Bring back Reagan and/or a less sleazy version of Bill Clinton.

There's a pattern here, that I wish I could better explain, but part of my heistation is wrapping my head around it, and part has to do with handing it out like candy.

So, some months ago, someone I've known a long, long time finally up and went off. It's not like what he said was particularly surprising, but for whatever reason he just doesn't get why people don't believe him. He had slipped up, before, throwing an actual Trumpist line at me, once, and, c'mon, if you know someone long enough, some things are obvious, even if it's just the fact of proverbial smoke and fire. But this time he spent at least a few minutes dumping his feelings, and it ought not have been surprising that it was a painful heap of rightist shite and tinfoil-wrapped potsherds, but it was, I admit, a fascinating rupture and spill.

Another person I know, who tries to present himself as liberal and enlightened, just can't seem to understand that when telling his fellow liberals the answer is to be conservative, and while being utterly unable to use the language of liberalism or the left, instead reciting words and phrases found in right-wing buzz, there is a reason people don't believe him.

What I don't get is why these people pretend. The one, when he went off, unloaded rightist conspiracism; but he also hands out a polymer capsule description of being center-left, more liberal on social issues, and more conservative on fiscal issues. The irony of sounding like a wannabe Reagan Democrat is actually coincidental to our moment.

Additionally, recent events in Portland have me recalling particular history, and this should be its own question. Still, I know an American who, personally, doesn't put on any pretense of being a liberal, but his favorite YouTuber is a celebrity known for controversy, who describes himself as center-left, preaches supremacism, and stands for election in a rightist, separatist, supremacist party.

And that's part of why I'm unable to shake a memory of Portland. But it's not just Portland; it's also Indiana, where a particular notorious figure is from, and southern California, where he once found a political base, participated in militia border patrols, and splintered from the KKK in part because it wasn't violent enough. And Portland is where he was stopped. Sort of.

To wit, what happened to the rest of 'em? It's not like they were all in Oregon, or anything, but it's where they were stopped. And if we consider the intervening years, it really isn't hard to see that, sure, people stopped something, but it never really went away. There was, after all, the hanger-on who declared a new operation and went manchild-terrorist over a Spike Lee movie; that was on the east coast.

And, yes, we should, here, consider National Socialism, and rightist suggestions of what socialism is, because the American version includes a working-class, anticapitalist proposition by which the prescription to society's ills relies on ethnoracial segregation and white supremacy. And, sure, we stopped it, once, but the advocacy, after the trial, really was to go lone-wolf.

And as birds of a feather gather together, we are again reminded that the language and pathology of supremacism remains consistent through its variations.

Maybe it was easier to hide in the Gay Fray, but that's the thing, it's been here the whole time. The corpse should be buried in its ritual position, oh, say, right here, and while we might consider decades of decomposition when wondering where the remains are, this is one time I'm pretty certain the zombies running amok in the streets are both real and relevant.

Among our disagreements, one we rarely get around to has to do with how people regard the word "libertarian". And while you do advocate a more leftward version of libertarianism, one thing that never really gets discussed is the idea of being progressive, to the one, compared to a very libertarian progressiveness that demands what one asserts is due and, at least implicitly, screw everyone else. And, sure, you've seen it, and it's also true you know how difficult it is to address directly because the white, male, Christian supremacy they believe their inherent human right is so shielded by snowbank ego defense. When people don't use the left-libertarian term explicitly, but commit standard libertarian rhetorical gaffes, it looks like that one who pulled out his rightward appeal after the election. What was true, then, and remains true in the general discourse, is that when confronted directly, the "economic justice" argument falters because it is parsed out and juxtaposed against the rest of justice.

And that underlying notion of demanding what one thinks he° is due, and screw everyone else, is what connects across divides in more typical left-right political scales.

Compared to the idea of being a "liberal Democrat", the most accurate thing our neighbor does in this thread is recall the joke about Bill Clinton being the best Republican president, ever. It's been strange, through the years, hearing Republicans complain of Democratic elitism while also, and often simultaneously, denouncing Democrats for responding to the voters who elect them, and before someone makes the point about representing all voters, well, that's right, which is why the Party establishment includes a Blue Dog caucus pandering to the conservative range of voters deemed necessary to winning a seat in this or that House district; if we actually attend the conservative critique, the obvious thing for Democrats to do is break leftward, and nearly radically. The problem, toward that end, is voters; this is the Democratic Party, after all, which never has been truly liberal.

It stands out when someone representing themselves as liberal needs liberals and Democrats to concede conservative lexicon, presuppositions, and framework a priori. In the day, Reagan Democrats bemoaned liberalism; now a "liberal Democrat" is appealing nostalgically toward Reagan Democrats and the DLC raising that bloc to priority, except not the supply-side economics, which, while he's ostensibly socially liberal, he skips out on the bit about being more fiscally conservative by trying to unanchor economic policy.

We come back to a question from last↗ month↗: How often is he right about anything?

†​

in re Labor Unions: When I lived in Oregon, in the early- to mid-Nineties, there was a curious uproar about the opulent compensation packages of public employees, the sort of issue that can smolder, scorch, and even explode in a government town like Salem. But you, for instance, already know part of the answer: No, the packages weren't opulent; they just looked better than what people without a labor union to fight for cost of living adjustments, even the barest scraps, were getting. That is, the same people who voted for union-busting politicians and anti-labor economic policies turned around and complained, not about the private-sector bosses who nickel-and-dimed them into misery, but the labor unions who kept the lights on, and food at the tables for their workers. After decades of wage stagnation, with the working-class population ever more sharply sick and tired of exploitation, of course we encounter these "liberal Democrats" denouncing labor unions. Just like, in the face of supremacism, we inevitably will hear from self-described progressives telling Democrats to abandon a majority of their voters—and, by extension of demographic reality, people in the United States—in order to coddle the delicate feelings of supremacists.

†​

Once upon a time, somebody came up with a name for an idea. It's just a name. I don't like to recite it, though, because that makes the name itself important. The actual idea is just a particular expression of a general human process, and it really is intended to read kind of like a labor dispute. In any of these iterations, some aspect of "economic justice" is at stake, but the argument necessarily presupposes to exclude from who is eligible for justice.

Among the gathering birds of ominous feather, it is a rather open appeal. It's in the alleged centrist liberalism of the vlogger who just can't seem to deal rationally with the fact that women exist. It's in the center-leftism of the tinfoil-rightist potsherder associate who isn't racist or misogynist or anything like that, but finds himself with no other alternative than to stand against a perceived excess of equality even before it occurs. It's in a particular progressive appeal against identity politics, one that I would otherwise separate from progressivism for being delivered in rightist language under a pretense of progressive unity, except that it's an easy step from there to prominent progressives pushing similar lines.

†​

The underlying theme isn't subtle, but still: It really does seem strange how much liberal politicking some people expect to start with, and adhere to, conservative definitions and value assignments; even accounting for the fact of human frailty, priorities are what stand out.

Absurdity: A "liberal Democrat" who wants, amid an outburst of dissatisfaction clearly distinguished by traditionalist supremacism, a return to the rigged economic system and value assignments that ostensibly raised dissatisfaction to rupture. Their argument really is all about self; one's priorities will tell us the rest.
____________________

Notes:

° A gender presupposition abiding traditional American prejudice in favor of Christian, white males.

 

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tax the sick & the poor & be a liberal apologist to justify why conservative ideology should not be challenged and be beyond reproach by the virtue of liberalist moral doctrine...
(im still reading)...

thats called a "Nazi"

humans are quite odd, however, extremes of social forced conformity tend to bend boundarys to suit conformist models to be one of the group.
separatism is maybe more the driving force behind the variance than a simple political racial ideology driver.

while i think of it
white pride is like a 7 year old girl with penis envy

conservative rich entitlist's
they manipulate equal rights to be their own law to dictate they should not be refused what ever they want.
to validate their own dictatorship.
reinforcing their position of elitist self entitled privilege.

it has been and is a consistent under current in the politics of the rich in most western countrys as it services class systems and provides protection from the poor dirty masses by virtue of exploiting working class tax revenue for their own personal use at a much vaster cost per person.

precisely !
and why aren't they is the big show stopper
it looms like a doomsday asteroid orbiting the moon

the autocratic fascist practicing subconscious narcissistic defense

The Modern Macbeth

to bastardise a term of human condition
"to rage against the dying of the light"
a wild animal is most dangerous when it is injured, and in so the aging fractured ideologies are the injured dying Self assurance that is looking to make one last stab for the heart to secure a sense of "im ok".
it is an ostensibly human as it is caveman
a child in an adults body seeking to smash everything in a fit of emotional rage to find self actualization for self assurance.

a madding of the melting Ego one might contemptuously phrase it.

foot note
i am concerned with fiscal alt-right apologist policy of the centrist liberals
whom is it they are throwing on the sacrificial fire ?
there own grandchildren ?

 

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... "you are telling me how to suck _ock"
"... Darling, i aint telling you shit unless you put cash up front... man-babys to the back of the line please"

 

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