Why do people on different degrees of the left treat each other like shit?

[jpgray]

Is it the family syndrome, where you treat your family far worse than your friends since you know there is an irrevocable bond there, whereas your friends might abandon you after bad treatment? The base can treat the Democratic leadership like garbage (behavior not always undeserved, in my view) because the Democratic leadership needs to drag along a number of them kicking and screaming to win elections, and the Democratic leadership can treat the farther left like shit because so long as they win primaries, where is a leftist gonna go besides them? Should we start putting family first? Can we end the -nastiness- and keep the disagreements and debate?

[mcctatas]

1. Well said.

I think there is a fundamental level of frustration due to the fact that where there are 2 democrats, you will have 3 opinions;)

[Autonomy]

19. LOL that's the funniest thing I've heard all night.

How about: "You can't get a Democrat to agree on lunch"?

-or-

Q: What's the difference between a Democrat?

A: About an hour.

[mcctatas]

23. Or this one from the great Molly Ivins...

"Trying to organize democrats is like trying to herd cats":rofl:

[Autonomy]

25. LOL. How about some Will Rodgers:

"I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat."

"Democrats never agree on anything, that’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans."

"The Democrats and the Republicans are equally corrupt where money is concerned. It’s only in the amount where the Republicans excel."

"Their greatest trait to recommend the Democrats is optimism and humor. You’ve got to be an optimist to be a Democrat, and you’ve got to be a humorist to stay one."

Some things haven't changed all that much in 70 years.

[Inland]

2. Because most leftists don't value winning elections.

If you don't value winning elections, then there's no reason to be conciliatory, ever.

[jpgray]

5. Well, the difference between Bush and Gore/Kerry would mean a lot to some

If you take a big enough picture view, they seem close enough as bourgeois, pro-business tickets, but especially those who rely on government aid, federal housing, welfare, &c to break the inertia of poverty, that cosmically small difference is magnified by the power of the office into the difference between life and death. Ditto for foreign policy, and, likely enough, disaster response. If all you want is the repeal of Taft-Hartley, though, I guess you could say "They're the same!"

[ksilvas]

8. Regan, Iran-Contra, Nothing, End of Transmisson.

[porphyrian]

14. What elections have we won under the current leadership?

According to my records, we've lost the last three major elections by pulling to the right, attacking our liberal base and fishing for some "moderate voter" chimera that never manifests.

[HEyHEY]

3. Just like a 2/3 moderate green socialist to say something like that

[expatriot]

4. the "left" is driven by ideas, the "right" is driven by power

We are driven by ideologies, therefore we debate with eachother and get so frustrated that our brethren are "sell-outs" or "nonpragmatic dogmatics." The right's number one aim is power, so they are more ready to subordinate their ideological points in order to form "packs" so they can have the most power.

That is my two cents.

[JI7]

6. i don't think it's as simple as that

[ksilvas]

7. My God,

Because we're still talking about the party
like it really exists.

[JackDragna]

9. Amen.

What leftist movement? What Democratic party? It's been co-opted by those who give the Republicans everything they want. I never considered myself all that far too the left until the moment I somehow got there by expecting Democrats to actually oppose the policies of the Republican party.

[burythehatchet]

11. It works out better for the Republican party that way

[jpgray]

13. Do you mean it no longer represents you, or that it is evil?

I suppose it was always evil--you have Andrew Jackson's genocide of Native Americans to the "let's net another slave state" Mexican War from Polk, to the bigotry and racism of the turn of the century Democrats, to the internment camps of WWII, to the puppet-state dictatorship meddlings of the Truman/Kennedy era, to the Vietnam fiasco of the Johnson era... where exactly was the Democratic Party existing as a great and unassailable thing? If you're saying it no longer represents you to justify a lack of participation, isn't that a self-fulfilling prophecy?

[omega minimo]

10. Oh fuck you

:hi: :rofl:

:yoiks:

[ksilvas]

12. Oh fucken look around you.

Typing your ass off in a chat room does not a
viable politacal party make.
Hence,
The last 20 something years since Regan.
The "Left" is in triage mode. In two weeks
we'll be fighting to keep Roe v Wade and mabey
Miranda rights.
What ever happened to the good ol days
of Mumeia Abu Jamal and Lenord Peltiare.

[omega minimo]

16. Which "chat room" did you leave your sense of humor in?

I'm sorry, I should have used:

:sarcasm: or :evilgrin: or :bounce: or :smoke:

Welcome to DUH

[ksilvas]

18. Sorry, got a little worked up I guess.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

15. They think we're always going to be around and we're not. They

are going to wake up and find they lost a lot of people. There won't be anything they can do to get anyone back.

[TahitiNut]

There should be a rule: Aim Your Guns To The Right!!

While I eschew the linear model of political ideology, it'll suffice for this. I've already said this:

The GOP has accommodated their far-right "extremists" and moved the political landscape to the right as a result. The establishment Democrats have attacked and marginalized the "leftists" who're nowhere near as far out as the right's edge, and have fractured the base.

What's to learn? Aim your guns to the RIGHT!! No matter WHERE you are on the (mythical) spectrum!!! "Centrist" Democrats? AIM TO THE RIGHT! "Moderate" Democrats?? AIM TO THE RIGHT! If the shells from the "left" of you fall short, INGORE THEM AND KEEP AIMING TO THE RIGHT!!!

Corollary to this would be stances on an issue-by-issue basis. Attacking people on stances that are opposed to GOP stances should be verboten, even if one doesn't really 'mind' what the GOP is promulgating. Expect incoming from the left, however. Don't fire back. Just crawl into a foxhole -- after all, you're close to the front lines so your foxholes should be deeper.

As a fairly "far" left person, I'll regard any fire coming from my right to be GOP fire. As a "leftist" my guns are aimed in one direction only. To my right.

[Autonomy]

20. Interesting war analogy.

I don't know a lot about being in a war, but I know that you certainly don't want to be isolated from your comrades because you shot at anything that moved and killed off your closest allies.

Republicans have won the last few elections through solidarity on the Right (ignoring for the moment the fact that they stole some of those elections). The rightward shift you're describing is not a phenomenon of the Republican party faithful getting what they want, but rather their ability to convince the center it's what they want. They've done that with their natural weapons: fear and distrust. We need to counter them with equal solidarity, while neutralizing the appeal to negative emotions.

Corollary would be that attacking Democratic office-holders and candidates on an issue by issue basis should be "verboten", as you put it.

[Jackpine Radical]

22. Why does the DLC always seem to think they have to apologize

to the right for the left?

[Zhade]

27. Because they have more in common with the right than the left?

NT!

[Autonomy]

17. The family analogy is good....

With the Left and Right having two different family styles. The Right is patriarchal and demands absolute loyalty, and the Left is matriarchal in style and tolerates dissent. That's the sociology of it, so say some Berkeley professors. But it doesn't really start or end there. The political truth is that there is always in-fighting in any group, and whether that in-fighting is self-destructive depends on a whole lot of stuff. Right now, given the 50-50 split in American politics, just about any in-fighting is going to be self-destructive.

[Must_B_Free]

21. mainly cause its fun

[wli]

24. Because fifth column attacks are happening. n/t

[Wizard777]

26. We're too busy smelling everybody elses shit to smell our own. But thats

only when we're not being brutally honest. Well you asked.

But I think your on to something there with the differing degrees. I think of myself a variable degree lefty. I have flames in all sizes. So ha ha. Fuck you all!

:rofl: