Giordano stuns with this insightful wrap up today
This wisdom came in a series of tweets I love too much to wait for a storified version...
2. While there are exceptions, overall people who have organized and won battles - John Lewis, Dolores Huerta, etc. - went with Clinton.
3. Whereas the high profile lefties with Sanders are overwhelmingly defined by a history of failed activist ventures. "Beautiful losers."
4. The latter group generally feels that their activism fails not because of anything they're doing wrong, but "the system is rigged."
5. That's always been the cop-out excuse. "I don't need to improve, or train, or change my approach because it's all rigged anyway."
6. Sanders' message of economic determinism - that all of life is about money - appeals to the loser part of the left, confirms its biases.
7. And it lets them off the hook, allows activists to take zero responsibility for going about activism in such an ineffective way.
8. This divide on the electoral left sharpens the racial divide, because organizers of color don't have the luxury of always losing.
9. Americans of color, in general, aren't duped or deluded into thinking "we are the majority already." That's plainly obvious.
10. The idea that there is some super woke majority out there waiting to lay siege to the palace is an overwhelmingly white delusion.
11. This imaginary unicorn majority, in their heads, gives them permission to think "we're not doing anything wrong, it's the system."
12. When people think that way, years of frustration and anger build into an impotent rage, and they berate instead of persuade.
13. Since berating is a behavior especially satisfying for men, the Sanders crusade grants them permission to be jerks, & call it politics.
14. It is thus the perfect cocktail for the emergence of the "Bernie Bro," who, again, is not a millennial but the aging white male activist
15. And the whole episode is only going to further reinforce their embittered worldview as the Sanders campaign now sinks into ignominy.
16. They will look back upon it and grumble to each other, "See? We were right! The system is rigged. It's not us, but THEM!"
17. That's why whenever they lose a primary they scream so loudly to invent "fraud" and "voter suppression." Things external to them.
18. They can't ever look in the mirror and say, "My god, we lost because of ME! We didn't train ourselves. We have no social skills!"
19. My central mission in the coming months will be to rescue the idealistic millennials from the "beautiful loser" left, because they're ok
20. What a shame the Sanders campaign didn't repeat the Obama model of training its troops. But to have done so would have been anathema.
21. Because training & organizing are about "agency." They teach "we win or lose based on what WE do." That's the lesson of Sanders' failure
https://twitter.com/AlGiordano
Agency, control of ones self, organizing. There's the power.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Hopefully it gets lots of records.
The lack of accepting responsibility and blaming others for their own failures is definitely a recurring theme that can't be overemphasized.
There was a post earlier today that imagined the dialog at Bernie's campaign that NEVER happened. The gist of the post was the Bernie's campaign and his supporters FAILED to plan ahead for simple (and OBVIOUS) things like New York's closed primary system and long registration requirements.
Number 17 in that list kinda hits on that issue, but doesn't address it directly. It does do a good job at accurately describing how they've responded to the fact that they FAILED to plan ahead ... choosing to blame others, the "system", and offering conspiracy theories.
It seems to me that for all the effort and money the Sanders campaign put into filing an "emergency" legal proceeding to force the NY primaries to be open, they could have instead focused those human and financial resources on publicizing the registration requirements, educating voters, and assisting them.
Oh well ... now they know. 
Putain Démocratique ??@goddamnedfrank
If you can’t even research your State’s primary rules and register on time maybe you shouldn’t call other people “low information voters.”
6:58 PM - 18 Apr 2016
20 20 Retweets 15 15 likes
https://theobamadiary.com/2016/04/19/early-bird-chat-723/#comments
Glad they didn't, though~
It's a mindset that wants "instant gratification" without planning and without effort and without forethought. (You know, kinda like what happens when you click on an internet poll ... you get the see the results right away, and if you're not happy with the results, you just keep clicking until you do. EASY!)
But when it comes to big stuff, I often think they'd rather angrily 'fight for change' instead of cooperatively 'work for change' ... and instead of thinking-ahead and planning ahead. (Basically, the philosophy seems to be "We'll shout at that bridge when we get to it."
The "all or nothing" approach will almost always result in NOTHING! Yet, they take a great deal of personal pride and self satisfaction in actually having NOTHING and in making NO PROGRESS!
Weird, huh?
Change can still happen, but one method is much more likely to be successful, and with a lot less stress ... and is more likely to produce meaningful long-term results.
It's a mindset and a culture of being the perpetually angry "victim" that is almost always doomed to failure or that offers only minimal (and short-term) rewards.
Misery!
"Agency, control of ones self, organizing. There's the power."
Sometimes I jot down notes;
Noam Chomsky: You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions. You are not responsible the predictable consequences of someone elses actions. The most important thing is to think about the consequences of your actions. What can you affect. (about 1:30:00)
they who have put out the people’s eyes, reproach them of their blindness
~Milton
POLITICS of the DISPOSABLE
Privatize the PROFIT
Socialize the RISK
INDIVIDUALIZE the SOCIAL
“...Few suppress critical thinking more systematically than those who falsely claim that they teach critical thinking (or as the awful cliché puts it, "thinking outside the box" . In reality, they operate within a closed system of "problem-solving," constituted as the pedagogy of the Rubik's Cube. What is called creativity is most often merely puzzle-solving (finding the best predetermined answer), whereas authentic innovation would include probing boundaries, interrogating assumptions, redefining concepts rather than using a desiccated sort of "critical thinking" as a shriveled substitute for a genuine critical consciousness. True creativity would consider taking the box off the shelf and disposing of its toxic contents….”
Howard A. Doughty
http://www.collegequarterly.ca/2012-vol15-num01-winter/doughty2.html
--------------------
‘When Margaret Thatcher married Ronald Reagan two things happened; one was the assumption that government was evil, except when it regulated power to benefit the rich. It wasn’t a matter of smashing government, it was a matter of rearranging it, and reconfiguring it, so it benefited the wealthy, the elites, those who run large corporations. But Thatcher said something entirely different, ‘that there is no such thing as society, only families and individuals.’
Paraphrasing Henry A. Giroux discussing his book “Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism”
Agency: action or intervention, esp. such as to produce a particular effect.: "canals carved by the agency of running water."
Four Freedoms articulated by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. In the 1941 State of the Union address, he proposed freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:
Freedom of speech
Freedom of worship
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear
You have to imagine what a good life is, but AGENCY, the ability to do that, to have the capacity to make decisions, to learn how to govern, and NOT JUST be GOVERNED, TO BE a CITIZEN, an AGENT.
‘A CITIZEN is a political and moral AGENT who has a SHARED sense of HOPE and RESPONSIBILITY to OTHERS, and not to just himself or herself.’
Paraphrasing Henry A. Giroux discussing his book “Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism”
I just got done reading it, and one thing I can say about dudebros, comprehension is not strong 
totally worth reading the take down...
It's just so smart and spot on...
A lot of what we've been saying but he lays it all out and wraps it up in a bow
Kicking it so weekend readers don't miss it.
I spent about an hour or so following some of the links bouncing through Giordano's Twitter feed. Trolls notwithstanding, there are some interesting conversations going on ~
Thanks RS 
AlGiordano Retweeted Lexa
As I started saying last week, 4/19 would be the Dudebro Rapture and 4/26 the Dudebro Apocalypse.
https://twitter.com/AlGiordano/status/723755233566826497
A must read for all supporters. Al needs to write this book!
