Eratosphere Forums - Metrical Poetry, Free Verse, Fiction, Art, Critique, Discussions Able Muse - a review of poetry, prose and art

Forum Left Top

Notices

Reply
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Unread 11-18-2020, 05:06 AM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2016
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 4,197
Default What is left. What is right.

.
.

I see where the Voting thread has gone and take it as a sign that this oped piece in the NYT yesterday encapsulates the current argument being made on that thread.

I cower as I post this, knowing that the author of the column has a reputation that includes condemnation for positions he's taken on climate change, terrorism, the Middle East quagmire and other hot-button topics that have so divided our country and our world. He isn’t always wrong. He isn’t always right. Therein lies the point: suffocating monolithism that leads to Trumpism/totalitarianism and the destructive nature of seeing things in duality are monsters to be slayed. The far right and the far left are mirroring each other. Come together.

If we are going to repair the tears in our tent — not the democratic tent or the republican tent, but the tent of our culture as Americans — then we must embrace and engage a broader coalition of thinkers. Different experiences lead to different paradigms that lead to different perspectives that lead to a repaired tent.

So, is there any appetite at this point for a discussion about what we’ve found out about the Left and the Right as they have gravitated to their polarized states and alternately freeze and set on fire our landscape? Wisdom, please.
.
.
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Unread 11-18-2020, 07:57 AM
Max Goodman Max Goodman is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posts: 2,253
Default

IMO the op-ed conflates separate issues. It's valid to ask whether the Left is becoming too narrow and, by pushing away left-leaning people, weakening its political influence. I don't see how this relates in any way to Trump voters.

Family separation. Voter suppression. Blatant anti-democratic power grabs. Trump and the Republican Party have done evil and their supporters are either willing to wink at evil or so far buried in the Right's information bubble (my uncle literally believes that anything CNN reports is fake news) that we would be foolish to try to reach them.

Recent history shows the Left--it's leadership, at least--trying hard to unite the country, and the Right treating the Left as the enemy. The actions and public statements of Obama and McConnell are just one example.

The Left is the majority. The Right has controlled most major policy for at least the last 20 years.

Should we try to work with Left-leaning people who are less woke than we? Absolutely. Should we try to work with the Right? Not until they show that they are willing to work with us, and that they value justice, the planet's health (not to mention the health of human beings during this pandemic), and democracy.

Last edited by Max Goodman; 11-18-2020 at 08:00 AM.
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Unread 11-18-2020, 10:38 AM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2016
Location: Seattle
Posts: 2,626
Default

Jim, I have questions:

If you want a centrist or center-right government, such as the Democratic mainstream offers, why not just argue for it on the merits? Why follow the roundabout route of condescendingly condemning the left for having and sticking to principles?

Why is the expectation exclusively that the left should sacrifice their political aims to unity (in exchange for... what? this?), but never that the center should make actual political offerings to the left? Why is "compromise" expected to be a one-way street?

Why is the left given spiel after spiel about how they should dutifully vote Democrat, then pull the Democrats to the left after they've won, when our votes are just about the only leverage we have to actually pull the Democrats left? (Why do the people who make this argument never seem invested in pulling the Democrats leftward once they've gotten their preferred electoral outcome? Is it because they never really believed it?)

Why is it that, when the left condemns Democratic leaders like Barack Obama for the horrific evils he committed (and subsequently defended in about as cowardly a way as possible), we are told that we are being "polarizing", and likened to the far right?

Why is "left" disunity exclusively the fault of the actual left and not the mainstream Democratic center? And why do people listen when right-wingers (like Bret Stephens) with an obvious investment in dragging the Democratic party rightward promote this view?

Max, the left is not the majority. It's not even a majority among the Democrats.

Last edited by Aaron Novick; 11-18-2020 at 10:57 AM.
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Unread 11-18-2020, 01:01 PM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2016
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 4,197
Default

.
What is left is little to go on. What is right is still way out of reach.

To be clear, I don’t endorse the oped’s POV but do see it as a place to start re-establishing some sense of normalcy. It’s just one of many places we can start if only we would commit to incremental change that over time will become substantial.

You are quick to observe that the dems pushed over the top because of woke libs,etc. (see below) but don’t mention that had the dems adopted a policy platform that was any further to the left they would have lost. Further, had the platform been one that AOC had written (don’t get me wrong. I really like her) the dems would have gone down to a humiliating defeat. No doubt about it. Right now, at this moment, the rhetoric of the far left and far right are wrenches in the machinery that isn't all that well-oiled to begin with.

I swore off pigeonholing myself politically a decade ago, preferring instead to participate in “gig” politics where my position changes given the policy/issue being discussed. But so that there is no doubt about the overall arc of my political leanings and for the purpose of this discussion I’ll call myself as a left-leaning centrist — not a right-leaning centrist as I believe the author of the oped piece is. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being neo/ultra/woke/antifa/cancel culture and whatever else you want to call the extreme left and 1 being the extreme right wing evangelical followers of those like Paula White Cain/white nationals/homophobes/misogynistic/conspiracy theory addicts and whatever else you want to call the extreme right, I’m a lucky 7.

The bad news that needs to change is that the far left and far right share similar qualities. They are likely to both never admit/acknowledge/believe they might be wrong, never admit to losing unless things have been rigged, never admit to lying, never accept responsibility but instead viciously attack and demoralize their opponents unfairly, scoff at morality/ethics and use them As if they are pawns, dispensable and moveable, those who put themselves ahead of others in all circumstances. The bad news is that they represent disrupting forces coming from both extreme left and extreme right. These two groups are not going to contribute to making things incrementally better.


But we are each taking turns preaching to the choir here (Kevin excepted). Unfortunately, we are increasingly tonedeaf to the harmonies that make up that choir and want to force the choir to sing only the melody line. Who will orchestrate?

A change in strategy with the way we interact in order to get things done will improve our standing with each other and with the world.

Aaron, I forgot to specifically answer your questions:

Question #1:Why do you 1.) assume that the “left” has and stick to “principles”? And 2.) deny that the center does not?

Question #2: Compromise by nature is a two way street.

Question #3: Your question is a bit garbled, but I believe I answered it in in paragraph three above.

Question #4: I do not think Barack Obama is evil. Trump yes. Stephen Miller yes. Steve Bannon yes. Roger Stone yes. William Barr yes. Rudy yes. Epstein yes.

Question #5: You’re just spouting platitudes here.


Max and Aaron: the center — not the left, not the right — is the majority.



.
.

Last edited by Jim Moonan; 11-18-2020 at 01:17 PM.
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Unread 11-18-2020, 02:16 PM
Max Goodman Max Goodman is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posts: 2,253
Default

It would be great if we had a system that, through ranked-choice voting or a parliamentary system of choosing leaders, gave voice to the complex variety of U.S. political opinion. We don't. We have two choices. (And can vote third party to encourage the major parties to adopt positions they're neglecting.)

Of the two viable parties, the leftward one has long been more popular and the rightward one more powerful.
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Unread 11-18-2020, 02:51 PM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2016
Location: Seattle
Posts: 2,626
Default

Jim,

1. I did not say the center has no principles. I said that people on the left routinely get critiqued for sticking up for their principles. Which is true. For instance, this thread.

2. Yes, it is. So why is the left perpetually asked to accommodate themselves to the center, without being offered anything substantial in return?

3. My question was perfectly clear. You claim, without evidence, that a further left platform would have lost (and not just lost, but lost humiliatingly). The evidence I have seen suggests otherwise.

4. If you don't think Obama's drone campaign is evil, then you care more about public presentation that actual policy.

5. No, I'm not just spouting platitudes, I am criticizing a common position (one that you are endorsing in this thread).

To which I'll add:

6. No, we are not all on the same team. You do not get to marginalize, misrepresent, and condescend to my views (and those of the alleged "far left" more generally) and then claim that we're somehow fighting for the same thing. Nor am I on the same team as someone who looks at Obama's escalation of drone warfare and deportation and says, "yep, good man, good president."

7. You appear to think AOC is far left. She is not. She is milquetoast center-left, of a piece with the center-left parties that European states with multi-party systems have. The appearance that she is far-left is an illusion based on the fact that the US has a centrist (or more probably center-right) party (the democrats) and a far-right party (the republicans).

Max, I'm not denying that. But being "left" and being "further left than the republicans" are really importantly distinct concepts. Everything Jim has posted in this thread is evidence of the importance of this distinction: failure to make it is what allows for insane claims like that AOC and Bernie represent the "far left".
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Unread 11-18-2020, 08:05 PM
Andrew Mandelbaum's Avatar
Andrew Mandelbaum Andrew Mandelbaum is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Portland Maine
Posts: 3,693
Default

But Jim, the Stephen's op-ed is empty from start to finish. You have to be a moral idiot to not see what Trump is. But he sidesteps that simple reality. How well-meaning people might inhabit a position of such idiocy is an interesting question. But the idea that group think on the so-called left is to blame makes the claim that these well-meaning but over-simplified "others" have no responsibility to actually unpack the bullshit reasons they use to justify their support of Trump. It is jackasses like Stephens that infantilizes the right as if they are just too stupid to see that unemployment numbers are meaningless if the wages are crap, the jobs are demeaning, and the quality of life is in decline. To him the Trump voters are not responsible for supporting obviously murderous policies. They are just infants who react as they do because the arrogant Left has grown weary enough of watching people die they no longer are fine sitting and watching his glorious ambiguity parade. They have begun to make decisive demands.

The woke business is young. It is still becoming. It is too early to say what will become of its missteps and oversimplifications. But Stephen's is really pissed not because he gives a damn about what will actually make a better world for the marginalized but because the new politics has called his bullshit for the self-interest it really is. He isn't genuinely wrestling with any of his own certainties. He is pretending he doesn't have any even though he has trusted his own certainties with the lives of others for his entire rather stupid career.

There are problems on the Left. But the basic principle that Capital is destroying the earth, that the present way of being is untenable, that the dignity of life and living should take precedence of economic growth is not something anyone should be willing to admit might be wrong. Compromise may be necessary on every major policy front but only because the present society is conditioned to its own deadened imagination. We can all actually sleep while other beings die painful deaths that are in fact completely avoidable. The fact alone should make you much more leery of schmucks like Stephens. The fact that many (not all) of the barely left but entirely more sane policies of AOC and company might be unpalatable to a majority of American minds should make us recoil from the rewind that Stephen's waxes nostalgic for not look to it as some starting point for a new politic. We need to look out side the old binaries for sure. Indigenous cultures would be a place to start in my opinion. All ideologies should be suspect. But if you confuse decisive and immediate action on the environmental and economic disparity fronts with extremism and retreat to a pace of change that doesn't ruffle the feathers of comfortable starlings like Stephens the coming suffering is going to be unimaginable.

It is beyond utopian to believe in more of what got us in this mess to begin with. The right is arming and rehearsing for taking the streets. Historically the center never holds against that sort of commitment. The mistakes of the young street movement on the Left seem born from a lack wisdom not excess of conviction. Go to the meetings and actions and get involved may be better than conflating the only hope with the enemy. And it is an enemy that is coalescing. Some of the woke stuff is annoying. But like I said, it is still becoming. I think it will adjust from within as it is forced to confront its own inconsistencies or over reaches.
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Unread 11-18-2020, 10:53 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posts: 8,307
Default

It seems important to note that the map of red and blue counties is pretty much a map of rural and urban areas.

Meaningful opportunities for rural and urban Americans to listen to each other's realities, and thus to develop firsthand empathy and solidarity with fellow Americans with different ways of life, are few and far between.

That isolation needs to change, in order for other things to change in our fractured society.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 11-18-2020 at 10:55 PM.
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Unread 11-18-2020, 11:47 PM
Quincy Lehr's Avatar
Quincy Lehr Quincy Lehr is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Posts: 5,478
Default

Stephens is a stupid and bigoted man who clearly has no conception of what the left has been historically, is now, or can be. His level of stupidity is almost Friedmanesque, and is outstanding even by the dismal standards of The New York Times's gaggle of idiotic opinion writers.
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Unread 11-19-2020, 05:35 AM
Andrew Mandelbaum's Avatar
Andrew Mandelbaum Andrew Mandelbaum is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Portland Maine
Posts: 3,693
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Quincy Lehr View Post
Stephens is a stupid and bigoted man who clearly has no conception of what the left has been historically, is now, or can be. His level of stupidity is almost Friedmanesque, and is outstanding even by the dismal standards of The New York Times's gaggle of idiotic opinion writers.
Truth. But the entire discourse in the mainstream, from end to end, is so far off the historical it is hard to know where to begin. When Hitchens sold his soul on Iraq it was like every outlet murdered any employee who could still spell Luxemburg or Kronstadt and gave each and every political writer in their ticket-box lines a never-ending enema bag of anti-marxist cliche's distilled from the Horowitz crayon collection. I am sure it was way before that when the Stupid began but it is so much worse every year since.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump



Forum Right Top
Forum Left Bottom Forum Right Bottom
 
Right Left
Member Login
Forgot password?
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Statistics:
Forum Members: 8,399
Total Threads: 21,840
Total Posts: 270,797
There are 849 users
currently browsing forums.
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Sponsor:
Donate & Support Able Muse / Eratosphere
Forum LeftForum Right
Right Right
Right Bottom Left Right Bottom Right

Hosted by ApplauZ Online