Analyzing the Honourable Wife-Beater

[sabotabby]

Eh, this is a good example of why the left always loses. At least the moderate, liberal left.

I honestly don't think there's much to analyze about the Honourable Wife-Beater. I can't empathize with people who lack empathy. I actually agree with the right in the sense that there's little room for dialogue and compromise. One side is practically the stereotype of the bomb-throwing, nihilist-anarchist*, with no ideology to speak of beyond destruction. The other wants dialogue. Guess which one will stomp all over the other?

Karen Connolly's section particularly galls me. I'm currently reading her book, and it makes me not want to finish it. Who cares if Ford diets or doesn't diet? Dieting isn't even healthy. I care that he's starving children, not what he puts in his own gaping maw

Micallef is wrong about Young and Eligible, but right about the inner suburbs, incidentally.

* No relation to actual anarchism as a political ideology, of course.

Comments

[lienne.livejournal.com]

Mars.

[sabotabby]

Mars.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I disagree.

Meaning I disagree with the notion that being fair and open minded about the opposition means an automatic loss in the polls. Granted, there is nothing quite as attractive as certainty and the Hitlers of the world definitely had it in spades, but I also think that there's a definite place for being a decent human being and trying to reach out and see if there is a common ground available.

I also think that most politics is a contest between people who don't necessarily disagree on all that much and it's the rate of disagreement that works. I also think that people LOVE to denigrate their opponents and it gets to be too much. Before I hate on that stupid woman who blathered every anti-Obama accusation she could think of (Muslim, socialist devil) I am also going to want to check that in my own personality. And be just as impatient with people who take part in that discourse with people I don't like.

Also Nixon was a liberal president - especially by today's standards - started the EPA, was actually serious about passing universal health care and turned civil rights into a conservative movement (without changing its makeup in the slightest- it just suddenly became an accepted value instead of a lunatic fringe) and I always marvel at how universally he was hated by the people who were seeing their agenda carried out by his administration (of course the same could be said about Clinton with welfare reform and the Greenspan economic models)

[sabotabby]

One can be fair and openminded, certainly, but today's liberals fall all over themselves apologizing for their own positions before they even get around to criticizing their opponents. Today's right makes no compromises whatsoever. Accordingly, the Overton Window has shifted so far to the right that Nixon—a war criminal—looks like a progressive.

Municipally, though, our intellectuals and authors are struggling to find complexity in a man who simply has no complexity. I mean, he practically ran on a platform advertising his lack of complexity. I think people here just can't comprehend how American-style bombast managed to triumph over the rational, sensible arguments of both the established right and left.

[ladypolitik.livejournal.com]

One can be fair and openminded, certainly, but today's liberals fall all over themselves apologizing for their own positions before they even get around to criticizing their opponents. Today's right makes no compromises whatsoever. Accordingly, the Overton Window has shifted so far to the right that Nixon—a war criminal—looks like a progressive.

So spot on that I think my head is going to explode.

eta: You know, I'm not sure I was aware that the concept was called the Overton Window until now. Like, I knew *of* it, but it never occurred to me that it had a clean-cut term; I've always had to allude to it in a roundabout way, the way Homer Simpson does with kitchen utensils ("Maaaarge, where's that...thing...you use to...shovel food...with....").

This makes me a terrible poli sci major, right? I was a totally keen student, and the bulk of my degree was mainstream white political theory, so this concept -- being so useful to reference -- is something I cant imagine missing. Maybe I was dozing off in class that day. Hm.

Anyway, *pockets for convenient future reference*

eta II: Edited for absurdly fitting icon, because come the fuck on.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's Allende. What's funny is the fact that the shul next to my shul - the traditional German synagogue of Washington Heights has a plaque honoring their war heroes and includes Henry Kissinger (even though they don't let him in the synagogue because he married a non-Jew - those German Jews don't play) and it is so pathetic since Kissinger isn't so much a veteran as someone who gave soldiers something to do.

People are attracted to people who are absolutely certain of their position even when it makes no sense. That's why they loved Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Theodore Roosevelt, Gandhi, Winston Churchil, etc.

But you can also sell rational decency with or without American style bombast. After all, Martin Luther King jr. was also a great speaker and Obama is going to win reelection partly because he comes across as smooth and personable whereas Romney looks like a robot.

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't hate the game, hate the players.

ANd yeah, we also had Jesse Ventura in Minnesota - but that's the Minnesota honesty thing. We love it when a candidate doesn't seem to be bullshitting us and Ventura was openly a fucking moron. And didn't hide the fact. We didn't trust Skip Humphrey or Norm Coleman because they just seemed like career politicians. But that also means that we voted in Paul Wellstone because he was an enthusiastic unapologetic liberal in 1990 when that was not a popular thing to be (according to common wisdom).

And then there's our presidential candidates - Hubert Humphrey ran in 1968 on a platform to keep going in Vietnam and Mondale ran on a platform in 1984 to raise taxes in order to balance the budget.

I'm still shocked by that one almost thirty years later. He ran on a platform to raise taxes.

How's *this* for middle ground?

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I had a hard time making it through the article, and frankly only scanned the last half or so.

That said, beneath a lot of the naivety about "dialogue" is a mostly inchoate idea that does make sense, namely that the left needs to engage with those people who were taken in by Ford and his gang of thugs.

Finding common ground with Ford is pointless, but most of his supporters are (or were, when he won more than fifty percent of the vote) are not right-wing monsters longing to destroy democracy, but frightened and frustrated citizens who couldn't see a better way to make things work again.

[sabotabby]

That's worked to a point, when you look at the mushy middle council members. Though really, I think, what's worked on them was less about finding common ground than it was hard threats that they won't be reelected if they went along with Ford.

Whoops!

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I knew I was doing a lousy job of communicating.

I meant there needs to be a long-term effort to reach the general population, not Ford's supporters on council. Those people need to be destroyed. I'm under no illusions the ideological right can be reasoned with. They are playing a long game and recognize only strategic retreats, not compromise.

[sabotabby]

Oh, I certainly agree with that. We lost Toronto by being snobbish urbanites and ignoring the inner suburbs. Note that the federal NDP did a better job of this than the municipal lefties. Micallef gets it right, but this is something that the organized left is just waking up to.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

This is part of what frustrates me about the transit debate. Neither position addresses the needs of the inner suburbs (or at least the underserved ones). Nobody seems prepared to state the obvious. It's not suburbs vs city. It's rich bits near the lake or subway vs Malvern and Rexdale. And the latter are still screwed even if Transit City gets built.

Sure he eviscerated public services BUT HE MISSED A WEIGH-IN PEOPLE.

[nichtsda.livejournal.com]

Well, we certainly can't have fat people in power.

Not hating! I'm just worried about his health! Because I'm just a caring person...

(who hates looking at fat people! Ew.)



(Note to people who do not know me: I'm not serious. I'm also fat.)

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Does this mean I have to stop mocking Newt Gingrich for his speedo pictures and focus on his terrible asshole message?

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

In the personality counts for a lot (as in people vote for candidates that they like - which is why Kerry lost to Bush, etc.) department there's this -

http://www.theonion.com/articles/poll-shows-best-part-of-primary-season-has-been-re,27715/