90% of your posts are criticizing posters, the site as a whole or the “far left”. It’s beyond tired at this point.
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I have seen widespread praise for the stimulus here and in the wild so isn’t that happening?
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I mean Johnny this just isn’t how politics works. We don’t get to assume the world should be exactly like we want it as the baseline condition.
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I’ll point out that @edc5036 laid out his critiques of the article and some of Biden’s policy. You are the one that described his criticisms as being “0 or 100%”, I guess because you view the 0 or 100% to be a negative thing. Now, that can surely be your impression of what he said, but it wasn’t my take away.
You say there’s no way that piece can be read as propaganda? Why must everything be 0 or 100% for you? I’d say that if you are consuming corporate produced media about political subjects and you are convinced that there is no way that it is propagandistic, then you’re not being nearly critical enough of what you are reading.
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That’s fair. Perhaps I am guilty of absolutes here too. In my understanding propaganda doesn’t tend to present two sides of a debate though.
The most depressing part about this is that there doesn’t seem to be any path forward for things that are supposedly extremely popular.
Seriously, in what year do you envision universal health care? A $15 minimum wage? Actually meaningful action on guns? Taxing rich people and mega-corporations more? All of these things supposedly poll well north of 60% and they seem like pie-in-the-sky fantasyland stuff to actually happen any time soon.
If we can’t get stuff done that is apparently very popular, how in the hell are we going to get the stuff done that is necessary, but may not so popular (speaking mainly about action on climate change here)?
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I really don’t understand this mindset Johnny. It means you can never celebrate any victory until the world is a utopia.
There will always be something that can be better. Always. I don’t understand how saying wealth gap is some kind of joker that negates gay marriage, reduced poverty, increased trans acceptance, increased funding for social programs, higher corporate taxes etc.
None of it is enough! We agree 100% on that point. I am
just not willing to accept that celebrating those other victories is some kind of moral failing on my part.
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Meaningful climate action seems in the offing.
apparently this is no major accomplishment according to the consensus here
A better question is how we can possibly expect Democracy to survive when it can’t produce what the overwhelming (and growing) share of the population wants?
This country is literally breaking apart in front of us, and after spending 35 years watching it I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.
I’ll be pleasantly surprised if we get to even a third of what we should be doing at this point.
And just so I’m clear (and this goes for literally any policy), getting back to where we were in 2016 is not progress. If we are at the same point on issue X that we were in 2016, that is FAILURE. We need to be better across the board.
Biden/Democrats have done some good things, and I have praised them for it (and will continue to do so when warranted). But there are a whole host of issues where progress is not being made or is woefully insufficient.
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I too am thankful we don’t live in a repressive regime.
Can we just assume any time we bring up some progress all statements are followed by an invisible “but it could be better”. Sort of like all posts on a forum are followed by an invisible “IMO”.
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You won’t get any argument from me that America is fucked. Short of literal revolution, which isn’t happening, those things you mention are not going to be implemented to the degree most on this forum would like. That leaves me two choices. I can either descend into a waaf despair or I can push for the small changes that makes peoples lives a little better and celebrate when they do.
Feels like a false dichotomy.
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Either that or an excuse not to push for more.
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How so? You think actual wide scale structural change is realistic?
Effective propaganda can definitely present two sides of a debate. In fact the choice of what the sides are in the debate is part of the propaganda. That Atlantic article in particular uses some of the same constructions and devices that have been used in various “look at how progressive X is” articles, some of which you’ve shared and we’ve discussed previously.
The article reinforces that your expectations should have been low, and then tells you about how people that are described as “progressive” feel heard and seen. It’s a variation of the phrase that has been popularized by politicians and PR agencies of “We hear you, we see you, ______.” Where the blank is filled in with things ranging from(worst to best) nothing—>platitudes–>promises that will be broken—>bandaid half measures rather than systemic change.
I’ll point out another specific example from the article that I feel is propagandistic.
We are supposed to believe that Biden is not an ideologue? Biden has been advancing ruling class interests while throwing out some scraps to the plebes his entire career. Consistently favoring prioritizing profits for banks/wealthy/corporations>people is an ideology(capitalism). It is why he is opposed to real systemic change(that would be socialism). The dude hasn’t been randomly mashing policy buttons for the past 40+ years, he’s been consciously favoring the owning class over the working class. Of course, he can have a “progressive turn”, because progressive isn’t an ideology. That’s what is so simultaneously worthless about it being used as a descriptor and makes it valuable rhetoric as part of propaganda.
Biden promised $2k checks and instead sent out $1400 checks. An article I read says that’s very progressive! Praise Biden!
Trump sent out $2k checks. Yet, nobody was insisting that we call Trump or that policy progressive. Or that we should praise Trump on an message board on an obscure corner of the internet.
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I don’t think that being realistic about the shape of the world means descending into despair.
The idea of celebrating small changes sounds like a defense mechanism where you sort of know WAAF, but think that if you don’t acknowledge it, then you won’t get depressed over it. And I wouldn’t necessarily count myself as part of the WAAF crowd, but I’m also not an optimist.
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This discussion is just going circles now.
I don’t think I have been shifted much from my pre-existing position which is that the evidence clearly shows Biden has shifted to the left on some policy positions and the best path forward is to use every lever we have to continue that shift. Short of some dreamland revolution I see no other path right now. Now as I’ve said in the past, we should be simultaneously working to help progressive politicians who can run in 2022 and 2024.
Anyway, this might just be an agree to disagree one. Thanks for the interesting discussion.