How To Stop Being The "Radical Left"

Or at least step one towards getting there. I know many here get ticked off by this. Most of us favor policies that really shouldn't be characterized as "radical" at all. When you get right down to it they're downright practical and based on fundamental common sense. And yet it is continuously the case that people on the left that are not "radical" at all are constantly labelled as the "far" left or the "fringe" blogosphere or the "radical" wing of the Democratic party.

And guess what? It's largely our fault. Not entirely of course... hell no. The other side pushes the meme as hard as they can get away with to discredit our arguments, but we help it along with enthusiasm.

Want an example? I was reading a thread here just today about the South. In it two things stuck out. First was a casually inserted "knuckle dragging Rethug" used to describe Southern senators and congressmen. And in that same post that same person... a mere two sentences later... described them as seeming to "thrive on hatred, divisiveness". No trace of an appreciation of the hypocrisy of that statement could be found. Not in the post, not in any of the replies. It was just taken for granted that was the appropriate way to characterize the other side.

Everyone sees it a hundred times a day on these forums. "Rethug", "Rethuglican", Repuke", "Puke"... but boy do we get pissed off if they call us the "Democrat" party don't we? THAT'S just childish!

Want another one? Yesterday someone posted a letter they wrote to a member of our beloved MSM expressing some criticism of how they were handling the coverage of the Blagojevich mess. A few excerpts:



This is, all too often, the public face our community presents to the world in the blogosphere. In comment areas of online news organizations. In letters to the editor. The ranting freaking crazy person conspiracy theorists... that's us! Yes, the other side has theirs too, but I'm not concerned if they get seen as whackjobs so let's keep the focus where it belongs. If we want to stop being portrayed as the radical fringe, we need to do something about it. It's that simple. No, reigning this conduct in won't do it all by itself, but it'll sure as hell not hurt. We can at least stop encouraging it.

Now before anyone starts, no, I'm not saying any of the epithets constantly and routinely hurled at the Republicans are unearned or untrue (although the brush that gets painted with around here gets damn wide on a regular basis). But it is entirely possible to say something that is true and still be a big ranting immature lunatic in the way you choose to express that truth. And to be blunt we have been overly tolerant of big ranting immature lunatics in our camp as long as they agree with us in principle and we thus bear considerable responsibility for the fact that they've come to be as widely associated with our side of the debate as they have. Far too often these people start spouting off and because we agree with the general underlying spirit of what they're saying we jump right in and cheer them on no matter how extremely poorly they have chosen to express that sentiment.

Then there's the towering issue of earth shattering importance of the day here at DU. Someone we don't like got selected by some committee to deliver the invocation at the inauguration. The invocation. Do you realize what the majority of Americans reaction to that is? THERE ISN'T ONE, nobody gives the teeny tiniest little crap about the damn invocation. It is a short, meaningless, completely forgettable ceremonial act that just fills time. It will be totally forgotten five minutes after it is delivered. It has ZERO impact on policy direction or the manner in which we will be governed for the next four years. It is a complete and total waste of breath to spend more than one whole sentence discussing it. Unless you're somewhere like DU, then it takes on an importance on a par with headlines like "700,000 Dead In Biological Weapons Attack on Major City". People go into absolute hysterics. One poster launched into a profanity laden tirade at Obama over it, neglecting to take account of the fact that Obama doesn't even select the person delivering the invocation. No time to stop to look up the facts when there's outrage to be expressed after all. I saw another claim it meant they were "coming for the gays" so we had to do something about it right now, in a clear attempt to equate this with how the Nazis were coming for the Jews and look what happened when we didn't stop THAT! And yes, I know the Nazis also came for the gays... but let's try to stay on point here. You want to know why a good chunk of the general public are so easily convinced that people who hang out in places like DU are fringe lunatics? Take a wild guess. Go ahead. What could possibly give them that impression? If you took an average middle of the road everyday member of the general public and showed them DU today they would walk away with the impression that half the people here belong in an institution. And they'd have pretty damn solid reasons for thinking it.

We love our hyperbole don't we? We love to turn EVERYTHING that doesn't go our way into the symbolic destruction of all that we hold dear and the precursor to all of us being herded into concentration camps by the evil fascists... followed immediately by the end of life as we know it. That kind of thing makes entertaining reading, but if we pull that out and wave it around every damn time something goes against us, no matter how large or small or important or unimportant, we have no business complaining that people don't take us seriously or listen to our warnings. Would a sense of perspective really be THAT bad a thing? Would it be SO difficult for us to treat a mountain like a mountain and a molehill like a molehill? It shouldn't be... but we don't seem to be very good at it around here do we?

So... how do we stop being known as the "Radical Left"? We start by not bloody well acting like a bunch of lunatics, that's how. Moderation crackdowns on unnecessary derogatory terms for the opposition might be a good place to start. It is entirely possible to express every opinion under the sun about the moral failings, evils, corruption, etc... of the right wing (or whoever else you're directing your outrage at this hour) without resorting to childish schoolyard name calling that makes it sound like we're protesting from the sandbox.

But if you really think that what is said here on DU and in the blogosphere actually started this whole mess, you don't know your history. If you think that what is said here on DU and in the blogosphere actually effects opinions of people who live in the reality based world, you're naive. We're what, 135,000 people here. I'm willing to bet you a lot of money that if you go down any street in this country and ask the first one hundred people you meet if they've heard of DU, you would be lucky to come up with one.

As for this:



I you don't think it has an influence you're delusional. And you're also apparently wasting your time being here when you think it doesn't matter. Do I think a post on DU will sway the opinions of millions? No. Do I think a hundred thousand posts on DU sway the actions and opinions of the people who are exposed to them? Obviously. And do I think those people then go out and influence others? You bet. Do I know exactly how many people end up having their view of the left influenced in whole or in part by what goes on in places like this? No. Is it a number greater than Zero? YES. Do we have a responsibility to conduct ourselves in a mature and responsible manner if we expect to be taken seriously by whoever is saying attention? Yes.

Do you take specific exception with the accuracy of anything I just said?

And DU in particular as to their effect on the minds of the masses. If it makes you feel warm and snuggly at night to imagine that your postings here will sway the minds of a few, much less the many, fine. But don't think that a lot of people are going to join you in your grandiose delusion.

At the end of the day this is a chat board, a politically oriented chat board yes, but a chat board none the less. As such its value isn't in the content that it puts out, but in what it provides to those who participate. Yes, there have been notable exceptions where what went on here actually caught the eye of somebody to the extent that it actually surfaced, for the briefest of moments, in the reality based world, but these exceptions are notable because they are exceptions, not the rule, not by a long shot.

As far as what we write here swaying the perceptions of the masses concerning their opinion of the left, please. As I stated earlier, the minds of the masses concerning the state of the left have been and are influenced far more by what happens in the real world than by what happens here. Which is more damaging to the image of the left, one minute of Rush, Hannity, et. al. spewing lies about the left, or a thousand posts here. If you actually think that the posts are more important, then we can stop this discussion right now because you're far gone beyond reason.

But frankly, your post is, in many ways, almost a call for censorship. Watch what you say, you could give the wrong impression, yadda, yadda, yadda. Why do you want to deprive people of their right to say what they want? That's actually where the value of DU lies, in allowing people a safe place for them to vent, get vocal, rage against the machine. Yet here you are, being all concerned about what we're saying around here. Things that make you go HMMM.

So yes, I do take exception, both general and specific about much of what you said. If you don't like it, oh well. You're not going to shut up myself or most of the others around here. We are, after all, just a rowdy bunch of leftists who won't listen to concern. So hey, rage against machine, or in this case the chatboard. But in the end please remember, it's not going to do you much, if any good, unless that of simple catharsis.

Without faux outrage, they don't have anything.

You can't hang HairBoy on us.

I'm having some difficulty figuring out what part of my post you're responding to.

Want another one? Yesterday someone posted a letter they wrote to a member of our beloved MSM expressing some criticism of how they were handling the coverage of the Blagojevich mess. A few excerpts:

"GOP corporate hack"
...
"(how much does the RNC pay him to spew his lies?-in fact how much does the RNC pay you to spew their lies)"
...
"Your corporate masters...have now decreed to you that Obama must be destroyed."


...I mean, really, how do we even know that this person actually IS a progressive or a leftist? They could have been(and the tone sounds like this is probable)a RW creep trying to write his version of "Radical Left" rhetoric.

The truth is, nobody in the whole party, especially the progressive wing or those to its left, has been a bitter end Blago loyalist.
I think we're all in pretty solid agreement that The Hairstyle That Walks Like A Man should be given the boot.

The person I was quoting was ranting about the attempts to connect Obama and Blagojevich. They were not defending Blago. And I intended that as an illustration of how people express their opinions in general in an incredibly unproductive way, it really had nothing to do with the Blagojevich situation itself. It was just a handy example of the application of conspiracy-theorist rhetoric.

n/t.

Like the Republican politicians constantly use the term "Democrat" instead of "Democratic".

You are mixing apples and coconuts.

...because we're not the official national representatives of "the left" we therefore have zero responsibility to conduct ourselves like adults. I forgot that only members of the government were supposed to be accountable for their actions and that the rest of the nation is supposed to be held to the standards of third graders.

Silly me.

I rarely do it myself but I realize that a lot of people are letting out a great deal of anger and frustration.

Conservatives march more or less in lockstep, cats are herd creatures compared to liberals, there is no way you'll get them all to agree on the color of the sky, let alone to do as you wish in your OP.

that this tone is how it has always been, that is not so. There were many years of civility, years of trying to, politely, have our points heard and debated. We were met with nothing but invective, derision, and hysterical screaming.

The devolution of constructive debate into the feces hurling shout-fest was deliberately established by the reich-wing because they have no argument to counter with, no success to point to, no ideas upon which their "philosophy" is based.

ETA: spelling

Yet it is completely irrelevant. I think we move beyond "but they started it!" being considered a legitimate excuse for infantile behavior when we leave elementary school behind. Don't you? Members of the Right can hurl insults and engage in derogatory childish behavior day in and day out. Let them. And let them be seen doing it. And let them be perceived accordingly. It is our choice whether we operate at the same level and our responsibility for how we are perceived because of that choice.

It's hard to be seen as the adults in the room if we don't act like it.

that this time we will be heard?

that is childish, bordering on delusional.:eyes:

Or is simply dismissing it as ridicule sufficient in your view to render it untrue by default? If you think what I wrote was wrong, by all means present an argument how so.

I stupidly though for moment you were actually interested in a discussion, your last reply disabused me of that notion.

Good luck with that.

If they were already dealt with by other responders I imagine that would make it rather easy for you to do it... what with all the heavy lifting being done already. Why not take a shot at it?

Attempting to not be something means there's something wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with the radical left. Acting like there is is what gives the right wing power.

I learned long ago that a bully will only view signs of your discomfort to his insults as a go ahead to keep using them. The more you take those insults and try and prove they're not true, the more you egg the bully on. Next time someone says "radical left" as a negative, just go ahead and tell them what the radical left is all about and why they should be radical left as well. You'd be surprised at how quickly this tends to deflate them, because they were expecting you to try and deny being so.

...I was addressing no longer being perceived as "radical" by the nation in general. There is no reason for it, and it is counterproductive. "Radicals" are people whose ideas do not lend themselves to mainstream acceptance and widespread adoption pretty much by definition. I'm not saying there's something wrong with our positions, only with our PR.

will be impossible for a group of people that are for the most part intellectually impulsive and reactionary.

for 3 decades haven't been on the left. They're on the right, and until or unless we achieve an honest broker in establishment media who will put this self-evident truth forward, nothing will change.

1. Right on the war
2. Right on the economy
3. Right on the bailout
4. Right on holding our lily-livered reps' feet to the fire.

The mushy center has been wrong on everything.

Strangely enough, the "radical" occupation of the Republic factory was widely supported, by ordinary people who were nominally "left," "center," & "right".

Buy a clue.

You just read the title, jumped to the conclusion that the rest of the post must have me saying the Left was wrong about ANY of the things you just listed, and launched into a response. Admit it. That is what you did isn't it?

Because if you HAD read my post you would have found I didn't say anything remotely resembling what you appear to think I said.

language they use.

i repeat, buy a clue.

If you'd like to take another run at it though feel free. I could explain it... but I did that once already and re-posting the OP would be kind of pointless when it's right there at the top of the page.

If you'd like a tip, instead of trying very hard to respond to a 1,000+ word post by desperately attempting to rewrite it into a single sentence... ignoring even that sentence, and instructing me to "get a clue"... you may want to consider... just for the novelty of it... responding to specific content in my post directly and presenting a counterargument explaining how or why something I said is incorrect. With whole paragraphs full of words and everything if you're feeling especially industrious.

Of course it's just a suggestion.

Here's your post with the irrelevance omitted:

>>How To Stop Being The "Radical Left"

Most of us favor policies that really shouldn't be characterized as "radical" at all. And yet it is continuously the case that people on the left that are not "radical" at all are constantly labelled as the "far" left or the "fringe" blogosphere or the "radical" wing of the Democratic party.

It's largely our fault.

Want an example? I was reading a thread here just today about the South...a casually inserted "knuckle dragging Rethug" used to describe Southern senators and congressmen...described them as seeming to "thrive on hatred, divisiveness". No trace of an appreciation of the hypocrisy of that statement could be found.

Everyone sees it a hundred times a day on these forums. "Rethug", "Rethuglican", Repuke", "Puke"... but boy do we get pissed off if they call us the "Democrat" party don't we?

This is, all too often, the public face our community presents to the world in the blogosphere. If we want to stop being portrayed as the radical fringe, we need to do something about it.

we have been overly tolerant of big ranting immature lunatics in our camp

Someone we don't like got selected by some committee to deliver the invocation at the inauguration. It will be totally forgotten five minutes after it is delivered. It has ZERO impact on policy direction or the manner in which we will be governed for the next four years. It is a complete and total waste of breath to spend more than one whole sentence discussing it.

You want to know why a good chunk of the general public are so easily convinced that people who hang out in places like DU are fringe lunatics? Take a wild guess.

So... how do we stop being known as the "Radical Left"? We start by not bloody well acting like a bunch of lunatics, that's how.<<


I don't agree with your premise or your argument - or the verbose way it's expressed.

I repeat: You seem to think the "other side" uses the label "radical" because of the way some express themselves.

They don't. They use it to SMEAR, & being more careful in what people say & how they say it won't stop those who desire to smear for political reasons.

I repeat, the "radical left" has been right about everything. Get a clue.

You think 1000 words is verbose? That's two pages in a book. It's just barely a pamphlet. If that was a serious statement that tells me an amazing amount about how worthwhile attempting to have a serious discussion with you is. Are you seriously trying to communicate to me that you have the attention span of a radish?

As for your disagreeing with my premise... you still clearly don't even recognize it.



No?!?! Really!?!?!? You're joking!

Wait... is that perhaps anything like saying "The other side pushes the meme as hard as they can get away with to discredit our arguments"? Are those kind of similar statements perhaps? Nah... they couldn't be... because you just finished dismissing THAT statement as an "irrelevance". Well, that or you are still not bothering to pay attention to what you are so enthusiastically taking exception with.

I damn well KNOW that's why the other side pushed it you oh so extremely perceptive person. Do you want to try reading my post one. more. time? Seriously for once maybe?



How about I GIVE a clue? I DIDN'T SAY THE "RADICAL LEFT" WAS WRONG.

like wading through "oatmeal," as another poster said.

Your advice is:

1) useless, as no one's going to quit having the discussions you take issue with,
2) stupid, as even if everyone stopped those discussions, it wouldn't stop those inclined to smear from smearing (anything can be smeared, if one's of a mind to), &
3) self-contradictory, as you now seem to be saying the epithet is a minus, but the content a positive.


I understood your post perfectly well the first time; you apparently think it's so profound one might have trouble grasping it.

I disagree with your premise, which is that being labeled "radical left" is a problem. Then I disagree with your argument: that dems are labeled "radical" because of the way they parse their posts at DU.

Get it?

Meanwhile, this is the third different "premise" you've now tried to argue you've apparently disagreed with all along. Let's see...

First I was supposedly arguing that the Left was just plain wrong... but that was when you obviously only really paid attention to the title and just randomly guessed what I was posting about. Something you appear to share in common with the poster whose "oatmeal" reference (which makes very little sense btw) you were apparently taken with... seeing as their response to my post made very little sense whatsoever. (I wasn't even talking about what "real leftist Liberal thought" was for cripes sake. How hard is it to actually read an OP before posting a reply to it anyway?)

Then I was supposedly arguing that the cause of the right using the "radical" label was the language our side employed. That would be when you actually went back and read the OP, but clearly weren't concerned with doing it very carefully. And amazingly, when this was pointed out to you... by the author of the post... you came back and insisted that you knew the premise the author was arguing and the author didn't. That takes a special kind of stupid. Then you stuck to it AGAIN in this post insisting that was the argument after it has now TWICE been pointed out to you that you're off the mark. If we were to plot your learning curve we wouldn't need a lot of vertical space on the graph would we?

And at least now you finally get it half right... but my god. You disagree that being labeled "radical" is a problem? Seriously?

Ok, let me see you explain yourself then. You do know what "radical" in the context of this particular discussion means right? So please do present me with some form of explanation for how having your position be associated with fringe political extremism DOESN'T make it more difficult to get it adopted and implemented. Please do enlighten me. Or... you could try to argue that something that works against your goals being realized isn't a problem, but only by changing the definition of the word "problem" I think.

And for the love of all that is holy, would you try to get the damn argument right just once? ONCE? I am not... repeat NOT.... arguing that posts at DU are the cause of the goddamn label. I'm arguing that they are one contributing factor that help make the label STICK. They REINFORCE it. The right can call us "radical" any time they want and there's nothing we can do about it, but every time people from our side start engaging in the kind of idiocy I outlined in the OP we help them convince others that they're justified to use it. Behaviour like I illustrated in the OP lives up to the label. And that is a factor that, unlike the motives of the right, is actually within our ability to influence... even if it is in a small way in our limitted little corner of the conversation... if we wanted to collectively get off our asses and try.

but wouldn't touch REAL leftist political thought with a ten-foot pole.

Reading your OP was like wading through a giant vat of congealing oatmeal.

Fail.

sw