rights or privileges is not stealing the same from those who already have them.

I would go further than this though – I don’t even like such social changes being referred to in terms of ‘progressive gains’ … granting gays the right to marry is not a gain … it is the correction of an absense. It might be a policy of much progressive political thought, but that does not make it intrinsically a function of progress, just one of justice.

—-

In one of your early posts, you seemd to make a reference to how gays are not ‘right’ because the bible says so? – if I am incorrect on this, please say so. If not … explain ‘where’ it says so and I’ll counter each and ever point.

On the issue of marriage ‘traditionally’ being between a man and a woman – the cry of so many on the right, but also on the left – seriously.

Since the nations where this is a contentious issue atm, aka where gay marriage is a serious political issue, are mostly eurocentric in origins, lets example the ‘tradition’ in that context.

When Constantine, ruling over what remained of the Roman Empire, made Christianity its official religion in the late 5th Century, he also made engaging in any homosexual act illegal. At that time the penalty was not so harsh, just the institution of some small fines.

Over the decades and centuries that followed, however, the penalties grew harsher and harser throughout Europe. Death by being drawn and quartered; death by burning at the stake; exile; imprisonment; branding; being spurned (and in an age where you local community mattered – that was harsh); death by a range of assorted methods too numerous to list them all and on and on.

This livened up to be even worse during the various Inquisitions.

So yes. Life for anyone too different, especially those ‘sinful’ sexual deviants, got a whole lot nastier, more brutal and short that was the relative norm – which was, more the most part, itself rather nasty, brutal and short.

So explain to the audience where … where in that long history of persecution could any application of marriage involving two men or two women, rise?

Of COURSE the western tradition of marriage, on meeting modernity, arrived as a man to a woman. Prior to very recent times, gay people were too busy hiding, or not hiding and being persecuted, to be able to get married!

So the tradition is irrelevant! Just like, prior to the late 18th century, the very notion of women voting was unvoiced. The tradition was – they didn’t.

On marrying, prior to a tad over half a century ago in the US and another century beyond that in the UK, ALL assets the woman held became assets of the man. If she had property, it was now his property. Money inherited from her parents, now his money and so forth.

So yes, the ‘Appeal to tradition’ line really doesn’t work.

And that is the problem – a lot folks with privilege, heakening back to ‘the good old days’ when things were how they ought to be.

And you – you think the problem is that progressives are failing to correct this view held by many?

Maybe it’s the black community’s job to educate bigoted whote people about how their views are innappropriate.

But beyond even that … many progressive DO try to educate and inform. What response greets such attempts so very often? – anger, and proclamations about “gay agendas being forced upon us – oh woe oh woe!”

Wasn’t Rick Perry talking up secession a few years back?

“Party of Lincoln”, they call it…

I don’t really disagree with the interested in attention thing (actually I’m kind of “meh, whatever” about it, but I sure don’t disagree). Thing is, it’s one thing for someone to be sincerely pursuing attention with real opinions, and someone who just makes stuff up to get attention, deliberately infuriating people JUST to get attention, without any real interest in the subject matter: ie, the ONLY passion is “gimme attention!!!!” and any attempts to converse are IRRELEVANT because the end goal is ONLY attention: not the part of attention that is “being heard” or “being affirmed.”

That is the problem with trolls: the arguing with them is inherently pointless, not because they will NEVER HEAR YOU, but because there’s no one really there TO hear you. They may even agree with you, but just feel the need to be asshats to feel they have power over people, and managed to wind them up over a race in which they have no horse.

It’s pointless to argue with the ironclad stubborn, to be sure, but if you got through that SOMEHOW, you would get to actual opposing beliefs.

Trolls are Kinder Eggs without the toy in the middle.¹

I’m not saying this delineation has to matter to you or even “should” matter to you, just that it is a real one, and it makes a kind of difference whether it is a troll or just an impossibly stubborn person.

¹Is that too weird an analogy?

It’s worth mentioning that the misplaced resentment we’re talking about has never been unique to either poor whites or Southern whites. Tea Partyers have higher incomes on average and they have a very similar sense of wounded grievance. Jeff Sharlet has observed that the constant in social conservatism has been “male headship,” treating economic issues as a struggle to restore the dignity of male breadwinners. That really amounts to treating women and children as the property of men.

I get the feeling that a lot of the people that the right count on for a
base would respect the left a bit more if they, in the words of Captain
America, plant ourselves like a tree by the river of truth and say “No,
you move!” 

Greg Sargent at the WashPost describes something similar:

“Obama advisers get angry when they think liberal critics are
refusing to accept the limits placed on him by current political
realities, and when lefties presume at the outset that Obama will
inevitably sell out…But the lefty critique goes considerably further than this. It’s an
argument with Obama’s team about tactics and strategy, about what might be attainable
if he handled these negotiations differently. The case from these
critics is if Obama approached negotiations with a harder line, it would
be better politics because it would juice up the base and show
indys he’s a fighter. They also advocate for this course because the
current dynamic is hopelessly broken — and they think a more aggressive
approach has at least a chance of broadening the field of what’s
substantively possible.”

While I agree with both of those, I don’t know what they have to do with the Sargent quote. Unless you’re suggesting that Obama and other Democrats should take a hard line on both issues.

It might be a policy of much progressive political thought, but that
does not make it intrinsically a function of progress, just one of
justice.

Yes — if you have a progressive concept of justice. Not everyone does, and I think that’s a vital piece of knowledge to have, because it provides what seems to me to be the only real answer to the “stupid or evil?” question. (Unless you just go ahead and define everybody who doesn’t see the world like you as ‘evil’, in which case please say so as I see no point in us trying to have a conversation at all.)

In one of your early posts, you seemd to make a reference to how gays
are not ‘right’ because the bible says so? – if I am incorrect on this,
please say so.

I’m afraid you are indeed incorrect; I referred to how some people believe that homosexuality is a sin against God, but that’s not the same as claiming that belief for myself.

So the tradition is irrelevant!

To the progressive concept of justice, yes. To the progressive effort to build a progressive world? I should like to hope not.

See, I think this is where all the “stupid or evil?” stuff hurts your cause — it’s easy and it’s fun and it engages people, just like any other caricature, but also just like any other caricature it’s not exactly useful for identification purposes. It seems to me that the more time y’all spend demonizing your political enemies, the less effort goes into understanding what they’re actually about — which is important, believe it or not, because how do you expect to out-argue somebody whose arguments you haven’t actually bothered taking the time to examine and disassemble?

I mean, a strong progressive sense of justice counts for a lot, but not all the smart guys are on your side, and sooner or later you’re going to run up against somebody who can talk rings around you, and maybe that’s not going to dent your own conception of what’s right and wrong (nor should it) but seeing you get your ass handed to you isn’t going to do anything to convince the audience that your side has the right of it.

And you – you think the problem is that progressives are failing to correct this view held by many?

Yes! What else could it be?

Look, let’s drop the whole idea of progressive justice for a minute, can we? I realize it’s useful in a lot of ways but right now it is impairing your perception of reality and your understanding of your own cause.

Progressivism, if it is anything, is a fight against entrenched belief, against tradition. That’s what the word ‘progress’ means. That being the case, you are necessarily fighting against “this view held by many” — on everything where the advance of progress requires any conflict at all, that is entirely and precisely what you’re doing.

Progressivism is by its very nature a fight against the status quo. More specifically, it’s a fight against beliefs and traditions most if not all of which have held sway in human society for centuries at least. Whatever you think about the value or lack thereof of those traditions, they have been the default for a long damn time. That being the case, and pretty much by definition, you’re fighting an uphill battle all the way.

Maybe it’s the black community’s job to educate bigoted whote people about how their views are innappropriate.

Only inasmuch as the black community and the progressive community overlap. It is absolutely the progressive community’s job, again pretty much by definition, to be educating people on that subject among others.

But beyond even that … many progressive DO try to educate and
inform. What response greets such attempts so very often? – anger, and
proclamations about “gay agendas being forced upon us – oh woe oh woe!”

You were expecting, what, a bed of roses? You’re telling people that the received wisdom they’ve believed all their lives is wrong, unjust, and not worthy of being suffered to exist. What on Earth gives you the idea that’s going to be easy?

And if I’m right about social issues depending on a relative absence of economic ones? That people who have enough to do already just keeping themselves and their families fed and clothed and healthy, to the extent they can manage it, aren’t likely to think things like abortion and gay marriage matter at all? What then?

 And if I’m right about social issues depending on a relative absence of economic ones? That people who have enough to do already just keeping themselves and their families fed and clothed and healthy, to the extent they can manage it, aren’t likely to think things like abortion and gay marriage matter at all? What then?  

Then we’re going to have to make progress without “your people” and “your people” will eventually benefit from greater economic opportunity and justice in spite of the fact they actively fought against. They’ll never acknowledge it or admit that they were wrong or show one ounce of gratitude for the benefits that they receive due to other people’s hard work. And we’ll all just have to live with that. 

You complain about how “your people” are being left behind. Well, if they’re being left behind it’s because they won’t get up and put one foot in front of the other to save themselves and the rest of us don’t chose to lay down and die next to them to keep them company. 

All these justifications that you’re throwing out for “your people” are not new. I honestly can’t tell if you simply failed history every single year of your school career or if you’re disingenuous or intellectually dishonest or what. I’ll admit that your claims to have once been a Progressive lead me to suspect that it’s the last one, but I can’t say. 

You seem to think that the Left has some obligation never to move at a pace that’s faster than the most ignorant, bigoted white person feels comfortable changing. If we listened to people like you, “your people” would still be sharecropping in an economy where wages for white labor are severely depressed by the enslavement of African Americans.  Instead we’ve progressed to the point where ”your people” barely have jobs because they’re struggling in the economy created by the fact that they care more about maintaining their bigoted, ignorant lives of (very selectively) received wisdom than they do about unions. 

“Your people” are the decedents, spiritually and possibly physically, of the white land owners of Hampton, Virginia. Early in the Civil War (aka Treason in Defense of Slavery) the Union troops at nearby Fortress Monroe had control of the town and most of the white residents fled. At the same time, hundreds (and eventually thousands) of slaves made a run for the fort and become “contrabands” and effectively free (a long & interesting story). 

A rumor spread through the Confederate ranks that the Union troops were going to turn the deserted town over to the contrabands and allow them to live in the homes of their former masters and betters. The rumor was totally false, but no matter. It took hold and the Confederates determined that something had to be done. The young men of Hampton organized themselves into a raiding party, returned to the town—–and burnt it to the ground. Better that daddy’s house should be destroyed and the family never able to return than to let Them defile it with their presence. An orgy of prideful, bigotry-driven destruction in the midst of the even greater orgy of prideful, bigotry-driven destruction that was the war.  

Now people with that same spirit want to effectively torch the country rather than allow Them to live in it as full human beings. I’m not inclined to pat those folks on the hand and reassure them that as white Christians they’re still super special and always will be while they’re waving the Zippo around. 

Abortion and same-sex marriage are economic issues in a sense because they’re proxies in the fight over privilege. Three years ago, the poster CombatQueer suggested at the old Slacktivist that the “pro-life” stance
“is often an attack of those higher up the socioeconomic scale by people
too embarrassed to complain about how much it sucks to be poor.” I would amend that to say that the attackers include people who aren’t quite poor but who perceive themselves as disadvantaged. More generally, abortion is more or less about conflicting visions over the role of women in society, with one side favoring “male headship.” With same-sex marriage, I’m not sure whether the proxy is mostly about gender roles or mostly about Christianity being normative or a combination. And with both issues, some opponents probably do have legitimate grievances about disenfranchisement apart from the reduction in privilege. In any case they’re focusing their concerns on the wrong issues, ones whose outcome would make little or no difference in their own lives.

 You mention ‘stupid or evil’ several times, yet I’d really like to know where, in my post, I used either of those terms. Or even where I implied either of them.  

I think he was complaining about “Progressives” in general, not you in particular. 

Obviously we do often play “stupid or evil”, here and other places. Everyone has to react to that in their own way. Personally I’m not going to apologize for it. There are plenty of things that are happening in this country right now where I honestly believe that stupid or evil really are the choices. I think Aaron simply doesn’t want to own the fact that when one group of people is actively hurting other groups—not just making them feel bad or left out, but actively hurting them, which is what we’re talking about—throwing in stupid as a choice is being generous. 

 I understand the impulse but don’t see how it alters anything myself – how it’s productive in any way. Maybe I’m missing something. I’d rather just call them on exactly whatever the problem is.  

I can only speak for myself, but it’s partially as you say a reaction to them calling me & mine evil and partially a push back against the idea that they own morality and values. Have you been around the slacktiverse long enough to be treated to my rant about the term “values voters”? Everything about that bit of BS is just infuriating to me. 

I’d be a lot more chastised by Aaron’s moralizing about “stupid or evil” if I believed for one second that he gives a similar lecture to “his people” when they call Them evil or lazy or unpatriotic or hell-bound or pedophiles or terrorists or any of the other ugly, ugly things that get said about Lefties and QUILTBAGs and non-Christians and non-whites on a regular basis. 

What Lori says. Plus, if I call bigotry out in the strongest possible terms–if I say “this is either stupid or evil, and so are the people who do it”–then I’m sending a strong message that this shit is not okay. I don’t think I can change the bigots’ minds, and I’m not gonna wait around for them to do so. I *can* take a stand and publicly condemn them. So I do.

Also, not everything I do is productive. Not everything I do *has* to be. I have a job, that job is neither politics nor PR, and “stupid or evil” relieves my feelings. That’s enough for me, some days.

As for descending…enh. When I start trying to take away people’s civil rights, I’ll worry about losing the moral high ground. As things stand, I think I could call Phelps, Beck, & Co. evil, stupid motherfuckers all day and still be standing on Mount Everest in comparison to ‘em–and I’m not even a particularly good person. 

 As for descending…enh. When I start trying to take away people’s civil rights, I’ll worry about losing the moral high ground. As things stand, I think I could call Phelps, Beck, & Co. evil, stupid motherfuckers all day and still be standing on Mount Everest in comparison to ‘em–and I’m not even a particularly good person.  

This. 

If the day ever comes that Christians are actually being persecuted in America, instead of just whining about it for ego gratification and political & financial gain, and I don’t stand up against the persecution I’ll have reason to feel bad. Until then, not so much. 

I make no claims to always taking the high road. I’m not a liar and I own my crap. However, I figure that morally I still hold the high ground in comparison to pretty much the entire modern GOP/Tea Party/Fox News Nation crowd and their supporters and enablers. 

Yeah – that’s always more than rough. You seem to have a pretty clear perspective though.

Actually, you touched on something that was niggling at me earlier. A large portion of fundamentalists are also conservative along the lines of “Progressives should make their own way; be responsible for their own life; stop asking for others to fix it all for them; stop pushing their agendas where they are not wanted and generally get away from that ‘victim’ mentality so many of them hold.”

Yet Aaron appears to be calling for Progressives to go in and help all of those ‘victims’ on the conservative side of things and push an agenda at them. I wonder how they would respond if we did as Aaron calls for?

Okay, no I don’t – already experienced it

As I said prior – people have the right to speak up in the manner they find right for them.

Not right for me, is not saying it isn’t right for Lori or you or anyone else. Nor am I saying any approach is better or worse … that’s the cool thing about us all being perfectly unique

Nor does my not using phrases like evil restrict my ability to resist and stand up. But that is just me.

My favourite retort to a seriously nasty little bigot:  a religious forum in a far-away land … they came on all ultra-religious and full of wrath, called me everything from the classic homophobe + transphobe phrasebook with invectives arranged in patterns that were surprisingly imaginative.

I explained that they could be as nasty as they wanted to but it would not change my resolve to live an authentic life. Then I forgave them, openly in the forum. That really set them off – a transgender lesbian forgiving the ‘pure of soul’ Christian. After that it didn’t matter what they said, the forum was pretty much united – having seen our respective actions. Even those who didn’t agree with my ‘lifestyle’ became more civil – except for the fellow I forgave.

Can’t always do that however. Sometimes an aggressive stance is called for and I’ve done that. It’s just not my first instinct.

But again – to repeat – if it is a more favoured approach of others, then that’s great. I think a diversity of approaches is fine – and probably even efficient.

As things stand, I think I could call Phelps, Beck, & Co. evil, stupid motherfuckers all day and still be standing on Mount Everest in comparison to ‘em–and I’m not even a particularly good person.

You remind me of the end of the Firefly episode “Shindig”:
“Sounds good to me, to lie here beaten while the better man refuses to spill your blood…”
*Stabbity*
“Me, I’m just a good man.”
*Stabbity*
“Eh, I’m alright.”

 You elevate my antecedents from sharecroppers to landowners in the space of a single short paragraph, yet I’m to take seriously your concerns about my putative intellectual dishonesty?  

I did no such thing. You should perhaps read what I actually wrote again with an eye toward getting the point instead of making excuses.

 
You are relentlessly presentist in what I will kindly call your analysis, yet I’m to credit your derision of my own admittedly patchy knowledge of history? 

I am not “presentist”. My entire point is that the case you’re attempting to make is a very old one, that it has never been valid and that it is not valid now. That is not what ”presentist” means. 

You deliberately disregard the effect of an enormous, necessarily exploited structural underclass on the value of all labor,  

Again you demonstrate that you have entirely missed the point of what I wrote. 

yet I’m to regard as worthy of any respect your sneering denunciation of my people as entirely responsible for their own suffering?  

Entirely responsible? No, definitely not. However, they’re also not the poor, innocents that you want to make them out to be. 

Yes, they’re poorly educated. That is, to a great degree, their own choice. 

Yes, they’re exploited. That is, to a great degree the result of choices they have made. 

Sorry, but I just can’t find it within myself to take this nonsense seriously. If at any point you decide you would like to try having a conversation, instead of simply fountaining undue opprobrium hither and yon, I’ll probably still be here.  

I have to give you credit for having a lot of nerve. It takes real stones to talk about me 
“ fountaining” given the percentage of the posts in this thread that were made by you. 

What I wrote wasn’t nonsense. It simply doesn’t support your position, so you don’t want to deal with it. That’s understandable. However, it doesn’t change the fact your attempt to paint the economic woes of poor whites as the fault of “Progressives” is inaccurate and self-serving.