Reply #28: Since sanity is winning in this thread [View All]

[PATRICK]

I might point out that the largest cause for frustration(people can be lead in any direction) is having to reach the minds and hearts in an increasingly hostile or really really dumbed down environment of corporate media, fractured, trivialized, RW pushed. by dumbed down I don't mean the hapless audience but the abdicated IQ of journalists and many advocacy groups flying through a storm on auto pilot.

Looking at what it means to be left might get things down to reality. A REAL case can be made for the nationalization of energy, health, education and elections. Would we want Bushco to be the socialist state enacting that platform. In a way they are through the entrepreneurial myth of privatization(privately owned government that is). Radical solutions are the hallmark of wing extremists. It kind of looks the same when the taken to the "extremes". Moderates tend to look the same too, especially if they truly have a respect for law and democracy.

There are more core unities than in the pro and con socialism/capitalism debate. It matters what kind of people there are and how subdividing the rational and decent, brutalizing and propagandizing them with distracting rage "issues" guts the majority the Dems are always wistful about. No one focuses on the horror show humans that sneak to the top during the righteous debates. A fantasy ideology like over indoctrinated fundamentalists which is outside the pale of its own religion has as much value as any other grouping within the odd game we have substituted for democracy and civic responsibility.

So those that see a light going off because a majority actually voted for Reagan, mild Carter handily wins while JFK labored mightily. If Carter won because of a message he disproved that the second time. LBJ, Mr Kennedy legacy landslide himself, knew when the jig was up. It's all nuts because the political reality is some ever new mystery of connecting to the people in a particular time or place, your ideas and skills and toothy grin be damned.

The GOP, who cannot represent the people they con, wish to simply remove those imponderables by controlling the means to communicate and vote. The need was simple and undeniable for them. We still argue about some sort of fair playing field where words and character count, and if not we simply try to improve our losing position with ideological cosmetics. Bush lost twice and he's doing just fine. he does nothing to communicate the truth to his addled backers. Rather than moving to the right we might just as well learn to lie better like politicians used to(and not just to your own party activists).