February 10, 2006

• Dear American Left: Please find a strong sensible leader who is both idealistic and practical. Sincerely etc.
• Dear American Left: Man, you all really suck. Maybe you should write a petition or something. Sincerely etc.
• Dear American Left, Please stop buying and reiterating the propaganda of the American Right.
• Dea American Left, You may have been the tradition which led the abolition of slavery; secured women's right to vote etc; forced the US government to end the Vietnam War; helped transform the social climate in the US to make life tolerable for gay men and lesbian women; warned the nation that Iraq had no WMDs and we were all being lied to in the service of an illegal and unjust war; and a dozen other concrete, tangible achievements -- but doggone it, the Republicans are currently in control of all three branches of government. Therefore, you do not exist. There was a Doonesbury cartoon a while back which said it perfectly: The left has a huge problem in that it's willing to listen to what the other side thinks. The right shoulders no such hangup.
• scartol -- That last point is something that I have been saying for a while. The left's willingness to entertain other arguments creates the perception that they are weak and wafflers to the fairweather voter. The right's unwillingness to do the same makes them seem strong and sure of themselves to the fairweather voter.
• dear American Left: are you done with the Simon and Garfunkel CDs yet? thanks!
• Clinging to individual conscience instead of toeing the party line is another Achilles heel of the left.
• dear American left: what word completes all of the following? a) Spanish-American ________ b) World ______ Two c) The Crimean ________ so you see, sometimes war is the answer.
• Spanish-American Rice? World Cup Two? The Crimean River?
• The Crimean River? The song by Justin Timberlake.
• dear American Left, You do not exist. Love, Chy
• Yes, cry me an river.
• The right's unwillingness to do the same makes them seem strong and sure of themselves to the fairweather voter To me this just makes them look like asshats. E.g. Bush saying that Brownie did "a helluva job" when the guy was clearly an idiot. The reason why the Left hasn't been strong is the leadership's been lacking. On the Left there is no one who's talking about the one item that the fairweather voter is concerned about but doesn't want to admit: Safety. Bush talks about it all the time: a safe America, a safer America, safe from attack.... He hasn't been doing anything effectual about it lately but at least he's hitting that button. The Left just complains about Bush and guess what? That isn't a platform. The Left lost the last election, not because of the strength of the Right, but the weakness of the Left. John Kerry was an avocado poising as a leader.
• Alright, I'll bite: Dear American Left: Don't be so quick to back off what you think is right. Don't yell at the people who you want to vote for you. Don't take the electorate for granted, and don't call them names or imply they're stupid when they don't vote for you. Don't parse. Don't be too lawyerly. Don't listen so much to the opinion polls. Take the high ground. Be pragmatic when you pick your candidates. And for GOD'S SAKE, all of you play for the same team, dammit. You guys are way to fast going for the knives on each other, whereas Republicans are all about being a team. Learn the lesson.
• For my own part I'm astonished that the Left does not attack the Republicans in a very very much more aggressive and outspoken way. This administration is composed of crooks and liars (TM) and has been wholly ineffective in almost all important respects. Any Democrat who fails at any opportunity to label the Rebublicans as a bunch of sleazy incompetents is failing in their duty. It's not enough to attack? The Democrat alternative is clear enough - as the party that will respect constitutional rights and international treaties.
• The team thing that fes mentions is the other incredibly important difference between the two parties. I honestly think that we have entered a long period of repubican dominance. Republicans are a team and toe the party line. Individual republicans are discouraged from having their own views. They are encouraged to all be on the same page. Democrats are not that way. Individual Democrats are more likely to voice their individual views. Unlike fes, I think that the individuality is a good thing. I think that it is more honest. Democrats will have to find another way to win back voters. I don't want them to become parroting clones. How about forcing Republicans to state what values they think that Jesus represented, and ask them what they have done to help the poor, heal the sick, encourage peace, turn the other cheek, and love their neighbors? I hate to resort to religion, but I think it would work in the short term.
• Absolutely. It's not a question of leadership; it's a question of unity.
• Dear American Left; You cannot win the hearts of people by having patrician millionaires guess at what "you people" want. Your leader must come from us, the people. Who will be strong enough, brave enough to fight, knowing that the first leaders will (symbollically) die in the battle? I don't think we will win by looking more like the right--so that our leaders get elected by mistake. And Levy is correct on many points--including that which remaisn of the left is as humorless and narrow-minded as a Donald Wildmon film festival.
• symbolically...remains
• On the other hand, if the democrats were all Stepford Politicians like the replublicans, agreeing with the party line whether they feel it's right or wrong, wouldn't the freedom-and-individuality-loving left lose some respect for them?
• The worst form of bondage is the bondage of dejection, which keeps men hopelessly chained in loss of faith in themselves. —Rabindranath Tagore
• Your leader must come from us, the people. Riiiight. "Us, the people" being insanely wealthy oil barons. Nice to find out I'm a tycoon after all.
• Try this one on for size.... Dear American Left: If you want to have any voice whatsoever, you need to divorce yourself from the Democratic party. Ralph Nader was right: The Democrats and the Republicans are just two arms of a single party. These two subsets of a single party operate in a Siamese twin-like manner -- and on a limited range on the political spectrum, at that. (Consider some of the Clinton government's great "accomplishments" after it abandoned efforts to at least start to nationalize health care: NAFTA; welfare reform; the Telecom Reform Act [which eliminated major ownership restrictions for radio and television groups]; the Defense of Marriage Act [which allowed states the power to refuse to recognize gay marriages granted in other states, among other things]; the first approval of extraordinary rendition, or "torture by proxy"; initiating "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rather than forcing real change in the military's attitude towards gays; deregulating direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising; and so on. Also: Are any of you monkeys reading this represented by a Congressperson who voted against letting Bush steamroll us into the war in Iraq? Anybody? Bueller? Any Oakland monkeys?) You lefties are never going to get anywhere as long as you're relying on a Democratic party that lets the Right frame the debate on issue after issue after issue. (Take gay marriage. Please. Is it really possible that this issue, and the way it got out the religious vote for Bush -- even the black religious vote -- may have swung the 2004 election? Incroyable, mais vrai.) (While we're on the framing-the-issues topic: Has anyone else enjoyed, in recent years, seeing Democrat after Democrat try to distance themselves from the word "liberal" -- in a country where, until quite recently, anyone with a brain knew that what made it great was the extent to which it embodied liberal democracy?) And you're certainly never going to get anywhere as long as you're relying on a Democratic party that's feeding just as piggishly at the corporate-money trough as the Republicans. (p.s.: Sadly, between the Democrats' ongoing fire sale of what's left of the Left's soul to corporate interests, your corporate media's moronic take on what constitutes news [not to mention your populace's addiction to that moronic take], and the fact that your system of democracy makes strong alternatives to the two main parties unlikely, you're going to find it hard to get anywhere in any case.)
• "Lets?"
• That's one hella big postcard, HW. Gonna take at least two stamps.
• Dear American Left, Please develop a better policy than telling me how fucked my current administration is. I'm fully aware, thank you. Love, Rollbiz
• Yes, where will we ever find American intellectuals writing cutting magazine articles like this one? Seriously though, while I totally agree, we're totally fucked, but what is the real, practical advice this author, presumed member of an "authentic" European left, provides? "try to ponder the lessons of the totalitarian century and those of democracy, Tocqueville-style, all at once, in the same breath, and with the same rigor." Yeah, that'll solve the problem that I'm fucking surrounded by people that are dumb as dirt.
• "Lets?" Have you very many examples of the Democrats proactively framing the debate? Any debate?