"Seattle's Socialist City Councilor Offers Radical Response to Obama Speech"

[Scootaloo]

75. The trouble I see is false progressives

The term "progressive" as a political appellation is problematic in itself - it's another term for conservatives who aren't reactionaries. For this reason - and the feeling that adopting the term was just giving ground to the right's demonization of "liberal" I've been refusing to use the term (not that liberal has a spotless history, but calling myself a leftist seems to derail any discussion right off the bat)

But you know, whatever, words change meaning over time, right? And then 2008 happened. And suddenly I'm hearing a lot of conservative bullshit coming from this "progressive" camp - not the politicians, they've always been middle-right twits because, well, they have money and power and that's what happens. but from the rank and file.

So, why did that happened? Did Obama make people conservative? BRFFFFFFT nope.

Two things; Authoritarianism and opportunism.

For the first, there are people who simply figure that everything coming from "their side" is perfect, and that any contest to that is therefore evil. Black and white thinkers. Thus why "firebaggers" like you and who say "could be better" are lumped with the shitting dicknipples in the tea party. I know the term "authoritarian" rankles a lot of people around here since it conjures images of a host of other political -isms, but it's a personality trait rather than a political movement, and no matter what, some segment of the population (sadly a surprisingly LARGE segment - yay psychological evolution) will display authoritarian traits.

The second, opportunism, is much more problematic, if no less annoying. You've seen of course all these republicans jumping from the GOP to become democrats. Are any of them changing their ideas and positions, do you think? I'm pretty certain they're not. The party switch is just a way for them to try to hold or gain power, of course; they're rats jumping from a sinking ship. They might be desperate, but they still carry the plague. And of course if politicians are making the very risky jump to what they see as the "winning side" of course voters, who have far, far less to lose, are doing the same.

I think DU has a large number of the latter, as well as a statistically normal number of the former. You'll note the number of posters who have long histories of anti-left, anti-labor, poor-bashing, racist and warmongering positions - which they shore up by paying lip service to marriage equality or choice. That is, they're conservative trolls on every issue that won't get them banned from DU, but sparkling angels on the issues that explicitly would get them chucked off the site.

right now the left's trouble is that most leftists are drawn from the people who AREN'T authoritarians and opportunists. naturally it's much easier to organize people who go with the flow, or limpet on for the ride, but not so much a grouping of people where everyone has four different ideas about how the thing should go.