…and the choice before us.
Many will remember Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech, in which she said:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed….You have to stay at the seat at the table of democracy with a man like Barack Obama not just on Tuesday but in a year from now, in four years from now, in eight years from now, you will have to be engaged.
Victor Davis Hanson notes that she also said:
We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.
…which is, of course, entirely consistent with the assertion made by Barack Obama himself, shortly before his first inauguration: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
It should be clear by now that all aspects of American life and society are rapidly becoming politicized. Obama greatly accelerated this movement, but he didn’t initiate it. The “progressive” political movement, which now controls the Democratic Party, has for a long time been driving the politicization of anything and everything. The assertion “the personal is political” originated on the Left in the 1960s…and, if the personal is political, then everything is political.
Some people, of course, like the politicization of everything–for some individuals, indeed, their lives would be meaningless without it. In his important memoir of growing up in Germany between the wars, Sebastian Haffner noted divergent reactions from people when the political and economic situation stabilized (temporarily, as we now know) during the Stresemann chancellorship:
The last ten years were forgotten like a bad dream. The Day of Judgment was remote again, and there was no demand for saviors or revolutionaries…There was an ample measure of freedom, peace, and order, everywhere the most well-meaning liberal-mindedness, good wages, good food and a little political boredom. everyone was cordially invited to concentrate on their personal lives, to arrange their affairs according to their own taste and to find their own paths to happiness.
But this return to private life was not to everyone’s taste:
A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.
and
To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. They began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.
I’m afraid we have quite a few people in America today who like having “the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions.” But for most people, especially for creative and emotionally-healthy people, the politicization of everything leads to a dreary and airless existence.
In her novel We the Living, based partly on her personal experiences in the early Soviet Union (which is probably why it is, IMO, the best of her books from a literary standpoint), Ayn Rand paints a vivid picture of what day-to-day life in the politicized society is like. Her heroine, Kira Argounova, is a strong anti-Communist, but absent other options has found a job (which she got through intervention of a Communist friend) in something called “The House of the Peasant,” which is dedicated to “a closer understanding between workers and peasants,” under the slogan “The Clamping of City and Village,” celebrated with posters bearing slogans like “Comrades, strengthen the Clamping!”
Kira’s boss at the House of the Peasant is an older woman “thin, gray-haired, military and in strict sympathy with the Soviet Government; her chief aim in life was to give constant evidence of how strict that sympathy was, even though she had graduated from a women’s college…” But the boss lives in fear of “a tall girl with a long nose and a leather jacket, who was a Party member and could make Comrade Bitiuk shudder at her slightest whim, and knew it…” All the office staff members also live in fear of the Wall Newspaper, which carries criticisms of individual workers both for their personal behavior as well as their work performance:
Comrade Nadia Chernova is wearing silk stockings. Time to be reminded that such flaunting of luxury is un-proletarian, Comrade Chernova…Comrade E Ovsov indulges in too much talk when asked about business. This leads to a waste of valuable time…We hear that Comrade Kira Argounova is lacking in social spirit. The time is past, Comrade Argounova, for arrogant bourgeois attitudes.
After reading this last, Kira “stood very still and heard her heart beating. No one dared to ignore the mighty pointing finger of the Wall Newspaper…No one could save those branded as “anti-social element,” not even (Kira’s Communist friend) Andrei Taganov… At her desk, she watched the others in the room, wondering who had reported her to the Wall Newspaper…”
All workers in the office are expected to be member of the Marxist Club (ie, to be “engaged,” as Michelle Obama would put it), which meets after hours and for attendance at which the workers are not paid. The club met twice a week: one member read a thesis he had prepared and the others discussed it. When it is Kira’s turn, she reads her thesis on “Marxism and Leninism,” which she has copied, barely changing the words, from the “ABC of Communism,” a book whose study is compulsory in every school in the country.
She knew that all her listeners had read it, that they had also read her thesis, time and time again, in every editorial of every newspaper for the last six years. They sat around her, hunched, legs stretched out limply, shivering in their overcoats. They knew she was there for the same reason they were. The girl in the leather jacket presided, yawning once in a while.
After mandatory discussion (“Kira knew that she had to argue and defend her thesis; she knew that the consumptive young man had to argue to show his activity; she knew that he was no more interested in the discussion than she was, that his blue eyelids were weary with sleeplessness, that he clasped his thin hands nervously, not daring to glance at his wristwatch…”), the meeting finally comes to a close. “We shall thank Comrade Argounova for her valuable work,” said the chairman. “Our next meeting will be devoted to a thesis by Comrade Leskov on ‘Marxism and Collectivism.’”
If this sort of thing sounds like a lot of fun to you, then you should be applauding the increased politicization of America. Of course, to a certain type of person–the type represented above by the girl in the leather jacket–such a society is something to look forward to.
The endpoint of such a society can be found in the words of the Nazi judge Roland Freisler, who, in sentencing Christoph Probst to death, sneered at his defense: “He is a “nonpolitical man…hence no man at all!”…the implication being that manhood and humanity are only to be found via participation in (approved) political activity. This is the ultimate development of the “the personal is political” line.
The politicization of American life has originated very largely in the universities–indeed, what has happened in these institutions has been a leading indicator for what is happening in the larger society. For just one of thousands of examples, see this post about the indoctrination conducted by the University of Delaware as part of its “Residence Life” program. See also the notes of one of UD’s designated indoctrinators about his or her interview with a young woman who was showing more independence and spirit than is apparently desired by that institution. The degree of bureaucratic intrusiveness in this conversation could have come right out the the “House of the Peasant” in the above-referenced novel.
The playwright and filmmaker David Mamet wrote an interesting book about the film industry, Bambi vs. Godzilla. His 1992 play Oleanna, which he describes as “a rather straightforward classical tragedy,” involves a girl who makes an accusation of rape against a male professor, said accusation being either questionable or outright false.
The play’s first audience a group of undergraduates from Brown. They came to a dress rehearsal. The play ended and I asked the folks what they thought. “Don’t you think it’s politically questionable,” said one, “to have the girl make a false accusation of rape?”
(I guess it was even more politically questionable for Shakespeare to have Lady Macbeth plotting murder.) Mamet describes his own reaction to the reaction of the Brown students:
I, in my ignorance, was stunned. I didn’t realize that it was my job to be politically acceptable. I’d always thought society employed me to be dramatic; further, I wondered what force had so perverted the young that they would think that increasing the political enfranchisement of a group rendered a member of that group incapable of error, in effect, rendered her other than human.
For if the subject of art is not our maculate, fragile, and often pathetic humanity, what is the point of the exercise?
But, of course, in the fully politicized society the role of art is the same as the role of science or education or car-building or grocery-shopping….to promote the interests of the dominant or ascendant power structure.
Note that the incident David Mamet describes happened way back in 1992. We are now in our second or third generation of university administrators and professors who have grown up in a highly politicized climate and take it as the normal way for human beings to live. It was inevitable that this toxic orientation would seep out into the larger society and increasingly dominate it, and now it has.
I wrote the original version of this post in 2014. Since then, the politicization has grown and metastasized. Sport, once a neutral meeting ground in which political affiliations mattered less than team loyalties, has now become extremely politicized. Hobby groups, from birdwatching to knitting, are now frequently boiling over with political tension. Dating and marriage increasingly follow political lines. The HR function, which once fulfilled a very useful purpose in many corporations, now seems to be increasingly dominated by people like the girl in the leather jacket in Rand’s novel.
And increasingly, politicization cannot be avoided even by the expedient of keeping one’s mouth shut…one is required to affirmatively state agreement with the ruling ideology. I’m reminded of a story told by the Russian rocket developer Boris Cherok in his wonderful memoir. Chertok mentions his friend Oleg, who was a talented poet as well as an Army officer. Irrespective of his military talents, Oleg’s prospects for promotion were not viewed as favorable, because his poetry was “very unsettling to the political department.”
And why? It was not because the Red Army had any dislike of poets. Nor was it even because his poetry contained criticisms of the regime–there were no such criticisms. No, the objection was because of what the poetry didn’t contain. As another friend of Chertok’s, Mira, explained the situation: The political workers consider his poems to be demoralizing and decadent. Not once does he mention the Party or Stalin in them.
There is also pressure to break personal or professional connections with those who are viewed with political disfavor. For example, this from Jonathan Kay:
A few weeks ago, shortly after I left my magazine gig, I had breakfast with a well-known Toronto man of letters. He told me his week had been rough, in part because it had been discovered that he was still connected on social media with a colleague who’d fallen into disfavour with Stupid Twitter-Land. “You know that we all can see that you are still friends with him,” read one of the emails my friend had received. “So. What are you going to do about that?”
“So I folded,” he told me with a sad, defeated air. “I know I’m supposed to stick to my principles. That’s what we tell ourselves. Free association and all that. It’s part of the romance of our profession. But I can’t afford to actually do that. These people control who gets jobs. I’m broke. So now I just go numb and say whatever they need me to say.”
Note that phrase “with a sad and defeated air,” and think about what things like this do to the human spirit. This particular example is from Canada, but there are plenty of similar cases in the United States.
The Democrats, together with their media and academic cheering squads, accused Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular of being Authoritarian. But it should actually be clear to anyone paying attention that by far the stronger authoritarian spirit–confirmed by actual authoritarian actions–exists among the Democrats: the push to censor social media, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, the unlawful importing of what they expect to be future Democratic voters, the intent to neuter any challenges from the Supreme Court, Charles Schumer’s evident approval of the idea that the intelligence agencies are sovereign over an elected President…all of this is intended to keep control of government exclusively within the control of the Party and its affiliates. But today’s Democrats go beyond Authoritarianism: in many ways, they represent outright Totalitarianism. There is no aspect of American society that they do not wish to control and to reform according to their preferences. And they will seek to undermine the emergence and existence of any independent centers of influence that threaten their hegemony. This is why they don’t like Elon Musk and will–if they have the power–use tax and regulatory policy to prevent the emergence of any new Elon Musks.
Should Kamala Harris win the election–and especially if the Democrats should gain control of both houses of Congress–it is not at all clear that the march toward authoritarianism and totalitarianism will be reversible. Those Republicans who say, well, if Trump loses in 2024, we can get a better and more electable candidate next time–those people are either kidding themselves or are really aligned with the opposition. Recovery may not be a matter of four years, but rather of multiple decades. Do not underrate the stakes in this election.
See also my post The Bitter Wastes of Politicized America and Daniel Greenfield’s post The Paranoid Party.
From X:
“It’s really amazing how quickly American intellectual and cultural life became Sovietized.
They were extraordinarily successful in creating paranoia: implicit bias, micro aggressions, invisible racism, strange new definitions of what was acceptable language that emanated weekly from the internet, coerced public affirmations of bizarre untruths (eg. ‘trans women are women’), inexplicable hysterias that erupted instantaneously and then disappeared just as quickly.
Everyone just decided, ‘well better to just shut up.’ While this tendency made sense in terms of individual self interest at scale in society it represented a cowardice that was quickly exploited.”
https://x.com/feelsdesperate/status/1836589509187674493
Wow! Good and chilling article! Seems the USA is at an inflection point. All I can suggest is that we support Trump, Republicans and honest elections as much as we can, and pray for our country.
I would also suggest that we avoid personal attacks and overheated rhetoric, which could turn off voters who are on the fence, or open to making intelligent voting choices.
StanD…”I would also suggest that we avoid personal attacks and overheated rhetoric, which could turn off voters who are on the fence, or open to making intelligent voting choices.”
Agreed. Rhetoric that ‘stirs up the base’ and/or generates clicks may not be the rhetoric that changes minds and wins elections.
This post:
https://x.com/WindDustStars/status/1836004815421182218
makes some good points.
Also, idiotic statement by Sarah Huckabee Sanders taking a shot at Kamala Harris for not having biological children. “So, my kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”
Dumb politically and unpraiseworthy morally, she is praising herself by asserting humility.
Dems are at war with biological children they either want to kill mutilate or convert them. Harris demonic devotion to abortion is exactly in that vein nearly as dedicated to protecting criminals from law abiding citizens
Agreed. Rhetoric that ‘stirs up the base’ and/or generates clicks may not be the rhetoric that changes minds and wins elections.
You have just encapsulated the entire political philosophy of the GOP over my lifetime.
Does that political philosophy seem like a success to you?
Not to me.
Also, idiotic statement by Sarah Huckabee Sanders taking a shot at Kamala Harris for not having biological children. “So, my kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”
Sarah Huckabee Sanders doesn’t owe Kamasutra Harris a thing. I note just about every single democrat politician never has any hesitation at all about making nasty and vile assertions about every conservative, every Christian, every ex-democrat, etc, etc.
Somehow that hasn’t prevented them from winning elections.
Perhaps a political party needs to generate enthusiasm from its key supporters, including in this case by insinuating that having children is good thing.
Also, if you’re generating clicks, then your message should be getting out. The GOP wants to get its message out, right?
Right?
Xennady….Hillary Clinton’s shot at the ‘deplorables’ cost her a lot of votes. It may have cost her the election. More generally, the Dem’s open expressions of contempt for so many groups in our society have had plenty to do with their loss of some traditional constituencies, viz the non-endorsement by the Teamsters’ Union.
It’s fine to say that having children is a good think, what is gained by making the statement that it’s not such a good thing for those who get their kids by adoption? What kind of sense would it make that non-biological kids don’t keep one humble? Why insult all the voters in that category? There are plenty of other things to go after Kamala Harris on.
Related: The Totalitarian Artist: Politics vs Beauty
https://quillette.com/2024/09/20/the-totalitarian-artist-politics-vs-beauty/
“..require you … demand … never allow … have to stay … will have to …”
To which my inner uncooperative and independent self replies, “You’re not the boss of me!”
I would have said “inner Bolshevik” but that’s what Bathhouse Barry and his resentful BAP of a beard apparently wanted us all to become.
Impressive performance by Vivek:
https://x.com/AeroStudioMan/status/1836966498620895739
If you were hiring a salesman–for a high-ticket and complicated product–would you pick Vivek or would you pick Charlie Kirk?
Hillary Clinton’s shot at the ‘deplorables’ cost her a lot of votes.
No doubt. Clinton attacked the electorate as a whole. She used a nasty slur against essentially every Trump supporter, which plainly included every potential Trump supporter as well. She’s evil, not an evil genius.
More generally, the Dem’s open expressions of contempt for so many groups in our society have had plenty to do with their loss of some traditional constituencies, viz the non-endorsement by the Teamsters’ Union.
Absolutely. Note I included ex-Democrats in my list of people continually asserted by vile slurs from the left.
Also, idiotic statement by Sarah Huckabee Sanders taking a shot at Kamala Harris for not having biological children.
OK. Now I went looking for that statement from Sanders attacking Harris for not having children. I didn’t find it, but now I follow you and Mike K on X, so I’ll count that as a win- for me.
I presume this “attack” was actually your quote from Sanders above…which I find hilarious. Leftists routinely call conservatives evil because of casual policy disagreements and just as often casually express how they want us all dead. Sanders made a rather banal comment mildly criticizing Kamala Harris for her arrogance, which I think is well deserved.
Note Sanders did not criticize the entire electorate, or every Democrat, or every Harris supporter, or suggest that their civil rights should be taken away, or say that they were evil.
She made a mild criticism of the Democrat candidate for President. That is, a person who has deliberately signed up to advocate for specific policy positions and face criticism for that. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Lincoln/Douglas debates, etc.
It’s fine to say that having children is a good think, what is gained by making the statement that it’s not such a good thing for those who get their kids by adoption? What kind of sense would it make that non-biological kids don’t keep one humble? Why insult all the voters in that category?
I’m reminded of an anecdote about when U. S. Grant showed up at the Army of the Potomac to take command of the Union war effort. After hearing various officers tell him all about what Robert E. Lee was going to do to him, he finally got fed up and told them to stop worrying about what Lee was going to do them and worry about what they were going to do to Lee.
Again, Sanders made a mild criticism against Harris. She did not attack all women without children, women with adopted children, women who want children but don’t have them, or any other combination of women and children. She criticized Kamala Harris for being arrogant, which she is, using an example out of her own life. You are filling in the blanks, fretting about the next set of lies the left will deploy. Please stop.
There are plenty of other things to go after Kamala Harris on.
Well, yes. How many of them wouldn’t result in the left conjuring up a new set of lies to lyingly defend her? Any of them?
Nope, none of them.
PS- I read that X comment from this Intra-Stellar person. My God. I’d love to mock every bit of that miserable homage to failure but this comment is too long already.
Xennady, we’re just not going to agree on this. I think a lot of Conservative and Pro-Trump communication is what somebody called ‘comfort food’…patting those who are already singing in the choir on their holiness, but not actually accomplishing anything toward converting the heathen.
“batting those who are already singing in the choice on the back for their holiness,’ of course.
The Bottom Line is Economics. Unless you understand that, you are not in the discussion. In 1960, outraging my Democrat family, I voted for Nixon. I had taken a class in Economics. I doubt that would happen today.
Compare this story from Stephen Vincent Benét, 1937.
That’s how long we’ve known what dictators look like when they politicize the whole of life, and at least half the country still doesn’t recognize tyranny when they see it.
https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/benetsv-thirteen02-bloodofthemartyrs/benetsv-thirteen02-bloodofthemartyrs-00-h-dir/benetsv-thirteen02-bloodofthemartyrs-00-h.html
David F: ‘…not actually accomplishing anything toward converting the heathen.”
You seem to make the assumption that lots of the “heathen” Demoncrat voters are open to being converted. Studying the actual numbers of votes cast in presidential elections might suggest an alternative view: for the majority of people, voting preference is more like a genetic characteristic (eg the color of their eyes) than an intelligent reasoned decision.
The largest group of citizens never vote. The next largest always vote Demoncrat. There is a smaller group that always vote Republicrat. The interesting group are smaller in numbers than the R voters — the Contingent Voters. They will never vote Demoncrat, and never vote for a RINO. When occasionally they get the chance to vote for a Reagan or a Perot or a Trump, they will come out and vote — otherwise they stay home. The only “conversion” possible on a large scale is convincing the Contingent Voters to come out & vote for the R candidate.
If the Republicrats would put forward genuine anti-DC candidates — or at least get behind candidates like President Trump — then the Republicrats would win. But our RINOs have no interest in upsetting their torrent of grift.
There are a lot of former Dems who made the switch…some, quite a while ago, such as
https://www.thenewneo.com/
and some much more recent, such as Bill Ackman and Sean Maguire
@BillAckman
@shaunmmaguire
David F: “There are a lot of former Dems who made the switch”
Yes, there are a handful of former Dems who have made the switch, just as there are Cheneys going the other way. But to win an election in the face of the expected fraud by the Ds requires Millions of voters. Those millions exist, but they are Contingent Voters, not dissatisfied persuadable Dems.
From time to time, historically there have been preference cascades in politics. The disappearance of the Whigs from US politics is one example. The rise & fall of the Scottish National Party is a more recent example. But we do not seem to be at that kind of stage in today’s US. And when a preference cascade occurs, my guess is that the Institutional Republicrats will be the first to be (deservedly) swept away.
Sgt Mom…”I would have said “inner Bolshevik” but…”
Isn’t it interesting that there is a category of Rebels whose rebellion is in favor of a social model in which rebellion will be permanently prohibited….
My husband and I are both converts from D to R, dating back a few decades. I’m starting to notice a new group arriving here in the Texas Coastal Bend: COVID lockdown refugees. They were reflexively D in their hometowns in Colorado or Ohio, but horror drove them to Texas and the R party after 2020. They are completely uninterested in RINOs and fervent in their Trump support.
A totalitarian state can appeal to people who’ve otherwise managed to forge no meaningful social connections. Prone to alienation and introversion myself, I can see the appeal from a distance, though perhaps I’m protected by my classically introverted distaste for allowing other people to dictate to me. I ameliorate my own alienation by forcing myself out of my comfort zone to join a church, to join a local cause (lately animal rescue), to run for local office, to attend Womans Club meetings (despite what a challenge they can be). These are all social institutions that work by getting people to join forces in causes that are meaningful to them, while remaining small in scale and immune to bullying by shadowful, powerful, distant authorities.
If you’re embedded in enough of these networks, you won’t fall for anything as silly as the assertion that “government is the thing we do together,” or the idea that nothing can be accomplished without giving a distant government unreasonable levels of control. The trick is to remember that cooperative institutions can and should be entirely voluntary and private. Any institution that depends for its survival on exclusivity and compulsion out to be automatically suspect. Spit in its eye at every opportunity.
Wendy…”If you’re embedded in enough of these networks, you won’t fall for anything as silly as the assertion that “government is the thing we do together”….that Obama remark was pretty revealing, wasn’t it? I guess he never read Tocqueville on the many other ways Americans do things together, or observed for himself…or *did* know these things, but preferred to ignore the point in order to focus on his prime directive of power accumulation.
“I would also suggest that we avoid personal attacks and overheated rhetoric, which could turn off voters who are on the fence, or open to making intelligent voting choices.”
I wrote this because I hope that any voters who are undecided or see the Biden/Harris program with clear eyes (or are uncomfortable with it to any extent), could vote for Trump. They could be prevented by doing this by crass, snarky, mean personal attacks on a Woman of Color (and her supporters), which reinforce the Orange MAGA Bad trope. I’m hoping for an awakening, a preference cascade.
Don’t ridicule Harris’ appearance, personal life, etc. Her (and Walz’s) policies are ammunition enough. I suggest this strategy for this unique fragile moment. The red-pilled who support Trump don’t need extra motivation.
We need every vote we can get, and I don’t trust the polls.
Horrifying thought about “all politics is personal” by Obama. Is that not the same as the difference between the US concept of “separation of religion and State” and that of “religion is the State” in other parts of the world? Now being imported to a theater near you. And, ah, the varying definitions of “theater”.
I’m beginning to realize that “Rules for radicals” is like some highly engineered virus that escaped (was deliberately released) from a polysci laboratory and if we aren’t very careful we’ ll be fed a uniparty vaccine as a response. “Help Lassie, I fell into this well of cynicism and can’t get out. No, no Lassie, filling it with red pills will only drown me.”
“Lassie, pray tell, what is in those red pills. Lassie? Lassie? Noooooo, you’re not really Lassie and never have been. Noooooo………..
Days later… “Hey, Billy, let’s not do those shrooms again, they’re too much like seeing your shadow on the cave wall and thinking its real life”.
“Billy? Billy……..? You’re not really Billy either…….”
?
“Billy? Billy……..? You’re not really Billy either…….”
Act III – Wakes up on the floor of a descending elevator. Muzak on the speaker interrupted by a seductive feminine voice, “Welcome to the – third level of ‘Dante’s Dungeon of Taxpayer Funded Deceptions’. Mind the gap and don’t forget to vote……”
Must stop, help meeeeeee…
Deep breath. “Ok. I’m ok now. Really, yeah, I’m ok. Just need a quiet island to spend some time on. Maybe one of those Easter ones. With the giant heads staring at me every morning when I wake up.”
…any voters who are undecided or see the Biden/Harris program with clear eyes (or are uncomfortable with it to any extent), could vote for Trump. They could be prevented by doing this by crass, snarky, mean personal attacks on a Woman of Color (and her supporters), which reinforce the Orange MAGA Bad trope.
You mean like the crass, snarky mean, personal attacks that Donald Trump and anyone who thinks about supporting him have been getting since roughly 2015?
I find incredibly tiresome that people who oppose the left face every sort of attack up to and including imprisonment while every Republican is expected to remain perfectly civil at all times and never respond.
I’m reminded of Mitt “Mittens” Romney and his 5000-page book of policies for his administration that never mattered, in part because of the usual tricks from the left. Perhaps if Mittens had spent a little less time planning his presidency and a little more pointing out that Barry Soetero wasn’t actually the Light Weaver he might have actually won in 2012. In other words, the boundless civility approach to politics has already been tried by the GOP and failed miserably.
Don’t ridicule Harris’ appearance, personal life, etc. Her (and Walz’s) policies are ammunition enough.
Personnel is policy. The public needs to know about these people and what they have said and done. I haven’t seen anyone criticize Harris for her appearance- expect when she appears to be drunk at public engagements. If she wants to avoid criticism for that, she should stop appearing to be drunk in public. No doubt her minions will demand such criticism ceases- but if she is actually drunk or drugged up when on the job the public has every right to know exactly what is going on. Typically, politicians respond to these sort of questions by doing interviews and such. Harris is uniquely incapable here, even with extensive preparation- and there is an affidavit from an ABC employee claiming she had advance knowledge of the questions in her recent debate along with other assistance.
Am I out of bounds here? Is this a mean attack of a Woman of Color? Should we ignore what actually happened and focus on what she claims are her policies?
I say no.
“mean personal attacks on a Woman of Color”
What color is the woman in question? She looks kinda sorta “White”. At least, that is according to Americans with African heritage.
Anyway, asserting that a person who puts herself forward for the most serious job in the world should be immune from personal attacks because she cynically claims a certain convenient ethnic heritage — NO! Especially at a time when policies she is associated with have put the world dangerously close to global thermonuclear war. If a candidate cannot put a coherent sentence together, is it a “mean personal attack” to point that out?
Good Lord. The question is not whether the opposition candidate should be immune from whatever, the question is *what will work* electorally.
The best way to defeat a particular weapon system is not always a weapon system of the same kind. You can sink a submarine with another (attack) sub, but you can also sink it with destroyers and aircraft.
The tactics that work for a Party that enjoys 90% media dominance may not be the tactics that work for a party with no such dominance.
David F: “The tactics that work for a Party that enjoys 90% media dominance may not be the tactics that work for a party with no such dominance.”
The assumption there is that the “party with no such dominance” is genuinely interested in winning. That does not describe the Institutional Republicrats. Their behavior over the last few decades has shown that (a) they really don’t want to win, and (b) if they do accidentally win despite themselves, they have absolutely no interest in governing. The Institutional Republicrats are happy to play the part of “right hand man” to the real rulers, and get a modest share of the grift for their cooperation.
Where does that leave us — the majority of the population that lacks any influence on the direction of this “democracy” regardless of who sits in what seats in the DC Swamp? When the game is obviously rigged, why should we try to play it?
Good Lord. The question is not whether the opposition candidate should be immune from whatever, the question is *what will work* electorally.
Exactly. So let’s review the success rate of the GOP since Reagan left office.
1992- Loss to the draft-dodging dope-smoking governor of an obscure state of no real importance. Sorry Arkansas I like you better now.
1996- Loss to the former governor of Arkansas who was at the time deeply mired in a myriad of scandals.
2000- Win but narrowly and after a long and agonizing process that did noticeable damage to the Republic.
2004 Win against a Vietnam vet who somehow managed to get three purple hearts without spending a day in the hospital and so loathsome that the men he served with wrote a book to explain how much of a piece of **** he was.
2008 Loss against a one-term senator who spent a long time- decades perhaps, I don’t recall- sitting in a church run by a pastor who hated the United States. Oppo research what is it? Hillary Clinton used that against him in the primaries, though, so the GOP should have been smart enough to use it in the general. Of course they weren’t.
2012 Loss against the former one-term senator who now had an awful record as president.
2016 Here it gets interesting. The favored GOP establishment candidate- Jeb Bush, son and brother of presidents, blessed with a vast amount of campaign funds- was smashed into proverbial paste by an ex-democrat real estate developer and reality TV star with no political experience whatsoever. Please clap.
I’ll stop here because that political party was essentially defunct by 2020, at least at the presidential level. Miserable failure extended over decades tends to end that way. The only role it had left was to sabotage the incumbent. This year, it conducted the usual presidential year circus and demanded people not vote for Trump. Since that met with the usual amount of success, much of the party establishment is now endorsing Kamala Harris.
That’s my evaluation of events and I don’t think it paints a picture of success.
The tactics that work for a Party that enjoys 90% media dominance may not be the tactics that work for a party with no such dominance.
I agree with Gavin Longmuir. A political party that wanted to win wouldn’t compile the record I described above, nor would it allow the other party to gain control of 90% of the media.
Xennady – aren’t you also on thenewneo? I think we’ve intersected there before too.
Exactly this. Too often it feels like Republicans are the battered wives of the body politic. “Well if I just had dinner ready on time he wouldn’t beat me.” – Never mind that the abusive man is deliberately playing a psychological game that makes it literally impossible for the task to be accomplished. It does make me a little happy that the Rs default to the adult view of “is there anything I could have done to change the outcome?” but eventually one does have to stop and admit, “no, it’s not me – it’s them, they’re just evil.” Eventually you have to stop and say, “this game is rigged and I’m not going to play any more.
True, but part of the problem in politics is that it’s not just tactics – but how tactics can be spun to the public. As the old joke goes – Republicans could cure cancer today, and the media would run headlines tomorrow about all the medical professionals they have now put out of work. It’s a real question of how does one play a game that rigged?
It’s not exactly a question of “allow.” As I’ve been listening to several on this topic lately, journalism within only a few generations had moved from a trade-like profession, to a credentialed one.
The thing about the other party is that they have gotten very good and very keen at setting up choke points in system to mint and craft new practitioner and then occupying those choke points to then create a lock on the system.
“Republicans could cure cancer today, and the media would run headlines tomorrow about all the medical professionals they have now put out of work.”
Very true — but so what? The Far Left has near total domination over the media — but who is listening to the media? The answer is — fewer people every day, except for Far Lefties and some frustrated non-Lefties. Many newspapers have shut down. Audiences for “national” news programs have been shrinking. If there really were a “Republican Party” and it really wanted to win, they would be happy that the Far Left is so focused on a dying means of communication … and they would be building alternatives.
But the Institutional Republicans in the DC Swamp are quite comfortable with their current position as token opposition. They are not worried about losing; in fact, they want to lose. The only fly in the ointment is for us non-Lefties, who find ourselves unrepresented.