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Subject A leftard from Slate goes into full meltdown mode. Brexit and Nice and Trump! Oh, My!!!

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A few salient portions (I've underlined the really interesting points that show how out of touch these writers for the elite (for both parties) are in how they view the "vast unwashed".

"Political [u]elites are understandably terrified[/u] by the speed with which illiberal democracy is coming into its own."

"So, while civics teachers dutifully recite the ideals of the Founding Fathers and while the political instincts of mainstream publications from Time to the Huffington Post are in some vague sense “liberal,” [u]the intellectual energy is now on the side of liberalism’s opponents[/u]."

[b]Regaining Our Conviction[/b]

"Habituation breeds indifference. A turn of phrase that expressed a point with the help of a striking image no longer packs the same punch because we have grown inured to its literal meaning; linguists call this a [i]dead metaphor[/i]. Driving to work in the sweet ride we bought a few months ago no longer gives us the same pleasure; economists call this [i]hedonic adaptation[/i]. The person who once sent our heart racing enters the room and we barely notice it; grown-ups call this [i]being married[/i].

"Something akin to this form of habituation has happened to our most fundamental political values. The ideals of liberal democracy are all around us. We know that the people are supposed to rule and that all citizens have a right to the same basic freedoms irrespective of their race, creed, or religion. But precisely because these ideas have surrounded us in a diffuse way for so long, we have begun to forget their meaning and their grandeur. [i]“The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful,”[/i] John Stuart Mill presciently warned in On Liberty, [i]“is the cause of half their errors.”[/i]

"So, while civics teachers dutifully recite the ideals of the Founding Fathers and while the political instincts of mainstream publications from Time to the Huffington Post are in some vague sense “liberal,” [i]the intellectual energy is now on the side of liberalism’s opponents.[/i]

"A few decades ago, right-wing critics of liberal democracy were mostly confined to the oddballs and nostalgics who stubbornly harkened back to some imagined golden age, whether it be the era of fascism in Europe or the era of Jim Crow in the United States. Their ideas were terrifying and their influence, at times, real. And yet it was clear to all that they were ultimately defunct, bound to become more and more ridiculous with every passing year.

"Since the turn of the millennium, this has changed fundamentally. The assumption that far-right alternatives to liberal democracy are invariably a remnant from the past is, itself, a relic of a bygone era. Illiberal democracy, the form of rule the far right now advocates in most places from the United States to the United Kingdom and from France to Turkey, is in many ways a new invention—and its ambition is nothing less than to claim the future for itself. Its broad appeal and rapid spread, encapsulated so painfully in the week of July 11, 2016, demonstrates that this aspiration is not to be dismissed lightly. To ensure that the future does not belong to illiberal democracy, its opponents will have to do the hard work of political resistance—and be willing to overcome their own deep divisions to cooperate against a common enemy.

"As in the 1920s, when liberal democracy first came under deadly fire across the world, this willingness to work together in the face of a grave far-right threat is far from assured. [u]Nobody should be more scared of the rise of illiberal populists than the left.[/u] And yet, in both Europe and North America, much of the left increasingly thinks of “liberal” as a term of abuse. [u]Indeed, a growing share of left-wing activists has gone from understandable anger at the many shortcomings of the status quo to an outright rejection of the foundational political values of our age.[/u] Assuming that ideals that are flagrantly contradicted in practice can’t be worth very much in theory either, they too are giving up on the core tenets of liberal democracy.

"If Donald Trump rails against Muslims in his speeches then, they believe, it is time to accept that freedom of speech is an outmoded concept. And if the police kill innocent black Americans then, they believe, the ideal of state neutrality between different ethnic groups is no more than a tool for white domination. The society they envisage is not one in which liberal democratic ideals are more perfectly realized than they are now—but rather one in which these ideals are sacrificed in the name of social justice.

"The most foolhardy parts of the left even go so far as to see the rise of their enemies as a strategic opportunity. Believing that things will have to get worse before they can get better, their most urgent desire is to smash up the status quo. Unwilling to recognize any real difference between the policies favored by the likes of Trump and the policies favored by the likes of Clinton, they prefer the agent of chaos, however violent, to the defender of the current political order, however decent.

"And so it is centrist politicians who have now become the last explicit defenders of liberalism. But, squeezed between a blatantly authoritarian right and an increasingly illiberal left, they have begun to seek refuge in new forms of technocratic rule. In the short run, the undemocratic bulwarks they are building against illiberal sentiments are protecting the rights of minorities. But their lack of urgency and the dearth of their vision mean that they do not even attempt to tackle the root causes of the populist rise, like the stagnation in living standards. In the long run, this is very dangerous: [u]The exclusion of the people from the political process—especially when coupled with an unwillingness (or an inability) to pass real economic reform—will only serve to inflame illiberal passions, turning even more citizens against liberal democracy.[/u]

"Among the many worrying signs of our time, perhaps the most concerning is that those who believe both in liberalism and in democracy, both in popular rule and in individual rights, have increasingly taken on a defensive crouch. They seek to rescue what they know to be valuable, and yet [u]they have lost their ability to articulate what part of contemporary reality is worth fighting for and why. And so many of them wind up focusing their energies on shoring up the bad as well as the good parts of our crumbling political order: Rather than imagining what social and economic policies might help to diffuse popular anger and fulfill the promises of liberal democracy, they seek their salvation in immobility.[/u]"

[i](less than 50% of article)[/i]
[/quote]

Original Message Time to close up shop, guys and gals. According to a writer at Slate, democracy died a few weeks ago... but guess we all missed the obituary.

The butthurt the writer feels is only overshadowed by the way he's shitting himself. He is sincerely trying to call his ~~comrades~~ fellow progressives to arms and to get past the increasing division within the ranks.

Sadly, with the recent disclosures of malfeasance, treason and collusion by their side of the aisle, that 'division' might be far worse than this writer makes it out to be. The elites are in a full on panic mode over populist actions around the globe as they see all their work over the past century about to go down in flames... and personally, I love it!

Of interest is a new 'buzzword' from the progressive camp. It's 'an illiberal democracy'. (!?!?!) Gotta love the way some on the left will couch their discussions with crazy buzzwords in a vain attempt to "go over the heads" of those they feel they are better than. So "illiberal" means one who is NOT liberal, right? Got it! But watch for other Orwellian phrases (I'm thinking this guy was grooming for a position in the Ministry of Propaganda - I threw up a little in my mouth a few times while reading this - you've been warned).

[link to www.slate.com]

Pictures (click to insert)





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