One of the things I love best about Obama, and one reason a lot of people don't understand him, is that he doesn't see the world in terms of Our Side is Pure Good and the other side is Pure Evil. It confused people, to the point where he could deliver the biggest expansion of health insurance in fifty years, the biggest expansion of regulating Wall Street in eighty years, and the (at the time) biggest expansion of renewable energy ever, only to leave the very people who agreed with those goals feeling like he was accomplishing nothing. To the point of both left and right running to the familiarity of polarized morality, of the idea that the more extreme you are the more principled you are. Well, if you haven't noticed how thoroughly the past ten years have disproved that hypothesis, I don't know what to tell you.
I usually do, but once in a while there'll be something I don't want to let slide. The last time I did he'd claimed Renee Good ran over the ICE guy's foot, so I was like, where are the X-rays?
For media illiterate trolls like Frank, good faith debate isn't possible. You can tell by his responses directed at me that he is so far down the malinformation rabbit hole that no light reaches him.
Well, Brucey, that does not explain the many, many people that I sit with and have a coffee, or cigar and good bourbon to discuss politics. In my large circle of people that I talk to about politics there is much disagreement. I welcome it... but only with people that are of good faith to have a discussion or debate. Not your hive of righteous know-it-alls that confirm Reagan's quip "it is not that our liberal friends are ignorant, it is that they know so much that just isn't so." You are projecting your own situation... nobody to talk to other than your own reflection and echo chamber.
So "she ran over his foot" can only be proved by X-rays showing broken bones? X-rays don't show any damage to soft tissue. I have had my foot run over by a vehicle and it did not break any bones, but it was extremely painful and took weeks to recover from. The videos are clear. She took off and the officer was at risk of being run over. If she didn't intend to run him over, she made a stupid and fatal mistake that anybody with a working brain would have first, never put themselves in that position to begin with, or at least would have been careful around officers with guns. Her girlfriend's comments "why did you have a gun". "why did you shoot her?" are indicative of the problem with the left and females... people that don't seem to understand accountability. They are mothered people... having a mindset that real man is supposed to protect them even as they impede and threaten these real men trying to do their jobs.
Brucey has nothing rational to argue back, so he retreats back into his ideological coastal liberal bubble where he can feel are warm and fuzzy in his mythical identity of an all-knowing being. He advocates ignoring the people that disagree with his world view, because he is really a weak person that cannot handle being made uncomfortable being challenged.
Liberals never write "good point, but what about this perspective."
For them and their fragile egos and tenuous self-confidence, there is no room in their psyche for accepting anything that makes them feel even a tiny bit less good about their perceived righteousness. What a dangerous place for a person to land on... closing their eyes and ears to learning from anyone other than those that just repeat what they think they already know.
A distinction without any meaning as it isn't "Our Side is Good", or "Our Side is Pure Good" it is that the "Other Side is Bad". Most of that divisive political decline to hell started with Obama. He is the Divider In Chief. He launched what is the primary Democrat campaign strategy today... to use Madison Avenue psych-ops funded by the CCP and other enemies of the nation to negative brand and character assassinate all opposition... including any within the Democrat cabal that don't stay in-line with the radical commie agenda. The Democrat don't offer any compelling ideas, just work hard to inflame the emotions of their feminized base to rage and violence to "kill" their opposition.
This is an interesting essay in that upon examination it is much more ambivalent about Obama than it presents itself upon first reading, almost Straussian in that sense. Yes, much of Obama's authoritarian philosophy was based on boundless and utterly ungrounded faith in the competence and capacity of NGOs to conjure up more utopian outcomes than the grubby democratic process, but Obama-ism was not so much a contrast to Ta-Nehisi Coates as a slippery slope down the same continuum to militant, coercive DEI. I pray to see the day when Obama's grotesque monument to his ego is razed to the ground and the land is returned to the indigenous peoples whom Valerie Jarrett so sanctimoniously acknowledged in her opening address this past Thursday.
Big problem is that non-Utopian politics lacks the ability to inspire. It always degenerates into procedural stuff that is, frankly, boring. I live in France and Utopian politics is alive and well here even if it seldom holds the reins of power. There is a role in politics, I think, for people who envision a better world.
Set 1000 people down on an isolated land to fend for themselves, and they won't spend any time seeking government jobs or starting non-profit organizations. They will focus exclusively on productive endeavors to make, build, grow, fix and distribute all of the real tangible products that are needed for human survival and thriving. Other than maybe the service of safety and security (military and law enforcement) government and non-profit entities would only develop later to provide some service to the productive system but would always derive 100% of its funding taking from the productive system.
The founding of this and every other capitalist democracy was such that people working in political, government and non-profit roles would do so in service in taking a break from their productive career. If working for a cause, the activist would give his or her time to protest and agitate for a vote and then return back to regular productive life after the vote is complete.
The development of a permanent and large public sector industry, especially that of hundreds of thousands of NGOs and paid protesting gigs, is a major, major mistake and flaw in the overall human system of democracy. There was, and should never be, any "profession" of "social sector". There certainly are roles like military, teaching and law enforcement that are legitimate public sector careers, but everything else is a looting enterprise that invites fraud and conflict of interest. It also repeats the Shirky Principle... the phenomenon where organizations inadvertently—or intentionally—perpetuate the very issues they were created to solve in order to ensure their own survival.
The founders called for small and limited government for a reason. The system cannot succeed breeding so many people drifting toward the looting side rather than the productive side. Democrats should drop this dream of enlarging and cornering the public sector. First, we are out of money. $40 trillion in debt and spending over $2 trillion more than we take in. There is no more capacity for any additional Democrat great society. Blue State Democrats are frustrated with this and are raising taxes on the people anyway, and this is already failing as taxpaying people are fleeing the states. It is a lie that people are not paying enough taxes. The reason that budgets are busted is that the looting public sector has grown WAY too large.
Democrats need to shift back to supporting the working class in the private economy if they are going to have any chance to survive. In effect, they will need to adopt most of Trump's policies and platform.
Nice try. Blaming Coates for Obama's failure to secure his own political succession or for the rise of Trump is not persuasive. Put differently, for somebody supposedly so in touch with the grand American narrative, Obama distinguished himself by being unable to make his revolution more permanent.
This is a very insightful piece, and it gives me a little hope that things are moving in the right direction. But DSA's growing strength and new political platform makes me think you may be seeing just one more ideological re-adjustment of appearances — going on since 1963.
I was driving friends to a movie when, from the back seat, came a vitriolic attack on Obama — the reactionary capitalist lackey. It was spring 2008 and he had not yet been nominated. The voice in the back was from the 1960s, as I am, and I knew what this meant.
By 1972, we radicals wrecked the Democrats. In eight years we lost 40% of the party. I thought my generation had faded or wised up, until I heard that voice. Looking online, I found they were already organizing against him. By 2012, Bernie Sanders almost could not be talked out of running against him.
Since then, I've done a lot of reading. The far-left has surreptitiously been growing stronger since Malcolm X launched his attack on that Uncle Tom, MLK, and spoke of the nine-year-old Chinese girl executing her Uncle Tom father (Nov. 10, ‘63, “Message to the Grass Roots”).
It’s not just Ta-Nehisi Coates, or BLM, or any one thing. What's been done to the Democrats is the work of a 60-plus-year-old, loosely organized but powerfully growing radical left. Until that’s understood, this country will continue to grow more polarized and less functional.
I have not. Always liked him, but read him more for labor market analysis, as I recall. Asking Gemini now, it seems I'd agree with him. I now have a less critical view of the LBL liberals. What we did not understand about them back then, was that they were justifiably traumatized by the spread of communism. The New Left wasn't pro-communist, but the one thing we accepted from the Old Left (Bernie etc) was that all the really negative stuff about Communism was just Republican or CIA propaganda. That's not meant to justify the Vietnam War, but it explains a lot about Liberals who were much less blind to that. And like you say about Gitlin, I think it's still relevant to the liberal-radical antagonism today.
Was too busy, but I did want to reply. This really resonated with me. For eight years, a radical friend dissed Obama every time we met, and often spoke highly of LBJ. Obama hits some terrorist and a few others--it's unpardonable. Napalming villages using B-52s -- no problem.
Also wanted to personally invite you to join my (free-forever) substack, as you seem to be exactly the type of person I'd like comments from and that I'm hoping will become part of a conversation on practical approaches to changing minds, once I get my book out the door. Here's my latest post:
Spot on! Excellent analysis. Now we need to seek the middleground, somewhere between hope and despair. The guiding principles should include a massive dose of common sense. I sense that most Americans are truly burned out on zero sum extremist activism irrespective of its source.
Ah, your wishes won't come true- given the toll the whole country has taken because of the current “ goodfellas” romping around everywhere yet getting butt- whipped...
Sad: such low level aspiration, such high certainty of abject failure…
I think this author articulates a way forward for the Democrats.
One of the things I love best about Obama, and one reason a lot of people don't understand him, is that he doesn't see the world in terms of Our Side is Pure Good and the other side is Pure Evil. It confused people, to the point where he could deliver the biggest expansion of health insurance in fifty years, the biggest expansion of regulating Wall Street in eighty years, and the (at the time) biggest expansion of renewable energy ever, only to leave the very people who agreed with those goals feeling like he was accomplishing nothing. To the point of both left and right running to the familiarity of polarized morality, of the idea that the more extreme you are the more principled you are. Well, if you haven't noticed how thoroughly the past ten years have disproved that hypothesis, I don't know what to tell you.
Good point. In general an activist (of whatever stripe) only thinks something has happened when they see the "other side" sobbing with humiliation.
They are totally uninterested in policy. Any "policy positions" they pretend are just signals to the "other side" designed to rile them up.
I will cling to my guns and religion while I contemplate this suggestion that Obama does not see the world as Our Side is Good.
Was that a deliberate distortion, or do you actually not understand the difference between "Our Side is Good" and "Our Side is Pure Good"?
Pay no attention to Frank Lee, He lurks around Persuasion in order to get his jollies "owning me some libs". He's a complete waste of space.
I usually do, but once in a while there'll be something I don't want to let slide. The last time I did he'd claimed Renee Good ran over the ICE guy's foot, so I was like, where are the X-rays?
For media illiterate trolls like Frank, good faith debate isn't possible. You can tell by his responses directed at me that he is so far down the malinformation rabbit hole that no light reaches him.
Well, Brucey, that does not explain the many, many people that I sit with and have a coffee, or cigar and good bourbon to discuss politics. In my large circle of people that I talk to about politics there is much disagreement. I welcome it... but only with people that are of good faith to have a discussion or debate. Not your hive of righteous know-it-alls that confirm Reagan's quip "it is not that our liberal friends are ignorant, it is that they know so much that just isn't so." You are projecting your own situation... nobody to talk to other than your own reflection and echo chamber.
So "she ran over his foot" can only be proved by X-rays showing broken bones? X-rays don't show any damage to soft tissue. I have had my foot run over by a vehicle and it did not break any bones, but it was extremely painful and took weeks to recover from. The videos are clear. She took off and the officer was at risk of being run over. If she didn't intend to run him over, she made a stupid and fatal mistake that anybody with a working brain would have first, never put themselves in that position to begin with, or at least would have been careful around officers with guns. Her girlfriend's comments "why did you have a gun". "why did you shoot her?" are indicative of the problem with the left and females... people that don't seem to understand accountability. They are mothered people... having a mindset that real man is supposed to protect them even as they impede and threaten these real men trying to do their jobs.
Brucey has nothing rational to argue back, so he retreats back into his ideological coastal liberal bubble where he can feel are warm and fuzzy in his mythical identity of an all-knowing being. He advocates ignoring the people that disagree with his world view, because he is really a weak person that cannot handle being made uncomfortable being challenged.
Liberals never write "good point, but what about this perspective."
For them and their fragile egos and tenuous self-confidence, there is no room in their psyche for accepting anything that makes them feel even a tiny bit less good about their perceived righteousness. What a dangerous place for a person to land on... closing their eyes and ears to learning from anyone other than those that just repeat what they think they already know.
A distinction without any meaning as it isn't "Our Side is Good", or "Our Side is Pure Good" it is that the "Other Side is Bad". Most of that divisive political decline to hell started with Obama. He is the Divider In Chief. He launched what is the primary Democrat campaign strategy today... to use Madison Avenue psych-ops funded by the CCP and other enemies of the nation to negative brand and character assassinate all opposition... including any within the Democrat cabal that don't stay in-line with the radical commie agenda. The Democrat don't offer any compelling ideas, just work hard to inflame the emotions of their feminized base to rage and violence to "kill" their opposition.
This is an interesting essay in that upon examination it is much more ambivalent about Obama than it presents itself upon first reading, almost Straussian in that sense. Yes, much of Obama's authoritarian philosophy was based on boundless and utterly ungrounded faith in the competence and capacity of NGOs to conjure up more utopian outcomes than the grubby democratic process, but Obama-ism was not so much a contrast to Ta-Nehisi Coates as a slippery slope down the same continuum to militant, coercive DEI. I pray to see the day when Obama's grotesque monument to his ego is razed to the ground and the land is returned to the indigenous peoples whom Valerie Jarrett so sanctimoniously acknowledged in her opening address this past Thursday.
Big problem is that non-Utopian politics lacks the ability to inspire. It always degenerates into procedural stuff that is, frankly, boring. I live in France and Utopian politics is alive and well here even if it seldom holds the reins of power. There is a role in politics, I think, for people who envision a better world.
Set 1000 people down on an isolated land to fend for themselves, and they won't spend any time seeking government jobs or starting non-profit organizations. They will focus exclusively on productive endeavors to make, build, grow, fix and distribute all of the real tangible products that are needed for human survival and thriving. Other than maybe the service of safety and security (military and law enforcement) government and non-profit entities would only develop later to provide some service to the productive system but would always derive 100% of its funding taking from the productive system.
The founding of this and every other capitalist democracy was such that people working in political, government and non-profit roles would do so in service in taking a break from their productive career. If working for a cause, the activist would give his or her time to protest and agitate for a vote and then return back to regular productive life after the vote is complete.
The development of a permanent and large public sector industry, especially that of hundreds of thousands of NGOs and paid protesting gigs, is a major, major mistake and flaw in the overall human system of democracy. There was, and should never be, any "profession" of "social sector". There certainly are roles like military, teaching and law enforcement that are legitimate public sector careers, but everything else is a looting enterprise that invites fraud and conflict of interest. It also repeats the Shirky Principle... the phenomenon where organizations inadvertently—or intentionally—perpetuate the very issues they were created to solve in order to ensure their own survival.
The founders called for small and limited government for a reason. The system cannot succeed breeding so many people drifting toward the looting side rather than the productive side. Democrats should drop this dream of enlarging and cornering the public sector. First, we are out of money. $40 trillion in debt and spending over $2 trillion more than we take in. There is no more capacity for any additional Democrat great society. Blue State Democrats are frustrated with this and are raising taxes on the people anyway, and this is already failing as taxpaying people are fleeing the states. It is a lie that people are not paying enough taxes. The reason that budgets are busted is that the looting public sector has grown WAY too large.
Democrats need to shift back to supporting the working class in the private economy if they are going to have any chance to survive. In effect, they will need to adopt most of Trump's policies and platform.
Nice try. Blaming Coates for Obama's failure to secure his own political succession or for the rise of Trump is not persuasive. Put differently, for somebody supposedly so in touch with the grand American narrative, Obama distinguished himself by being unable to make his revolution more permanent.
This is a very insightful piece, and it gives me a little hope that things are moving in the right direction. But DSA's growing strength and new political platform makes me think you may be seeing just one more ideological re-adjustment of appearances — going on since 1963.
I was driving friends to a movie when, from the back seat, came a vitriolic attack on Obama — the reactionary capitalist lackey. It was spring 2008 and he had not yet been nominated. The voice in the back was from the 1960s, as I am, and I knew what this meant.
By 1972, we radicals wrecked the Democrats. In eight years we lost 40% of the party. I thought my generation had faded or wised up, until I heard that voice. Looking online, I found they were already organizing against him. By 2012, Bernie Sanders almost could not be talked out of running against him.
Since then, I've done a lot of reading. The far-left has surreptitiously been growing stronger since Malcolm X launched his attack on that Uncle Tom, MLK, and spoke of the nine-year-old Chinese girl executing her Uncle Tom father (Nov. 10, ‘63, “Message to the Grass Roots”).
It’s not just Ta-Nehisi Coates, or BLM, or any one thing. What's been done to the Democrats is the work of a 60-plus-year-old, loosely organized but powerfully growing radical left. Until that’s understood, this country will continue to grow more polarized and less functional.
Have you read Gitlin's The Sixties? What he says about the dynamic between liberals and radicals is still relevant.
I have not. Always liked him, but read him more for labor market analysis, as I recall. Asking Gemini now, it seems I'd agree with him. I now have a less critical view of the LBL liberals. What we did not understand about them back then, was that they were justifiably traumatized by the spread of communism. The New Left wasn't pro-communist, but the one thing we accepted from the Old Left (Bernie etc) was that all the really negative stuff about Communism was just Republican or CIA propaganda. That's not meant to justify the Vietnam War, but it explains a lot about Liberals who were much less blind to that. And like you say about Gitlin, I think it's still relevant to the liberal-radical antagonism today.
Very what's-wrong-with-this-picture to watch Obama attacked from the left for not being more like LBJ!
Was too busy, but I did want to reply. This really resonated with me. For eight years, a radical friend dissed Obama every time we met, and often spoke highly of LBJ. Obama hits some terrorist and a few others--it's unpardonable. Napalming villages using B-52s -- no problem.
Also wanted to personally invite you to join my (free-forever) substack, as you seem to be exactly the type of person I'd like comments from and that I'm hoping will become part of a conversation on practical approaches to changing minds, once I get my book out the door. Here's my latest post:
https://daretoknow.stoft.com/p/hitler-thank-performative-radicals
Subscribed!
I'm currently working on a piece to launch my own Substack. It's called "Barack Obama Won't Save Us--But What We Can Learn From Him Just Might."
Thanks for joining! Let me know when you launch that. Sounds very simpatico.
Spot on! Excellent analysis. Now we need to seek the middleground, somewhere between hope and despair. The guiding principles should include a massive dose of common sense. I sense that most Americans are truly burned out on zero sum extremist activism irrespective of its source.
Absolutely wonderful, just beautiful. Thank you.
Let's hope that is the case!
Ah, your wishes won't come true- given the toll the whole country has taken because of the current “ goodfellas” romping around everywhere yet getting butt- whipped...
Sad: such low level aspiration, such high certainty of abject failure…