Some Defend-President-Obama-no-matter-what-folks here will do anything to divert,

[BumRushDaShow]

166. To address your assertions

It's obviously a big subject to get too specific here but there are many examples of how this "reality-based" claim by people who object to "hyperbolie" has been as much an impediment to progress as the reactionary GOP.

It's not a matter of seeking unrealistic "purist" goals. The first step has always been to try and at least stop the Democratic Party from backsliding from its claimed role as the party that is the balancing force to GOP conservatism.

Before the 1930s, what we call "the Democratic Party" was by no means anything like what you see today (which evolved after FDR and gelled during the '60s with the flight of the "Dixicrats" of the south, to the Republican Party. The GOP, after 28/36 years of Democratic control, decided to cannibalize and distort the message of "states rights" and individual rights and attract/nurture a disaffected group. These Dixicrats, the descendents of those who lost a civil war over the ownership of my own ancestors and their ability to actually have the Constitution apply to them (to live like a human being), insisted on their right to their property as "individuals", and to do with it as they pleased. They were the agricultural capitalists. Meanwhile the northern Republicans from the party of Lincoln, were your bankers and industrial capitalists (steel, chemicals, misc. manufacturing), who originally battled those southern capitalists - not because of any lofty goal of equal rights for all, but because they felt it unfair that one group benefited from free labor vs their being required to pay for it. But by joining ranks as capitalists, they could muster resources to the benefit of both.

So before you describe any "back-sliding", you need to understand where these ideologies have come from with respect to party affiliation, and how they are evolving within their new, "modern" configuration. This re-configuration has not settled down yet and that is why simple black and white solutions will not succeed.

One example -- When the financial sector was "modernized" through deregulation in the 90's, a lot of people criticized it and tried to point out how destructive that could be to the economy and to te interests of the majority -- and how it would lead to abuses and excessive concentration into a small handful of Super Bank Monopolies.

They were not pushing for some fantasy -- Just trying to make sure that any "modernizations" were balanced and were not being done totally to advance the interests of the Super Banks at the expense of the economy and the majority of the population.

No one in this thread is disagreeing with the destructive results of Reaganomics. And ironically, the very coalition that helped propel Reagan and his minions (the social conservatives) were unceremoniously tossed aside and suppressed by Reagan and the GOP, only to pop up again 20+ years later to assault all of our sensibilities because they refuse to be denied again by the party that used them. Yet their message as an extreme, has only resonated to a small portion of the electorate (although that portion is willing or able to vote unfettered). Their strategy is all "stick" and no "carrot", and this does nothing but breed selfishness and hatred. We (as liberals/progressives, etc) shouldn't have to rely on all "stick" to beat the electorate senseless, although some stick is definitely needed if used intelligently.

But again, as long as one denies the fact that this country focuses on money ("economy&quot versus other things ("well-being&quot , then you won't be able to work towards some sort of balance as the two are intertwined in this modern society. E.g., the desire to lessen the burden of work to increase the well-being, has in fact promoted the mechanization of it - which paradoxically hurts the worker when it comes to the means to obtain goods and services through compensation for work. This does not mean that I promote going back to "manual labor" as a solution (and that was something that China promulgated to create a Foxconn). But this has to be factored into any solution without assuming that "money" isn't relevant.

What has happened however, in a sortof underground way, is the return of the "cottage industry" via the internet, with a proliferation of pay-forwards and other communal activities outside of the main economic structure, and this tends to mitigate, however much or little, the negative impact of the centralized corporate state. This is why the focus on the internet (and control of it) by the capitalists.

But the "realists" and "adults" used your same dismissive tone, and said that we were over-reacting and being "unrealistic." Well, down the line, those warnings were proven true.

Again - look at history and see how things have evolved or devolved based on past strategies, rather than knee-jerk reacting without thought. The concentration of wealth has gone on throughout human history. It is sadly a part of human nature. The strong will vanquish the weak. But the clever can outsmart the strong. It's a matter of tactics. One of the strategies that the GOP has used, is the power of the megaphone - i.e., they bought up bundles and bundles of media outlets (tv, radio, print) in order to bombard our society with their twisted message. What media outlets do liberals own? You see, in order to proceed with the ideals-based outline, you can't just type away furiously here to the choir. The message needs to go out far and wide and the purveyors of the message need to accept an economic "loss" when investing in such. The fact that > 500,000 protested the Iraq War back in 2003 and it was barely even mentioned on the news, is a case in point in the difference of "owning the megaphone" and the consequences of not having one. And so we descend into a cycle of self-flagellating about "messaging" and not seeing the forest for the trees and how to deal with it.

Maybe you are projecting your own frustrations at what you perceive to be a totally un-reformable system. But I don't agree with overcompensating for that by insulting and trying to marginalize people who still believe that actual reform and change for the better are possible.

The fact that as a black woman, I am here today able to vote and generally live where I want (dependent on financial means), is a testament to the fact that the system IS "reformable" - with sacrifice (however tenable these rights are). But the problem with many on DU is that they think that 1 person holds the key to all that reform and they give a pass to the rest of the players that are required to make change happen - and that includes the public and every one of our elected officials. The way to a solution requires a slog towards getting through to those folks rather than take the easy way out by slamming a single one at the top.