2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Pro-Bernie protestors yelling at kids at Hillary Clinton rally (video inside) [View all]forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)Not even a crying child will make people think "gee maybe we need to chill", no it's just the same old excuse-making and whining and abdication of responsibility. "Oh don't bring your child to see your favorite politician" - like what the fuck? I guess if I go to a Trump rally and get my black ass kicked it's my fault right? "Oh you can't prove it was Bernie supporters" (yeah they weren't chanting his name before they attacked that little girl)". I would call these people "childish" but that's an insult, I think "degenerates" is a better word because they have degenerated from what a responsible citizen and a responsible voter should be.
This isn't just about Bernie though; this is the kind of thing that we see with all these angry fringe ideological movements who reject the hard work needed to build consensus and move society to your side (though with the angry fringe right the ideology itself directly hurts too many people to ever build a coalition around).
The Professional Left needs to go back to the drawing-board. Tear the ENTIRE fucking edifice down, start over. Embrace pragmatism, compromise and coalition-building, even if you disagree with a given politician, even if they're too neoliberal for your tastes, with a strong enough coalition built by the above, you can move them to where you are. But screaming at people doesn't work. It hasn't worked for 50 fucking years. Screaming at mothers and children DEFINITELY won't work. (and this isn't just Bernie supporters but the campus activist set, even though I agree with both of their ideological positions!). The problem is though that a lot of (mostly upper middle class white) people are getting rich off producing the ideological equivalent of clickbait designed to channel outrage and energy into screaming at people and not building movements and characterizing everyone who disagrees as Eurasia or Eastasia depending on the day. This is what leads to a bunch of grown men screaming at a little girl and ripping up her sign and making them cry and not feeling a shade of remorse. Because they have been taught to dehumanize their ideological enemies, even if they're little girls who don't care about the ideological shit and think a woman President would be an amazing thing (which it would be). We know where the dehumanization of your ideological enemies leads. We know where that shit leads. It needs to stop.
What is even more amazing is that we know where this leads and we don't even try to be sensitive to anything that even hints at that. We've already had a SD threatened by a Bernie supporter. What happens if someone is hurt or killed by a Bernie protester at a Hillary rally? What if some unhinged fanatic actually hurts or kills a SD supporting Hillary? I'll tell you what happens. You better move to Sweden or Canada, because leftism is DEAD in America for another 50 years. Every left-wing populist movement would be compared to it. But I don't think the most fanatic Bernie supporters care, because virtue signaling is more important than winning, because touting "principles" and staying pure to stroke their own ego is what they're really in this for.