I'm an idealist first, a pragmatist second

[Capt. Obvious]

Unlike many absurd claims to the contrary I understand that I can't get 100% of what we want from Politician X (and neither can the ones making that absurd claim btw).

Idealists fight for their beliefs and raise holy hell to move the needle in our direction. Sometimes we even primary sitting Dems for not hitting a percentage of our ideals.

In the end I always vote for the winner (usually not the idealists' candidate) as I'm pragmatic.

As an idealist I don't overlook my guy's flaws - I call attention to them and either try to change them or get someone new in.

As a pragmatist I know it's better to have a flawed candidate than a Republican candidate.

As an idealist I will not sit on my ass and just accept things the way they are because they can't be changed.

As a pragmatist I sometimes throw my hands up in the air and say, "what's the fucking point?"

That last part is the worst part of the pragmatist side.

[Fumesucker]

1. Your Obamaphone is coming through loud and clear over here

[Capt. Obvious]

13. .

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. I couldn't agree more! First and above all, I want the GOP gone and this whole

decades-long episode of GOP domination and destruction. Once they're gone, we'll be able to begin to begin repairing the country.

[AZCat]

10. I disagree slightly.

The GOP can stay, as long as the nasty people who make it a horrible hate-fest are gone. I wouldn't mind an opposing party as long as they weren't so evil.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

20. I would prefer multiple parties. Having only 2 is so limiting. But we have only 2 because our

system is different from that of other countries. I DO agree with you though. The GOP is the undisputed most evil group I've seen. They're not confused, they're EVIL.

[randome]

3. Good for you. I'm happy for you. I also don't care.

What does this have to do with anything? Debate, complain, whatever you want, DU is supposed to be, I think, a melting pot of ideas.

But also recognize that progress has been made. Or is Bernie Sanders' word not good enough for your idealist side?

I think we can all handle talking about the pros and cons of this Administration and what direction we think we should be headed.

But if anyone has some sort of outrage fetish they want to indulge, I say leave it at the door, please.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Bjorn Against]

4. To make it clear my post was not refering to pragmatists like you

There is a big difference between "pragmatists" who insult idealism and the real pragmatists who understand why ideals are worth fighting for.

[Capt. Obvious]

11. I understood your point

I thought of adding this to your thread instead of starting a new one but I figured this was a different point altogether.

I'm constantly reading barbs about the left causing doom for the party and being blamed for 2010 and so forth. We vote, we volunteer, we gotv. We may even do more of that than the "pragmatists" you speak of.

[frazzled]

5. That's fine, and sort of describes most of us ... but

I think there are two things somewhat awry in this (and most of the other similar) discussions:

The first is the argument that you can spend 730 days (365 x 2) "raising holy hell" and yelling at Democrats and telling them how wrong they are, and then spend 20 minutes on 1 day, every 2 years, sucking it up and voting for one—and pretend that you are accomplishing anything in this way. This is not effective on a number of levels:

(a) Raising holy hell sometimes does have an effect. Unfortunately, the effect is to make some friends, acquaintances, or casual listeners think they should not vote. We've been over this one, and I know some people don't buy it, but it seems inevitable that there's some truth to it. Witness the bashing from the left of Al Gore in 2000, and the several thousand gullible kids who decided they'd be wise to vote for Nader in Florida instead. Bye bye President Gore and climate change efforts.

(b) Raising holy hell without supporting or participating (other than anonymously voting every once in a while) does not generally accomplish goals. This is especially true if the hell you are raising is done from behind the keyboard of a computer (and I'm not saying that's you; I'm just speaking about some mythical hell raisers in general). It's also true when you are in the minority (and I think we've established over the past few days, citing respected polls by Pew, for example, that dissatisfied Democrats equal only about 8% of the universe of liberal Democrats. Actually the conservative Democrats are a much bigger group, and if they're there in the trenches with their Congress people, say, working on campaigns, visiting their offices to meet, their yelling is going to be heard a lot more than yours.)



I'm drawing casual observations from working on campaigns and in organizations over the years. In 2012, for example, I worked in the national Obama campaign office here ... and so many people were showing up you had to stand in line waiting just to sign in, and then wait further for a desk space and phone. These must've been a pretty good cross-section of Democrats, because on the various days I worked there, I was wedged between old people and very young, students and retired teachers, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Jewish doctors, and Catholic nuns. I even rode the elevator up with a gay Muslim. In 2008 we drove 7 hours, giving a hitch to the head of neurosurgery at a large public hospital, a nurse, and an undergraduate college student, to go canvassing in another state, knocking on doors of down-and-out strangers. The support and time all these people expend tend to give the politicians they're working for, and donating money to, the idea that they're happy with their policies and what they're doing. So whatever you're raising hell about ... if you're not being heard by the field directors or the campaign staff ... if you're not in there saying to your Senator or Representative, hey, I spent three weeks making phone calls for you, and I want to see something happen about X ... you're hell-raising is probably not going to get you that far.

Enough: all I'm saying here is that reluctantly casting a vote once every couple of years isn't all that. And it doesn't buy you much of anything. Nobody can connect your vote with your bitching. They probably don't even think you voted if you're bitching. Have a goal, but try some honey.

Which brings me to point two: raising hell. I think it has its place. But it only works if it is accompanied by an equal amount of working within the system, and playing nice. If we look back at the civil rights movement, and more recently at the gay rights movement--these factions started by raising some hell, but that's not how they got what they wanted. Both groups were working behind closed doors in Washington, working the system, from the inside. And the winning side in the civil rights movement did not come from the Stokely Carmichaels or Panthers (important as they might have been): they came from the ordinary citizens, led by extraordinary (and flawed) leaders, practicing nonviolence, asking for some common-sense dignity. The actions of Act Up may have been necessary in the beginning, but the gains made in recent years by the LGBT community did not come from that, but rather through the most conventional, normative kind of argument: we want to get married. And in the meantime, Ivy League men and women, lawyers and political insiders, were working the halls of Washington again. The work of both groups took decades of hard, on the ground work, and neither got everything they wanted. The job is not done for either quest for equality. But these groups succeeded because they had patience, and persistence. And nobody won what they wanted by saying "fuck you, you piece of shit car salesman, give me my rights." That doesn't tend to work all that well.

I'm rambling. And I know there will be those who pick apart my argument. It's fine. I don't want to argue back. I just want to say that I think we all share the same goals--but we don't share the same tactics. And I don't think one side will ever convince the other. Let's stand back and see who wins in the end.

[joshcryer]

7. Great post frazz!

Should be it's own thread.

[Bobbie Jo]

9. Excellent post. nt

[Capt. Obvious]

12. Who says we do nothing but vote?

[Bluenorthwest]

14. ACT UP and Queer Nation events took place in a time where there was zero access to

regular political channels. Not only was Reagan indifferent and silent about AIDS the Democratic Party had not yet included the LGBT community, Bill Clinton was the first national Democrat to acknowledge the community as part of the Democratic coalition.
ACT UP was how we got forward enough to have some communications with actual power in government. What they did not only laid the foundation for today's more elegant LGBT politics, what they did also got lots of health care debate rolling, I first protested outside an Insurance Company over people being denied drugs and treatments in the 1980's with ACT UP. I'll bet that the bulk of the folks happy about ACA did not start in the 80's. We did.
It was wartime. It was a great crisis. Government and both Parties were utterly absent. The 'health care providers' were in panic mode, there were no protocols, it was mayhem.
Thank God almighty for Larry Kramer. I live today because he was angry then. It is that painfully simple.

[frazzled]

18. I participated in some ACT UP events myself

I am fully aware of the movement and its goals, and showed up on the street during the Silence = Death protests. My husband was involved in promoting the first World AIDS Day events, from the beginning. We knew a founder of ACT UP.

But it made mistakes, too. I hope you saw How To Survive a Plague--nominated for an Academy Award and aired recently on PBS's Independent Lens. It's incredibly moving, and well done. A part of it, however, deals with the eventual rift between ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group; the research and scientific arm of ACT UP). The fight with the FDA to get untested drugs approved immediately was won, sort of, when AZT was approved. But TAG eventually realized it had sort of made a mistake, because AZT was not the answer, and it gave a false sense of security and, for a while, actually impeded resources and energies for further drug research. There was real hostility that arose between the street activists and the research arm, and TAG ended up splitting off and working more closely with the government, instead of in opposition to it, and realizing that the FDA has its reasons for thorough research and clinical trials. In the heat of the immediate crisis, the push for untested drugs was necessary. But what really led to the current drugs that are sustaining people's lives successfully was the work that was done when TAG worked with the pharmaceutical industry and government to do longer-term research on the effects of drugs. I think you owe as much to Mark Harrington as you do to Larry Kramer: http://www.treatmentactiongroup.org/staff/mark-harrington

I am so glad you are alive and well. I'm so sorry for all the people we lost. We are not at odds: we want the same things. We need both outside activism and inside working with the government. Neither one works alone, and that was my point.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/how-to-survive-a-plague/

[joshcryer]

6. I'm a fighter.

Fighters pick and choose their battles. Fighters never give up.

[RobertEarl]

8. It is a compromising situation

In real life there is always a compromise having to be made.

But on DU, if you don't want to compromise, you don't have to.

That's what makes DU so special to me. We are in good company here and the idealism that most of us share can be shared without compromise, if we so desire.

Now: in order to further education, compromise here is sometimes required, but it is not a demand to educate, or be educationally minded.

If all you want to do is rant and rave about how the Liberal Left has always been the more correct course, this is the best place to let 'er rip!!

[KittyWampus]

15. The term you seek is "Ideologue", not "Idealist". Evidence-

Evidence the way so many throw out the epithet "Third Way" even when it doesn't apply.

A Pragmatist understands to make progress facing a strong headwind, one has to tack to the sides at 45 degree angles… you know "triangulating". Progress may not happen in a direct route.

So if it were just a matter of holding feet to the fire or advocating an end goal vociferously, then a DU'er has a case for being labeled an "Idealist".

But that term doesn't accurately apply to many who would identify with it.

Philosophically the correct foil to "Idealist" is "Realist" or "Materialist".

Lastly, Pragmatism isn't about being "fatalistic" or "cynical" and throwing your hands in the air. It's about finding a way forward by compromising.

As someone who is far Left of center, I want to move forward however possible. While I see value in "triangulating", I try to distinguish between those who compromise because they share my same goals and those who want to undermine. That is not always easy.

In the end, I find a lot of DU'ers have a very black/white view of politics. They are set in their narrative and won't deviate. Part of it is rigid Ideology but it is also Cynicism. Cynics hate progress because it invalidates their world view.

[Capt. Obvious]

16. Thank you for mapping it out

[JoePhilly]

17. +1 ... I'd add the distinction between strategic goals, and tactical goals.

I think some here confuse a Strategic goal, like "Medicare for all" with a "tactical goal", like the ACA.

A Strategic goal is generally a destination that you can't get to in one move. It takes a series of tactical moves to get there. And not all of those are "straight lines".

Folks who don't get this distinction think that passing the ACA is inconsistent with working towards an ultimate goal of universal health care.

[woo me with science]

19. Still trying to make "Third Way" an epithet, huh?

Actually, it's a useful descriptor with a clear meaning...just like "authoritarian."

Ah, the attempt to discredit the term, "authoritarian." I predicted this OP.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3171893

...Authoritarians don't like being called what they are, and since they can't yet prohibit words and restrict others to an approved Newspeak Dictionary, they settle for flailing at and attempting to discredit the individual words they dislike.

This tactic...is most amusing in one-to-one settings. When someone uses an accurate word to describe what you are doing or advocating, just put the word in quotation marks, add some exclamation points, and try to neutralize it by pretending it's an epithet instead of an accurate descriptor. We have all seen it here 1,000 times. A person's politics are described as Third Way, and he or she rears up in indignation, expressing shock at the "namecalling."

Well, no. "Third Way" means something. It is not an epithet, but rather descriptive shorthand for a clear and specific set of political values and policies. You can see what "Third Way" means by going to the Third Way website, where the goals and policies - liberal on the social issues unimportant to the One Percent but corporate and authoritarian on virtually everything else - are clearly delineated.

Those who embrace the policies don't want to admit it, so they try to make the term an epithet...something to be banned by a jury so that it can't be accurately applied to them on the forums. And now we are hearing the same sort of defensive attempts to discredit the word when authoritarianism is called "authoritarianism."

Of course "authoritarian" means something. Brazen defense of a government's spying on its own citizens is indisputably authoritarian.

I always picture an indignant poodle rearing up in outrage and exclaiming, "What?! You called me a DOG?!"

Orwell was right. Defending against authoritarianism *requires* defending language, because authoritarians will try to twist, discredit, or take away the words that are necessary for us to describe what is being done to us.