There’s no probably about it, really. He’s been upfront about being a non-observant Jew in interviews…
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Correct, he’s been totally transparent that he’s Jewish by heritage, but not by religion.
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He’s a less cranky version of my WWII vet (deceased a few years) Jewish father-in-law.
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Yeah, the Soviet Union might have been pretty crappy for Russians but it was fantastic for Europeans and Americans as the fear of communist revolution and the workers rising and expropriating property fuelled compromise with workers. As I commented from reading Sally Heathcoate Suffragette the other year - power never gives concessions because it is morally correct they do it because of fear and skulls smashed open on the streets.
As with others above and many, many people I meet i think I have been heading further left anarchist over the years.
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It’s easy to figure out Clinton’s core values. Go to Pew research. Her value is the one that gets 50%+ of the vote.[quote=“FunkDaddy, post:60, topic:74046”]
pragmatism is a tool for asking people to abandon their principles.
[/quote]
We need T-shirts.
I guess I think of this as a bit of a prisoners dilemma. If we all accept that in the end we are going to defect, we all get screwed. The only way co-operation works is if we are really going to do it. If I had a choice, I would be saying no to voting for Clinton this election. The party establishment who are working so hard to put Clinton in are very confident that in the end all those Sanders supporters will pick the lesser of two evils. But change only works if we don’t. If I was an American and it was Clinton vs. Trump I would honestly wonder whether the lesser of two evils was to vote Clinton, keep calm and carry on; or vote Trump and start digging secret tunnels to Canada for Muslims.
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All of this forms a pretty fantastic argument for abolishing the two-party system and moving to something like ranked voting. The fact that Sanders has to run as a Democrat and Trump has to run as a Republican should be seen as a weakness.
In a ranked voting scenario, both you and @awjt could mark Sanders first and Clinton second, or even vice-versa and never have to worry about your vote being wasted.
######Sometimes I like to dream a little…
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Living - as I do - in a nation where four parties have seats in federal parliament, ranked voting would make even more sense for me. I love the idea of changing the voting system, even if only to shake things up. Our current election system (both the US and Canada) seem to be considered solved games by the players, and so they just do degenerate electioneering. At least with a new system someone would be tempted to say, “I don’t know how to win, so I’d better just try to make the most appealing policies.”
Or they could listen to the same spin doctors they currently use to win as often as they’d win a coin flip. But yes, it’s nice to dream.
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I would love that. As well as getting rid of the electoral college.
If I could rank my choices, I would just put 1 mark next to Bernie Sanders and leave the rest out of it, because to put any other marks would lift them a little.
Also, @anon50609448, yes, it is a prisoner’s dilemma. It sucks.
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Yeah, I’m sure the two parties will get right on that.
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Yes, we can’t think about judicial appointments enough. Alito? Roberts? Losing Gore SCOTUS appointments set POC and gender issues back more years than anyone can say.
And the Roberts Court has legitimized wingnuttery against health care and gone to the precipice on reproductive liberties, corporate authority, voting rights … the list goes on.
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The dems also passed civil rights legislation that let the GOP argue “law and order” to southern working dems. Sen. Sanders’s campaign is the first strong sign that working dems can’t as easily be wedged apart by cultural issues any more.
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Fine, the real reason the fake quotes piss me off is it’s very condescending. The person is essentially implying that they know what I meant to write better than I did.
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Which fake quote? This one?
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Is it?
African American rights had two revolutionary moments, the civil war and the CRA. Everything else was slow incremental improvement.
Gay Rights? Slow increments, even gay marriage took over 30 years and came around well after most of the rest of the Western nations.
Yeah… that’s why I’m arguing against revolutionary thinking.
Some of this argument is just labelling, a lot of the stuff you call breaking down institutions and revolutions I just call a gradual evolution.
That’s fine, but I’m not sure Sander’s is really capable of delivering what you think he’ll deliver.
Municipal pols are pretty random, look at the state legislatures in the US and there’s some really insane characters.
What I think is different is the people at the top. I find the US Republican party to be seriously scary. Of the current primary I think Kucinich, Bush, Christie, and maybe Cruz are the only ones who wouldn’t be unmitigated disasters. Even then I doubt they’re achieve the very low standards of George Bush. I really can’t think of anyone prominent in Canada who’s that extreme.
On that topic Obama failed exactly the way I expected him to fail. It’s very easy to say no to drone strikes in the abstract. But when you feel personally responsible for any terrorist attacks on US soil, or 20 year old US soldiers under your command getting killed by IEDs then it becomes very hard to ignore the CIA’s pleadings.
Sanders has mostly ignored foreign policy so far, are you really confident he’d hold to that position when the head of the CIA tells him “remember that guy you didn’t let us drone strike? Well here’s the photos of the soldiers he just killed”.
Same goes for civil liberties, it’s the President’s job to keep Americans safe which means there’s intense pressure to do everything you can.
I think this captures a lot of the reason why Sanders is a bad choice even if you agree with everything he has to say.
I think being President is a much harder job than people realize, Obama is a really brilliant person and his first couple years were a gong show figuring things out, he nearly blew his signature bill when the ACA website didn’t work.
Hillary strikes me as someone who is extremely competent, she won’t do everything I want her to do, but she’ll do a good job.
Look at Jimmy Carter, he was very progressive but rightly or wrongly became perceived as an incompetent President. As a result he got 4 years in power followed by 12 years of Republicans and a general shift to the right.
If Bernie becomes the flag-bearer for progressive left politics and drops the ball the net result will be a shift to the right.
No the “smiling like an asshole” stuff he inserted into my quotes as well as as few other …summarizations he provided.
I think it was fairly clearly satire, but it was changing the context in a way that did misrepresent what I tried to write, as well there’s the principle of putting words in my mouth (well my keyboard).
Ah ok. That’s not good then!
Yes, it is. Revolution/revolutionary thinking is the accelerant of social evolution in the US. You are dangerously close to trying to make a binary argument of something far too complex.
In the US much as many places, social evolution does not occur except as a reaction by the establishment to the revolutionary or as a result of the political capture by the revolutionary of that establishment.
It is quite pronounced in US culture, and arguing against it is both futile and counter-productive. In your two examples, no gains would be made but for the demands of revolutionaries.
I note you may be confused as to what a revolutionary is. MLK = Revolutionary. Malcolm X = Revolutionary. Harvey Milk = Revolutionary. Michael Swift = Revolutionary. Two examples from each of the movements you cited that demonstrate the range of what is revolutionary.
I can kick the ball even further, it’s not a problem when you move those posts.
The (former) Reform Party, it’s leaders and allies. Quietly espousing views often --identical-- to those found to the south in the extremes of the Republican Party, tailored for the ears of the far less revolutionary Canadian electorate. Like their brothers to the south, not only do they get on just fine in their own right (pun intended), but they’ve also done the heavy lifting in dragging other parties past the centre and well into the right.
A Liberal ain’t Liberal in Canada anymore, except in election season. Just like the D to the south, they’ve been whittled away by the Right, carved into a manipulate-able likeness.
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O yeah I totally did that! Removed the : from his “slightly smiling” emoticon and added “like an asshole” Totally accurate accusation, though his claim of a “few other…” whatevers is 100% bullshit. I attribute it to butthurt and forgive it.
It was rude of me, but Canadians who represent Universal HealthCare in the language of my enemy (as “free”) get the boot, as do Canadians who suggest to US peeps that such things are out of their reach, so quit trying. The Boot.
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I’m from Alberta. They’re right wing but not nearly as much as you suggest.
The last two Provincial elections when a mildly Republican-like entity popped up (the Wild Rose party) they failed in part because people were worried they were further to the right then they let on.
To be honest even Ford isn’t that bad from a policy perspective. He’s fairly extreme on tax cuts and skipped going to the gay pride parade but otherwise is mostly just a blowhard.
Trump had the casino hide the black people when he came to visit while Rob Ford would go and smoke crack with his black friends!
Well you also did “pragmatism pragmatists pragmatist” and possibly other stuff (I didn’t check that thoroughly).
But the reason that pissed me off is because it changed the context of my statement to claim I was citing my nationality as a point of superiority, that was wrong.
My actual reason for my claim was 1) you’d were making assumptions that I was American, I didn’t want to give a false impression, 2) I obviously understand and am comfortable with some of the policies Sanders was endorsing, 3) being Canadian I acknowledge I have lower stakes in your election and don’t actually vote or anything.
True I then shifted to a criticism of what I termed US style “revolutionary thinking” as an explanation for why the US is having some of the specific problems on the right it is having (and why I think Sanders is a bad idea) but I’m really trying not to be condescending or assholish about it. There’s good things about that tendency, but I think there’s also a lot of bad ones too.
