Somewhere a bridge has gained its Troll back.

[BainsBane]

457. I am far less generous toward that attitude

Dismissing the rights and concerns of people of color and women is reactionary. It is way more reactionary than Third Way. There is nothing progressive or liberal about it, and I don't consider people who do so to be leftists. Period.

I also consider a lot of this angst about corporatism to be strange, as though they have no conception of the country they live in. There has never been a President in this country that did not promote economic interests and there never will be as long as we remain a capitalist nation. For one thing our constitution makes property sacrosanct. It is a quintessential capitalist document. I might wish for a different political system, but I know enough history and political theory to understand the role of the capitalist state. When I articulate those ideas, which are clearly Marxist in orientation, I am called a "centrist." It's nuts. What I am is politically pragmatic. I refuse to obsess about individuals, be it Snowden or Obama, and make political decisions based on the available options at the time.

I care about the NSA but I don't give a shit about Glen Greenwald or the boxes in Snowden's garage. None of that has any relevance to the conflict between national security and civil liberties or the actions of the NSA. In fact, it's a way of avoiding substantive discussion on those issues. THAT is why I avoid those threads.