Philosophical Productive Discussion

[benji]

Let's see how bad this will go, inducted by moving from the research center:

Royalan, B-dubs, Red Mercury, Soliloquy of a Dogge, Hodgy, some other posters that I can't remember but are probably landlords will swarm any political thread that doesn't involve trans people or the current administration fucking up and tell any poster that's further left than them who's upset with the Democratic party that by god, they better vote for the Democrats because you don't want Republicans to WIN do you, and everything would be fixed if they could just get the VOTES, don't you understand that, you stupid voices of the people you, fucking fall in line already. Anyone telling them that hey, boilerplate leftist policies that are relatively normal in the rest of the world are actually pretty popular with Americans and would go a long way in boosting their poll numbers are hit with how unrealistic we're being, we don't know how government works, we have to be pragmatic, etc etc. 

"We have to win elections before we can do anything, and that means appealing to moderates!". All right. If you say so. Go ahead and cook.

Then out come the shocked pikachu faces and disgust when the moderate party full of moderates that they fought so hard for adopt moderate positions like "Not punishing the police for misbehaving at all and funding 'better training' instead" or "It's not worth my time and political capital to rule on corner case trans issues right now".

The Democratic party team sports lib warriors never, ever, ever show their face in threads where lunatics are bitching about how some moderate D took a moderate position and threw them under the bus. They don't have the balls to say "you don't want Republicans to WIN, do you?" to ClickyCal or Excelsiorlef. If you're a straight guy who's furious that our healthcare sucks, yes, even and especially the ACA? Well NOW they have the stones to be in your face all of a sudden.

Meanwhile, the RE minority contingent will bitch about the Democratic party and... what, push back against them? Advocate that people withhold their votes so that Dems might run someone better suited to them? Nope, never seen it. It's basically just a thread full of "fucking cis people" and then that's it. What I call "bitching around the cracker barrel" comments. It's not just fucking useless, it's boring. 

I'm reminded of that sad thread that I don't feel like finding right now where someone was really fired up about trans issues, some law had been passed, and they actually wanted to organize something for once, and their solution was the old "everyone call your representative, all the time, every day! Let's record our efforts here!". It was pages and pages of "I called today, did my part" interspersed with "it's TELLING how barren this thread is". I don't know, maybe it's that calling your rep does not and has never worked, even accoring to the OP of the thread who admitted it might be a waste of time but he wanted to feel like he was doing something?

In a democracy, which of the following positions do you actually think gets closer to the end goal of progressive change that you want?

1. Pragmatic realpolitik and compromising where you have to in order to make tiny steps forward
   
2. Recalcitrant ideological positioning, where you would rather have nothing than water down what you want (which is coincidentally the end goal of the people who hate the very principle of the change you want to make)
   

Niether gets closer to it, it's a trick question. In a Democracy, you must have at least two opposing positions that nevertheless are participating in good faith. America has never had this, so you can never compromise to get what you want. Even if you could, the right wing destroys progressivism faster than compromise and incremental change could ever create, and this is why the Democratic party is, and always will be unless pressed by force, useless for actual positive change. If the Democratic party was capable in any way, shape or form of making the country better, they would have by now, but they have not. Republicans have largely attained all the goals they set out to achieve around the time Reagan was elected, but Democrats are still eternally on step one of... well, any issue they're supposed to be behind. Change will come from the direct and collective action of the people in various forms, not a party. But, as has been stated, this isn't a politics thread.

This is a rejection of democracy justified in reverse.

Perhaps a politik productive discussion thread is warranted, though from my experience that just leads to a cessation of the topic in general due to the intractability of illiberal and anti-democratic premises. 

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

So perhaps such a thread is doubly warranted.

Let's try to be somewhat nice to each other. In particular, please avoid accusations based on supposed motivations. This is not a moderation threat but a request as the instigator of this thread.