Politicians aren't all the same, even if they all do terrible things

boing
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Parenting tip: When you want your child to do something, present them with a constrained choice related to your goal: do you want the ducky or the tugboat in your bath? This allows them to feel that they are in control, and distracts them from the bigger decisions that children aren’t supposed to make.

Being an adult is about realizing that we can do more than pick from the choices presented to us. We can create our own options and pursue them on our own terms. It’s not about being a martyr or a perfectionist. It’s about being mature enough to know what we want.

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Apparently, we are not allowed to celebrate the fact that the attorney general for 12 percent of all Americans is pretty cool in a few key ways or figure out where that could take us. My respondent was attempting to crush my ebullience and wither the discussion, and what purpose exactly does that serve?

It serves to undermine faith and respect for the political class.

For those who are completely invested in the idea that social change comes from attorney generals and state representatives, these criticisms are totally baffling. “I mean sure, all politicians do terrible things, but clearly some have done worse than others, how can you not recognize that?”

I do, but the important part of that observation is the first part: All politicians do terrible things. Maybe the true power is not in empowering the least-bad ones, but finally declaring: fuck politicians and fuck politics.

Society moves forward through bottom-up people power. It always has. The suggestion that politicians and votes play an important role in social struggles is a lie, and it’s a lie specifically designed to distract us from our real power.

When someone points out the shitty things your favorite politician has done, they’re not being a nitpicky perfectionist: they’re trying to remind you that your focus on politicians in general is harmful to the social progress you desire.

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Whoops. Another reason why I shouldn’t jot a quick addendum without closer reading. I meant 40th percentile of income (~40K per household), not 40% of median. 40% of median would probably not be attractive almost anywhere.

And I wonder about the 90th percentile ($143K). Of course an awful lot of people would take it, but would it over or under 90%?

It’s an appalling place to be working-class or below.

Truly? It’s pretty hard to untangle poverty from the racial-aspect of socio-economic status. If we try, is it really better to be working-class (~40the percentile?) in much of the rest of the world compared to the US? There’s a little more government support, but to be honest very few countries have comparable programs to EITC and of course cost of living expenses are higher to much higher almost everywhere.

Not living in the US, it’s pretty clear to me that living in poverty is appalling almost everywhere. I suspect what makes it harder in the US is there is fairly widespread, visible wealth. It’s quite possible that if the 1% simply didn’t exist, the poor might be materially worse off, but still psychologically a lot healthier.

Of course, the same theory says that vast majority of the world might be happier if all of us in the global 1% were to mysteriously disappear…

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There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging concessions that politicians make, but that doesn’t mean we have to support them. Just keep up the pressure. Like @zikzak argues, the way that change is achieved is through mass mobilization of regular people. Politicians only make concessions when we force them to.

Conversely, sometimes a given politician might be more disposed to make concessions, so theoretically there are reasons to strategically vote for certain candidates. But in practice what this means is that we wait generations for change and things only get worse and worse, and people go to their graves still waiting. Still, liberals smugly remind us that their party of choice, widely known as the graveyard of movements, is our only option, and that we have to wait and wait and wait for positive change.

Anticapitalist radical MLK wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail that white moderates are the greatest threat to freedom today because they perpetually delay serious change and so function as a stabilizing force for the status quo. I think his analysis still works for liberals today, and is particularly apt for this conversation.

Just as importantly, Cory mentions foreign wars. These and other forms of US interventions (coups, CIA ops, aid to dictators and fascists, etc.) have killed countless millions–far more than 20 million since WWII. The two dominant political parties in the US are responsible for destroying countless lives, countries, and hopes for a better world. Asking us to support the people responsible “because healthcare” is cruel and short-sighted.

We were probably all raised on the idea that when a government kills millions of people, then the world has an imperative to remove it. This is the excuse for US interventionism, and it’s bound up with the way that our societies view Hitler, for example, the poster boy for “OK we have to do something drastic about this.” If we’re going to judge a society by its atrocities then the US is quite possibly and objectively the single worst state in all the world. Revolutionary change is, in my view, imperative. But I also think that for the US it is impossible.

Frederic Jameson once wrote that, with the advent of the nuclear bomb it is now easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. I think the same applies to the way things are in the US. It’s easier to imagine that society there will keep on going the same way right up to the moment of its collapse, and then everyone loses. For working-class people, the best thing I can recommend is that they get out while they can and move somewhere with a better culture and better material conditions, because life is too short to wait on Americans to stop being Americans.

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So, their tactics so far have been sooo effective, eh? And it’s ensured that they keep being elected to decisive majorities…

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When the GOP has been so intransigent that they’ve caused a government shut down over partisan issues it ends up hurting them in November. There is a lesson to be learned there.

Personally I like to have someone reasonable to vote for, rather than have to choose between two pushy and hard-headed groups. It’s preferable to fistfights on the House or Senate floor.

In the last half century of American politics neither side ever really has a decisive majority for very long, just like neither side manages to keep the White House for more than three terms. If you’re annoyed that your side is never 100% in control, blame the framers of the Constitution.

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This chart in Wikipedia would be to differ. Since 1995, the Senate and Congress have been Republican-controlled 2/3 of the time. The politicians in power in the USA have absolutely no fear of the electors, but tremble in fear of their corporate bosses.

Also, I’m not American. In my case, my ‘side’ got elected last November. ;->

You’all need to slap some of the politicians around, down there, like we did to the PCs in 1993 where they went from being in power with 169 seats to 2 seats after than eletion (!). They didn’t even have ‘Official Party’ status anymore.

Message received!, let me tell you.

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Wrong message, though. They were outflanked to the right, and their response was to merge with the party that had outflanked them, driving their party’s values further rightward. The result, I remember, was CCRAP.

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The chart on wikipedia shows that the Democrats have had control of both houses for most of the last half century (in the House alone it splits 44 years to the GOP’s 18 years), but if you’re going to parse it such that only the last 20 years count, fair enough. Of course this election could change everything, we shall wait and see. But if so, it wouldn’t be because they became as pushy as the GOP, quite the opposite.

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But it sure felt good for while.

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The Republicans became real arseholes about twenty years ago, at around the time that the Project for a New American Century was established…

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I appreciate your analysis here; thank you.

I would add that privilege and access have engendered a few to paragon the effort you speak of, and as hero worshipers, human(s) sold. However, it doesn’t make it right, and it makes it incumbent upon the accessed and privileged to open themselves up, imo. Lead by example.

Show me profit isn’t everything. Please? Thank you in advance. Signed, Just A Human.

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It accelerated then. It started with the southern strategy.

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It begins agin.

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The southern strategy was when the GOP embraced evil. Reagan was when the GOP abandoned substance. Shrub was when the GOP endorsed stupid.

There’s always a bottom below.

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I’d tend to agree. But an interesting thought experiment would be what the Democrat party would be like if much of power and support resided in the elements that currently support the Republicans. One can claim that the party would not have ceded policy to such supporters, but anyone who knows anything about politics understands that is never the case.

In such an alternative history, it’s not inconceivable that Trump would have found a more amenable home in the Democratic party and its “Solid South”.

My feeling is that the Republican’s Southern Strategy helped the Democratic Party dodge a bullet.

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I find this funny - Donald Trump’s political party membership:

Republican (1987–99; 2009–11; 2012–present)
Independent (2011–12)
Democratic (2001–09)
Reform (1999–2001)

He’s good at picking losing sides. Republican when Clinton was President, Democrat when Bush 43 was, then Republican under Obama.

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