A Savagely Modest Proposal For A Democratic America
The One True bIX
It isn't quite normal to look to The Portland Mercury for truly inspired and legitimately provocative commentary (sorry, guys but it's true), but this week's edition includes a pair of feature articles that are more than worth mentioning. Agree or not with the high invective of the first, the second distills its general point.
In the first half of the feature, Dan Savage paints a picture of Blue America as an archipelago of urban enclaves -- he points out that Kerry "won every city with a population above 500,000" and "half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000" -- and says that this Blue America should, in so many words, tell Red America to f*ck off.
To red-state voters, to the rural voters, residents of small, dying towns, and soulless sprawling exburbs, we'll say this: F*ck off [Edited - b!X]. Your issues are no longer our issues. We're going to battle our bleeding-heart instincts and ignore pangs of misplaced empathy.
...
In short, we're through with you people. We're going to demand that the Democrats focus on building their party in the cities while at the same time advancing a smart urban-growth agenda that builds the cities themselves. The more attractive we make the cities--politically, aesthetically, socially--the more residents and voters cities will attract, gradually increasing the electoral clout of liberals and progressives. For Democrats, party building and city building is the same thing.
In the second half of the feature, Sean Nelson takes the same general view of the Blue/Red divide, but places more emphasis on firmly -- and without fear any longer -- proclaiming and championing the values of this urban archipelago, rather than hurling quite the same level of invective at Red America.
... We're for pluralism of thought, race, and identity. We're for a freedom of religion that includes the freedom from religion--not as some crazy aberration, but as an equally valid approach to life. We are for the right to choose one's own sexual and recreational behavior, to control one's own body and what one puts inside it. We are for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Unlike the people who flee from cities in search of a life free from disagreement and dark skin, we are for contentiousness, discourse, and the heightened understanding of life that grows from having to accommodate opposing viewpoints. We're for opposition. And just to be clear: The non-urban argument, the red state position, isn't oppositional, it's negational--they are in active denial of the existence of other places, other people, other ideas. It's reactionary utopianism, and it is a clear and present danger; urbanists should be upfront and unapologetic about our contempt for their politics and their negational values. ...
Nelson argues for a loud and vocal reclamation of what it means to be liberal, which, he says, literally means "free from bigotry... favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded." He rattles of a string of (yes) values which are common amongst residents of our urban archipelago, including education and true literacy, science, reason, history, and the social contract (and the taxes it requires).
"All those things that non-urbanists have replaced with their idiotic faith," Nelson writes. "We're for those."
I suspect that the Savage piece will make a fair number of people recoil. But at the very least, it should be read in its entirety because its sheer anger is a necessary underpinning to truly appreciate Nelson's somewhat more refined approach to the same concerns.
In the end, at their most basic and shared level, Savage and Nelson are absolutely correct. To move forward, the Democratic Party above and before all else, must reassert its claim upon the values represented by this urban archipelago -- which first requires that it stop pretending that these values are somehow things to be ashamed of, or only spoken of in private amongst other Democrats.
They are also both entirely correct that the America described by these urban values indeed simply is a better America than the one desired by the base of the Republican Party out there in its vast Red Sea. It is, in fact, simply a more American America.
Yes, there is a not insignificant portion of the country that for some reasons insists upon and persists in pretending to be stuck somewhere in the middle, between these two value systems, and they repeatedly demand attention, routinely compel the parties and their candidates to cater and pander to them.
But just as the Democratic Party needs to stop trying to reach out to the hardest of the hardcore Reds who will never share the small-d democratic values of the urban archipelago, it should also resist the temptation to reward those who, at this point, seem willfully and selfishly to pretend to be in conflict when it comes to these two competing value systems. It's time for the Democratic Party to stand firm as the party of tolerance, reason, and the social contract, and tell the whining middle to make up their minds which version of society they want America to resemble.
In our heart of hearts, we of the urban archipelago, those strongholds of the true Democratic Party, know what we believe, and know those values for which we stand. And we know they are quintessentially American values.
We also know the the rightest of the right-wing Reds will never agree, simply are beyond the reach of reason, and perhaps will only ever come around -- if they do at all -- when they see by our example that our way of life is a better one.
And we know that the whining middle needs to grow up and decide for themselves. No more pandering to their insistence that we reach out to them. They are supposed to be adults and citizens of a democratic republic. They've been given more than ample opportunity to see each version of America, and it's time for them to pick a side.
Addendum: For various ways of looking at this urban archipelago, see the previously-mentioned work with electoral maps and cartograms, which visually represent the concept.
Originally published on The One True b!X.
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Nov 12, '04
These sentiments are great as a cultural manifesto (if only for providing one with a sense of self-satisfaction, but not as a political one.
Some commentators here at BlueOregon have made a better point: "Let's do a better job of presenting our message and showing its strengths." I doubt that's enough, but it's way better than telling Red America to "F* off" even in the way Sean Nelson does. Despite a nicer turn of phrase, the arrogance of Nelson's views are astounding. And that kind of view is not going to expand Democrats' success in national elections, whatever it may be worth in itself, as a philosophy.
Despite all his claims to the contrary, it's Nelson who is the exclusionist, it's Nelson who is the bigot. That ought to be abundantly clear from the article's illustration. This is supposed to be an expression of a more enlightened point of view?
And like a bigot, Nelson misunderstands even who his adversaries are. That ignorance makes him, and others like him, dismal advisors. Taking this kind of advice would guarantee even more failure in the future.
Nov 12, '04
I completely agree with Anthony. You can't make cities more inviting to people who love agriculture, solitude, or small town life. You can't make people who want their kids to grow up roaming the hills and fishing in a pond happy in an urban environment. The fact is this country is huge, and it contains a mix of not only the cultures of people of color, but also a variety of white cultures, some of which the author apparently disdains. We're a big enough country for all of us - including arrogant exclusionist do-gooder liberal urbanites, right-wing gay-bashing religious fanatic small-town dwellers, and everyone in between. Go moderates!
7:46 a.m.
Nov 12, '04
Locally, the Democrat's President's Council has virtually igonored the rural/urban divide in Oregon...dumb, dumb, dumb.
Nov 12, '04
I would add that, as important as the fundamentalist Christian vote has been, it took far more than that to help the Republicans to win. That means that not only are those who need to be wooed by Democrats not necessarily the reddest of the red, but also that the Republicans would be fools if they trimmed their policy to play heavily only to that group.
Nov 12, '04
"And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers."
There's a winning strategy for the future!
The world does look different as the number of people around you thins out. Then also, people sort themselves into places where like minded folks live. Yes, it's different out there, and looks like Dan, in good American tradition, wants to kill everything that's different.
The electoral college gives power to land, independent of people. It is a constitutional reification of the rural values, the rural labor system, and land and slave based economics of 18th century America. It's a drag, but it ain't gonna change soon.
We're half way to becoming an urban nation, but we're still living in a rural political system.
We urbanites are big time ecologists but we don't know jack (technical term) about living on and in the land. I quite like being a rootless cosmopolitan, but I'm not nearly as certain as Dan Savage that folks who occupy the rural landscape are rubes. I think they are shaped by different economic and social realities. I think they are maybe even deprived of the benefits of living in complex diverse environments, although I have no doubt that they derive other competing benefits from their lower density lives.
I think that the institutionalization in America of progressive politics will not work without a coalition of rural and urban progressives.
I think one obvious place to forge that coalition is around land use/environment, even though it may not produce results that urban dwellers like.
I note that Blue Oregon solicits guest articles from rural Oregon, and that's the whole key, across America.
Rather than saying "f***" rural America, we've got to find an alliance with values that part of rural/suburban/exurban America can also buy into and that we can buy into. Those values need to be perceived not as "urban" values because I think rural voters probably do perceive themselves and their lives as representing by the very fact of where they live, a different set of values from "urban" values.
Within each state it doesn't matter where those progressive rural exurban suburban voters come from, or how scattered they are, for Presidential politics at least.
I'll tell you one reason simply waging a cultural war isn't so good an idea... progressive Americans are doing better at the Presidential electoral college level than they are at the state level, where Republicans are increasing their grip. Land and the people who occupy it not only rule, they are increasing their power. We'd better find a way to build land based progressive power (state legislatures).
No need to buy into any hatred of rural America or "rubes" while we do that.
Nov 12, '04
OK, so based on the tenor of this article, as a blue person, you are absolutely right and no one else who disagrees with you can be correct. That is really sad, if not dismissive of anyone else.
Unfortunately, unless you can secede the cities, we are still one country. In addition, usually on a per capita basis city dwellers get a lot more of the public services already that may ex-urbs pay taxes on. So you do need someone outside of high-density housing areas to help pay for this stuff. In addition, I think most of the crime and poverty (I'll agree about deep-south income levels) situations center around high-density areas. So, cities really don't have a corner on intelligence.
If your message cannot resonate with a majority of the population, then maybe you should do some soul-searching. I only ask you leave the possiblity that there are two sides to any question. The totalitarian approach these guys advocate is really not very tolerant whether or not their message is liberal/conservative.
Nov 12, '04
I believe this election was a wake up call to Urban America. The rural parts of the country have been at war with the urban parts for some time. We don't seem to understand the hate percolating around the rural churches and meeting places for our urban life style. Now I don't think cities have to go to political war with country folk, but do we really need to continue to subsidize there life style? Love thy neighbor, but if my neighbor hates my guts, I'm not going to go out of my way to help him.
Nov 12, '04
Cab jogged my memory about a sort of interesting tidbit relative to the hate percolating around rural churches for urban life. My mother, a country-living fundamentalist Christian, told me quite solemnly the other day that according to Scripture we are to live in the country, not the city. Though I am quite familiar with the Bible, I cannot recall having read any such admonishment, and I reminded her that Jesus lived in a city as an adult, that he was born in a city and raised in a city. She retorted that Bethlehem was really just a village of about 500 people and that as an adult, Jesus was homeless. I ather than asking her whether perhaps the message from God was that we all should become homeless, I bit my tongue. She might have retorted that the city was so evil that Jesus died there, too. Some people will use Scripture to support anything.
Nonetheless, I agree with others here that we can find a common ground, and the most stable common ground we all share is love of country. We saw that in a big way the last part of September, 2001. We're a lot like a semi-dysfunctional family - bickering amongst each other relentlessly until an outsider threatens one of our own, and that's when we finally pull together.
Nov 12, '04
Becky, I agree love of Country is something we share, but the ideas and ideals of what that country is is so different. Rural America looks to the 1950's American image, while we in the urban centers see a more inclusive free flowing America. One thing I know is Rural America can live freely in urban America's dream, Urban America cannot live freely inside rural American's dream.
2:05 p.m.
Nov 12, '04
While I can sympathize with the anger of Savage and Nelson--I too have been angry at times in the last 10 days, an anger born of intense sadness at the direction this country is taking--I agree with Becky that finding common ground is the only path out of this mess.
I've come to think over the past few days that common ground between urban blue liberals and rural red conservatives may just be found in economics. If the Democratic Party could help the poor and middle class see that by voting Republican, they've voted against their own economic self-interest, we might just be able to battle back.
It will take an economic populist with incredible skills to be able to be heard by both sides (John Edwards, anyone?) but it may be the only way that we can finally defeat the entwined ideas that Republicans are the party of the common people and Democrats are out-of-touch, taxation-crazy, godless, latte-drinking city dwellers.
Nov 12, '04
There's far more common ground than Leslie thinks. The urban/rural divide isn't the only reason Bush won, and even that divide is based on issues other than things like religion. I think the "moral issues" distinction isn't about what many are tempted to think. A political party that depended on fundamental Christians to get elected and didn't bother about urbanites and the rural urbane would never win a presidential election.
3:01 p.m.
Nov 12, '04
I agree with Becky that finding common ground is the only path out of this mess.
You might notice, if you read my take on the Savage and Nelson rants, that I don't disagree. Where I veer off from the "centrist" or even so-called "moderate" herd is in believing that it's utter lunacy to think we should be reaching out to the unreachable -- and there are two types of unreachables.
The first, as I argued, as the hardest of hardcore Reds, who will simply never believe in -- or even accurately listen to -- liberal values.
The second is where we're having the greatest point of contention. The group everyone else is falling allover themselves to call the "persuadables" or some sort of reachable middling folk are, to my mind, little more than self-important whiners who refuse to be the civic adults a democratic republic requires them to be. They want to be catered and pandered to, rather than live up to their responsibiltiy to decide what sort of country they want.
Those people are only going to "come around" to some sort of common ground when they realize that seeking out pandering politicians and/or occassionally voting for the right-wing machine which has methodically been undoing the social contract is destructive, and when they notice that liberal values are fundamentally more American and more generally fair.
3:04 p.m.
Nov 12, '04
In other words: The necessary event is for the whining middle to realize that liberal values are what contains the "common ground" required for American civil society to function properly.
We should not be trying to adopt or co-opt the self-interested values of the whining middle in order to declare that we have found some sort of alleged "common ground" with them.
3:49 p.m.
Nov 12, '04
So If I understand this properly... we ridicule the right... we berate the middle and call them whiners. Somehow that gets us 51%? If gunning after the people that disagree with us will somehow produce a majority liberal vote, I have to ask... where were these people on November 2nd after the most massive GOTV and voter registration drive in history?
I believe in the power of our ideas. I believe in the truth of our stances. I'm not too proud to ask for the vote of someone who is newly convinced that progressive values actually represent them better than conservative ones. A surefire way to ensure we'll never win is to suggest to anyone that progressives are "too good" for their votes.
3:54 p.m.
Nov 12, '04
I'm not too proud to ask for the vote of someone who is newly convinced that progressive values actually represent them better than conservative ones.
This isn't the question. If they are somehow "newly convinced" then they are not part of the whining middle seeking attention, they are citizens who grew up and gre into their civic responsibilities, looked around, and noticed that liberal values are where the common ground is.
That's not what any of the above has been about.
5:13 p.m.
Nov 12, '04
Measure 36 showed us, I think, that progressives cannot afford to wait around for conservatives to pull their heads out of their asses, or for the right to stop spewing falsehood, and that the first step toward framing the debate is to stand up and participate in it.
I heard nothing from that campaign until LATE September - meanwhile, the bigots had time to convince everyone else that either 36 was the new "no special rights" measure, or that they would burn in hell if they were religious and voted no, cause this was supposedly God's will (which still makes me wonder - why are all the 'prophets' of our time so butt-ugly?). And I couldn't refute the measure to 20,000 people by myself in the meantime. (I got to about 50, maybe 70.) So, shame on me, I guess, for lacking the time and swings of the clue-iron to beat this thing.
When Tanzer's 100 Things piece (in my humble opinion, and in that of many of my progressive friends, the best. mailer. ever. to hit a mailbox in the history of politics, btw) distributed, ballots had dropped. That piece should have gone out at the very beginning. It was around then that I got to see the first ad on TV for tolerance and inclusion.
And even then, it carried by the closest margin of any of the states. There's hope, and it's here - most of these people in Oregon are not so far away from the light, that an intervention, a vehement argument or just one properly-applied shot with the clue-iron wouldn't get them the rest of the way there.
So maybe we can overturn this piece of shit next time - if we even have to.
Nov 12, '04
There you have it. The task is to win those folks with their heads up their asses, those folks who are "far from the light." Just be sure that you lie to them convincingly enough so they don't know how you really feel.
Bear in mind that a majority of Oregonians chose Kerry, but also approved of Measure 36.
8:38 p.m.
Nov 12, '04
Apropos of my post above, here's what I'd like Blue Staters to do: develop your vision. It exists, but mostly in the negative, as the yang to the Bush yin. Don't begin at the point of a binary America--us and them. Start with a comprehensive vision that rings absolutely true to what you believe.
Now: instead of forcing "red America" to accept the vision as a kind of penance for their foolishness, assume instead that there is no "red America." Look out over the vast spaces of Oregon and ask where you see people who already share the vision--because obviously they're there. Hunters and fisherman are natural environmentalists, as are most farmers. The working poor are natural labor constituents. Start digging around, thinking of folks as "Oregonians," and I bet things look different.
The GOP has had a tough task. They've had to divide to conquer, but they managed it brilliantly. Let there be a period of powerful screaming as liberals try to come to terms with this shattering election. But then let's take America back.
1:21 a.m.
Nov 13, '04
Well said, Jeff. Us vs. them is too simplistic, and moreover it is fighting on the front that the GOP created. Intolerance to "red staters" will get us nowhere.
8:55 a.m.
Nov 13, '04
I find it interesting that people don't notice that what Jeff said is entirely consistent with what I said.
I guess people are so stuck on the invective in Savage's piece and the haze it leaves, that they aren't reading past the surface of thwhole set of arguments?
10:50 a.m.
Nov 13, '04
I'm just cooler, neener neener.
Nov 13, '04
John wrote: "Measure 36 showed us, I think, that progressives cannot afford to wait around for conservatives to pull their heads out of their asses, or for the right to stop spewing falsehood, and that the first step toward framing the debate is to stand up and participate in it."
No, it was your unwillingness to wait around a little longer and your desire to instead push forward too quickly that led to Measure 36. But as long as you refuse to see that, it's hopeless that things will improve. I've been watching this issue of gay rights since high school (1978-1981) with great interest and the progress made in changing minds and hearts on the issue has been incredible. Why not give your fellow Americans a little more time to come around naturally? 20 years from now it would have been a non-issue.
Nov 13, '04
Savage is excellent in describing the need to focus on urban-area self-interest. But he's wrong to associate the red-staters with rural areas, because our rural population is becoming insignificant. It comes down to different types of suburbia.
For a critique of Savage's argument, see http://urbanist.typepad.com.
Peace, Jarrett
Nov 14, '04
Jeff states: "I'm just cooler, neener neener."
I agree. Much more cool than The Portland Mercury and it's pathetic articulation of a 'solution'.
Nov 14, '04
disclaimer: oh yeah . . .
. . . One True b!X is cooler and more articulate than The Portland Mercury too :)
2:51 a.m.
Nov 14, '04
I'm not cool, I just render that way in text.
Is posting comments to BO at almost 3:00 AM during a break from reading Stephen Elliott's most frickin excellent book Looking Forward To It and being jealous of his following the primary campaigns around and writing a book about it... is that cool?
3:05 a.m.
Nov 14, '04
At any rate, what I really wanted to say regarding the fact that on a fundamental level Savage, Nelson, I, and Jeff are orbiting the same thing was this: The focus of the Democratic Party needs to be on actually sticking to an authentic identity and promoting its actual values.
The rage against the the Reds (or, for that matter, what I keep calling the whining middle) doesn't mean we don't ever speak to them -- it means we stop pandering to them as part of some cynical political calculus we hope will get us into power.
I think that Jeff is saying the same thing.
Nov 14, '04
Re: the nature of 'cool'
One True b!X states: “The focus of the Democratic Party needs to be on actually sticking to an authentic identity and promoting its actual values.”
I don’t think that anyone disputes that is what needs to be done. However, the identity proposed by The Portland Mercury ‘journalists’ and the way that it’s articulated is, well -- very ‘uncool’ (in keeping with the last few posts).
Are they the examples of how this new urbanite ‘identity’ articulates itself? (...and don’t even get me started on The Mercury as a media ‘standard’...)
At the very least – what they propose leaves out the many blue people in red states that don’t particularly aspire to become “urbanites” or relate to that particular identity.
When The Mercury article is quoted as stating: “To red-state voters, to the rural voters, residents of small, dying towns, and soulless sprawling exburbs, we'll say this: F*ck off [Edited - b!X]. Your issues are no longer our issues.”
--- I have to admit, I do find that to be very ‘uncool’.
I was born in South Dakota, grew up out on the rez, lived in Texas where rodeos and pow wow trails converged on family ranches, lived and worked as an ‘activist’, in Washington DC, did my time as a struggling artist in NYC -- from my experience, this particular tactic won’t get the collective ‘us’ anywhere.
So while I agree with One True b!X when he states: “The focus of the Democratic Party needs to be on actually sticking to an authentic identity and promoting its actual values.” -- I dont think we should be looking to The Mercury for the answers -- no matter how 'cool' it tries to render itself.
1:33 p.m.
Nov 14, '04
You're still missing the point, which I attempted to make a little clearer by combining Savage's piece with Nelson's piece with my own comments.
Intended by them or not, what I was trying to do is get people to look at the Savage and Nelson pieces the same way one looks at Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" -- something I would have thought would be clear by using that very term in my post's title.
Whether or not they want you to take their articles literally, my suggestion is that we take them as hyperbole which raises into stark relief what the Democrats should and should not be doing.
It actually kind of boggles me that so many people seem unwilling or unable to construct their readings of these pieces and my own additions to them in this manner.
Nov 14, '04
re: missing the point
While the cleverness of your headline was not missed, and while I understand that you quote The Mercury in order to address how the Democratic Party needs to coalesce into an un-fractured identity and promote its values ---
--- I do not agree that identifying too strongly with the general concept of an “urban archipelago” (that will merely translate into an ‘urban elite’ by critics) which you (correct me if I’m wrong) seemed to embrace – will lend to the successful formation of such an identity for the Democratic Party.
I assume that you accepted and embraced this one concept upon reading your words:
“In our heart of hearts, we of the urban archipelago, those strongholds of the true Democratic Party, know what we believe, and know those values for which we stand. And we know they are quintessentially American values.”
When discussing the collective identity of the Democratic Party – there are simply some key phrases that are unwise. Simply put: the word “urban” doesn’t resonate with rural America – period.
This should have become evident to you in the course of comments here which I think stem, of course, from the reactions of reading The Mercury – but more importantly – by associating a ridiculous mindset with yours when you stated:
“And we know that the whining middle needs to grow up and decide for themselves. No more pandering to their insistence that we reach out to them. They are supposed to be adults and citizens of a democratic republic. They've been given more than ample opportunity to see each version of America, and it's time for them to pick a side.”
You see, the thing that you may missing – is how one treads dangerously close to identifying rural America as a “red version” and urban America as a “blue version” just from the sheer fact of having previously identified so Strongly with the concept of an “urban” anything. Add to this the context in which others from the Mercury are utilizing the word in the formulation of an identity -- and an innocent word becomes all the more tainted by association.
In regard to The Mercury quotes -- while I understand that your “suggestion is that we take them as hyperbole which raises into stark relief what the Democrats should and should not be doing.” --- I do not understand why you cannot accept the feedback here that suggests one of the things we SHOUlD NOT be doing is identifying too strongly with anything (proposed by me to include the word "urban") that may lend to further fragmentation rather than unity.
In my own nation and tribe separate from this nation and political party -- I remember the attempt at insult when being called an 'urban indian' -- which was to say that one 'lacked tradition' -- or 'sold out' and was an 'outsider' when going back 'home'.
The word is still tainted in rural America -- all the more so by the articles you quoted --- even if just for the sake of hyperbole on your part --- the mindset that utilizes them to divide can be quite serious and I pose that if we adopt it too strongly -- that is precisely what will occur: division rather than unity.
5:30 p.m.
Nov 14, '04
I assume that you accepted and embraced this one concept upon reading your words:
“In our heart of hearts, we of the urban archipelago, those strongholds of the true Democratic Party, know what we believe, and know those values for which we stand. And we know they are quintessentially American values.”
Personally, i do embrace the image, because it's simply true -- in a generalized form anyway. That doesn't mean however, that I think the Party itself should run around using terms like "urban archipelago" but I think it would be rather silly to dismiss the image because the county-based electoral maps bear that image out. As description, it's accurate, even if as "out of the mouth of the Party" rhetoric it may ve rather an inapproproate one to use.
In regard to The Mercury quotes -- while I understand that your “suggestion is that we take them as hyperbole which raises into stark relief what the Democrats should and should not be doing.” --- I do not understand why you cannot accept the feedback here that suggests one of the things we SHOUlD NOT be doing is identifying too strongly with anything (proposed by me to include the word "urban") that may lend to further fragmentation rather than unity.
Two things here. One of them is simply to restate what I wrote just above, about there being a difference between what the Party itself should be saying and the words it should be using, and what the rest of us should or shouldn't use when trying to describe the world. The urban correlation to living Democratic values is real, and there's no reason why writers can't point it out.
Secondly, and this comes back around to my own personal point in all of this, in order to have any "unity" with those parts of the country that I've termed the whining middle, liberals and Democrats need first to be honest about who they are, and about what they value -- with themselves and with each other before anything else, and then with everyone else.
To do so means understanding various causes and correlations when it comes to those liberal and Democratic values, whether or not the Party itself adopts the descriptions and imagery.
At that point, when it's clear to ourselves and to others who we are, any "unity" that comes about with other people will happen because they discover that they share the same values with us.
To do any of this in any other way leads only to a false unity, the sort that the
centristscalculating collaborators have been foisting upon the Party for years on end now.5:31 p.m.
Nov 14, '04
Dammit. Typepad stripped out the strikethrough that's supposed to be running across the word "centrists" in the above.
Nov 14, '04
Alright. All disclaimers and confusion cleared.
Moving on to the apparent heart of the matter --- which I have always agreed with you on -- with the exception of referring to a 'whining middle'...
You state:
"in order to have any "unity" with those parts of the country that I've termed the whining middle, liberals and Democrats need first to be honest about who they are, and about what they value -- with themselves and with each other before anything else, and then with everyone else."
Righty-O you are. Agreed.
My question then becomes: by what process?
Nov 14, '04
. . . and by the way . . .
Absolutely.
Posting comments around 3:00 AM on pertinent issues that affect our lives during a break from reading a book that also addresses pertinent contemporary issues AND being jealous of anyone who might actually get paid to do it full time... is cool.
Uber-cool, even.
Nov 15, '04
Extra! Extra! Read it here. Extra -- read all about it. Honest this!
<h1></h1>VENTILATE THAT!
Larry Houghteling sends along this erudite throwback that sounds like a call to civil war. It's from an over-the-top friend:
"Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves -- yeah, those are states we want to keep.
"… No, no. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your "Real American" selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are, you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh, I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads. Fuck off." www.fuckthesouth.com
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