If the Democrats do nothing else but be just and fair, then they'll have failed as a ruling party. Curiously, I am saying that the Democrats need to be unjust and unfair. They need to be understanding to an unreasonable extent, kind beyond propriety. Merely doing what is right and proper won’t win the day.
You are right.
Obama, I am fairly sure, will take this sort of approach. But I suspect you can see the difference between Obama and yourself. I believe you are more concerned with the task at hand (as evident from your post), but I believe that Obama is more concerned with the people at hand. He won’t leave the tasks ignored, but people will be his first reaction, just as tasks are your first reaction. So I suppose, what I am saying is that what the Democrats need to be a successful party is more Obama and less Josh.
You're assuming that my persona on the Compendium is the one I wear all the time. It's not, but, even supposing for a minute that it is, I would disagree with you strategically. I wrote an article about this recently. Every aspect of the Democratic Party now has its own work to do in furtherance of their shared goals. The elected Dems have to lead. The movement progressives don't; their job is to change the terms of the debate. Obama himself said during the campaign that he can't do everything, and he expects us to pull ourselves past the finish line rather than dumping it all on him. He's right. By combining leadership and outreach with activism and idealism, we move forward. The key is not to stab the Republicans, but to make them think we're doing them a favor by stabbing them. We have to give them ownership in the progressive movement. I don't know how much of it we can pull off. Certainly, ideologues and strategists on the right will make that work a lot harder. What I do know is that America, on average, has always moved left rather than right, so in that regard I have some hope. I expect that universal healthcare and energy production in America will be in a completely different place by 2016. Gay marriage may take longer, but with interracial and interreligious marriage now commonly accepted where once they would have resulted in disownment and violence, I am hopeful.
Now, as for "more Obama and less Josh," I think you do not give him or me enough credit. It hasn't gotten a lot of coverage, but Obama is both more liberal and more ruthless than he lets on. He is a very calculating person, and I expect him to lead with smiles and handshakes not only because he recognizes that it would be healthy for the country (which is what sets him apart from the Republican leadership style of recent times), but also because this is what he expects will bring him the most success. And I agree with him. Obama didn't get to be president in his forties by being a nice guy. He got there because he has the moves. He's one to be taken seriously. As he himself once said, behind the scenes, in response to a question by Brian Williams about what Obama was doing in his life to combat climate change, "We can’t solve global warming because I fucking changed light bulbs." That's not the kumbaya you heard on the campaign trail. That's the voice of somebody who has plans. Obama knows what he's doing.
Meanwhile, when it comes to Josh, I'm not as mean as I might seem here. I certainly can be that; I wouldn't personally call it "mean," because of where the motivation comes from. But whatever you decide to call it, it's true that I am not betraying my character by being aggressive and adversarial. These, however, are not my only tricks. I would have to be considerably more ignorant and less ambitious to be nothing more than the Lord J Esq you think you know, and that doesn't add up. Would you expect a starship to have only one system for responding to a new situation?
Is that what you think I am out here to do? Hah!
Remember that, by reading into my writings here, it is much safer to try and deduce what I
can be than what I
am not. I'm not like Krispin or ZeaLitY, who wear everything on their sleeve whether they mean to. I'm more like yourself.
In general, antagonizing Republicans is something to be avoided...if all else is equal. I never pick on people, except Krispin, who keeps bringing it on himself. But "all else" rarely is equal. We live in a vibrant, dynamic, deliciously intricate world. Progress is a challenging, multivariate equation. It takes half a lifetime to figure out what the world really is and what we want progress to actually look like. Even then, there are many ways to go about it, and many strategies to try. I rarely antagonize Republicans with no other goal than short-term entertainment. I usually have something much greater in mind. You talk about changing people's minds...but can you do more than talk? It's hard to actually find ways to carry it out. Consider, for a moment, the influence I have had on several of the people here at the Compendium. I didn't plan that from the beginning, but I saw the opportunity for it before anyone else did. I bring to the table a hard-to-miss blend of strong ideas and personal flamboyance. Many people, including some in this thread, are dismissive of that. Fine; they're dealing themselves out of the game by taking such a stance, so I consider them dead weight and don't pay them much attention. Others, like Ramsus, have concluded that I'm a shit. Fine; that harms my reputation but not my cause, and I have to admit that, if somebody wants to get upset with me, they have usually earned the right to do so. Other people, however, have, amazingly, bought into to my ideas. That may make me temporarily en vogue, but, far more importantly, it helps promote my cause. When I first came here, I wasn't expecting anything in particular, other than to share my enthusiasm for the Chrono series. My personal style on the forums, which developed over time, was the result of a question I posed to myself after the early presence of Daniel Krispin gave me the opportunity to observe my own development of a social mask in real-time. That in turn afforded me the even greater opportunity to conduct a grand "social experiment": I didn't realize at first exactly what that was, but it has always been my ambition to question the unknown, and it was only a matter of time before I began to figure out that I was in the position to test my ability to influence people not just by reciting lines of logic, but by folding human emotion into the concoction. Say what you will; I'm pleased with the data. My phasers actually
work. And I'm telling all of this to
you, Mister Bond, because you're the only one who could possibly understand.
As an elitist I'm not above manipulating people. Indeed, that's a requirement. Don't get me wrong: I do give genuine praise, or consolation, or advice whenever they are genuinely sought out. I freely give them, for we all share the same humanity and I never forget that. What makes me harder to figure out is that it is in my interest for all of us to become better people, and, contrary to popular belief, the road to "better personhood" cannot be reached by amity alone. I have great respect for humanity even if my repsect for individual people is hard to earn, and, as a consequence, I know that people can take a lot, and will often emerge the better for it.
Do you know what happens when people's minds grow? They become more liberal. For once, I use the word "liberal" in its best sense. That's the kind of liberal I consider myself to be. I am only a Democrat because that is the party which best advances my interests, however maddeningly imperfectly. I am not a doctrinaire liberal, not a collectivist, and certainly not an old-school Marx-fueled revolutionary. I like my liberties civil and my rights human. I play politics in order to achieve these ends, and what I want the most is for the human mind to be held up above all of our other attributes. I want a world where the law says, and the people agree, that no basic right and no personal ambition--
no ambition, good or bad--should ever be denied to a person on the basis that they are female, gay, black, nonreligious, poor, or whatever else.
My adversarial posture here, and wherever else it shows up, is almost never to antagonize Republicans for the sake of antagonizing them. I am comfortable that I have taken more steps forward than backward. Some antagonism is a byproduct of this strategy, and one of the ways in which I try to minimize it elsewhere is to be experimental in places like this where the consequences are minimal. So far, so good. I have influenced at least a half-dozen people here at the Compendium in a positive way, and have not yet been run off the boards by a torch-and-pitchfork mob. Never mind other venues; here on the merits of my history at the Compendium alone I would disagree with you that my party needs less Josh. Your point is appreciated and agreed--"don't be a dick"--but I don't think you have read me correctly, because I don't think it applies to me. I'm not a troll who happens to be smart; I am...for lack of a better term...an "activist." I'm getting in people's faces. Sometimes, that's the way it has to be. Perhaps this ad hoc primer will be of some help to you in understanding my point of view.
On a certain level, what I am doing is hardly unique. We all manipulate one another. Most of us do it with praise, support, affirmation, and flattery. I myself am no exception. We usually carry out this manipulation in order to enrich our lives direclty, by building stronger person relationships. And when we fall short emotionally, we usually do so by reversing these same behaviors: We condemn, undermine, spurn, and insult. It's human nature to reason that, if the things that build relationships strengthen us, then those same things in reverse will wound our enemies. (We conveniently forget that they wound us too.) For most people, the social experiment ends there. Not for me. I want to change people's minds for the better, and that means putting everything on the table. It is an intuitive conclusion that my flamboyance detracts from my ideas, but that conclusion has turned out to be wrong. The whole Light Side and Dark Side dichotomy is a fake. Good and evil do not exist like that. What I am doing is tactical. It works. To my genuine surprise, I actually
can stab people and make them think I am doing them a favor...because I
am doing them a favor, and the holy grail is not to trick people but to teach them. To mix up my metaphors, this is just like hitting someone who is being crazy, and having them reply "Thanks, I needed that." If the highest price I have to pay for my progress is that good folks like Radical_Dreamer who are put off by my style won't play ball with me anymore, I consider that a no-brainer tradeoff. So, as soon as my little stabby-stabby machine is perfected, I'll plug it into my undersea power source, and will shortly thereafter achieve paradise and live forever. =)
Now rather than continuing to beat a dead horse, may we cease with the idle banter and bitching and get to the real matter at hand? My question is for you, directly; if I wanted to disrespect you or another, I would do just as you said. Now I ask, why do you vainly flame the conservatives if your intent is to remediate the state of affairs benevolently and productively?
I know you are not a vengeful person, so I am confused as to why this would be the action you would find aesthetically appealing.
My comments to Thought should provide the answer you seek. I will add that there is nothing vain about what I am doing. Like all of us, I do have a sense of vanity. Like so few of us, however, I let it run wherever it likes
except where my feet are about to go. Ahem, BROJ.
For the entire thread, when you didn't understand my words, questions and/or opinions, you didn't ask what I meant. You made assumptions on what I meant. And when you failed at guessing the correct meaning, you gave up.
In fairness to myself, I do think I have understood you at some level. By saying otherwise I was giving myself an out from our exchange, which I found pointless. However, you do make at least one point, now. I should have asked what you meant. Let that serve as a complement to my above remarks. I'm not perfect.
For what it's worth, I would suggest you tone down your diction and your figures of speech in the future. I appreciate your eagerness to show off, because language is a beautiful power-up, but yours needs work and I'm afraid I don't have much patience for this sort of thing. It takes time out of my already full schedule to come to the Compendium at all, and I don't like being cornered in mindless conversations--which is exactly what happens when one party abuses language to the point that communication breaks down.