WS: Joanna, I am sorry but you just plainly wrong here. Poor people are extremely vicious to one another, their children, their spouses, and their neighbors. An very uncooperative. In the conditions under which they live, the "I do not give a flying fuck" attitude is not only a prevailing one but also a rational one. Your main concern is not being taken advantage of by your neighbors - playing it nice is a luxury few can afford.
Frankly, I think you lived too long in Berkeley environs - I held similar views when I lived there in the 1980s. But I now live in Baltimore for the past 13 years - I mean inner city Baltimore, the murder capital of the United States, not Baltimore suburbs, and that experience taught me quite a bit.
Joanna: So, if we do all that, what would be the diff between us and them? What exactly would we be winning if we won?
WS: This is precisely my point - politics - like advertising and entertainment - is not about "issues" or "values" anymore but about attention grabbing and adrenaline rush. Anything that is louder and more outrageous is a sure winner, anything else simply does not count and vanishes from the screen, if it is noticed at all.
You, and Chuck, arguing that the days of "racist" Repug politics are numbered are missing the point. In as much as racism is a political philosophy - reprehensible, but having some rationality in it, this is not about that. People shout racist or fascist or sexist or militaristic slogans not because they subscribe to, or even understand, the philosophies that these slogans represent. They shout these slogans for one an only purpose - their shock value. They are all shock-jocks - ideologically vacuous - and vying for attention by being loud and obnoxious.
My point was that this is the game being played right now, and if the Democrats want to hold to any political significance, they must start playing that game or be lost. There is no alternative - they have to bark with the pack or be lost. But that is NOT the way I would go or, for that matter, ask anyone on this list to follow.
I did not argue that this is the way any self-respecting liberal, progressive of leftist should espouse without jettisoning our core principles Democrats are political players - their goal it stay in power. They missed the boat and they need to catch up. But the values that are dear to liberals, progressive and leftists are simply shunned by the majority of the population, and there is no way anyone can win and substantial following nowadays by advocating these values.
We are simply in the doghouse, dark and cold, and the only choices that we have are either to fuck the principles and play the shock-jock game, pull a Horowitz or a Hitchens (methinks Cockburn is heading in that direction too), to gain some "Macht Ohne Morale" as the Nazis used to say, or stay in the cold dark doghouse, miserable and deluding ourselves that "revolution is around the corner.
Alas, that is always a third option in almost any situation - that offered by the stoic philosophy: "listen with emotion, but not with the entreaties and complaints of the coward... and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing." http://users.hol.gr/~barbanis/cavafy/antony.html
This is my preferred solution.
Wojtek