The nature of the left: masterminds?
Commenter “huxley” observes:
I wish to interject, as an ex-leftist, that the left is not a group of masterminds calculating their next move as in chess.
The left is a complex set of subgroups working in affinity but not top-down. They throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.
In 1999 the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization were the big deal. Old leftist strategy: rich vs poor.
In 2011 Occupy Wall St. continued the rich vs. poor, but though expectations were sky-high the whole project collapsed. It didn’t capture mainstream popularity and the tent city squalor (looking forward to today) was considered a horror even by liberals.
However, what sold like wildfire was Obama’s blatant sowing of racial division. So that’s where we are today.
The left does what works, at least in terms of maintaining and extending its power.
No question that the left is not a monolithic group, much less one composed entirely of “masterminds.” But it doesn’t have to be. Like all groups, there are leaders and followers, and like many groups, the organization of the many elements on the left is loose or sometimes nonexistent or even in conflict. Remember this old clip from the brilliant Monty Python 1979 movie Life of Brian?
Lots of “splitters.”
But let’s not make the mistake of thinking there are no planners, and no very clever ones. There are many planners on the left, and there are also groups with hierarchies. Not everything they try works, but I have little doubt that they strategize and plan. Why do we know Alinsky’s name, for example? Because his most well-known work was a set of tactical rules for guiding the left to victory. And of course Obama was an Alinskyite – in fact, a trainer:
Alinsky synthesized his theory of political agitation is his famous 1971 book, “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, considered a founding text of modern community organizing and a classic of radical-leftist agitation-propaganda theory.
Obama received a comprehensive course in Saul Alinsky during his years as a community organizer in Chicago, an experience Obama recalled as “the best education he ever had.”
Years later in 2007, The New Republic’s Ryan Lizza interviewed then-senator Obama and found him still “at home talking Alinskian jargon about ‘agitation,’” and fondly recalling organizing workshops where he had learned Alinsky-esque concepts like “being predisposed to other people’s power.”
In those years, Obama was schooled by disciples of Alinsky himself, including Mike Kruglik, who remembered Obama as “the best student he ever had,” a “natural … undisputed master of agitation.” …
… He then went on to teach Alinsky concepts and methods at community organizing workshops and seminars in Southside Chicago.
Obama also served on boards in Chicago, including the Woods Fund and Joyce Foundation, which dispensed grants to groups specializing in Alinsky-style agitation.
Gramsci was another planner, and a very successful one in terms of his ideas taking hold. One familiar name is Bill Ayers, who started out as a terrorist but later marched a la Gramsci through the institution of education, with great success for the leftist cause:
In short, Ayers uses his position as a professor of education at the University of Illinois to inculcate his students with the notion that they are revolutionaries sent to the schools to brainwash students. …
[Sol] Stern’s conclusion?
If Barack Obama wins on Nov. 4, [2008] the “guy in the neighborhood” [Obama’s disingenuous description of Bill Ayers during the campaign] is not likely to get an invitation to the Lincoln bedroom. But with the Democrats controlling all three branches of government, there’s a real danger that Mr. Ayers’s social-justice movement in the schools will get even more room to maneuver and grow.
We’ve seen it come to pass.
Education is the foundation of the growth of the left’s power, and it is no accident; there was a plan. If all leftists weren’t in on the planning – and they certainly were not – that doesn’t mean there weren’t prescient and insightful planners. One who is less famous in this country and yet influential was Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Here’s a description in an admiring leftist periodical:
… Freire continues to be a lodestar for teachers working in poverty-stricken communities across the globe, and for just about anyone who’s searching for a sense of justice in an unjust world.
Every critically minded educator has at some point used Freire in their teaching — either to gain some insight into the upside-down world of the oppressed or as the inspiration that led them to view teaching as a way to overturn society’s asymmetries of power and privilege.
And all of this was happening in a way that meant that most people didn’t notice it until it had reached critical mass, which made it more difficult to guard against.
No doubt the left still has plans.
Even I, who thought Obama an empty suit. had some hopes of his election thinking it would reassure blacks that they were at least equal. He was worse than even I could imagine.
“I am so old that I can remember when racists were mostly white.” Thomas Sowell.
The Left has wrecked Chicago. It is 100% devoted to tribalism and Big Government. Chicago is the perfect city for the Dems’ convention in 2024.
I thought so, too, he carries all the baggage of the old world as well as the new,
susan rosenberg a maoist revolutionary, who actually bombed the Capitol in 1984,
seems to at the pinnacle of focos, insurgent cells, since she was pardoned in 2001,
she was part of the May 19th revolutionaries, sentenced to 58 years, by guess who, had considered more significant charges, but he thought it would keep,
“One who is less famous in this country and yet influential was Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.”
Yep…the left-trending schools of theology back in the 1980’s (probably even earlier) all had his Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Pedagogy of Hope on their reading lists.
All part and parcel of the Liberation Theology movement…ie Critical Marxist Theory whitewashed with a few prophetic texts…and gussied up with the “Jesus was a refugee” and God has a “preferential option for the poor” nonsense.
Mike K:
Obama was good at pretending to be less of a leftist than he actually was, and pretending to promote racial healing when in fact he promoted racial division. But the clues were there.
For example, here are two pieces I wrote about him prior to the 2008 election: this and this.
Cornhead, “ The Left has wrecked Chicago.” Parts of it have been wrecked for quite a while. I lived on the South Side in the early seventies and it was a dangerous and violent place then. I doubt that it could have reached its present state without that as a base. The crooks and thugs who ran the ghettos in Chicago eventually got integrated into city politics without becoming civilized, leading to its current mess.
Freire, Alinsky, Ayers, these are people who wrote books that some leftists read, maybe, but they don’t exercise any organizational control over the left, do they? Certainly not the dead ones.
These guys are theorists, maybe, but they aren’t planners in any meaningful sense are they? They set out the principles to operate by, but leftist groups have to get money and training and leadership from somewhere, and pay people. These guys don’t do any of that (some of them are dead).
If you want to know who the planners or masterminds on the Left are it makes more sense to me to look at the boards of foundations and NGOs.
Gov. Pritzker of Illinois might be one, if you look at the organizations he heads, funds, and serves on. (And every time you stay at a Hyatt you give him money to do it.)
Melisande:
A good example of the principle is Gramsci and Ayers, with probably many other people in between such as (probably) Freire. His magnum opus was translated into English in 1970. Bill Ayers had a mild interest in education, then became a terrorist, then went underground, and ultimately emerged and went to grad school in education in the 1980s and set about (along with others, of course) transforming our educational system by transforming teacher education. Ayers is good at operationalizing the theories of others and bringing them into the real world in a very effective way, reaching large numbers of teachers-to-be in the practical sense. He is quite familiar with Freire’s work:
And of course, people with money are also involved – such as Pritzker – in funding various social justice movements.
Hillary wrote a thesis on Saul Alinsky and was gushing with praise as a student when she got to meet him.
The Antifa group has a semi-standard logo that alternately features a black flag overlaying a red flag, or vice versa. It signifies a coalition of anarchists and communists. Traditionally, they hate each other but they consider capitalism to be a unifying enemy. Which takes precedence? I suppose it depends on whomever is leading the local chapter based on the varying logos. They struck me as being well organized with some decent funding as well.
“As Ayers argues, deciding how to teach is a moral choice. Every teacher teaches for something and against something else—there is no neutrality.”
This is the heart of the issue. Ayers is correct. The question is always, “What is your moral starting point?” That’s the metaphysics before anything else.
We ALL have a metaphysical starting point. Being honest about that and allowing others to make their case alongside yours was not how Critical Marxist Theory worked/works.
From my view there has to be some sort of central committee that is leading. There’s way too much coordination of messaging that has been happening for over a decade.
Watch how after some event within a few hours, or at most a day, all the media, academics, leftist politicians are saying the same thing. And many times it’s the exact same wording and phrases.
That level of coordination is very frightening to me. There’s nothing on the right, or with the GOP, that matches it.
the journolist that expanded into the rizzotto tree circle (all those who vetted their copy by hillary)
The movement is not a top-down organization, but it has thought leaders, and these thought leaders promote a common set of principles. The group is guided by the principles, because these are the transparent motivation for action. There is no organization to attack, no figureheads to prosecute. There is no coherent conspiracy that will be caught with surveillance, warrantless or otherswise – only smoke. But the proponents adhere to the principles, and recognize common motivations, and rush to support each other when defending against attack. You’ll see the groups come together and mingle. When the precinct station is set on fire, you’ll see them come together, without any communication or organization, as a common enemy to the cops. You’ll see them gang up on the Proud Boys, or the red hats. They are guided by their beliefs, and no marching orders are required.
Aggie:
I think the idea that there is NO communication is almost certainly incorrect.
physicsguy says, “Watch how after some event within a few hours, or at most a day, all the media, academics, leftist politicians are saying the same thing.”
Just before Labor Day weekend, Fauci’s little friends at the CDC released an “update” on the latest mutation of the bug: “CDC is tracking a new SARS-CoV-2 variant called BA.2.86 and working to better understand its potential impact on public health. This update follows CDC’s initial risk assessment summary on August 23, 2023. The updated COVID-19 vaccine will be available in mid-September. Learn ways to keep you and your loved ones safe as we head into the fall season.”
https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/whats-new/covid-19-variant-update-2023-08-30.html
Note the none-too-subtle inducement to fret, worry, and line up for yet another jab.
Yesterday “Dr.” Jill tested positive for COVID. Today, “President Joe Biden will don a mask indoors after he was exposed to COVID-19 through his wife, first lady Jill Biden, according to the White House. ‘Since the president was with the first lady yesterday, he will be masking while indoors and around people,’ press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday, citing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance. ‘As has been the practice in the past, the president will remove his mask when sufficiently distanced from others indoors and while outside as well.'”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/biden-mask-indoors-jill-biden-covid
How long do you think it will take the usual crowd of lemmings and virtue signalers to try to reimpose lockdowns and all the rest of the 2020 mandates?
physicsguy:
Remember JournoList? I think anyone who doesn’t believe there are such groups today is naive.
Also, that Time article about “saving” the election described a large organization of different groups.
Neo, I sure do remember it, I wonder what the replacement is.
Pa+Cat, I have reached a level of cynicism such that I really doubt the good Dr Jill has covid. Just a bit too convenient to push the masks and lock down narrative. And I read today, can’t quite remember where, that the Europeans and some US scientists said this latest variant is just a sniffle producer. Or as one wag put it, a scarevariant.
I wonder if the public is going to buy it. I have seen an uptick of mask wearers in the grocery store; 98% are black.
“No doubt the left still has plans.” neo
That is indisputable. Yet just as the best laid plans of mice and men go astray, even more will their plans turn to dust when those plans are at war with reality itself.
The harm they are doing and will yet do is likely to prove incalculable.
Hopefully before they shrug off their mortal coil but if not in the afterlife… may they receive the reward they so richly deserve.
Reading Barack Obama’s True Legacy
They hid his Red Diper roots, his Marxism college classes extremely well.
Worse his Muslim bringing up, he is the Manchurian Candidate and his minions still run the show.
I grew up in Iowa, during the Vietnam war, far from any leftist masterminds or foot soldiers. As a teenager, I was very smart and very angry about the war. I already had the habit of constantly reading, so I naturally looked for people who would help me understand the war and my anger. I found Alinsky, I.F. Stone, and Ivan Illich.
I wrote about Alinsky for my college application essay. I.F. Stone provided guidance for my opposition to the war. I went to Cuernavaca to study at Illich’s institute, which was supposed to provide a de-schooling alternative to formal education. To this day, Illich is the only charismatic man I’ve ever met.
Before the internet or social media, how did I find these people? I read books and magazines checked out from an old, run-down public library. Do I now support book bans and closing public libraries? No, but I’m very suspicious of angry young men and the people who inspire them. Getting over the Left was a long process. For me, the change started with simple embarrassment. Most of the leftist people I knew were terribly foolish and awful snobs. I didn’t want to be like them, so I withdrew into a vague liberalism. For example, I became a quiet supporter of Muskie, instead of an organizer for McGovern. Remember Muskie? Few do.
Neo’s post was prompted by one of Huxley’s comments. Now I’ll mention another. From time to time, he’ll write that most conservatives don’t understand the intoxicating nature of being part of the Left. It attracts people who want to change the world. The ideology feeds that desire, so it’s like a drug, and breaking the addiction is hard. To angry young men, conservatives seem like a limp alternative. No passion, no excitement. Always more of the same. The foolishness of youth is an old story. Maybe we should change the voting age to forty-five.
THE BORG !!!
Almost everyone on the left either knows he or she is in a war (whether or not we think there is a war) or is willing to go along with or tolerate whatever actions are taken by the leftist warriors.
It’s true that people like to think of the politicians on their own side are feeble compromizers and temporizers and those on the other side are ferocious, single-minded ideologues, but the Democratic Party and the left are additive. Everybody in the party wants something from government and it’s easy for each special interest to make deals and trades to get what it wants.
Democrats march in lockstep. They may not care about each other’s big issues, but they don’t publicly object when somebody in the party goes too far, because that could mean losing what they want themselves. Every interest group has its own agenda, and the party leadership adds the plans and programs the groups want together. They don’t care if it means bigger deficits and more debt. Congressional Republicans aren’t altogether different, but the Republican base wants less from government, so it’s harder to build coalitions.
___________
Something tells me that Obama the community organizer was better at giving talks about community organizing than actually organizing communities or anything else, other than his own political career. I suppose he was doing favors for the local bosses and interest groups in the expectation of them supporting him later. I still think Obama was more of an empty suit, a seminar room radical with little real drive or persistence, but I see that we disagree. Given the opening, Obama might have given the bureaucrats and activists free rein, as Biden has, but I don’t see him forcing them forward (and don’t see that they need much of a push anyway).
_________
It’s hard for outsiders to know how much of radicalism is a real revolutionary fervor and drive to remake society, and how much is the fashionable dilettantism of liberal arts and social science students. We outsiders either overestimate the revolutionary passion or underestimate it. At some point, the drive for power takes over and the idealism (if that’s what it was) just becomes a pretext.
I have a friend who is a radical leftist and spits on liberals (probably would literally do it given the chance), people like the Clintons, Democrats in general. But he supports them against conservatives and Republicans, whom he hates viscerally. So practically speaking you can say he’s part of a monolithic and directed movement even though he certainly doesn’t see it that way. Likewise, mainstream Democrats not as radical as he is will never see any danger from the left, even though in principle they don’t agree with, for instance, radical leftwing attacks (intellectual and political) on the constitution.
So no, it’s not directed, but it might as well be.
When Bill Ayers won a half-billion dollar foundation grant to “improve” Chicago public schools, it was the largest such grant ever awarded. He set up an organization to administer this grant according to Ayer’s vision for what childhood education should look like.
Ayers’ direct, acknowledged guide to educational reform was Paulo Friere. And that blueprint is explicitly directed towards creating revolutionaries—not actually teaching basic skills. For Friere, you only teach skills in the context of creating and enabling revolutionaries.
It will shock none of us that 1) it’s next to impossible to identify exactly where all that money went; it certainly didn’t improve any school’s test scores. What programs that can be identified as having been implemented by Ayers’ organization are all bullshit revolutionary-consciousness-raising nonsense, and 2) The person that Ayers’ picked to head the Board of his dream educational project—his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use a half-billion dollars to institute his personal vision of proper Frierian-based reform—was Barack Obama.
}}} In 1999 the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization were the big deal. Old leftist strategy: rich vs poor.
I remember these, and laughing like hell at these imbeciles.
We were, even then, no longer a manufacturing economy, we were an IP & Services economy. Nothing that happened at the WTO was going to amount to much as far as the USA was concerned.
MEANWHILE, over on the other side of town, extensive meetings of WIPO (The World Intellectual Property Organization, the IP equivalent of the WTO) the Rich Bastards were setting up shop to take defacto complete and permanent control over IP.
There was much chicanery afoot, of course, as they tried to rig it so that anything any of the “lesser” nations, which wasn’t copyrighted, fell into the public domain, so they could loot any IP those nations had already created. There was also a strong effort to push the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a complete abortion of a law.
Enough of the nations involved smelled the rat, and refused their efforts, as well as rejecting the DMCA (The US Congress, however, unilaterally passed it, of course)
But they tried, oh, how they tried to take control over everything.
PA+Cat – Following up on COVID, I’ve bearly given it a second thought in well over a year, actually closer to two years.
I have noticed that the only people who seem to be getting COVID now are the COVID neurotics, the people who have received the vaccine along with every single booster shot and were the biggest scolds during the lockdowns. My household had COVID once, early during the first year after the lockdowns. We also had some nasty non-COVID colds and flus that year as our immune systems re-acclimated to being around people. Since then, we’ve had very normal, minor colds completely consistent with the pre-COVID world. We haven’t had reason to even test for COVID for years.
And yet the progressives I know are still regularly getting COVID, masking, quarantining, and the whole deal. And it’s not (entirely) made up. Several of them have been quite sick. I’m not sure if this is some kind of mass neurosis, if the vaccine and boosters really do make you more susceptible to COVID, or what. But I do feel for the neurotics. They’re still living COVID hell. I believe it is a hell that is almost entirely of their own making, but it’s hell nonetheless.
But I think this plays to neo’s original point. The left has a large faction of people who are so psychologically dependent that they appear to be literally making themselves sick based on a narrative. In that sense, there is definately a herd, and someone, or a group of someones, is setting the narrative for the herd. I think its an open question whether the people setting the narrative are doing so maliciously or if they are driven by their own neuroses.
(Parting thought – Imagine for a minute that you are one of the COVID neurotics who, for whatever reason, is still catching COVID and still getting quite sick. You are running a COVID test everytime you get the sniffles and you are masking and quarantining according to the COVID-era rules. Then you look around at the rest of us who aren’t masking, didn’t receive vaccines or boosters, really aren’t paying COVID any mind, and are fully prepared to man the barricades against any new COVID-related mandates. I have to imagine that the primary feelings of the COVID neurotics towards the rest of us are some combination of hatred and contempt – which is an incredibly potent tool for whoever is setting the narrative.)
it was a virus that was engineered in china, but funded by the ministries of health of three countries, designed to be readily transmisable, fast inexpensive treatments were proscribed from use, to maximize the death price, in the metropoles largely among the original holders of colonial concessions in china, australia was by proxy, the lockdowns justified by fraudulent science, enriched a tiny handful and emiserated millions
…and was INSTRUMENTAL in STEALING a CRITICAL election, enabling those who ENGINEERED and ORCHESTRATED the STEAL to HIJACK the country.
– – – – – – – – – –
“… I have to imagine that the primary feelings of the COVID neurotics towards the rest of us are some combination of hatred and contempt…”
Ya’ know…that kinda rings a bell…
so they did everything in their power to wreck the cities, to hold the citizens hostage to roving gangs of thugs, which made the ballot avalanche almost inevitable, and a challenge to any judge that would look askance at this rolling fraud,
but Orange Man, he hurt their feelings, of course Pence and Barr and the other bowery boys all were accessories after the fact,
The left has some ready fuel.
My wife says I make some weird connections. Here goes:
An anthropologist whose name I cannot recall–maybe Boas–said that pre-Abrahamic religions were entirely about controlling the environment. We pray that a hurricane would turn away, too, but there is more to the Big Three.
One aspect of such religions is that you can’t satisfy the Sky Person about a Big Deal by killing a chicken.. That won’t end a searing drought. Besides, you already tried that. Eventually, you pitch a kid into a volcano. Drought ends, as they do, so it worked.
Lesson is that massive, uncontrollable, possibly invisible, forces require massive sacrifices. Two aspirin and call in the morning won’t get it.
Example: Four governors put the known infected into nursing homes with utterly predictable results. Who’s the villain? DeSantis because he didn’t make people do stupid stuff. The dead in nursing homes aren’t even an apostrophe in the pandemic. It’s making people do stupid stuff that solves the problem.
People who can’t tell a virus from a sugar cube–only marginally less educated in these things than I–were certain to the point of insanity that hydroxychloroquine wouldn’t work. And, with the energy of the Inquisition’s heretic hunters, they shut down, slagged, slandered, set the law on those who said it might, or who even reported good results.
Taking a pill does not satisfy the need for massive sacrifice. It doesn’t satisfy the need to see others made to do stupid stuff.
Coincidentally, those seeking unaccountable power found little resistance in making people do stupid stuff–many millions were begging for it. If HCQ worked…the EUA would be void and the vaxxing would be unnecessary, not to mention masking, distancing, shut downs. And it wouldn’t be a massive sacrifice.
Handy, huh?
Mann, in his fabulous “1491”, about the circumstances of the Native Americans just before and after the arrival of the Europeans does his homework. He has lots to look at, for example, in the philosophy and religion of the Mexica, last before Cortes.
They were convinced that the sun–source of life–was in constant battle with the moon and stars for life force. If the latter won, the sun would die and so would humanity. Thus, life force had to be provided. It was IMPORTANT, by golly, and killing a chicken a day wouldn’t do the job. Hence the endless human sacrifice. Once, in a hugely difficult–I presume, due to technological difficulties–feat of organization, the high priests managed to equal Auschwitz’ daily through put of 2500. Banking life force against a really rough time, just in case, I suppose. But it wasn’t chickens.
So, I suggest, there is a powerful need for massive sacrifice, no matter how counter intuitive (stupid stuff) in the face of a looming catastrophe.
And how convenient it is for those who seek power.
In the quiet part loud, recent observations from Authority that, to save the planet, we need to end “private” transportation. That means my car. Not the Bigs’ cars. I don’t want to be a climate denier, do I? And in that potential accusation are…millions determined to do stupid stuff to avoid the planet boiling.
I’m not sure if I should be compassionate or not about this. A woman I know, a pastor, recently lamented that a child in Africa died so she could have her lithium battery. I hope, for her sake, that she was speaking metaphorically. If climate change turns out not to be a thing, then that would be a tough time for her. But then, would I be justified in thinking she deserved her tough time? The kid certainly didn’t deserve his.. It was, in a manner of speaking, her idea.
So she has a vested interest in climate change for a reason, I think, few of us have contemplated.
But the PTB have a lot of ready fuel. AKA the moral equivalent of war, except this is far more powerful.
Here is the the book. https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Democracy-Organizing-Social-Movements/dp/0865714185
One of the co-authors is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbZDdttxw54
When Antioch fired my husband, we refused “to stay on and make them look good”. Worked there for 12 years built the program most popular and then the insiders wanted to take it over. Being women they of course had no background in the field, so they needed my DH to stay on and write papers for them, before they would give him a good recommendation to any other school. I said “NO. I am done with this crap”. This woman called one night to tell me I would be blacklisted wherever we went “we will follow you–you will never work again”. My crime you see was “not supporting single women”. For 24 years now many strangers at different times have burst into my home. I have been pushed downstairs, been spit in the face when volunteering at a housing desk and of course never allowed to work again. During the next 5 years I asked 23 attorneys in Seattle to help my DH. They all–every single one of them– said the
same thing: ” I CAN”T I AM AFRAID THEY WILL DESTROY ME” Always look for the dirty girls of Seattle, because it is their family wealth that has supported this feminist and her ideas for socialism. They first tested their skills by ensuring the first woman archbishop in the Episcopal Church, then they tested their skills by getting Obama elected. Melinda Gates once said, “let us (women) run the world and we will do a better job”. She is also “so proud my son is a feminist” Wherever we go they have stalked me, blacklisted both my DH and myself. Now, of course they have someone–a new friend who teaches school– working over our DD, who is a grown woman.
I suspect that the “Occupy” movement was a shadow recruiting program for antifa. It drew the disaffected, and the naive idealists, among whom would be a significant number of sociopaths, losers, and criminal types. Those were selected out, and trained by the seasoned radicals. Again, this is just a hunch.
JWM
H/t Powerline: “Biden Backdoors Israel in the U.N., Rescinding Trump’s Recognition of Sovereignty over the Golan”, Tony Badran, Tablet mag.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/biden-back-doors-israel
Badran sees a plan at work over in his lane. Hidden agendas? Check. Long march thinking? Check. Obama sitting behind the screne? Check. US interests take the hindmost? Check.
as chris rufo points out, the so called blm stemmed from black liberation army and weatherunderground, two blades of the same knife, same for antifa,
Anne:
That’s certainly a horrible story.
The only thing the left hated about McCarthy was that he went after them.
I also have long thought that anyone who thinks women are better at running things like politics, or “the world,” is either flat-out lying or a very poor observer of women.
“…backdoors…”!
(Oh, come on, you KNEW this was coming, um, didn’t you?…)
While Yair Lapid is in Washington for “consultations”(?)!!
Touche!!!
Neo said: I also have long thought that anyone who thinks women are better at running things like politics, or “the world,” is either flat-out lying or a very poor observer of women. >>>
Although I’m a classical-feminist, I never thought that women needed to be in leadership roles just because we didn’t have many in those roles. Just didn’t seem important as long as I was assured of my basic civil rights.
Now it’s come to the point where I affirmatively suspect that the average woman leader is somewhat less likely to be reasonable and responsible. God help us, it’s almost as though the menfolk who opposed granting women the right to vote were on to something when they claimed that women were way too emotional to be able to make such decisions, and that women would end up electing pussies. Well, they didn’t use the word pussies (as far as I know) but it’s the same idea.
All of the descriptions of how the left works — in the post and the comments left me wondering whether we could ever wax eloquent or not about the right. Where are the catalysts — thinkers, money bags and activists?
It’s as if we seemingly understand the left’s success formula — whatever it is. But either are to unimaginative to come up with a better one or in the meantime just flatter the success by imitation.
RigelDog
Back in the day, as a First Lieutenant, I made a decision which had a lot of weight. It was not, I hasten to say, a combat issue.
An enlisted man said, “Sir, you officers are like Mr. Spock [Star Trek’s LOGICAL and emotionless second officer]. But I guess you’re supposed to be.”
To the extent that ability or that felt requirement that was what had to be done, regardless was gender specific, or at least not equally distributed, maybe you’re right.
Small sample, I know. No woman I know who opposes Trump says word one about policies. It’s all he’s a hateful person. Period. Men say the same, sometimes it seems their reference to policies are a cover for it but at least they know they’re supposed to look like they’re concerned about policy. You can generally tell, since they get the policy or its results backwards. But they know, at least, they have to fake it.
Richard Aubrey:
I agree with you, as a generalization, that women are more likely to have emotional reasons for their voting patterns. It’s by no means universal, but it’s certainly more common. However, the dichotomy between the sexes breaks down where Trump-hate is involved. That is, strangely enough, I see 99% of the Trump-haters of both sexes giving predominantly emotional reasons for being against him, and very strong ones at that. When they talk about policy – both sexes – it’s something about immigration and what a bigot he is (which is basically an emotional reaction, too). I just don’t see men having policy objections to Trump – unless you consider an objection to his remarks on J6 a policy objection, and if that’s the case, then women have the same objection.
.neo
As i say, guys try to cover the emotional side by mentioning policy. But they get it backwards. Trump is working with Putin or Kim. Based on NYC sales bluster about, “I like the guy.”
They likely know better but they know they have to fake it
Richard Aubrey:
We seem to be reading different people. The men I read basically say (as the woman do), “Trump is a POS,” and seem to feel no need to explain further. Similar to Jonathan Chait writing about George W. Bush.
Neo. Different folks, agreed. I think the guys do the emotional thing in making their decisions, but they seem to realize they need to fake it.
Oh sure, laugh at the stupid liberals cutting up each other like the assholes they were in college as freshmen at the dorm.
We’ll split into camps ourselves. Fueled by boredom at the Hillary Clinton Attitude Adjustment Center you’d better choose sides during the inevitable riot between those of us that posit that America was a constitutional republic and others that claim it was a democracy.