Posted on 09/30/2017 5:18:50 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Progressives will make political gains when they stop assuming voters respond to nuanced arguments and ideas
Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon recently told the audience at a rally for theocratic loon Roy Moore, who just won the Republican primary for Jeff Sessions’ vacated Alabama Senate seat, that “they” — meaning the Republican establishment — “think you are a pack of morons.” Accusations of "elitism" against Republican leadership are the newest incarnation of a trademark conservative attack on Democratic politicians and liberal media commentators — all of whom, we are to assume, squeeze their nostrils together whenever they walk past an American without an Ivy League pedigree.
Besides the amplification of a sickly sense of self-pity, these increasingly common declarations of persecution have the disadvantage of being false. If the political establishment — especially mainstream Democrats — truly believed that voters like those at the Roy Moore rally were morons, they would win more elections.
Progressives lose at the ballot and across the culture because they consistently overestimate the intelligence and decency of the American people.
History’s greatest monster, otherwise known as Hillary Clinton, has presented a compelling relitigation of the 2016 election in her new book “What Happened,” arguing that James Comey’s violation of his professional standards, the overt chauvinism of Republican voters, the latent sexism of the mainstream media and the zealotry of the Bernie Sanders cult coalesced to form the circumstances perfect for her defeat.
Critics of Clinton claim, many of them without reading the book, that she does not acknowledge her own devastating errors. She did not visit Wisconsin and Michigan, she did not forcefully articulate an economic program for national growth, and she relied too heavily on “identity politics” throughout her campaign appeals to voters.
Her gravest misstep, which she does not concede and the media never mentions, was that she believed the majority of Americans were sufficiently thoughtful and moral to reject the prospect of a historically illiterate conman who routinely makes racist remarks and once boasted of committing sexual assault, acting as President of the United States.
She was wrong.
The Clinton campaign ran countless advertisements spotlighting the vulgarity and cruelty of Trump, thinking, “Americans will not vote for this monstrosity.” Nearly 63 million Americans did vote for it, seemingly more concerned about Clinton’s private email server than Trump’s willingness to use nuclear weapons or his unapologetic articulation of skepticism that a man of Mexican ancestry could fairly adjudicate a case.
Now, Trump is president, and he recently bellowed in Alabama — at a rally for Moore's primary opponent, Luther Strange, whom Moore has defeated — that the NFL should forbid players from kneeling during the national anthem. “Get that son of a bitch off the field,” Trump projectile vomited into the microphone.
The rhetoric of the current president is a far cry from “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent . . .” and “Ask not what your country can do for you . . .” It is, however, something that resonates with the American people.
According to the newest poll on the NFL imbroglio, 64 percent of Americans believe that the league should force its players to stand during the opening performance of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
One can almost hear the whimpers of progressives stressing the importance of “free speech.” The reality is that most Americans don’t know, and wouldn’t care if they did.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center recently discovered that 37 percent of Americans could not identify a single freedom that the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees. Only one in four Americans could correctly name all three branches of government.
During the second presidential debate, Donald Trump chastised Hillary Clinton for not reforming the tax code when she was a Senator. The Democratic nominee explained how a bill becomes a law, giving the next president a free lesson in elementary civics. The exchange barely registered in the minds of the American people, most of whom are unaware of the legislative process themselves.
Thomas Jefferson, the founding father President Trump likened to Robert E. Lee with little public objection, once wrote, “knowledge is the currency of democracy.” America is bankrupt.
The liquidation resulting from decades of uninterrupted perversion of language and degradation of discourse affects not only the intellect, but also ethics. It is all but forgotten that Colin Kaepernick, who is currently unemployed, began the anthem protest to call attention to the continuation of police killings of unarmed black men, often without professional penalty, much less legal recrimination.
White Americans claim that they admire Martin Luther King Jr. and that they believe in the words, “All men are created equal,” but like Jefferson himself, they indicate that the truth is otherwise with their behavior. More anger is visible in reaction to players kneeling during a song than after video emerges of police officers executing innocent, black men. A large segment of whites, including the 50 percent who told pollsters that they will now boycott the NFL over the protests, demonstrate greater respect for “the flag” — a symbol of cheap cloth — than the lives of their fellow citizens with dark skin.
Ignorance and the erasure of humanity are as American as football and flag waving. A recent experiment from The New York Times found that the more accurately Americans could identify North Korea on a map, the less likely they were to favor military action against the country. Harm de Blij, in his book “Why Geography Matters,” credits geographical knowledge as a bulwark against war and isolation. He also writes that “the American public is the most geographically illiterate society on the planet.”
In a 2015 Public Policy poll, 30 percent of Republicans and 19 percent of Democrats were in favor of bombing Agrabah. It has a vaguely Middle Eastern-sounding name, so clearly it is a threat to the survival of America. Lucky for our sake, it is the fictional setting of Disney’s “Aladdin,” an animated feature film for children.
While Trump ingratiated himself to the public with his condemnation of politically incorrect speech from professional athletes, and as he likely prepares to tweet threats against the Sultan of Agrabah, Puerto Rico is experiencing a humanitarian crisis of extreme suffering. More than three million people who live on the islands are currently struggling to meet basic needs. Estimates of how long they will suffer without power are grim.
Only 54 percent of Americans are aware that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Ignorance of Puerto Rico’s commonwealth status with the United States is most important because of the heartless provincialism of many Americans. 81 percent of Americans who realize that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens support robust American aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Only 44 percent of Americans who do not know about Puerto Rican-U.S. citizenship support aid.
Progressives enjoy making appeals to the goodwill and generosity of Americans, and are consistently surprised when their arguments fail to resonate. They also counter the increasingly simple slogans of right wing politics with positions that require an extra step of thinking. On taxes, for example, Republicans will suggest that tax cuts help everyone. Democrats will counter that supply side economics disproportionately assist the rich, who are not in need of assistance, while reducing revenues available for important social programs. Many Americans will not make the extra step. The most powerful slogan, headline or catch phrase is all that matters.
Clinton used poor phrasing when she said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal mines out of business,” but her diagnosis of the future of a terminal industry was correct. Trump promised to “bring the jobs back.” Who won that argument?
Progressives will make political gains when they stop assuming that the majority of Americans operate according to rationality and compassion.
Edgar Allan Poe believed that all human beings are potential victims of, what he called in one of his most brilliant phrases, “the imp of the perverse.” Speaking of “ghastly and loathsome” images of human suffering, Poe refers to the human capacity of destruction, and the enjoyment people find in the perverse: “We perpetrate these actions merely because we feel that we should.”
Poe’s story begins with criticism of theologians, psychologists, and intellectuals for having too narrow, and faithful, an outlook on humanity. They have all denied or ignored the imp. The narrator then recalls his fascination with murder and “the brief, but pregnant sentences that consigned him to the hangman, and to hell.”
He speculated that he could get away with the most lethal of crimes and carried out his misdeed simply because he wanted.
Progressives are the theorists Poe eviscerates in the opening of his story, unwilling to confront the hideous truth. Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and their sinister friends whisper, “come on,” to the inner imp of the perverse.
An aggressive and self-entitled movement of millions of Americans are all ears.
why does the lift always leave out certain things and think we don’t notice they leave out.... illegal... immigration
they leave out taking the knee in protest ...during work... is violating their free speech
of course the same left has been closing down Christian Bakers because they won’t bake a cake for a gay marriage other words there’s free speech is not allowed I’m sure you’re not allowed to take a knee
and also the same left this that go ballistic if you fly a Confederate flag and would fire you
See, this is whats really strange, we can't even agree on what the FACTS are. Routinely made racists remarks? WHEN? Boasted of sexual assault? WHEN? These things never happened, they are a fabrication through distortion, so deeply ingrained in the liberal psyche, that they have become Truth. Its an amazing thing, to see otherwise intelligent people, delude themselves to this extent. Its scary, actually.
Well, he does have a point...
Do you understand any of this profound drivel?
“An important theme within postmodem feminism is that essentialist notions of women and naturalized conceptions of the human subject are unnecessary and troubling ingredients for feminist political theory and practice (Alcoff 1988; Ferguson 1988; Hekman 1990; Mouffe 1992). Perhaps no one has advanced this claim more forcefully than Judith Butler through her use of the idea of performativity. According to Butler, our gender, sex and self are the effects of publicly regulated performances. In contrast, I argue that her notion of performativity is too pure to provide an account of our identities. Moreover, it is not obvious that we would be better off understanding ourselves as the effect of publicly regulated performances. This does not mean that a feminist politics would be better off with essentialism. Rather, I suggest that political practice can probably do without either an essen tialist or performative understanding of the subject.”
There is no nuance to progressives, they are transparently jealous and bitter like this screed demonstrates.
Go on, ***hole. Keep calling us stupid.
That’ll work.
L
No he has no point. This twisted ramble of jargon you cited does is not complex because it reveals a subtle truth...but to hide the fact that the writer is cluless.
“God has blessed us Trump followers with stupid enemies.”
Sounds like a great tagline.
That’s what I was thinking... he has that characteristic unfounded belief in his own superiority that just screams “look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I can decorate your house better than youoooohhhooooo!”
Um, no....
Progressives lose at the ballot and across the culture because they consistently overestimate their intelligence and constantly put down America.
Group thinking is the guiding princible of the delusion...not honesty. It is simply more important to leftists to have the “correct view” than to have a view that conforms to actual reality. So they use whatever intellegence God blessed them with to rationize excuses for settling for the “correct view”. They lable deviation as “backwords”...and think that in the curret year such deviations are a moral and intellectual failure worthy only of riducule and never of consideration. And when a blunt honest intellegent person comes along, they are deeply threatened and lash defensivly, as they have at Trump. They fear dissulusionment. They fear facing their own short comings. They want the blue pill.
The left are not ‘nuanced intellectuals who want to help everyone but are too smart to be understood sometimes’. They are morons, on their best day, when the sun is shining.
Thanks to whoever posted this. Its disturbing and pedantic. Im glad to see that Libs still dont get it.
Salon gets it wrong one more time.
Yeah, the voters rejected Hillary. But, it was not because of the e-mail scandal, though that was one of the many reasons that she lost.
I sure hope the Dumbocrats follow this hate-filled lunatics advice.
How much dumber can the Democrat message get? It is being delivered by Maxine Waters. That woman is a metal retard.
Half the party is functionally illiterate. The other half is fully illiterate!
that she believed the majority of Americans were sufficiently thoughtful and moral
*********
Moral?? The Clintons?? lol
Where has this dufus been the past 25 years?
Indeed, I have noticed the disclosure at the bottom, and am not surprised ;-).
Glad you enjoyed it. :)
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