It would be nice if the Meditation Wing of the party, for once, did some introspection :)

[grantcart]

Brought to you by these guys: https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1249

I realize that suggesting that giving people helpful suggestions about more introspection, self examination and self awareness is really not about making helpful suggestions about improving epistemological skills but rather a veiled way of telling "the other guys" in the party that they are full of $h&t.

While more introspection is always welcomed, sometimes it really isn't about us.

Sixty two million voted for an obviously crass crude guy that openly talked about sneaking into dressing rooms so he could peak on women and underage girls who were changing into their swimming wear and was caught on an open mike boasting about grabbing women.

Trump knew that, just like other countries, he could momentarily spook the herd and create a stampede. In one of the strangest moments of the campaign he becomes aware of what he is doing and openly shares with the world, in a weird stream of consciousness moment, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."

The idea that if we only had presented a better face or a clearer explanation of policy or a more consistent set of principles that it would have changed the outcome ignores the broader reality of what happened. The fact is that we live in a country that has a large number of racist reactionaries and they are accompanied with an equal number of weak minded numskulls who will follow anyone, literally anyone who bombasts outrageous affirmations about old truths that the educated part of the country knows are not only not true but were never true.

What we did had very little to do with the outcome of the election. Even if we had made certain strategic changes and won Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina it would not have changed this basic fact: Sixty million people voted for someone who ran a bigoted, tribal campaign. Even if we won the Electoral College these 60 million would still be on full scale crazy.

Twenty years ago I worked for a company that completed audits for companies and I had a unique ability to get virtually everyone who agreed to a phone appointment to learn more about it to sign up for the audit. The normal close rate was about 30% and I completed a stretch of 49 in a row that all agreed.

I had this one appointment who declined. I knew I was on my game and for the next few days I examined every word I said trying to figure out what happened. One week later the front page of the local paper exploded with a story about how the well known business owner had been cruising bus stops for the last 30 years and picked up young women over the age of 18 and paid them to go back to his office where he took pictures of them without their clothes. He had kept meticulous records, never touched any of them and apparently never broke any laws.

Turns out an hour before the appointment a disgruntled employee had sent him an extortion note and the day after invited the newspaper in to make a complete statement so that he couldn't be blackmailed.

The moral of the story is, "Not Everything is About Us".

Obviously I am not against introspection but I will leave it to each person to decide whether or not they need to do more.

What we need to do is to stay united, keep our eye on the enemy and fight them every inch of the way. Divide them when possible, co-opt and send a lifeline on any who are rethinking their position, and humiliate and destroy their hardliners, Ryan, McConnell and all of the Trump sycophants.

[Warren DeMontague]

1. Are you suggesting that "the beatings will continue until morale improves"

isn't actually a concrete plan for morale improvement?

[grantcart]

3. Sort of, using your metaphor I am saying that

"Urging self flagellation to the part of the Democratic Party that you have the most policy disagreements with will have little effect on stopping Republicans from being ignorant racist selfish assholes".

[Warren DeMontague]

4. It's important to remember that for a section of DU

"issues-based political discussion" is beside the point.

It's basically about someone's table in the 7th grade lunchroom gossiping about and lobbing spitballs at the other table of kids they don't like.

It's also important to remember that said table is actually half empty, a good half of the chairs are occupied by socks.

[Moostache]

9. Funny you would use that phrase...it was a favorite of my dad when I was growing up! (n/t)

[Cary]

2. I interpreted the posts in question to be about uniting.

That was the point, wasn't it?

Vote Democratic Grantcart.

[grantcart]

7. I think if I told you that you really needed to be more introspective you would find that

offensive and patronizing.

Yes everyone wants people to unify to the point of view that they hold.

In the first place I don't really hold to their being neat distinctions of different kinds of Democrats.

I am guessing that most Democrats want single payer but differ on how much compromise they are willing to make as a question of strategy on the pace of implementation.

In other areas I think we don't really have clearly defined sub groups but crisscross on various issues. I would like to see the government have clear guidelines for business but am not anti business, except for the extraction industries which I think should be nationalized in the same way that Norway did with the North Sea Oil. What group does that put me into?

If party unity is the goal of the threads then instructing them to be more introspective in a condescending way would be an unlikely path to create party solidarity.

[Cary]

8. Oh, I have been offended and patronized by much worse

Different people react differently. The real question isn't whether people are offended. The real question is who will stand against evil?

Vote Democratic.

[cheapdate]

5. Agree.

[L. Coyote]

6. If I had seen this first, my post would not have happened:

It would be nice if Republican Party leaders and supporters did some intervention of trump,

[Demsrule86]

10. This is a wonderful post...K&R.

Thank you.

[bucolic_frolic]

11. Jesus is Coming! Build more McMansions

and gimme a tax break

Is that introspective enough for you?

[Tom Rinaldo]

12. Essentially of course you are right

It would take profound and sustained cultural changes to change that core of 60 million voters. And even with that it would be a process of whittling away at that number in relatively small increments over many years.

Of course, that can be done, and it has been done in the past. Once upon a time it was literally impossible to elect a Catholic president, then it wasn't - although prejudice against Catholics has not completely vanished. And once upon a time it was literally impossible to elect an African American president, then it wasn't - although substantial prejudice against African Americans still remains. Once upon a time Margaret Chase Smith was the only female U.S. Senator. Now we have 21, but that number should actually be 51 or 52...

Meanwhile though we are where we are. You wrote above: "Even if we had made certain strategic changes and won Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina it would not have changed this basic fact: Sixty million people voted for someone who ran a bigoted, tribal campaign..."

Very true. But had we been able to make the right strategic choices to pull off winning those states, the EPA director would not be dismantling the EPA. The Head of the Department of Education would not be dismantling Public Education. An anti-choice pro corporate Justice would not have been elevated onto the Supreme Court. Thousands of families would not be getting torn apart by ICE deportations, and so much more.

So yes, I am in favor of acing our tactics to the extent possible, and using introspection and anything else that will help us do so in the short term. Because the margin between winning and losing can be small, but the consequences of losing instead of winning can be monumental. I don't believe Al ore would have invaded Iraq iike Bush did for example. How much different the world might be had the Supreme Court not installed George W. Bush instead of Gore, or if there hadn't been a confusing butterfly ballot used in one county in Florida.

And I strongly support people like Martin Luther King Jr who do the slow heroic work of transforming our culture, sometimes one person at a time.

[grantcart]

13. Thanks and good to see you again Tom

My point about the alternative future where we win the White House wasn't that Secretary Clinton would have had a better cabinet, or that implementation of policies like the EPA would have been maintained, or that we would be in a profoundly safer national security position, all of which are true.

Had we won the Electoral College there would have still been a sizeable minority that would have still controlled the Senate and the House and they would be even more emboldened in their opposition than under President Obama and there would be 20 committees investigating President Clinton, the foundation, etc.

Winning the election is preferable but it doesn't solve the problem that in this country we have tens of millions of deeply misguided citizens who are acting in a primal tribal way.

Democracy requires comity. In destroying the comity that existed prior to President Obama's election McConnell and the other Republican leaders have made the whole exercise of governance more difficult.

[Tom Rinaldo]

15. Great seeing you again too. Yes, all very true

I hold slight hope that the political convulsions we now are going through might lead to the fever finally breaking. It did for a while after Watergate. People will either get exhausted by it all and step back from the brink - or jump over it.

[lamp_shade]

14. Kick and rec

[Blue_Tires]

16. k+r

Can we go into a bit more detail about the nekkid girlies, by any chance?