General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Liberals Without A Conscience [View all]freshwest
(53,661 posts)And due to the way you formatted your reply, perhaps because of the device used, I cannot make heads or tails of who said what.
And you are still making the assumption that the OP author is the blog author. Deaniac is not here on DU.
I've gone over there to research this. The 'cash trap' accusation is in error, no matter how many times it is repeated.
I wonder why it is being brought upm instead of discussing the topic. It seems that posters are running away from the questions raised in the blog article.
It is the ideas in the blog that interest me, and the topic of the OP, not the personas. You responded to my answer to a poster who said they did not know who that was, and I answered with what I found on the blog itself. I spent a while, thinking about the ideas, going to all the embedded links and following those out.
Several serious charges have been made about the OP writer and blog writer, who are not the same person. One, that it is spam and being posted for money; two, that the blog author is a bigot, that is, a homophobe, when he is gay; and if you go to the link, there are comments where the blog author explains he had a change of heart over anger from Prop 8 passing in CA. I'm unsure if that is what you are referring as changed.
The blog author and the OP author have distinct writing styles. They are not the same person and the blog author lives in CA, not MI. Even if they were the same, and I have written and they are not, will we be calling Thom Hartmann and Alan Grayson spammers now for posting?
I will add an additional point, that the OP writer knows better than to post more than four paragraphs. The blog writer would post all of his material, if he needed the views. He was at Kos for a long time until he decided to start his own blog.
I contend it is the ideas at the link that is found objectionable, not these other things. No one has spoken seriously to them it has just been dismissed out of hand. He's not a RWer but is a pragmatic Democrat, just as Howard Dean was and still is. Dean has made statements as of late that might not be considered Left enough. But he is a pragmatist.
The blog expresses what DU used to be about, helping people through the Democratic Party and good governance.
The link in the article of the OP leads to many links he did not write and are not garbage. His conclusions are his own, and I agree with many, some I don't. They are all good food for thought.
We must get to the end result of actions, back to taking care of people and not be so much about ideology or winning as to disregard real people.
I have had to deal IRL with people on the Left and Right who were so focused on their win, or their ideology, that real people died. They felt they were correct and did not see the human beings that suffered from their rigid postitions. I cannot support this and I feel this is part of what the blog author means. Like the words here:
Easy To Be Hard
by Three Dog Night
How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard, easy to be cold
How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud, easy to say no
Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about bleeding crowd...
I think Deaniac is much like Howard Dean. And Barney Frank said:
Understand that the more deeply you hold your ideals, the more you are morally obligated to be pragmatic... Idealism without pragmatism is just a way to flatter your ego.
When I was very young, that word pragmatism seemed like a cop-out. And when I first read that statement, it was mildly offensive to me again.
Then I thought of what I'd seen and how the 'idealism' of some cost lives of those who they thought were worth the sacrifice for their utopian vision. I can't do that.
That is what the OP's link is about, compassion. It speaks of the millions who have been helped, instead of a perfect plan according to ideology. And what Obama did for women and others, that are real people.
No one seems to want to talk about ideas here now, just taking sides, making accusations and not talking about IRL solutions. It makes DU unproductive and is not why I joined DU or why I became a Democrat.
Peace Out.