Fascinating post from Chris Bowers. And despite the snark I'm about to inflict -- it's my nature -- I'm sure gawd happy it's Bowers on the teebee instead of the Cato Institute's loathesome Lord Kos. Bowers writes:
I have several thoughts on all of this:
First, it is really difficult to blog when you are always receiving media requests.
Oh, the humanity!
This has happened to me twice before, in October of 2006 and July of 2007. Then, just like now, I remember thinking how the publicity generated from blogging was, ironically, keeping me from actually blogging.
Second, if I have become one of the go-to interviews for progressive dissatisfaction with Obama's transition, then either there isn't much progressive dissatisfaction with Obama's transition, or I am in a more prominent leadership position for the ideological left than I realized. Either way, it has given me real impetus to make my arguments more specific, informed, and attached to potentially positive resolutions.
Which can only be helpful to you, the blogosphere, Obama, and above all, to the country. This is exactly the time to lay down markers, set up metrics, and turn on our critical thinking skills, and get Shrill
. "Wait 'til he does something" means wait 'til it's too late.
Third, it does not feel comfortable to be in disagreement with such a large percentage, probably a majority, of the progressive blogosphere.
For some definition of "progessive." I ask, again, how a progressive movement can be built on the basis of misogyny and false charges of racism -- or a discourse as toxic as our own has become.
It doesn't feel very good to stick out from your family like that. Maybe I know how Clinton supporters felt during the primary now.
Plenty of room under the bus!
I just hope that people take what I write at face value, rather than as the product of some sort of ulterior motive.
Have they called you a racist yet? That's when you'll know you're on the right track.
- lambert's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Front page
Comments
i swear, i feel more and more guilty
for the time i got in Chris' shit, about not being progressive enough, one time when we were snarking at each other in person. it's so cute to see him going down the path.
now, kevin, i have no worries about, whatsoever...
I wanna go on the teebee so bad!
Not.
But all snark aside, they're doing great work over there. Now, I feel we rather hacked the trail and took some hits for it, but heck, that's what C list bloggers are for....
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Can you please stop the BS equivalation
of the Progressive Movement with Nasty Anti-Hillary Commenters at dKos?
I understand the broad-brush tactic: to offend anyone who considers themselves progressive (like myself) but who has not engaged in misogyny and false charges of racism.
Maybe the goal is to get people like me to share your sense of grievance over the primaries? It's not working. It's not persuasive.
Isn't that like
separating Republicans from loyal Bushies? Not easily done. Enabling is a lethal toxicity unto itself. To many of us under the bus, the very word "progressive" has lost any political meaning beyond "laughable hypocrisy."
The most apt statement is the one from MLK Jr. "It's not the loudness of my enemies I'd remember; it's the silence of my friends."
LOL
"The most apt statement is the one from MLK Jr...."
Christ. I wonder if the Obama haters are going to get even more pompous and self righteous when his administration actually starts, and they actually have presidential acts to complain about instead of just lingering wounds from the primary.
Grievance
Shystee:
This has been a continuing theme, and I don't agree with any part of it.
Now, here's an example of a grievance:
Now, I'm not comparing the primaries to conditions before the Declaration of Independence, except to point out that a demand for redress, for justice, proceeds from a sense of grievance. One approach would be to address, if not redress, the grievance.
As far as the broad brush, I ask again: How can a progressive movement be based on misogyny and false charges of racism? I didn't participate in the misogyny, and I didn't make the false charges of racism. People calling themselves progressives did, and not in onesies and twosies, either. And I called bullshit, and at some personal cost.
I'm not the one who polluted the progressive brand: People calling themselves progressives did.
So, if you want to defend the progressive brand, may I suggest that, instead of shooting the whistleblower, that you figure out how to clean it up? That might be a more constructive approach than tut-tuttery, eh? Because Shut the Fuck
Up isn't working for me -- nor will it, I suggest, for the country.
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes -- some of us prefer to suppress the late unpleasantness, and others seek to learn from it. "Get over it" didn't work real well with Florida 2000, and I suspect that, ultimately, its success for the 2008 primary will be similar, and for the same reason: Injustice was done. Now, if Obama does turn out to be FDR, all this will be forgiven. And when that happy day occurs, I'll eat my chocolate cake hat.
UPDATE I point out that Kos has a page at the Cato Incident. So "mean things" on Kos may or may not be BS, but isn't on point here. It's a cute riff -- even if it does have the feel of coming from behind the lines instead of down in the trenches -- but has no relevance here.
The Collective Punishment Brush
I didn't participate in the misogyny, and I didn't make the false charges of racism, either. But I see myself as a progressive. So it's insulting.
People calling themselves women, Democrats, Liberals participated in the pro-Obama primary nastiness also. Do those groups need to apologize as well?
Or is it my responsibilty to force all offending progressives to apologize? I don't think it's going to happen.
After all these months I still don't know what you suggest an appropriate redress of your grievances would be. I don't think the asshole blog commenters are going to apologize, ever. And Obama nominated Hillary as Sec of State so that should be something, no?
Good to see I'm annoying you as well, Lb. But I'd rather work together.
I post on it when the story comes up, like everything else
I don't go out of my way to post on it; but when the news comes up, I post on it, setting the record straight if need be -- and pointing out when we got there first, before others, which reinforces the Corrente brand in a good way. After all, nobody agreed with Cassandra, so that makes us not Cassandras, eh? Funny that the "... prematurely correct..." posts have become a series, eh?
I don't expect the Village, and I certainly don't expect progressives as a class, to grant redress or apologize for anything (although thankfully, in individual cases, "de-shunning" certainly does happen*). I do expect some redress to come from the efforts of me and those like me. Abolishing the broken and undemocratic caucus system would be a form of redress, for example.
For the rest of it, the problems with the progressive brand are not of my making and not mine to solve. If you want to call yourself a progressive, then the problems other self-proclaimed progressives created for the brand become your problem, whether you created those problems yourself or not. That's unfair, but as I'm sure we both know, life is unfair sometimes.
NOTE "Collective punishment?" Geneva Convention-worthy? I guess mean things on the Internet have some significance after all...
NOTE * Can't find Patriot Boy's post.
The post you're looking for
http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2008/07/a...
See also:
http://correntewire.com/general_delivery
If you call yourself progressive
But really mean liberal, it is either because you consider liberal a bad word, or think it has been sullied beyond redemption, and are repackaging the ideology with a new term.
Liberals didn't even sully the term liberal, the VRWC
did. Progressives themselves did the damage to the term progressive, deal with it. Not all "States Rights" proponents were bigots, but they learned to stop calling themselves that after it had been irrevocably tied to racism. A smart person would realize that progressive has been irrevocably damaged as a term and an ideology, and find a new one.
After all these months I still don't know what you suggest an appropriate redress of your grievances would be.
That's because you haven't really been reading this blog. You've been reading the posts the Senior Fellows write, decided you don't agree, and haven't delved further.
The number one thing that can be done to redress grievances, is to NOT FORGET. Don't let the fact that this past election, open season was declared on women who dared to exist in public, and disagree with their male "betters", go down the memory hole. Because, as I said another day, the massive wave of woman hatred that Obama engendered to get elected, isn't going back into Pandora's Box, now that the election is over. They succeeded using this once, they'll try it again. I've already seen ramifications in my own life, where sexist fuckwits have been emboldened by the public shaming of Clinton and Palin, and I am now subjected even worse sexist behavior, than I endured even a year ago.
And Clinton's acceptance of the SoS position, signals nothing except, that she knows that as a woman, to accomplish your priorities, you have to work with sexist men. It doesn't mean we should all kiss and make up and pretend the primaries didn't happen. Am I happy he offered it? Yes, I see this as a wonderful opportunity for her, and the nation. Still not over the primaries.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Not forget...
Maybe I need to reword my question from How can a progressive movement be based on misogyny and false charges of racism? to How can a progressive movement be based on misogyny, false charges of racism, and airbrushed history?
A word about the language. A couple of words, actually.
I am a Liberal, of the unrepentant 60's variety. I am also a Progressive. No one can take either of those affiliations from me, or declare that I am not what I say I am. No one has that right.
The one, being Liberal, is a manner of thinking, a philosophical approach to understanding - or at least approximating - reality and grappling with its complexity. The other, being Progressive, is a political approach to the management of societal demands. There is no conflict in my mind or in my heart with being both.
We have dictionaries and encyclopedias to deal with what these words, and the concepts behind them, actually mean. I am not in the least interested in how the movement of the moment chooses to pervert or redefine or discard them. I frankly don't give a flying fuck about anyone else's opinion of whether or not I can claim those appellations; they are mine, end of story.
Shystee is twisted six ways from Sunday, no argument, and wrong about several things, but he is certified absolutely for sure and certain a true Liberal and a true Progressive - and damn anyone who says otherwise.
Please, no name-calling!
Shystee's personal definition of "liberal":
If the glove fits
That's the trouble with manufactured definitions; anyone can conjure them, and if adhered to by some and not others then words lose their consensus meaning and communication breaks down. Neither a Conservative nor a Liberal nor a Progressive nor a civilized goal, IMNSHO.
I'll stick with Webster's, at least until the OED3 sees daylight.
I agree n/t
.
Neoprogressives
That phrase was coined (at least as far as I can tell) here.
My view: Republicans did their best to destroy the "liberal" brand. Even to the point where "a liberal democracy" became an epithet. Former Republicans and quasi-republicans, especially those not necessarily opposed to the neo-conservatives (Kos, Huffington, Aravosis, Sullivan, Marshall, etc.) have done their level best over the last few years to coopt the "progressive" brand.
I think it is because if they had used the term "neo-progressive" that would sound too much exactly like what they are, which is "neos" coopting a brand that is/was ascendant. Neo-progressives share as much with 'progressives' as neo-conservatives share with conservatives. The only difference between them seems to be which "dirty, fucking" they hate worse: Dirty, Fucking Hippies, or Dirty, Fucking Evangelicals. Neo-progressives like those I cited above have barely identify with any traditional goals of either liberals or progressives. In fact, they are quite happy to use the tools, framing, arguments, etc. of neo-conservatives.
So when Lambert asks "How do you build a progressive movement....", does that have the simple answer, "You don't, that's how you build a neo-progressive movement."?
-----------------------------
Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites
A new variation on equivalation: disquivalation
Pretending that the misogyny (see also here) and false-charges of racism (links to relevant examples inside the linked posts) that benefited Obama were merely the province of a few Mean People on Daily Kos.
This on the other hand is something to build on
From Chris' Post:
This is something Corrente can really contribute to.
Er...
... I don't think you meant to say "can." I think you meant to say "already is."
E.g.
Or E.g..
Or even
Is currently doing on multiple
fronts.
But if what you don't like is written, and what you like is not written, rather than doing the writing, it is easier to do the complaining.
Cthulu helps those who help themselves!
-----------------------------
Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites