On Sun, 21 Feb 2010, SA wrote:
> But what you can hope for is to push both parties to the left - just as the
> TP is pushing them to the right
I have an honest question. It may sound goading, and I don't mean it to be.
The shock troops of the right has always been their crazies, which right wing intellectuals and party figures encourage and play to (to varying degrees, depending on the decade).
If the left is to take a page out of their book, it would seem to mean unleashing and encouraging the left wing version of such crazies.
But whenever crowds on the left start to get excited about even mildly crazy TP-type stuff -- "corporate personhood" or "moving money" to take two recent and exceedingly mild examples -- you and Doug -- the two guys who seem most to yearn that we could have something like the right has -- are first in line to hose them down.
I don't understand how you guys reconcile the yearning with the your own strong aversions.
And mind you, you're not alone. I share your aversions.
But FBOW you guys seem to want a left-wing version of what the right has had for the last 50 years without allowing any crazies on board. That seems like the null set. Without crazies, it would be different in essence from what the right has had.
Has the right ever had shock troops who weren't fully stocked with crazies? The teabaggers wouldn't have made any impression on the town halls without birthers and people who believe in death panels. And you have to be crazy to believe in either of those things.
Michael