[extropy-chat] future is up for grabs

[Robert Lindauer]

On Aug 13, 2005, at 7:47 AM, Mike Lorrey wrote:

>>
>> That is, due to close-mindedness and the inability for progressives
>> to put aside petty differences (like "those
>> freeking commie hippies are against the war, so I couldn't possibly
>> help their cause even though they're right about that one thing.")
>>
>
> This is so odd that you say this, because the common understanding is
> that the Democratic party is highly factionalized with many special
> interests (various minorities, unions, radical left groups, peaceniks,
> greens, gays, immingrants, foreign countries, the UN, the bar
> associations, anti-gunners, etc), while the GOP generally only deals
> with three main factions: religious, business, and libertarians, with
> the lesser groups of Cubans and log-cabiners having lesser though
> significant, influence on single issues. The GOP has been so dominated
> by the religous faction in the last two decades that the others are
> only able to play ball if they buy the fundie garbage.

Now this is fascinating that you say such a thing since in fact, the 
demographic mix in the republican party is almost identical to that of 
the democratic party.  Hispanic, black, asians, gays, conservationists, 
young, old, etc.

Obviously the political mix is different, with the republican party 
attracting large corporate interests, hawks, oligarchists, fascists, 
and, of course, rich people (which don't make a significant voting 
population, interestingly...) instead of the democrat's appeal to 
peaceniks, unions and greens and communists.

What's funny, though, is that even though the "fundie garbage" is so 
offensive to so many people in the Republican party or who vote 
republican even though they don't self-describe as republican (I take 
it that's you and certainly Mr. Brooks), will put up with the most 
absurd political/religious/scientific ideology in order to retain the 
fundamentals of the republican party - e.g. American Dominance - 
sometimes even though they disagree with everything else that the party 
does.  Even anti-war activists will put up with republican-party-people 
just because they don't like unions or whatever.

This is the phenomena that I find interesting since the left's "looser 
coalition" is so easily broken by the republican party pandering to 
minorities of the minorities (say, by making a super-wealthy black 
woman with a Ph.D. a leader in the administration)

>
>> What's funny but unsurprising is the result that the right wins their
>> battles relatively consistently with negligible resistance from the
>> so-called left which is unable to put together a convincing platform
>> and that people respond to this inability to "just get along" on the
>> part of the left as wishy-washiness whereas in the hands of the
>> Republican party, the wishiest, washiest of all political machines,
>> their wobbling is regarded as sturdy toughness, mostly because of
>> good neocon-controlled press.
>
> The right wins primarily because the left just doesn't have a positive
> message for proposals that the American people are willing to buy.

No, the right wins because they cheat, everybody knows it, they're 
convicted once in the ACLU vs. State of Florida and no doubt will be 
found out again.  Most of Reagan's administration was involved in the 
drugs-for-guns illegal activities of Ollie North and those 
-hard-on-crime- Republicans

>  The
> only success the left has had in three decades has been when they
> co-opt libertarian or GOP proposals, as Clinton did quite a bit of. The
> DNC is currently lacking purpose, again, as evinced by Dean saying the
> party "needs a message" (any message, apparently).

Obviously, the democratic party today is wallowing the shit they've 
created.  The bent over backwards to help Mr. Bush with his war and 
when they were found wrong, they did nothing.  They've done nothing to 
help the unions in years, they haven't managed to deal with health care 
or poverty, or anything that would actually help their core 
constituency.  The only reason people vote for democrats anymore is 
because they are so put-off by the smug-wally-george pharisees that 
anything is better.

> The left has nothing
> positive to say, it only complains, smears, tears down, whines and lies
> over and over again.

First off, there has never been a more complaining, smearing, 
tearing-down, whiny lying group of political bastards than the 
Republican Party with their constant bullshit, their constant 
falsifications about every detail of human life, their constant 
personal attacks on their political rivals, their sniveling television 
commentators, etc.

For instance, the most interesting and substantive comment the 
President made about Kerry was:

"Sen. Kerry's been in Washington long enough to have taken both sides 
on just about every issue." - from a $2000/a seat fundraiser speech.  
Now the hypocrisy is incredible given that while he was an oil 
prospector he said to the nation on television "Of course it's 
convenient to have a president as daddy, I have unlimited access to the 
most powerful man in the world."  Given that Bush isn't the sharpest 
piece of glass on the floor, it remains notable that he was, for the 
duration of his election campaign, unable to eloquently define his 
platform except for a few fringe issues (albeit issues that should 
really upset extropians - like the stem-cell research stuff).  Whereas 
Kerry went to great lengths to take informed, written positions on the 
major issues facing our economy.


Secondly, it's true that the democrats are unable to put together a 
convincing platform because they've dug themselves a hole by all but 7 
of them voting for the Iraqi war and since Clinton's presidency not 
continuing to struggle with their core appeal - the lower and middle 
classes, e.g. the vast majority of Americans - with some of them 
joining in on the war-profiteering (like Diane Feinstein, for instance, 
who so consistently votes with republicans that the fact that she calls 
herself a democrat is a pandering sham).  That is, they're just the 
weaker arm of the same statist domination machine.  Nothing surprising. 
  In order to control a population, you have to pander to the poor 
enough to make them feel like -something- is being done. Otherwise, 
they become desperate and start actively organizing beyond the reach of 
the power of the state-run-economy and you end up with revolutionary 
movements.

>  When it does propose anything, it is always tired
> old obsolete socialist BS.

Unfortunately, no.  For instance, Kerry's proposal to create jobs by 
investing in America instead of involving ourselves in endless foreign 
wars, was far from a socialist proposal, but reflects more of a 
generalized angst that American's have about killing people spending 
billions of dollars while people here remain unemployed, homeless, 
undernourished and sometimes without access to medical care.  But you 
have to remember that Kerry's wealthy - born that way - so his rhetoric 
in this regard is unconvincing.  He can't be a class-consious socialist 
any more than Carnegie could have.  Simultaneously, his proposal to go 
to the UN and ask for their assistance in establishing peace and order 
in Iraq while pulling out our oil contractors and military as much as 
possible can't be regarded by anyone as having anything at all to do 
with socialism, just cleaning up after the mess made by our poorly 
potty-trained president and his team.

On the other hand, the truth of this is that the left comes up with -so 
many- progressive proposals from so many different camps that it's hard 
to think of it as a unified whole and so instead of single-good 
proposals rising from the din, they all get squashed by the democratic 
party machine of "centrism" -whatever that is-.

Remember, for instance, that it was lefties who came up with such good 
ideas as seat-belt laws, food inspections, low-income housing, 
cigarette taxes, emissions control, environmental impact studies.  
Notably, Nader of the Green party was personally responsible for 
pushing a lot of these through congress -as an outsider.  When Nader 
ran into the complete political baloney of the democratic party's 
"centrism" thing he went Green - and rightly so.  In fact, after 
thinking about it, I believe since the Libertarian party has nothing 
left to offer, it's time to start supporting the greens.  I'm sorry I 
was mistaken thinking that the libertarian dream of freedom was 
achievable that way since the libertarian party leadership are really 
just a bunch of statist apologists, in-the-closet tax-and-spend 
republicans.

But it takes a big person to admit when you were wrong and so I was 
wrong for being a libertarian in the first place and ever saying nice 
things about them.  Hopefully we'll be able to coopt the good things 
about the libertarian ideals for the sake of the green party.  
Otherwise, time to move on again.

Robbie Lindauer
thetip.org