The left getting bogged down into intercine blaming is necessary but only to the extent that actual lessons get learned. If everyone just keeps on trucking, blaming people they already disliked, we're so ****ed.

I agree that 'social justice for show and ego' is a lot worse than genuine social justice but somewhere in this you seem to have taken your notion that there is no genuine liberal appetite for social justice, what you really need to do is abandon the pretense, that's the big millstone here. Think about all the white working class voters you can win! And all the working class blacks too!

I'm here, like, yeah bro, we could win like that I guess, but I care deeply about the social justice.

I guess you can just pretend you're Yoda on Dagobah and say no, not really, and that's why you fail but I suppose all I can do is shrug. I am pretty passionate about yes, winning elections and seeing through that my point of view finds representation and power in government but NOT merely by abandoning the things I care about.

You just insist no one really cares about them and viola, how easy it would be to win! Whatever, I can't refute the non-falsifiable claims of pop-psych experts that in fact social justice is a pretense scam industry that but for the deep ego soothe it provides, we would all dismiss it and rebuild the New Deal.

I maintain you are almost surely correct on the merits that if the Democrats entirely dispensed of all of the things that rankle white working class voters they would have more white working class voters in their coalition. I've admitted maybe a dozen times this is both correct but trite and involves sacrificing priorities I think liberals care about. Maybe I'm wrong and you're correct that it's nothing but ego gratification but I maintain the opposite, that this is something leftists genuinely actually care about and want to see it reflected in governance. We're both spending a lot of words to cover some frankly pedestrian terrain here.

Again, I don't know what to say in response to this but shrug. It's a bunch of paeans about spirituality -- and a demand that liberals to win have to ditch the false pretenses and instead literally embrace Christianity.

I'm not sure what to say yo, but I think we've reached Peak Democratic Party advice: tut-tutting liberals lack a certain je ne sais quoi when talking to working class whites, what they really need to do is genuinely speak to them by literally, what, converting en masse to Methodism or Baptism or something? Oh, no no no, not that bit of idealism, you wouldn't recommend that. But instead, Democrats need to genuinely embrace religious themes and come to a deep understanding, maybe like Disneyland embraces both the Frontier and Space in the same theme park. Just need to really work on theming and story and character development. Which is fine, it might be correct, but let's not pretend this isn't style over substance, that you're not just asking for a different form of virtue signaling in lieu of what the Democrats currently do. If you're going to pivot back to "no, no, this has to be *sincere*" and looking for Democrat to actually lead the charge on reforming America's faith, I'm even more agog about the next steps then when we started this: forget identity politics, getting whites to embrace moral altruism is a bridge too far, focus on instead on the trivially simple goal of reforming the belief systems of the spiritually impoverished. Just that.

Again, without the glib sarcasm: at every point when pressed for specifics, you pivot to demanding Democrats do some really unreasonable thing (here in this post, it's not merely to pretend to have faith but to literally "have faith") and then sort of walk it back to more branding and marketing exercises ("rich metaphors that are designed to appeal across different states of mental, emotional and spiritual development.") This is basically saying Democrats are too much Oprah, need to be more Dr. Phil.

I can agree you seemingly have no real practical dog in this fight and merely an academic one, because like all good academics, you have some seemingly valid and coherent criticisms to offer and plenty of questions to ask but then practical solutions are stubbornly impractical and unrealistic like "Democrats just need to find sincere religious zeal." Yeah, OK, we'll get right on that. Just that simple.

I find it a little ironic some of the criticism here is that like "liberals just don't want to work on the things they care about" but you can spot people like Phone Booth who have never had to grapple with the problem before, that thousands of words later, the take-home advice, the real problem that Democrats need to address is "spiritual impoverishment." All I want to do is things like keep black people out of jail for non-violent drug offenses and roll back the worst effects of mandatory sentencing from the 1994 crime bill. Shame, shame, warns Phone Booth, why that's not even policy, just some pointless ego soothing! Instead focus on solving spiritual impoverishment, finger wag finger wag. I agree he's sort of got me dead-to-rights because I walked away from a career in professional politics more than a decade ago and left the fight to others but I'd have never gotten involved at all if the battle lines were like, literal spiritual fulfillment. If the apex of the liberal project is that recognizing that things like sentencing policy for crimes was ego stroking but the real practical battle is for souls, then I am forced to leave it to others; I never had a prayer.

based on your posting Dvaut think the absolute worst of those that disagree with your politics and grant every benefit of the doubt to those that agree. it's like we are different species.

Go ahead and explain why you think that then. I read this twice and do not really understand what you're writing here.

Phone Booth: Democrats are failing because they are engaged in a bunch of insincere messaging directed at phony white liberals, only pretending to be concerned about blacks.
Me: well OK, maybe there's some of that, but you know I think there's a lot of actual concern about blacks, plus Democrats have this diverse coalition so a lot of messaging that comes off as ham-handed or two-faced is just a bit of an intractable problem when your voters aren't uniformly white and in decent economic shape like the GOP has, plus Democrats have tried what you're describing, it's hard to get politicians to separate messaging from policy, and Third Way strategies resulted in actual policies designed to mollify white resentment from Democrats, and that bothers me. It also probably depresses black turnout too.
Phone Booth: well that's not even policy, just ego soothing, have you tried focusing on spiritual impoverishment?
Me: da fuq?! that's is even harder and apolitical!
seattle lou: the fainting couches! The incivility!

Round and round we go, 2p2!

You were quite comfortable with the "basket of deplorables" characterization of Trump voters but sure that liberals hearts are pure in your response to Phone Booth above. It's weird to me but maybe it does not ring true to you. I won't pretend to know your thoughts better than you. It's annoying as **** when people do that to me.

Phone Booth said the problem with SJW's is they ain't radical enough, AND they would be foolish not to cooperate with selling out some civil rights issues for power. In different posts. I'm not entirely sure how to merge these concepts. With regards to "depress black turnout" he believes no such thing would take place. I asked him.

Really interesting utubez called Global Trumpism that covers the collapse of centrist parties across the developed world, looks at economic arguments, is it just racism etc.

Very similar tangents to discussions I have had itt and others.

Its a lecture by Mark Blyth professor of international political economy at Brown University.
Its quite long.

In no post here am I arguing there are not Democrats, maybe large swaths of them, that are engaged in cosmopolitan norm signaling as a way to make themselves feel better and aren't genuinely concerned with the fate of anyone but themselves, black or otherwise, co-signed.

And here I have authored what, a dozen posts, covering thousands of words, insisting strongly that I *don't* want to abandon the principles of social justice that I care about, and you're here to remind me -- what again? Liberals are actually scoundrels that will happily dispense of all that **** if it just means winning again?

You might be right, but again seattle, remember my point here: I HOPE NOT.

If you're here because you have sort of understood the implicit dig at principle-free Republicans who abandoned literally everything they pretended to believe for generations save for white grievance politics, then we're on the same page. That's why you're here responding to this, right? Phone Booth is fundamentally on your side of this, probably how maybe secretly you behave, which is well Trump ain't ideal but if the GOP gets Trump and he's a winner, you're going to make the best of it, and you're sure in your heart those loser liberals are just like you and would do the same if we just had our own Orange Buffoon who sold white resentments with a more leftist economic message?

Yeah, again, I'm basically pleading that we NOT go down that round. That's your bed to lie in yo. I'm trying to make it not mine. I will repeat for you as I have for Phone Booth that I sort of always understood, as have everyone -- as has been the subject of my posts here that Democrats historically have fallen for "get power with hippie punching and water canons pointed at blacks" could absolutely work, that Democrats have been down this road ~TWICE now in the post WWII era, both in the immediate aftermath of 1968 when Nixon won and again after Reagan, and that it produced some really bad consequences and self-defeating logic both times. I am straining to point out that it might work for realpolitik reasons because I want to acknowledge that up-front, then say, hey but wait, hold on, YOU DON'T WANT THIS LIBERALS.

The reason why: I don't want a Democratic Trump in 2020 or 2024. Or a Trump lite. Because these things matter to me. My responses do not assume pure hearts but more that there are no easy and lazy answers nor utopian solutions, and let's face it, Trump offers both, and Phone Booth is suggesting both: on the one hand he issues vague confidence Democrats can win on white working class appeals then cleverly not act on them, but also, that also Democrats real messaging problems are that they're not nearly radical enough and aren't set to literally evangelize the electorate. I haven't said it explicitly but your arrival and clear offense taking at implied dig at modern Republicans is exactly what I'm set against. It's what Phone Booth is basically suggesting: embrace utopian messaging platforms but you know failing a sincere embrace of that, straight up lie to people and sell them X (appeals to white people) but deliver Y (whatever you want, that's just back office stuff). This is the Trumpification of politics: get people to wholly embrace a new faith in government and if you're concerned the practical realities well remember it's all Machiavellian tricks anyway.

That's like, what I don't want in government. A fools' hope maybe but believe me it does not assume pure hearts, just an aspiration for them. Or just simple decency. And that politicians are cynical and can't be trusted. So the idea Democrats can radically reshape the electorates' spiritual vitality as Phone Booth suggests is lunacy -- but his fall-back, the basic idea that remember, these are shell games and empty vessels anyway, you take care of the real details later in smoke filled rooms is also practically dubious, if not morally so, that politicians can't be trusted to operate as good-faith partners in the backroom when they win on resentment and fear.

Nah I was thinking nothing that deep. Mostly want you to not have such a harsh view of the common man.
I will read the above a few more times and think about what you have said. It is quite different than my rather simple thoughts.

I'll check it out, eventually. I do have time for long YouTubes at night, but they best be interesting.

This is demonstrably false. Its just selection bias based on you seeming to be a Bernie supporter.

Of course *you* see fake news from the left perspective.

Russ had a pac that spent 95% of the donations and gave jobs to all his old senate staff.

I'm about to listen to this, but want to register in advance my amusement that the preview still makes it look like a Jonathan Pie clip.

Democrats should just keep all their policies but stop being nice to minorities. This is clearly what white Anerica wants.

I just think that phone booth and I share a character trait which is that we are not into groups identities but tend more towards self identity. The mistake phone booth seems to be making imo is that he assumes that most people are like that when in truth it's a personality trait that is not the norm, specially in politics. Thereby he is making assumptions about how left wing politics work that are only partly true.

I agree that there is a lot of cynicism in leftist circles but it's more about group identity than ego. I've seen everything in the left. From people who want to be part of a hipster intellectual movement to people that just happen to enjoy making strategic decisions. But there isn't only selfishness going, there is also a sense of empathy and desire for fairness and the well being of others.

Also this isn't chess were you can suggest what both sides should do like you were a bystander because in politics there is also an underlying assumption about human beings work. Those of us that lean towards the left have an assumption that some of the things we don't like about society are because of structural reasons like government policy not because people don't pray enough or stuff like that. If we thought that society problems can be solved with just spiritual enhancement at a personal level , guess what, We wouldn't be leftist!!

Edit: I completely agree with phone booth that the left absolutely fails to talk to religious people. I've read some liberation theology stuff that is interesting but that is another thread altogether I think. My quick take on the subject is that many on the left think believing in God is basically like believing in Santa Claus while it's actually much more complex than that and religions usually have an important social component ( this in direct relation to my first paragraph on this post). Personally I think myself as an spiritual person influenced by Taoism and Jesus Christ.

What do you think is the best way to bring about social justice the way you define it? And why do you care specifically about your definition as opposed to any number of other ways to define it?

This has been addressed.

There appears to be a complete lack of understanding of what faith and religion are about. Or for that matter metaphors. Everything is a metaphor - the human mind is not capable of dealing with anything but.

It does appear that way to me as well.

There appear to be conflicting definitions of radical here. My definition of "radical" is working realistically towards a future that is very different from the present. The definition others are using appears to be something along the lines of: taking a rhetorical position that is maximally upsetting to others. Nothing is radical that doesn't change the world.

This doesn't seem to be a fair and balanced way to describe what I wrote but beyond that, you're demonstrating the mechanism by which the SJ movement is harming itself. It's fairly obvious to me that a $25 minimum wage would do far more for civil rights and equality for disadvantaged groups than whatever race/gender/sexual-orientation-based preference program designed to favor historically underprivileged or whatever but clearly pushing for this ahead of identity politics is "selling out some civil rights issues for power" because it also helps white cis males.

The other sense in which it's a mischaracterization is that you'd actually get more SJ stuff done in your favor if you didn't ask elections to be a referendum on SJ matters. Pushing for something to be an election issue is equivalent to working against it if it's unpopular among voters. I'm asking you guys to stop sabotaging your own cause. There are enough other things to talk about during elections - don't bring up issues where you're losing among the voters. I mean, it's not even about policy - the Clinton campaign spent a lot of money and time making this election about racism and sexism. That doesn't seem productive in a country that is very racist and sexist.

This doesn't seem to be a fair and balanced way to describe what I wrote either but to get to the most critical aspect: you seem not to understand that the vast majority of issues never get much press during elections. Also, I think you're confusing what I'm suggesting in a moral sense with what I'm suggesting as a tactical matter given the goal you have in mind. If you want your version of social justice to happen, you have to use subversive and underhanded tactics because you don't have the votes otherwise. It seems to me that you'd rather act as though you already live in a world where your goals are shared than to do whatever it takes to make them reality. That's fine, I guess, but then they aren't really the end goals.

Lobbyists get things done all the time with bipartisan consensus that would be quite unpopular among the general population. Lots of highly popular things never see the light of the day and are silently blocked. There are ways to get things done without going through the American people - in fact that's how almost everything gets done. If the SJ movement is able to generate all this outrage during elections and has lots of actual foot soldiers who are genuinely into it, why can't they organize themselves into a large movement that works with politicians to get things done? Corporations are able to buy policy with a fraction of the popular support and not a lot of money either. I mean I know why they can't but do you?

It was good. I watched it all, including the long Q&A despite not being able to really hear the questions.

No, just your own. But it's kind of the same thing. To rewrite the script a little, this is kind of where we are:

DV: My ideas are not popular - people are fundamentally opposed to my ideas.

PB: If you want to genuinely move others, you have to be 1) genuine, 2) have faith yourself, 3) understand how faith shapes others. It ultimately entails losing yourself and don't be surprised if you end up a different person with different ideas.

DV: I don't know what this faith thing is all about and don't want to change or sacrifice anything

PB: Hmm, in that case I don't know how strongly you feel about any of this.

DV: But I do really care. How do I make them happen anyway?

PB: Learn how to work behind the scene - that's how you get unpopular things done. Understand and use dark arts if you have to - that's one way to get things done when you don't want to do it the hard way.

DV: That's too dishonest or something.

To editorialize a little, when I'm talking about faith, I'm talking about self-understanding. For example, do you understand yourself well enough to answer questions like - do I genuinely want this or is this just a means to some other end? Except, of course, self is not just a self but a reflection of the universe and a reflection of self itself, so to understand self is to understand the universe and the conception of self as both a reflection of self and the universe. And since to understand is to internalize and to internalize something is for it to have the same relationship with self as self itself, to understand is to love and to love all is to understand all and to be divine. To truly have faith is to be on one's way to internalize all this - of course it's not necessary to recognize or understand the secular formulation I provide here - as a way of being.

In the developing world the Catholic Church anyway does mix with the left and they have the murdered priests and nuns to prove it.

You're gonna be nursing that grievance for years, aren't you? I mean, literally, in 2019 you're going to toss out throwaway "basket of deplorables!" jabs, I just know it.

You shouldn't be confident about your reads. Didn't you attack Marty today for making a comment you didn't understand? You're douche bag gauge needs to be turned down a notch you're not that clever.

Phone Booth you keep pushing the view that elections and non-elections are completely different stuff. They are not. We just dont agree.

I do agree with you that you can make stuff happen even if the majority doesnt agree.
But the counter example you propose requires a huge lobby apparatus, having such aparratus that requires a huge economic capital. Economic capital that the left clearly doesnt have. So what now? Are you going to propose we use our big influences in the mainstrem media? When the right uses political office to push certain stuff, they dont only have the formal political office but they also have a bunch of other stuff in place which the left doesnt have. And even then, they still need to make sure they only piss off the dvauts & flys of the world and not the general public.

When Thatcher pushed the poll tax, people rioted massively in the street and her position took a huge hit( she ended up quitting as PM by the end of the year but that was probably more due to her stance against UK entering the EU). When the new guy arrived, guess what? The poll tax was history.

So if the left wants to push certain laws that favor the black community, they will need something else as well as political office. One way to do so is having the symbolic capital that means winning an election under such rhetoric ( perhaps a better way is having political office + a grassroots social movement that makes populous rally thereby having more leverage ). But even if you tone it down the election there will be a point when you will face attack from the right and you are going to have to be able to reply to that and the public will judge you for it.

That is the cliff notes of liberation theology . In Chile there are two or three very famous priests that constantly spew leftist stuff on the media. At least here they are jesuits. Even Pope Francis, himself a jesuit, has flirted a bit with those positions.

The Bill of Rights, and further civil rights work isn't SJW nonsense, Phone Booth. Stop meditating on the mountain. Go find where I'm talking about how we need to invent the best words to describe intersectional feminist conflict theory, you know, for progress. Like, shrug, I don't know, enforcement of the equal protection clause? Let's do that. If I attended some hippie commune and discussed the need to transcend our bodies, become nature, and so on, I must've forgotten.

The Democratic Party is not an instrument of the people of which you speak. That you believe otherwise, well, you tell us. They throw fits on twitter and mostly live in actual dorm rooms. Writing policy they ain't. But, their existence it would appear to frighten your delicate sensibilities, and mistake some for others. You've been had. Torch your library. There I go again, that rhetorical twist, funneling deplorables to the polling stations. I must contain myself. Find my mountain. Please signal signal forgive signal me.