I don't like the words "dismal" "radical" "rancid" used against the left. I am a proud liberal.

[madfloridian]

I have been aware for over a decade now that liberal had become a dirty word, even among the more conservative Democrats.

I have been taking that word back for several years now. I think there is room for liberals in the party, and I think the party should cherish us. Most of us who call ourselves that stand for the traditional values of the Democratic party...strong unions, a proud public school system, reproductive rights for women, the right for people to marry the one they love, separation of church and government, the belief that all are equal and deserve equal rights. There are many other issues that may change through the years, but those should be the basis of our Democratic beliefs.

I find it hard to take when others celebrate an article like that which appeared in The Guardian in 2012.

A letter to my dismal allies on the US left

Please, radical leftists, spare us the bitterness and negativity; we need hope and incremental victories and you provide neither.

That is not a true statement. I don't understand completely the author's premise. I do know calling the left, liberals names does not help anything.

Just a few quotes:

O rancid sector of the far left, please stop your grousing! Compared to you, Eeyore sounds like a Teletubby. If I gave you a pony, you would not only be furious that not everyone has a pony, but you would pick on the pony for not being radical enough until it wept big, sad, hot pony tears. Because what we're talking about here is not an analysis, a strategy, or a cosmology, but an attitude, and one that is poisoning us. Not just me, but you, us, and our possibilities.

If I had to interpret that it would be "don't make waves".

Believe me, a lot of us already know most of the dimples on the imperial derriere by now, and there are other things worth discussing. Often, it's not the emperor that's the important news anyway, but the peasants in their revolts and even their triumphs, while this mindset I'm trying to describe remains locked on the emperor, in fury and maybe in self-affirmation.

Uh, sometimes the emperor must be called out.

When you're a hammer everything looks like a nail, but that's not a good reason to continue to pound down anything in the vicinity. Consider what needs to be raised up as well. Consider our powers, our victories, our possibilities; ask yourself just what you're contributing, what kind of story you're telling, and what kind you want to be telling.

Sometimes there's a real need for that hammer.

This marginalization of liberals has gone on for years.

In his "Saving the Democratic Party" memo of January 1985, From advocated the formation of a "governing council" that would draft a "blueprint" for reforming the party. According to From, the new leadership should aim to create distance from "the new bosses"-organized labor, feminists, and other progressive constituency groups-that were keeping the party from modernizing. From's memo sparked the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council in early 1985. According to Balz and Brownstein, "Within a few weeks, it counted 75 members, primarily governors and members of Congress, most of them from the Sunbelt, and almost all of them white; liberal critics instantly dubbed the group 'the white male caucus.'"

One of the main phrases to keep us in our place is that we want to be right all the time, that we expect purity. One major way is to compare us to the Tea Party.

From TPM:

Blanche Lincoln calls out the Democratic Left

In a new interview with The Hill, Sen. Blanche Lincoln -- facing a tough Democratic primary challenge funded by national progressives on Tuesday -- called out her opponents on the Democratic left wing. Lincoln said she is facing criticism from a political movement that she suggested is divorced from the political reality.

"Just like the far right, I think the far left also believes that you've got to be with them 100 percent of the time or you don't meet the test," Lincoln told the paper. "I don't think there's anybody that you're going to be with 100 percent of the time -- not and be true to your constituency. My first commitment here is to Arkansas."

And a discouragement to "activists" and activism.

From 2003

The Real Soul of the Party

Hint: It is not activists.

Not only is the activist wing out of line with Democratic tradition, but it is badly out of touch with the Democratic rank-and-file.

"But the great myth of the current cycle is the misguided notion that the hopes and dreams of activists represent the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. Real Democrats are real people, not activist elites. The mission of the Democratic Party, as Bill Clinton pledged in 1992, is to provide "real answers to the real problems of real people."Real Democrats who champion the mainstream values, national pride, and economic aspirations of middle-class and working people are the real soul of the Democratic Party, not activists and interest groups with narrow agendas."

One last paragraph from Solnit:

There are really only two questions for activists: what do you want to achieve? And who do you want to be? And those two questions are deeply entwined. Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style.

I agree with that, and for sure it works everyone....not just liberals.

[TDale313]

1. Thank you!

[hifiguy]

2. 100% agreed.

This kind of deliberate and intentional shit-stirring is really making DU suck.

[madfloridian]

5. Yes, it is. It worries me.

[Rex]

32. Not me, it is so obvious even the dullest person could notice.

Their cleverness went dull a long time ago and now they just play circle jerk. Ignore them and laugh. We will still vote and make a difference, they cannot stop us or depress us with the Lefty Fringe garbage...we get the EXACT same crap from Foxnews!

[merrily]

40. Agree that laughing is often best.

[Rex]

30. Notice the shit HAD to be stirred, because they made a GD-P forum?

Wasn't anytime then right back to Bash Lefty. People were in here agreeing and having good conversation. Can't have that. I swear their crap is so old and boring. It is hard to believe any of them think they are really any clever anymore. All that Fringe Lefty bloggers crap is all there is for a little world of nobodies.

As if anyone would listen to someone else whine about whiners...well ONE group here will. Sad that anyone would waste such time, but they do.

[Jamastiene]

53. It was so nice on DU that last few days.

We were really having something like a honeymoon on DU since the recent positive rulings by SCOTUS. We were sharing pictures of various places lit up with a rainbow of colors. We were breathing a sigh of relief for a long standing denial of equal rights finally being rectified.

Also, we were agreeing that the recent hate crimes need to be addressed. We were sharing how happy we were to see hate symbols in some cases removed from government buildings and in other cases, at least on the table to be removed.

All of a sudden, someone decided to drag up old left bashing negativity and ruin it. Honeymoon is over, I guess. I had hoped it would last longer and that everyone could move forward. I see that hope has been dashed.

[Rex]

56. Me too, I was really liking this more polite and happy DU3.

THIS is why we cannot have nice things like META. Someone will always be around to make it suck for everyone else.

[enigmatic]

91. I'll say it again

It's just a game for a chunk of people here. It really doesn't have anything to do w/ politics in a way, it's about dividing and starting fights and pot-stirring. Their interest isn't politics or the Democratic Party or affecting change as it is just another way to bully and get people fighting. I've seen the same behavior many times on many, many different boards, political and non-political, innocuous and benign.

When the same people go out of their way to sabotage debate and healthy conversation on any board it's easy to see.

[Prism]

105. +1

Obvious trolls are obvious. If there's a massive board war, and the same cadre of people are smack dab in the center of it for years, it doesn't take Scooby Doo to figure something hinky is going on.

Or maybe it's maladjustment.

Maybe some people just need hugs.

[demmiblue]

61. +1

[Bjorn Against]

3. That editorial sounded like it was written by Bill O'Reilly

[whatchamacallit]

4. The author is a smug shit-stirrer, stomping her feet for a Loyalty Pony n/t

[djean111]

6. Digging up that rancid article now is making me think that someone is having trouble selling

themselves as a liberal - so now, make "liberal" a bad word.

[madfloridian]

9. I am going to fight back every time they make it a bad word.

Been doing it for years...and will continue to do so.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

7. I don't much mind 'radical', other than it usually is used incorrectly.

Take a position that polls show 75% of Americans agree with, and some bozo out there will talk about how 'radical' it is. And far too often that bozo calls themselves a 'Democrat' while supporting policies better left to the Republicans.

[madfloridian]

8. Yes, our views are mainstream. Ugly words need to stop.

[KG]

10. is this the left the centrists don't need to win elections?

or the left they blame for not getting out to vote for centrists?

or the left that's no different from the right?

oy.

[madfloridian]

11. Must be that left.

I would rather feel a part of the party myself...not be called names.

[Doctor_J]

14. The left they don't want to serve, but want to blame when they LOSE elections

The problem with them is, from my point of view, they want to have a republican congress, to provide cover for their right wing agenda.

[Snotcicles]

17. That left has a name remember? "The Professional Left". I have been waiting for it's comeback. nt

[Maedhros]

102. Democratic Party leadership does not want liberals or progressives to gain ground.

There is a reason we are subjected to an endless stream of right-leaning Democratic candidates for which we have to vote lest "the Republicans win!"

[madfloridian]

12. I was hoping the party would embrace its liberals finally. Guess not.

I would like to feel a part of the party instead of an outsider.

[madfloridian]

13. Easy to tell where majority stands on liberals in the party.

Claire McCaskill's interview gave a clue, Luis Gutiérrez' words gave another. The reception in the posts gives another view. Liberals are asked to have "generosity and kindness and style."

But what about the others? Shouldn't they as well.

[HooptieWagon]

15. Rahm's comment was a clue where we stood.

[Art_from_Ark]

16. So were Obama's comments about being an "'80s Republican"

[LWolf]

69. I picked that up in the '08 primaries,

which is one of the major reasons I never extended any political trust in his direction.

[Art_from_Ark]

123. He also had a favorable appraisal of Reagan

and talked nebulously about the "excesses of the '60s and '70s", which were two of the most liberal decades of the 20th century.

[merrily]

41. More than one comment from Rahm and more than one commenter from that White House.

[truebrit71]

71. Yup.

Which is why I am backing Bernie 100%

Sick and tired of the Corporate-owned Democratic Intelligentsia telling me that "the left" is rocking the boat and that we need to "be more realistic'.....Fuck that noise. And fuck them too.

[CharlotteVale]

18. I'm also a proud liberal. I don't see what the point of

Being a Democrat is if one is not liberal.

[Blue_In_AK]

19. This is excellent.

Thanks, MadFlo.

[madfloridian]

22. Appreciate that, Blue...how are the fires around there now?

Thought about them a lot and the dangers.

[Blue_In_AK]

23. The fires are still bad,

but there has been some rain the past few days that's temporarily helped. It's supposed to heat up again toward the end of the week, so we're certainly not out of the woods. Here's the latest from the Division of Forestry's Facebook page :

This satellite image shows the wildfire situation east of Fairbanks on June 29, 2004. That year is generally considered to be the worst Alaska fire season on record. During June 2004 alone, a total of 216 fires and 1,153,257.9 acres burned. By the end of 2004, Alaska’s total acres-burned reached 6,590,140 acres. It was a tough year.

June 2015 isn’t quite over, but our totals with one day left in the month are sobering: 399 fires have burned some 1,600,000 acres.

The wildfire situation this summer has mainly been triggered by repeated lightning storms tracking across an abnormally dry state. (The lightning has been astonishing; on June 21-23, some 50,000 lightning strikes were recorded in Alaska.) In fact, a comparison of fire records shows that June 2015 has had dramatically more lightning than June 2004.

While this month has surpassed June 2004 in several metrics, firefighters are working hard to contain fires that are threatening towns, villages and other improvements.

[madfloridian]

31. Has your home been threatened? That would scare me so much.

[Blue_In_AK]

35. No, I live about five minutes from downtown Anchorage,

and we haven't had any fires in our immediate area. The Willow Sockeye fire, which destroyed several homes, was about 90 miles north of here and the Sterling Card Steeet fire about 90 miles south, so both affected our air quality for several days, but they are pretty well under control now.

The fire activity now is closer to Fairbanks and also Western Alaska, where several Native villages have been threatened.

[madfloridian]

48. I did see your other post with the mapping of the fires.

Such scary stuff. I did not realize it was so bad. Keep us posted. Glad you are okay, but sad for those who are not.

[Prism]

20. It was posted to start a fight

Guess Instagram was slow today or something.

[madfloridian]

21. Well, I'm mad enough to give them one. It's my party, too. Been a Dem all my life.

[me b zola]

24. That filthy post should have been taken down

[geek tragedy]

25. What is your reaction to "social issues mean fuck all"

just out of curiosity?

[madfloridian]

28. I did a search of the 2012 post and did not see those words.

Could you give me a clue? Sounds like I would much disagree, though.

[geek tragedy]

29. The LBN thread about the executive order on overtime

is getting trolled hard by people purporting to represent the activist left.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141131526

You see, to some "populists" 5 million middle class, working Americans getting an overdue raise is cause for outrage.

Because if there's anything populists don't like, it's working people getting a raise.

So, there is definitely that undesireable element here. You obviously are not amongst them, just to be clear.

[madfloridian]

33. I had not seen that thread.

Actually there are not that many on either side here who act like that. Just a few, but most of us are NOT deserving of the broad labels applied. It hurts the party.

[geek tragedy]

34. The problem is that one asshole can draw more attention

than 100 good folks such as yourself. When there's disagreement this especially becomes the case.

Works both ways--Hillary can have 100 progressives endorse her, but the nanosecond Loathsome Lanny Davis appears . . . or people see the words "Penn" and "Mark" close together.

[bvar22]

92. "The Left" does not like Working People getting a raise?

From which layer of deception did you create that rule.

I've been a mainsream-Center FDR Democrat, what you and your friends like to call a "Radical, Fringe Leftist", and I have NEVER resented a Working Man getting a raise.

You must have the "Fringe Left" mixed up with the Centrist Democrats or Republicans.

[daredtowork]

26. Beautiful summary. nt

[Rex]

27. LOL! It is drivel, never forget it is to bring you down so you won't go vote!

The assholes that have never worked an honest day in their life sit around and complain about real activists. They are sad little people.

[KoKo]

81. Solnit even "channels" Don Rumsfeld in her ridiculous Screed..

So here I want to lay out an insanely obvious principle that apparently needs clarification. There are bad things and they are bad. There are good things and they are good, even though the bad things are bad. The mentioning of something good does not require the automatic assertion of a bad thing. The good thing might be an interesting avenue to pursue in itself if you want to get anywhere. In that context, the bad thing has all the safety of a dead end. And yes, much in the realm of electoral politics is hideous, but since it also shapes quite a bit of the world, if you want to be political or even informed you have to pay attention to it and maybe even work with it.

[lovemydog]

36. Wait. What?

Noone else in this thread takes to heart the main point of the article:

'There are really only two questions for activists: what do you want to achieve? And who do you want to be? And those two questions are deeply entwined. Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style.'

It's not about 'feeling good' or 'feeling righteous.' It's not about getting offended by some tough talking about we can all step up our game. To affect real substantive change.

No one else sees a little bit of themselves in the rest of the article? I see part of myself in that article. I think we should constantly be looking for ways to improve so that real change can exist.

As SoKrates or PlayDo once said: the unexamined life is not worth living. I think it's good to have reality checks every now and then. To really examine, what are we doing that actually helps change things and what are we doing that doesn't change anything.

I'm a democratic socialist. Left of liberal on most every issue. I'm always kind of surprised at how little introspection many folks posting here seem to bring to the conversation.

[madfloridian]

37. Read this first paragraph...then get back to me about how much we can learn from it.

O rancid sector of the far left, please stop your grousing! Compared to you, Eeyore sounds like a Teletubby. If I gave you a pony, you would not only be furious that not everyone has a pony, but you would pick on the pony for not being radical enough until it wept big, sad, hot pony tears. Because what we're talking about here is not an analysis, a strategy, or a cosmology, but an attitude, and one that is poisoning us. Not just me, but you, us, and our possibilities.

You said:

'There are really only two questions for activists: what do you want to achieve? And who do you want to be? And those two questions are deeply entwined. Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style.'

It's not about 'feeling good' or 'feeling righteous.' It's not about getting offended by some tough talking about we can all step up our game. To affect real substantive change.

We are trying to achieve a country which cares more about the majority than the 1%.

I have never been anything but kind to those around me, my family, my friends. Why the lecture toward people you don't even know.

Just who do you think is feeling "good" and "feeling righteous".

I guarantee you if they read that post they feel pretty damn bad for being a liberal.

[lovemydog]

38. Thanks for your reply.

I've never felt bad about being a liberal. For me, that article is mainly about how to be a better one. A positive one both online and offline. To me it's about not lecturing all the time and not insulting or hectoring allies over one or two issues. Like, room for improvement. I guess we'll agree to disagree on that.

I know that you care very deeply about education and you have posted fantastic articles about it here. I appreciate you very much for that my friend.

[progressoid]

57. Do you see the irony there?

The author is lecturing us about how to not lecture.

[madfloridian]

89. And..

using rude words while lecturing us not to lecture.

[GeorgeGist]

94. and being rude while lecturing liberals to ...

'do it with generosity and kindness and style.'

[madfloridian]

96. Another call not to stray far from message...bipartisanship.

We need opposition parties. It keeps a country healthy.

[madfloridian]

42. She calls on us to have "generosity and kindness and style". But look at this paragraph she wrote.

O rancid sector of the far left, please stop your grousing! Compared to you, Eeyore sounds like a Teletubby. If I gave you a pony, you would not only be furious that not everyone has a pony, but you would pick on the pony for not being radical enough until it wept big, sad, hot pony tears. Because what we're talking about here is not an analysis, a strategy, or a cosmology, but an attitude, and one that is poisoning us. Not just me, but you, us, and our possibilities.

That is not kind, has a sarcastic style, and the only generous thing is that she might give us a "pony".

[merrily]

43. madfloridian, I am sorry you are upset. It's just not worth it.

[madfloridian]

44. There are times to be upset.

There are times to let things pass. I don't mind being upset over something like this. It's deplorable.

[merrily]

45. Ok .I can't tell you how to feel, so I will just say

[Ichingcarpenter]

46. Kick & Rec n/t

[raouldukelives]

47. Well, the article was calling out the far left.

Of which I know a few, and while I disagree with the verbiage, and the authors inability to focus long enough to deliver a cognizant thought, some of those folks are..Hard to please.

I mean, I know our money is made out trees, but how am I supposed to try to fix that? I just think it is a losing issue right now.

No, we don't live in a Karl Marx daydream, and as much as some might want to, I don't think we have a realistic shot at making us into one, not to mention making us into one before climate change overtakes us.

Yes, every form of fossil fuel should stopped being used ASAP. But transitioning that quickly just isn't feasible and no reason not to continue to push for change or try to elect representatives who care.

Yes, standing armies are against our Founding Fathers wishes but I don't think disbanding the military is a winning issue right now.

As the article itself states, "every minute of every hour you are making the world". Heavy stuff and the only real, incremental change we can truly control.

Do your minutes strengthen the rights of the oppressed? Do you hours serve those who wish to make things better or do they serve those who wish things to remain the same?

Does the fruit of your labors serve those who treat the left with dignity, kindness and style or does it serve those who could care less what some of us think and are making things worse for all life.

Dylan Roof wasn't an accident. He was fed a diet of hate. Provided by right wing websites and politicians funded by some of the largest firms and faces in Wall St. All courtesy of people who don't care who they work for or who that work benefits, as long as it benefits themselves.

[treestar]

49. I think that author was referring to the people

who spend plenty of time exaggerating and calling the rest of us stuff like Third Way. Now I see they can dish it out, but can't take it. And the demand to be courted is weird. It shows she was right about the narcissism. Why don't they court us, so we'd agree? Why do they think they are better than we are? And how will other voters respond? They won't respond to all that negativity and complaining. It's whining that they don't already agree rather than trying to convince them. That has never worked to persuade anyone.

[Romulox]

50. This is Red Meat for the rightwingers our Party wants to pander to... nt

[HFRN]

51. those are all terms for 'non-corportist Democrat' nt

[madfloridian]

52. Bottom line of that 2012 post as I see it?

Why it was posted and so supported here 3 years later?

Because it is felt by many that it is best we activists not forget that our place in the scheme of things is to speak softly, not offend, be unobtrusive in our behavior and words.

I have read Solnit's works, so this really caught me off guard.

The fact that so many welcome her words is another surprise.

The main defense seems to be that she is not speaking of everyone on the left, just the ones think issues might be important. Now that bunch can be annoying, she says.

These words:

O rancid sector of the far left, please stop your grousing! Compared to you, Eeyore sounds like a Teletubby. If I gave you a pony, you would not only be furious that not everyone has a pony, but you would pick on the pony for not being radical enough until it wept big, sad, hot pony tears. Because what we're talking about here is not an analysis, a strategy, or a cosmology, but an attitude, and one that is poisoning us. Not just me, but you, us, and our possibilities.

I have in the past seen threads about ponies locked because of the ugliness.

Believe me, a lot of us already know most of the dimples on the imperial derriere by now, and there are other things worth discussing. Often, it's not the emperor that's the important news anyway, but the peasants in their revolts and even their triumphs, while this mindset I'm trying to describe remains locked on the emperor, in fury and maybe in self-affirmation.

Peasants revolting are the problem?

When you're a hammer everything looks like a nail, but that's not a good reason to continue to pound down anything in the vicinity. Consider what needs to be raised up as well. Consider our powers, our victories, our possibilities; ask yourself just what you're contributing, what kind of story you're telling, and what kind you want to be telling.

I want my story to show that I stood up for public education, that I stood up for issues I believed in, that I never found it necessary to put someone else down so that I could feel important.

[Agnosticsherbet]

54. Reagan ruduced the word, liberal, to profantiy, more than thrity years ago.

In those distant days, many liberals surrendered and stated calling themselves progressives.

I remained a liberal while it was considered ""dismal" "radical" "rancid.""

I revel in their scorn.

[madfloridian]

55. So did our party policy leaders from the late 80s on.

[Jamastiene]

58. I guess the honeymoon is over.

It was nice for a couple of days there. Even some of us who are at each other's throats normally were getting long. A few got jealous and decided to ruin the honeymoon by dragging up old left bashing bullshit. That was highly unnecessary.

Many of us were getting along and coming together because of the recent SCOTUS victory. That was a victory that came about because the "radical" LGBT community would not STFU when the Third Wayers told us to.

Whether we are usually considered the mouthy assed "left" who won't STFU about gay rights and civil rights, or whether we are usually considered BOGger fan club types, or whatever other divisive bullshit used to constantly divide the Democratic Party into smaller factions that seem to hate each other, we were getting along nicely in celebration.

It was almost like we were united. It was nice while it lasted. It sure didn't last long, though, before somebody went digging up old ugliness and pooped in the punch bowl.

[madfloridian]

63. Yes, there was actually joy here over the happiness of one community and much sadness..

over the losses in another.

It almost felt united.

[Prism]

83. The Parlor Advocates are afoot

"That was a victory that came about because the "radical" LGBT community would not STFU when the Third Wayers told us to. "

Yup yup yup.

It's amazing, this thought that LGBT victories fell out of a clear, blue politely centrist Democratic sky, when the fact of the matter is it took decades of radicals pushing and pushing and pushing and refusing to be polite and shutting the eff up.

But then, the same people pushing this line now are the exact same ones who were way up our ass in 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2009-.

And then claimed credit and victory for the fruits of our labors.

People are never disappointing. I called this almost exactly six years ago:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8494260

[madfloridian]

90. Yes, I would say you called it just right.

Thanks for the link to that post.

"That was a victory that came about because the "radical" LGBT community would not STFU when the Third Wayers told us to. "

[enigmatic]

93. Exactly

I remember those days and what posters were saying those things. And most are still here.

[kath]

97. Oh, yes. Weren't there plenty of people here that said that gays/lesbians should be happy with civil

Unions, that they were rocking the boat way too much by campaigning for marriage equality so should sit down and STFU?

(My memory is not the greatest these days, but I seem to remember a lot of that shit going on)

[BrotherIvan]

114. Oh hell yes

And now we are treated to rainbow avatars and tweets from the candidate who opposed equal right is 20 fucking 13. It's so special it makes my teeth hurt.

[hifiguy]

106. That is what some people here do.

They live for the opportunities to poop in the punch bowl.

[stevenleser]

59. So you have never complained about a Democrat? Will a search of your posts back that up? nt

[madfloridian]

62. Steven dear, please search my posts. You will not find anything this ugly and rude.

But I know you will feel better if you do it.

[kath]

98. Good thing you called him "dear" and not "hon"

Or you might have got a hide.

Some major suckage on DU these days.

[madfloridian]

103. I had heard that.

But not until after I put dear. Oh, well.

[Hissyspit]

109. Isn't the issue here the content of the Guardian piece?

That it stinks?

[BainsBane]

60. You continue to conflate liberal with leftist

They are not the same. The author knows the distinction, as her use of the terms in the article revealed.

In response to a question in a different thread, I posted this reply about the differences: http://election.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6807293

Her critique was directed at a certain "sector of the far left." Not liberals at all, not the left generally, and not the far left generally.

Do you not see a contradiction in one's insisting the Democratic party and Democratic politicians, as well as other Democrats, be subject to continual critique but refusing to brook any criticism that might apply to themselves?

[madfloridian]

76. What's wrong with either of them?

[BainsBane]

84. Nothing, not as a whole, but nor does it make them superior

to the rest of the liberals and the left they like to criticize. None of us are infallible or superior to others. I understand that point doesn't sit well here, but I happen to believe it.

[madfloridian]

113. "the rest of the liberals and the left they like to criticize."

I sure don't feel superior here. If I ever start thinking I'm important, I come to DU and learn differently right away.

I have trouble with your categories of liberal and left.

[Romulox]

77. Nothing at your links lends support for a Hillary candidacy. None of it. nt

[BainsBane]

85. Yeah, probably because that wasn't my pont

Not in this post or my OP. Believe it or not, a contest among political elites is not the only thing to talk about.

[Romulox]

86. Of course it's your point. It's the point of the linked thread. nt

[Igel]

108. That's the crux of it.

Left of center = liberal, progressive, socialist, far left. With no distinction, no difference. It's a way of being in the majority when you're fringe.

Then there are false oppositions.

"Often, it's not the emperor" is offensive. Because the counter claim is that "sometimes it is the emperor."

Then again, the author, by saying "often" entails "sometimes." Some people don't know the word "entail": "involve (something) as a necessary or inevitable part or consequence."

It's an iterated whole/part fallacy.

[sabrina 1]

64. When someone uses the words 'The Left', you know they are not of the Left. What a bs 'article'

What THE LEFT KNOWS is that it is the Third Way, which I am willing to bet that author is a part of, that is the problem with the Dem Party.

You do not use those two words unless you are from the 'right' or a 'moderate, Reagan Republican. They out themselves when they do this, every time.

[madfloridian]

66. Well, guess what.

Now someone is going to look up my old posts here to see if I ever attacked Democrats.

It should be very interesting, since history about the views of the left, the liberals, of the party....that history is repeating itself right now.

I've been saying for years that "the left" should be welcome in the party, not dismissed and ridiculed.

It was nice around here a few days when we all celebrated things together.

[truebrit71]

72. Every single time...

....

[hifiguy]

107. That usage should ring every bell and whistle

all by itself. It's coded bullshit used by conservatives, Repukes, corporatists and Turd Way sellouts.

And everyone here knows it.

[madfloridian]

116. They would be speaking in third person.

Which means they are not considering themselves at one with us.

[LWolf]

65. I don't either.

It's telling that so many even on DU find it appropriate, some even applauding it.

It seems like too many have been working for too long to disenfranchise, to marginalize, the left by whatever name we are called. I hope we are coming out with enough voices and boots to take some ground back.

[madfloridian]

80. Applauding the ugly words....that's what bothers me so much.

I would just have ignored it I think until I saw so many approving. It got to me.

[LWolf]

88. It's like

the veneer has been stripped, revealing the ugly cancer of neo-liberalism that's been growing underneath.

[G_j]

67. K&R!

[Octafish]

68. More than a couple asshats like to denigrate FDR, JFK and RFK on DU.

For some reason, it makes cents to do so.

Thank you for standing up, madfloridian. I, too, am proud to be Liberal and a liberal Democrat.

[madfloridian]

70. Well, I'm gonna pay for taking this stand. Payback's on the way.

Someone is going to look up my old posts to see if I ever attacked anyone with such ugly words. Should get really interesting here as they start posting...cause it is deja vu 2004 all over again with the left being lectured and dismissed.

[Octafish]

118. Like Little Hoovers

Double checking, cross-indexing, collating, like good little G-men. Making detailed lists of your posts, friends, and sources for proof of conduct.

It not only helps install a new kind of Wall Street and War Friendly Think as the new Democratic paradigm, it helps link Who's Who for the Big Round Up.

The Last Gasp of American Democracy

By Chris Hedges
TruthDig.org, Posted on Jan 5, 2014

EXCERPT...

The most radical evil, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is the political system that effectively crushes its marginalized and harassed opponents and, through fear and the obliteration of privacy, incapacitates everyone else. Our system of mass surveillance is the machine by which this radical evil will be activated. If we do not immediately dismantle the security and surveillance apparatus, there will be no investigative journalism or judicial oversight to address abuse of power. There will be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black mold until even the banal and ridiculous become concerns of national security.

I saw evil of this kind as a reporter in the Stasi state of East Germany. I was followed by men, invariably with crew cuts and wearing leather jackets, whom I presumed to be agents of the Stasi—the Ministry for State Security, which the ruling Communist Party described as the “shield and sword” of the nation. People I interviewed were visited by Stasi agents soon after I left their homes. My phone was bugged. Some of those I worked with were pressured to become informants. Fear hung like icicles over every conversation.

The Stasi did not set up massive death camps and gulags. It did not have to. The Stasi, with a network of as many as 2 million informants in a country of 17 million, was everywhere. There were 102,000 secret police officers employed full time to monitor the population—one for every 166 East Germans. The Nazis broke bones; the Stasi broke souls. The East German government pioneered the psychological deconstruction that torturers and interrogators in America’s black sites, and within our prison system, have honed to a gruesome perfection.

[font color="green"]The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant. [/font green]

The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which government killing and torture are used against only a handful of unmanageable renegades. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by systematically crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. It ceaselessly peddles fear to keep a population traumatized and immobilized. It turns the courts, along with legislative bodies, into mechanisms to legalize the crimes of state.

CONTINUED...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105

Sooner we become used to the ideals of New Democrats, like "money trumps peace" and "Some are above the law," the better off we'll be, madfloridianita.

[sabrina 1]

74. I guess they think we don't notice. But I like to know who we are associated with. It makes it easie

to identify the actual problems that need to be addressed. And this is definitely one of them, a big one!

[Octafish]

119. It's as if an alternate reality is being substituted, bit by bit.

Very Rovian.

Bush/Cheney Still Lie with Abandon

What makes George W. Bush and Dick Cheney such extraordinary threats to the future of American democracy is their readiness to tell half-truths and outright lies consistently without any apparent fear of accountability.

by Robert Parry
Consortiumnews.com

While other politicians might spin some facts in a policy debate or a tell a fib about a personal indiscretion, President Bush and Vice President Cheney act as if they have the power and the right to manufacture reality itself, often on matters of grave significance that bear on war and peace or the future of the nation.

Even in the face of growing public skepticism, Bush and Cheney continue to invent new lies and retell old ones, seemingly with the goal of at least keeping their gullible right-wing “base” behind the faux reality depicted on Fox News, the Rush Limbaugh radio show and other right-wing media outlets.

So, on April 5, Cheney showed no hesitancy in telling Limbaugh’s listeners both an old canard about how Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was in league with al-Qaeda terrorists and a new one about how a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq would “play right into the hands of al-Qaeda.”

Cheney surely knows that U.S. intelligence analysts have reached the opposite conclusions on both points – that there was no operational relationship between Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda; that terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was based in a section of northern Iraq outside Hussein’s control; and that the U.S. occupation of Iraq has been a boon to al-Qaeda that the terrorist group wants to extend, not end.

As one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants, known as “Atiyah,” wrote two years ago, “prolonging the war is in our interest.” The letter, dated Dec. 11, 2005, and obtained by U.S. intelligence after Zarqawi’s death in June 2006, urged that Zarqawi’s jihadists in Iraq show patience and restraint in deepening their ties to Iraqi Sunni insurgents.

CONTINUED...

https://consortiumnews.com/2007/040607.html

We live in gangster times and the crooks control the Police State, otherwise the warmongers would be in jail with the banksters.

[YoungDemCA]

101. More than a couple asshats use past Democratic Presidents to denigrate current and potential ones

Because the historical context and circumstances are always identical, of course.

[Octafish]

121. I was writing about how those three held Democratic principals.

For some reason many people have a problem with the democratic ideals that peace and prosperity for all, as well as justice, equality, and democracy, are our birthrights as citizens of the United States. FDR, JFK, and RFK gave their all to make it so. They, unlike so many of today's politicians, had integrity.

[SoapBox]

73. I'll simply say...

Bravo for your post.

What bugs me are the labels...and I feel that they are just used as weapons. How we ever got to the point where wanting fairness and common sense (see your list) became a bad thing and of course labeled as such, is beyond me. And now the creeps, crooks, cheaters, liars, thieves, Banksters, Holy & Pious Pulpit Pounders, Pukes and Baggers have using the labels down to a science to manipulate the now mindless FuksNews lemmings. Just say "librul" and you might as well think TERRORIST!

There was just a post this morning, slapping another label on Bernie...he's from the "ultra-liberal" wing of the party...

Yikkkkkes, scary stuff!

[madfloridian]

75. Yes, there have been enough labels.

[KoKo]

78. Thanks "MF"!

I know 12 year olds who could write better than that screed Solnit barfed out of her lap top. She's pretty desperate to try to drag out the old "Ponies and Rainbows" crap along with wagging her finger and reminding/reprimanding us:

"But the great myth of the current cycle is the misguided notion that the hopes and dreams of activists represent the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. Real Democrats are real people, not activist elites. The mission of the Democratic Party, as Bill Clinton pledged in 1992, is to provide "real answers to the real problems of real people."Real Democrats who champion the mainstream values, national pride, and economic aspirations of middle-class and working people are the real soul of the Democratic Party, not activists and interest groups with narrow agendas.

[Hiraeth]

79. I think that woman is well on her way to becoming as obsolete as Anne Coulter.

[madfloridian]

82. The sad part is that her work is usually great. Here's an example..

Compare this to her use of the words rancid and dismal above. Makes no sense at all.

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/the_politics_of_pretending_are_killing_us_why_we_cant_ignore_the_truth_any_longer_partner/

The problem, of course, is that the people who most benefit from the current arrangements have effectively purchased a lot of politicians, and that a great many of the rest of them are either hopelessly dim or amazingly timid. Most of the Democrats recognize the reality of climate change but not the urgency of doing something about it. Many of the Republicans used to – John McCain has done an amazing about-face from being a sane voice on climate to a shrill denier — and they present a horrific obstacle to any international treaties.

Put it this way: in one country, one party holding 45 out of 100 seats in one legislative house, while serving a minority of the very rich, can basically block what quite a lot of the other seven billion people on Earth want and need, because a two-thirds majority in the Senate must consent to any international treaty the U.S. signs. Which is not to say much for the president, whose drill-baby-drill administration only looks good compared to the petroleum servants he faces, when he bothers to face them and isn’t just one of them. History will despise them all and much of the world does now, but as my mother would have said, they know which side their bread is buttered on.

.....Mass movements work. Unarmed citizens have changed the course of history countless times in the modern era. When we come together as civil society, we have the capacity to transform policies, change old ways of doing things, and sometimes even topple regimes. And it is about governments. Like it or not, the global treaties, compacts, and agreements we need can only be made by governments, and governments will make those agreements when the pressure to do so is greater than the pressure not to. We can and must be that pressure.

That's from 2014.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

87. They used to call us Reds, hippies, troublemakers, and traitors.

Same message, same Decaf Democrats using much the same language.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" William Shakespeare.

[madfloridian]

95. The DFH were right.

[kath]

99. Yes! Three cheers for the DFH!

[YoungDemCA]

100. Obama's a liberal, too

nt

[DonCoquixote]

104. This is just a preview

because come 2017, people like this will be telling Hillary that the first thing she needs to do is dispose of the "dismal" left. Because she sees that Sanders has some bite, perhaps she will not listen to them.

[Hissyspit]

110. Wow, that's an awful piece Solnit wrote.

Embarrassing.

[madfloridian]

112. Agree.

It was awful.

[Aerows]

111. Blanche Lincoln

lost because she a corporatist and opportunistic asshole.

She knows exactly why she lost, and doesn't really care because now she can rake in lobbyist big bucks like the soul-sucking horrible person that she is.

[Aerows]

115. Anybody stupid enough to call

their own allies rancid and dismal is neither a Democrat nor a liberal.

They are just plain ignorant.

[Texasgal]

117. Or just simply

a jerk.

[Logical]

120. Will kicked this posts ass! And you sure kicked this post a lot!