General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "Bernie Sanders talks about...the possibility of a presidential run...." [View all]True Blue Door
(2,969 posts)There's an obstacle in our way. What should we do?
1. Try complaining about it.
We complain at it, but it doesn't go away. At this point a reality-based activist tries something else, but someone who thinks their own feelings about the problem are more important than solving it will just keep doing the same failed thing over, and over, and over. They'll believe that being right is its own solution, and yet the obstacle still won't move.
2. Try reasoning with it.
Sometimes an obstacle really is just a result of people who don't know what they're doing, so sometimes reasoning works. But if it doesn't work, again, you have to move on. Can't make a fetish out of a given method.
3. Try impassioned pleas.
Maybe the people responsible just aren't logical thinkers, and need to hear arguments from emotions and values. This sometimes works, but if it doesn't...gotta move on. Even if you yourself are an emotional thinker, you can't keep doing this over and over despite not succeeding with it.
4. Try bargaining.
Like it or not, democracy does not permit perfection. Ever. "Perfect" systems are the domain of dictatorships, and even then they're just lies. So whatever you accomplish is going to involve a lot of dirty compromises. Social Security and Medicare are dirty compromises that were totally worth it. Those who wanted more dismissed them as pitiful half-measures and their proponents as corrupt weaklings, but the proof has been in the pudding. But if you can't find enough common ground to make a beneficial arrangement, then you have to move on. This is where the DLC types have trouble - they never admit when their counterparts can't be dealt with civilly, and just give and give like Neville Chamberlain until they're basically carrying water for their own opponents.
5. Move around the obstacle.
When it's clear that no amount of complaining, reasoning, cajoling, or bargaining can resolve the problem, then just move around it. If possible, it's a lot cheaper to build a road around a hill than to carve a tunnel through it. But sometimes even this isn't possible.
6. Fight.
So then you have to fight, and you're not fighting for perfection - just to force the other side back to a point where one of the earlier approaches will work.
Guys like Kucinich, Sanders, and so on get stuck somewhere between 1 and 3. They don't care if what they do doesn't have results, because they can always blame other people's imperfection. For them it's about being right, not about making progress. Well, their righteousness doesn't build schools or get wrongfully convicted people out of jail. It just makes them feel better, and makes the people who put them on a pedestal feel better. That's not an accomplishment, it's an excuse for failure.