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In reply to the discussion: Why Hasn't The American Left Convinced More Americans To Vote For More Progressive Candidates? [View all]woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Last edited Mon May 6, 2013, 04:32 PM - Edit history (5)
As though the mechanisms for silencing liberal voices weren't brazenly clear and in our faces every single day.
This inane OP pretends that the multi-billion dollar corporate media machine does not exist, and that it does not dominate the airwaves and the national conversation to promote its own candidates and destroy non-corporate upstarts before they even have a chance to begin. It entirely denies and ignores the billions and billions in funding required even to compete in elections at the national level. It ignores the deliberate restructuring of countless aspects of our political process over the past 30 years to shut out non-corporate voices, including the shameful seizing of control of the debate process and access to debates by the two corporate parties, changes in balloting and districting, and changes in campaign financing that allow plutocrats to hand-pick candidates and media memes.
The tone of this OP is the same, sneering "blame the victim and rub it in your face" garbage that we have come to expect from the Third Way. Like in the very same corporatists' "bootstraps" speeches to impoverished families, we are mocked and told, ludicrously, that we are just not trying hard enough.
This when ALL the evidence shows that the electorate is on our side already, but just are not given the chance to vote for a candidate who represents our views. Polling screams over and over again that the electorate craves more progressive policy positions. The proof of the scam is that corporate candidates invariably veer LEFTWARD during election season, brazenly lying that they support a public option, or want to defend Social Security...because they know as well as we do what the country really wants to hear. They spew the lies and the promises, and the desperate masses vote overwhelmingly for the lesser of two "viable" evils we are presented, and then as soon as the election is over these faux liberals are fellating the One Percent again.
What cynical, simplistic, manipulative garbage this OP is. What a marvelous example of how stupid Americans are assumed to be, and in what contempt we are held by the very ones who claim to represent us and be working on our behalf. And the icing on the cake is the use of the pronoun, "we," as though these Third Way vultures share any of the same economic values and goals as the millions of human beings out in the country they continually lecture and mock.
No, the country is not right-leaning. No, competing in national elections and the media is not simply a matter of will-power and a superior message. And, no, the Third Way is not on the side of the American people.