A Short Note On The Democratic Party And The Progressive Left....

[malthaussen]

291. A judicious enough statement, which ought to be expected...

Viewed from an historical perspective, this sort of internal catfighting is to be expected in political parties, especially when circumstances have hardened to extremes as is the case today. I do understand that recently DU has become a toxic environment, at least in some posts; I tend to avoid such donnybrooks as my life expectancy has become too short to worry much about Internet brawls.

A flaw of the US two-party system is that neither party has a true ideology, thus each has historically tried to draw from a large pool of citizens who share divers beliefs. Recently we have seen the GOP pushed to ridiculous extremes on the Right, and it does appear that some Democrats would like to do the same to their party, albeit in the opposite direction. Leaving the excluded middle, er... excluded. But then multi-party parliamentary systems, which are more common worldwide, have the problem of trying to put together a coalition to govern, which can be made difficult if a given party wants to stand rigidly on their platform and not give a little. It would be a nice pipe-dream if only the US could dump the extremists on both sides of the spectrum and assemble a party or two of milder voices, but that is unlikely to happen, so it has fallen to the Democrats to try to do the job themselves. Hence the addition of many fellow travellers who really ought to be Republicans, including our President himself (by his own statement).

On the whole, however, I disagree with your implication that DU should concentrate on practical matters and not ideological questions. Because DU is not a policy-making body. Were we ministers, legislators, magistrates, then obviously we would be compelled to deal in the sphere of "reality," or at least the reality defined by politics. But DU is just a meeting ground for people of left-leaning political inclinations to meet and vent to others of (somewhat) similar views. As a practical matter, the only interface DU members have with the real decision-making process is in encouraging each other to work on a community level to promote people and policies that advance Left goals. If the site confined itself to such questions, it would be a much smaller venue indeed. Accepting that such a restriction is impracticable and undesireable, we open the door to ideological discussions, which is not in itself a bad thing.

What would you, Magistrate? Extremists in these days serve more as the conscience of the Democratic Party, which has certainly drifted far to the right of where it was when I was born. "Pragmatism," you know, deals with perceptions of reality, and such perceptions are easily manipulated and distorted, so without loud voices proclaiming that we have lost our way, we might indeed lose our way. Taking Social Security as an example, despite constant reminders that SS has nothing at all to do with the formal government budget, the real, honest-to-god policy makers in our Nation's capital seem to have accepted the perception that it does indeed require adjustments. Should we pragmatically accept that judgement and undermine one of the cornerstones of Left belief, which is that the government has a responsibility to help ensure the health and welfare of its citizens? Enough of such moving goal posts, and the Left will be a figment, not a reality. We do need to address what should be done, else how can we set goals to which to advance (or, in the case of the right-leaning Democrats, from which to withdraw?).

As for argument by hyperbole, I see very few people who actually argue at DU. Most seem to prefer orating on a soapbox; we might as well be on the corner of Hyde Park. In a true debate, hyperbole and even irony have little place, because a search for truth should not be tainted by rhetoric at all (except perhaps for the purpose of elegance or beauty). But who at DU truly wants to search for truth, as opposed to winning an argument, or at least fighting one out to the bitter end? I can think of a few such people, but they do not figure prominently in the kind of bitter and abusive wars that DU has recently been experiencing. All-in-all, it seems to me that DU accurately reflects the toxic political reality we live in, which might appeal to a pragmatist if the proposition were not absurd. But to change that reality, mustn't we address questions of what should be, as opposed to what is be? Taking things as they are at DU these days, the proposition "DU should be a venue for reasoned, dispassionate debate on critical public issues" is as absurd as the proposition "The government should ensure the health and safety of all citizens" is in the "real" world. Given that DU is by intention an open venue with few real restrictions on content, it would be a rather difficult exercise to try to set (and enforce) standards of decorum that would not cause the immediate banishment of some of our more active voices. But it's a nice thought.

In summary, I think we need the loud and unreasonable voices on the extreme fringe and should occasionally listen to what they have to say, since they serve as a reminder of the goals we should be striving for, as a party and as a society. If they are shrill, it is because we are moving, as a party and a society, away from those goals. While it is true that their clamor may be distasteful, this is true of all who man the barricades in a war, be it for civil rights, gender rights, or human rights. It is the responsibility of those of us who sit comfortably far away from those barricades to distill the meaning from their rantings and decide what can be done from what should be done.

-- Mal