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Saturday, November 04, 2017

Re-Litigation All The Way Down

Here's hoping all the nice folks pointlessly re-litigating the Democratic primary yet again hours before an enormously important eminently winnable Virginia state election aren't re-litigating an enormously important eminently winnable lost Virginia state election a week from now. I should have known when the W-enabling Naderites all lost their minds just a few years later again over Bernie's birdie that even Trumpmerican authoritarianism isn't enough to unite progressives in support of the Democratic Party, that never adequate instrument which remains our last, best hope to save us from ourselves.

2 comments:

jimf said...

> I should have known. . . that even Trumpmerican authoritarianism
> isn't enough to unite progressives in support of the Democratic Party,
> that never-adequate instrument which remains our last, best hope
> to save us from ourselves.

https://bintchaos.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/clash-of-civilizations/
---------------
Clash of Civilizations
April 16, 2017
bintchaos

. . .

The current assault by the alt-right on college campuses really isn't
about free speech or science. . . It is about the continuing
impenetrability of academe to conservative ideology, and
red/blue neurotype/phenotype hypothesis. You see,
Dear Reader...the coming demographic doom of the GOP isn't the
hispanic death cross -– it's education. . .

So having seized the presidency, the right is incapable of
understanding why conservative ideology still can't
penetrate academe to propagate conservative ideas [hm. . .
depends on department. There is Jordan Peterson in the
psych department. ;-> ].

> . . .[L]iberals and conservatives [are]. . . motivated to
> avoid hearing one another's opinions on a variety of social
> issues, and largely for the same reasons. . . The aversion
> applie[s] to issues such as same-sex maqrriage, elections,
> marijuana, climate change, guns, and abortion. . .
> [P]eople on the left and the right are motivated to avoid
> hearing from the other side for some of the same reasons:
> the anticipation of cognitive dissonance and the undermining
> of a fundamental need for a shared reality with other people. . .
> The result of this desire to avoid ideological[ly]
> incongruous views is that liberals and conservatives live
> in ideological information bubbles, and what could ultimately
> be a contest of ideas is being replaced by two
> non-interacting monopolies.

Call this divergence, polarization, or pseudo-speciation, it
all means the same thing. There is no "common ground" or space
for compromise. The elegant Nash equilibrium the Founders set
up has failed, and both sides are playing Sinner Vs. Sinner
T[it]F[or]T[at] now. . . The conflict isn't about science
or free speech -- it's about trying to seize the controls. . .

The one thing about the Nash game the Founders built. . .is the
pendulum swings back. It is likely there will be a dem wave
in 2018 and/or 2020. But what happens when the pendulum sticks,
doesn't swing back? That's when we will know the Founders'
system is truly broken. . .
====

jimf said...

> . . .enough to unite progressives in support of the Democratic Party. . .

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/opinion/the-new-democratic-party.html
-----------
The New Democratic Party
Charles M. Blow
NOV. 5, 2017

. . .


The Democratic Party, or at least many of its highest-profile
figureheads from the last election, is locked in a vicious cycle
of re-examinations and recriminations. The latest of those is
the controversial new political memoir, “Hacks: The Inside Story of
the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House,”
by Donna Brazile. . .

The book is dishy on a personal level but damaging on a political level. . .
“Donna Brazile may be burning the village in order to save it.”. . .

I don’t begrudge anyone the right to tell his or her own story,
but my focus now is on protecting the country from Trump, and nothing else.

Brazile contended. . . that there would be no truly good time for
her to release her book, and that people questioning the timing
could “go to hell.”. . .

The reign of Trump is the reign of ruin. That is why the Resistance is
needed now more than ever. . .

Liberals have the will and determination to turn this giant mistake
around, to pressure their elected officials or possibly replace them. . .

The only issue I see is that these efforts seem to be operating separately
from the national Democratic Party, a dinosaur of bureaucratic machinery
in an evolved age of direct democratic action.

Liberalism has leapt over the Democratic Party. Liberalism has its eye
on a new beginning, while the mainstream party is stuck looking backward
and bickering. The Resistance isn’t part of the old Democratic Party;
The Resistance is the new Democratic Party. . .
====


So. . . the "Resistance" needs to "leap over" the "old village"
(and presumably found a new one), but shouldn't be dropping
any lighted matches along the way? Or something like that. . .