[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by Aaron Novick

I neither said nor implied that that operative speaks for the entire party.

Really? You didn't? Why else would you link to this secondhand comment from a nameless (and possibly completely fictional) person, if you weren't a little overeager to present it as evidence of the attitude of "the party I voted for"?

I think you're being trolled, Aaron. Granted, there are very good reasons for progressives to be deeply suspicious of establishment Democrats. But it would be better to save your energy for stuff that we can prove really happened. Rumors like this that can't be rebutted because they don't identify their sources just make me think that someone's trying to get people pissed off with each other, so that the different wings of liberalism can't unite to get anything done. Who benefits from that? Conservatives. Ugh.

[Aaron Novick]

Julie, you have accused both me and Yahoo News' white house correspondent of lying, and I really don't know why.

[Roger Slater]

Aaron, you presented it with the comment that your party hates you. Since the evidence you gave is solely something that a party operative said, the necessary and logical implication is that you felt the operative was speaking for the party. If you did not mean to give that impression, then correct yourself, but don't act as if you have been wronged because others did not read your mind.

And it would be just plain dumb to appoint Sanders or Warren to the cabinet when their states have Republican governors, especially if we achieve a 50-50 control after the run-offs. I doubt very much either one of them wants to be in the cabinet with a Republican-controlled senate more than to be a member of senate controlled by the Democrats.

[Aaron Novick]

The clarification I have already offered is sufficient for anyone who cares to interpret me honestly.

[Max Goodman]

We’re arguing over things about which we broadly agree. In another thread, Jim has posed a question related to this.

[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by Aaron Novick

Julie, you have accused both me and Yahoo News' white house correspondent of lying, and I really don't know why.

For the record, I never said or implied--or at least, I never intended to imply--that you were lying. I never thought that, and I still don't.

I thought that you were demonstrably wrong about one thing, and that regarding another thing, you might have allowed a troll--probably not the journalist himself, but whoever directed his tweet to you, so that you could be outraged by it and post it here--to get you all riled up, for their own advantage.

I doubt that this will make you feel better, Aaron, but I sincerely believe that both of us are speaking the truth as we see it.

I don't know the Yahoo! News White House Correspondent, and his motives may be pure--I have no reason to think otherwise, other than that his Twitter traffic is probably a component of his salary, so it could be to his advantage to inflate it with juicy snippets that fall short of the usual journalistic standards. He certainly didn't follow the usual standards for source attribution in this particular case.

Feel free to skip the following blather if you've lost interest in this particular argument. As Max said above, we are basically in agreement on the sincerity, or lack thereof, of the establishment Democrats' embrace of progressive activists and progressive ideals.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Aaron, I couldn't believe it when you told Max that you "never said or implied" that the unnamed Democratic operative spoke for the entire party. That's why I demonstrated my surprise ("Really?") that you seemed so blind to the implications of linking to an individual's quote, as if he or she was an unofficial spokesperson for the party, while summarizing your view of the party's hatred of progressives.

Surely you can see how a reasonable person might come to that conclusion.

And then, regarding the inflammatory (literally, with flamethrowers!) quotation that had inspired your initial angry post, I said, "Aaron, I think you're being trolled." This is not the same as saying "I think the Yahoo! News White House Correspondent is lying, or trolling you." There are lots and lots of other people, including Yahoo! News itself, who might be hoping for that quotation to go viral, for their own financial or political benefit. And it's no secret that the more people who get pissed off about something, the more they'll share it. (For example, do you typically follow Yahoo! News, or did someone forward this to you because they were outraged by it?)

I did, in my prior post, note that there are credibility problems with Walker's reportage of that incident, but that's not the same as accusing him of lying, or even of exaggerating for maximum effect.

I concede that it's highly unlikely that the Yahoo! News White House Correspondent, Hunter Walker, fabricated the quote. It would have been somewhat less unlikely to exaggerate it, or to reword the paraphrased part for maximum emotional effect. The problem is not a problem only if he did commit some sort of impropriety. The problem is that he could have done such things, because there is no way to verify what he reported: he hadn't named his source or otherwise provided independent confirmation.

This is why there are basic journalistic standards for the use of unnamed sources. And his tweet did not meet them. As tweets rarely do. More on my problems with that later.

You seemed willing to overlook this departure from convention because of the journalist's lofty post ("Yahoo News' White House Correspondent). May I point out that Claas Relotius enjoyed a sterling reputation at Der Spiegel before...he didn't? That unfortunate situation continued for years, precisely because of Relotius's reputation, which tempted his editors to let his quotes and paraphrases go unverified (in violation of their own rules).

From Yahoo! News itself, regarding the use of unnamed sources:

When news organizations use an unnamed source, they are asking readers to trust the credibility of the information at a time of public distrust in the media. There’s a high bar for using anonymous sources in a news story, and deciding not to reveal a writer’s identity is often considered a last resort.

The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press follow some general rules for relying on an anonymous source:

* The information is vital and newsworthy.

* The information isn’t available from any other source.

* The source is reliable and has firsthand, direct knowledge of the information.

* The source would risk losing his or her job or risk safety if his or her name was revealed.

The use of anonymous sources must be approved by a department head and submit to multiple levels of fact checking before publication. The identity of the anonymous source(s) are typically known to the editor as well as the reporter.

https://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-news-ex...235736297.html

As I mentioned above, journalists' tweets are not typically subjected to these rigors. They are much more gossipy and colorful and in-the-moment, and they should therefore be taken with a grain of salt.

Is the purported "Democratic operative"'s quote the sort of thing that an establishment Democrat might say about progressive activists? Yes, probably.

Is it representative of what the party writ large is thinking? Quite possibly.

But fabricating plausible things that people might have said, but which no one actually did, is exactly what got Claas Relotius in trouble. Blindly taking what he said at face value, based on his reputation and his post, is what allowed his fraudulent career to go on for so long.

I think we all, myself included, need to be a bit suspicious of stuff that seems to confirm our own biases. And to note whether or not they are comporting with the rules that were designed to protect the public's confidence in journalistic integrity.

[Aaron Novick]

The operative's claim reminded me of a fact that I find painful. It is not my main (let alone sole) evidence for this fact.

This is not an obscure interpretation of my post. In fact, it's the obvious one if you (a) recognize that this post is not my first statement on the topic and (b) try to avoid attributing obvious stupidities to me—in other words, if you apply milquetoast principles of reasonable interpretation.

Am I being "trolled" by this operative's claim? Who cares? What matters is the fact itself: that there are no viable options, in the current political landscape, for me ever seeing a government that even approximates my ideals. The Democrats do not, and do not want to. (Some individual Democrats do, as Max noted. But these individuals are not the party.)

That is the injury, to which may be added the insult that, as a member of the actual left, I have to deal with the sanctimonious, patronizing, insufferable smugness of mainstream democrats, who have nothing but contempt for my desire for genuine political representation. As if it's ungrateful of me to ask for something better than "not the republicans". As if I'm personally tearing the country apart by having the gall to criticize drone warfare murdering my Middle Eastern brothers and sisters, mass deportation of my Latin American brothers and sisters, the inability to make health care affordable and available to all Americans, the refusal to take serious action to mitigate climate change, etc., even when the culprits have a "D" next to their name. Because, hey, the Republicans are worse, right?

That's the source of my despair, and despair is the right response to it. The relief of Biden's victory masked it for a moment; now it's back. Am I being trolled? Yes, by the world—not by some journalist on twitter.

Electoral politics offers no viable path to a just world. What does? I'll be trying to figure that out during the Biden presidency.

[Max Goodman]

nevermind

(and because the system doesn't seem to want to save so brief a revision: nevermindnevermindnevermind)

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by Aaron Novick

Electoral politics offers no viable path to a just world. What does? I'll be trying to figure that out during the Biden presidency.

I'm looking for an answer to the same question.

[Julie Steiner]

Just about all of civilization, religion, and philosophy on this planet has claimed to have been devoted to the same, yet most of us are still singing "I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

We'll never get to that perfectly just, free society that we all want to live in (however different it may look to each of us). But if we want to get closer to it, we can't be content to stay where we are.

And we can't despair when we realize that actually getting where we're trying to go is impossible. Yes, it's impossible through peaceful means. But it's also impossible through non-peaceful means.

But giving up entirely is not a good option, either.