I’m surprised that the Guardian put up a video “sure to offend a large number of viewers”—especially those on the Left—but here you go. It expresses, to some extent, the way many of us feel. The Guardian‘s notes:
As part of the final week of the ABC comedy program Tonightly With Tom Ballard, comedian Jazz Twemlow takes a provocative and semi-satirical spray at the left for being ‘so bleeding woke we find something new to be offended about every few seconds’. In a seven-minute rant that is sure to offend a large number of viewers, Twemlow says the left is ‘about as open to dialogue and as self-reflective as a Gordon Ramsay on a meth spree’. Video courtesy of ABC Comedy
Very good stuff! I think humor like this is the best way to broadcast such messages.
Quite Funny. Mr. Twemlow has discovered that the crippling defect of the Left is not its abstract principles, but rather ….Leftists. The high frequency of certain behaviours over the centuries from the acolytes of Robespierre through the admirers of Nicolas Maduro suggests that the DSM should simply include a new category: Leftist Personality Disorder.
Leftist Personality Disorder with an expression of Virtue Signaling; too bad the result looks like a narcissistic autocrat.
There seems to be two contradictory ideas currently in vogue in American liberal circles:
The first is that putting the ideas of horrible people into the spotlight is capable of corrupting the public. Perfectly nice, innocent people hear someone like Bannon or Yiannopoulos speak and become twisted into alt-right foot soldiers.
The second is a complete rejection of the narrative that some working class whites broke for Trump due to economic concerns that Dems failed to campaign on in favor of idpol issues. And furthermore an insistence that anyone who voted for Trump is a confirmed racist, for life.
So apparently the siren song of the radical right is capable of corrupting the innocent, but also anyone who falls for it was never innocent to begin with. Perfectly consistent.
….and insane. Which is where we’re at today – crazies of the left, lunatics on the right. The sad thing, the thing that is strangling our democracy, is that those extremes are dominating public discourse and politics.
It’s hard for us normal folk to get a word in edgewise.
The snark is welcome*, Paul, but sadly that’s all it is.
*really, I like snark, sometimes. I learned a long time ago that of anyone, my comments often deserve to be made fun of. It’s sometimes my only source of humor.
Sorry, I was trying to agree with you in a humorous way. I guess I missed.
That was spot on.
Late to the game, I would have commented, “Here I am, stuck in the middle with you”.
I’m completely with you on your 1st, but not the 2nd. Dems did not fail to campaign on the economic concerns of working class whites. That narrative (Dems not addressing working class economic concerns) was, always has been, a part of the Republican Party’s propaganda effort and the evidence that it is a lie is archived across the internet for anyone who wishes to actually test the claim to see. Perhaps the Dems can be blamed for not finding some way to convince people fooled by the Reps false narrative but it is clearly inaccurate to claim that the Dems failed to address their economic concerns. They addressed them in far more detail and with policy proposals that were far more likely to have positive results than MAGA.
So you’re left with three possibilities.
The Dems DID fail to get their ideas across, which is why so many are unaware of them and opted for Republicans who were (presumably) able to get their ideas out. Incompetence.
Another possibility, the one you favor, is that Republicans are better at politics, which is nothing more than the art of lying.* Malevolence.
The third, and the one no one in the party or their apologists want to admit is possible; they were unable to convince people of the value of their policies. Incompetence, again.
No matter which you think is most important, the Dems have and continue to fail. While the republicans have lost whatever was left of their cancerous souls by electing and supporting Trump, the Dems are not the kind of alternative that one can hope will do better. We need, but will not get, a viable third party. We are stuck with our ridiculous political system with incompetence on one side and malevolence on the other.
*I think I agree with you on this being the most important reason the Dems have failed as often as they have.
And publicly funded election campaigns.
Meaning NOT privately funded, right?
Correct, I could have been more clear. When We the People™ are footing the bill, I imagine we’ll be spending quite a bit less than is currently necessary to fund a winning campaign.
–
I was shocked to see how much was spent on a rural legislative district in my state for the representative campaign. It is truly shocking, and think how many excellent would-be candidates never bother because that sort of fundraising is beyond them?
It sure ain’t pretty no matter how you look at it.
I agree that the Dems have those policies but in 2016 it did seem like identity politics was spoken with a louder voice.
The Republicans message is insidious. They don’t try to claim that they will do better for the workers, they claim anything done by the government is automatically harmful to the working class.
I’m reminded of a full-page Apple ad in the NY Times several years ago, showing a beguiling lassie of (South-?) Asian extraction, gazing upwardly and seemingly into infinity, with the caption, “Designed in California,” conveniently avoiding mentioning Fox-Conn (and its worker suicide-prevention safety nets) and offshoring of U.S. manufacturing jobs.
Just congenially curious – are the values of U.S. corporations – as evidenced by their offshoring of U.S. manufacturing jobs on which many U.S. populists have depended over the years for a secure living – of sufficient merit that they are worthy of the flower of U.S. youth joining the military to go in harm’s way to be killed or maimed for life on behalf of those corporate values?
In the last few years, I’ve noted in online U.S. Navy recruiting efforts (I myself am a navy veteran) an emphasis on U.S. (corporate?) “interests,” as opposed to “duty, honor, country.” (I’m also reminded of mailings I’ve received from the American Legion, emphasizing the material, consumerist benefits of American Legion membership, never mentioning the organization’s ideological “100% Americanism.”)
I disagree. The democratic party has been full-on pro free trade and mostly pro business since at least 1992 and Clinton. Clinton is of course famous for NAFTA, but also for example, the 2008 bailout was passed with more Dem votes in both the House and Senate. Signed by Bush then, yes, but it was the Dems in both houses that pushed it through.
Now, I happen to support free trade as a long-term strategy. But pursuing it with no thought to the blue collar jobs and industries it’s going to hurt was, IMO, a huge Dem mistake having nothing to do with what the GOP did or did not think about it. And bailing out Bear Stearns and corporations involved in the sub-prime mortgage disaster while providing relatively nothing for individual citizens hurt by these market failures was, again, a huge Dem mistake.
I think it’s absolutely true that folks like Trump merely pay lip service to working class prosperity; as neglectful as Dems might have been, he’s still worse for them. But I can fully understand the switch; to working class folks, Trump may be all false promises but he’s new; the Dems are false promises with a decades-long history of betrayal.
I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. I do understand that many middle class and poor white folk feel betrayed by the Dems. However, the number of them that actually have been severely impacted negatively by free trade is much smaller than the number of Trump supporters that claim they have been. And the Dems have given thought to the hurt such policies would cause and have helped those affected much more so than the Reps. The numbers are there for anyone to see if they care to look for them. Many different people, some even on the Rep side, have compiled the numbers, graphed them, explained what they show. And they show that over the past 30 years or more that nearly all metrics by which societies and economies are judged have improved under Dem policies and gotten worse under Rep policies. Why then do the people that fair worse under Rep policies continue, for decades, to vote against their own best interests while believing that the party that actually does better by them is not just screwing them sideways but evil as well? That’s the question. And the true answer isn’t that the Dems have been betraying them.
Regarding bail outs, while the Obama administration did continue the programs it was the Bush Jr. administration that planned and initiated those big bail-outs, not the Dems. This is not a subtle difference in point of view. Is it not reasonable to hold people accountable, to some degree, for accepting reality? Or is what people believe the only thing that matters? I say, no. Hell no.
No, the Dems are far from wonderful let alone perfect. But there are real, significant differences in both character and magnitude between the Dems & the Reps. And nearly all of what Trump supporters believe about Dems is inaccurate. Who’s fault is that? The Dems? In part, yes, I think it is. They’ve failed to counter the constant purposeful attack against them. But that ain’t the half of it. I direct most of my blame to those who have been lying, cheating and stealing way beyond the norm for decades with malice aforethought, with calculated purpose to deceive and manipulate, in order to so thoroughly take over government that they are free from serious opposition. And not so they can rule well but to milk as much wealth out of the country as they can for themselves and their masters and damn the consequences. And I also hold responsible those that, for whatever their reasons, continue to support the Reps beyond all reason and, these days, decency.
It’s undoubtedly true that Trump voters had many reasons for casting their ballots for him, economic anxiety perhaps chief among them. And those voters were certainly not all racists. But anyone who voted for Trump in 2016 at least had a high threshold for tolerating racism in their candidate. Chrissake, Trump got his toehold in politics flogging his bogus “Birther” claptrap, which was racist to its core. And his demagoguery of nativism and bigotry was on ample display for all to see during the presidential campaign.
Many may have had other motives for wanting to put him in office notwithstanding, but the man’s racism and bigotry could have come as no surprise to the sentient among the electorate.
Not sure I agree with you on that one. For one thing, the invective against Obama when HRC opposed him was easily as harsh. And the birther silliness seems to have come up during that campaign, and were spread by Clinton supporters and Obama haters alike. I think the Drudge Report picture of Obama dressed as a Somali Muslim can be more reliably connected to the HRC campaign.
It was a Clinton strategy to oppose Obama as being “not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values”
But I am confident that there are armies of people who spend all their time poring over everything DT has ever written or been recorded saying, looking for those horrible racist slurs.
I had a pre-election conversation with some people who were convinced that Trump was openly antisemitic. So, concerned, I went looking for all the antisemitic remarks. And did not find any. I was a little surprised, as he is not known for self censorship.
There are plenty of vulgarities to be found, and not all of the people he disparages are While males. Which is not to say that he is not a racist. He might be. But the claims of his misdeeds contain so many exaggerations and misrepresentations, whatever true claims there are have been lost in the noise.
But even voting for Trump does not mean that you necessarily approved of him, his views, or even his policies. There were no good candidates in the last election. Many people did not vote for a candidate so much as against the one who they feared would do the most damage to their lives and families.
I voted against HRC, because I felt that she just craved power (Trump as well), but also because she had the appointees and infrastructure in place to make very big and permanent negative changes to the US. Trump, even with the same motivation, barely has the support of his own party, much less the thousands of people in the DOJ and legislative branch who owe the Clintons for their success.
But I still could not vote for Trump. I went third party.
There are a bunch of people now calling every Trump supporter, republican, or conservative a bunch of ignorant fascists. Not only is this provably false, but it functions like strategic bombing. It seems like it would frighten people into inaction and silence, but it usually just makes them angry and strengthens their resolve.
It’s one thing to play hardball politics (as Hillary did in 2008) by portraying your opponent as a bit of an exotic. It’s quite another entirely to promote (as Donald Trump did) the ludicrous, vile theory that Barack Obama was a secret Kenyan-born Muslim (which is a theory that upwards of half of all registered Republicans say they still believe to this day).
Trump was this nation’s most prominent “Birther,” and he flogged this racist bullshit from 2010 into his presidential campaign. (You’re certainly not contending this was a debatable issue about which reasonable minds might differ, are you?) Trump also repeatedly lied about getting information in support of his Birther claims from high-placed, anonymous government sources, and lied about sending a team of private investigators to Hawaii who were discovering evidence of Obama’s foreign birth.
As I made plain above, I am not claiming that all Trump voters are racists. But I am saying — and I don’t see how this can be reasonably debated either — that those who voted for Trump had to have a high tolerance for abiding the racism of their chosen candidate, since that racism was on open display during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign (indeed, has been on display for Trump’s entire public life, from his efforts to impose the death penalty on the “Central Park Five,” to the discrimination lawsuits brought against the Trump Organization by the US Justice Department).
Trump’s Central Park Five moves were some of the most egregious among many.
If half of all registered Republicans still believe that Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim, perhaps Hillary was right all along in her estimate that half of the Trump supporters are “deplorables”. Hard to believe they aren’t also racists.
As of last December, 57% of Trump voters, and 51% of Republicans overall said they believed Barack Obama was born in Kenya, as freakin’ unbelievable as that is.
If there’s a racially neutral explanation for this, I’d love to hear it.
I wonder if the latter is due to people leaving the party.
After all, if Trump believes it, and he’s somehow the last Republican, then 100% of all Republicans would then believe it.
A bit hard on meth heads.
“I’m Hitler, and yoga’s a problem.”
Brilliant.
“Jazz Twemlow” — Isn’t that something Wes Montgomery would hook up to his guitar?
Sorry.
I have to admit to having been a little apprehensive about viewing this video but I after watching it I can say I pretty much agree with all of it.
The most serious problem of the Left: a house divided against itself cannot stand. So much effort is put in to policing and punishing fellow liberals (is “fellow” sexist?) that it essentially opens up a second front, if you’ll pardon my mixing war references, one fight against the right, the other against everyone to left of the right, be they centrists or the rest of the liberal left. This is what was expected of the right when the tea party began their rise, yet the conservatives more or less circled their wagons (another war reference, and probably racist)and fought successfully against the post-Obama democrats, supporting a candidate they clearly despised, and are now fully in control of government.
I liked the first minute and a half, anyway. 🙂
I kid; it was a good piece.
Despite all the moaning and groaning from those people who think that the “regressive left” will somehow take votes away from the Democrats and perhaps cost them the election, current polling points to a Democratic victory in November. Of course, we’ll have to see the actual results, but in contrast to my usual pessimistic nature, things are looking up. The FiveThirtyEight site now gives the Democrats a 7 in 9 chance of taking back the House. Trump’s approval rating has dropped to 39.6%, finally breaking the many months of it being at 42%. We’ll see if this is a trend or a blip.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/
As I have stated several times before, Democrats shouldn’t waste a penny trying to win over the white working class (which overlaps with the religious right), which has been trending Republican for decades. Their concern for specific economic programs is far overshadowed by their panic at the demographic change taking place in America. Loss of social status, based on race, is what motivates them. They view life as a zero sum gain. They don’t understand how world economies are changing due to patterns or world trade. Instead, they look for scapegoats for their perceived woes (many in the white working class are not hurting economically, as opposed to the truly poor). Trump is the perfect demagogue for them. Democratic success will hinge on turnout, which so far looks pretty good.
If Trump’s poll numbers continue to drop, it will be interesting to find out who is falling away – traditional economically oriented Republicans or members of his cult. I suspect it will be the former.
In summary, this overhyped concern about the “regressive left” in terms of electoral politics is nothing more than a right wing smokescreen, but it is also a failure. As of now, there is little evidence that many people who are inclined to vote Democratic have changed their minds because they think, “Oh my, a college student has shouted down a speaker. I’d better vote Republican.” Yes, the Democratic Party has fissures between the left and center, but in the end they will all pull the Democratic lever. I believe (or at least hope) that the factions of the Democratic Party have learned that ideological purity is really not that great a thing.
Yes of course, the Democrats should not spend a penny winning over that bunch of racists. Way to go, sunny ways are coming.
By the way, are you referring to the same bunch of racists (white working class) that voted for Obama twice?
Sorry for the multiple posts, but I have another question: could you help me finding a word to describe someone that generalizes about a group of people based on the color of their skin and/or their socio-economical condition? Asking for a friend whose first language is not English.
Thanks
Once again a thoughtful post, Historian but I think you overstate your case. I agree that few Democrats will change their minds over a few college students behaving like fascists.
The Dems have a couple of problems – the first I think is not a big issue this Novemember; Democratic voters don’t vote in midterms. But they should have pretty good turnout this Nov. A lot of people are really pissed off.
But they will have to try to defeat incumbent Republicans if they wish to win back the house, that means while the woke candidates who’ve unseated incumbent Democrats in the primaries are likely to prevail because they running in Democratic districts, if the Dems try to run woke campaigns in those districts with Republican incumbents -the ones they need to win to get the House- they will lose. If the Dems don’t make it clear they are not anti-white racists in those districts, they will lose.
I have faith that Americans will come out to vote in November (I suspect the anger is deeper than polls suggest) but I do not have faith in the Democratic party to be able to win. It will be a close run.
The polls indicate that Democrats will win back the House in November. This means they will win some seats held by Republican incumbents and that they are doing something right. Again, this would be due to turnout, something that Democrats have been sorely missing in mid-terms. Increased turnout can come from a combination of many groups including young people, minorities, some disaffected Trump voters (although I wouldn’t count on many of them)and the actual poor. In two months we’ll know if the strategy worked.
There are many pundits who think the Democrats need to win back the Trump voters to win. There is a very large debate on this question. It is not difficult to find many passionate articles on this topic. In my view, winning back Trump voters would be nice, but it is cost ineffective.
Think of them as Hillary haters rather than Trump voters. That should make them easier to win back.
I just googled over to 538.com. It does look promising.
My guess is that “Remember Trump” will motivate Dems to get out and vote for quite a while.
I disagree. The problems caused by the regressive left have a lot more influence than college students shouting down speakers. These ideas gives the right (not just the far right) a language with which to paint all liberals and Dems as shallow, bigoted SJWs. Just look at the New Yorker fiasco discussed in these pages. This involved a major national magazine, various movie stars, and a public figure in Steve Bannon. The right is taking full advantage of how deranged it appears.
Also, these attitudes are so influential with college students. We count on their energy and activism in order to promote the liberal agenda. These bad ideas are tainting a generation. They are also prevalent outside the campus. I have acquaintances in the neighborhood who are into the very same silly way of thinking.
If the polls are correct (and the election will determine that) then your fears are unfounded for at least this cycle. The long-term effects may be a different story, but it is much too soon to tell.
I happen to believe that if voters really understood the issues and what the GOP has built themselves into over decades, the Dems would get 80% of the vote or more. I am not satisfied with just barely capturing the House in November. The Dems have to aim higher in order to establish a hedge against the inevitable events that don’t go their way.
“… current polling points to a Democratic victory in November.”
It’s always a good strategy to rely on polls. It worked out very well in 2016.
Don’t forget that this isn’t just a fight for November, and it’s not a fight to win over 50% of the country. Elections are for cities, state governorships, Senate, House, and even the Presidential election relies on a state-by-state accounting. And we’re not fighting for Democrats’ votes. Maybe we should also be fighting to get back all the white working class votes we lost last election? The ones who previous voted for Obama? You can bet there will be even more who abandon the Left if it continues with this crap, instead of going back to talking about the problems those people are suffering from, instead of how privileged they are.
And, like it or not, people hear about what’s going on at college campuses, especially with the internet and their own children going to college. If those things upset me and have changed my views of the Left, then I can’t imagine how much it changes the views of less intelligent people. I at least understand the scale of what’s happening on college campuses (relatively small), but others see it and conflate it with the entire Left (just as dumber Democrats see 200 people go to a Richard Spencer speech and conflate those 200 with the entire Right). Additionally, these colleges are the culture on their campuses are teaching/indoctrinating those students. If we want students to be, well, not as bad as what we’re already seeing, it would probably be a good idea to try and ameliorate the situation.
Yes, I have acknowledged polls can be wrong. My main point is that political parties do not have unlimited resources. They must be expended wisely. My view is that there is “more bang for the buck” in trying to increase turnout as opposed to winning back Trump voters. There is a vast pool of 50% or more potential voters that do not cast ballots. That’s where I would look for winning margins.
Increasing turnout should definitely be the short-term strategy for a win in November. Dealing with the regressive left is obviously a long-term project.
Until the Democrats distance themselves from their lunatic fringe they don’t deserve to win.
I’ve brought some of these points up before but it’ll save me time to just link to one of Nate Silver’s articles:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-story-of-2016/
The short version is that it wasn’t that “the polls were all wrong,” it was that people don’t know how to read polls and were over-optimistically spinning them.
Furthermore, while it’s possible for a single race like that for the Presidency to have an unlikely outcome, it’s orders of magnitude more unlikely for hundreds of independent observations of dozens of individual races to all be radically off the mark.
Yeah, polls can be wrong, as can the point spread. But political parties that ignore the former fare no better than gamblers who ignore the latter.
The race goes not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s still the way to handicap ’em, as a wise feller once said.
“… then I can’t imagine how much it changes the views of less intelligent people”
BJ, i cannot see how that statement is going to change their minds either. In fact, i would say it’s partly responsible for losing them in the first place, no one cared enough.
They had enough intelligence to want a voice,
and look who that turned out to be.
Excelllent!
That…was…amazing. One of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a long time. At first I was hearing lines to which I could point in the comment I was clearly going to post after I finished watching, but there were so many by minute three that I just gave up on that.
I’ve never heard of Jazz Twemlow, but he is fantastic! I’m definitely about to look up his other work. I’ve very rarely seen someone deliver comedic dialogue so well. If he wrote this as well, I’m even more impressed.
I just looked him up. His last tweet was “People sure are fond of conflating ‘fighting fascism’ with ‘tweeting about it.'” Great stuff.
He was very good and he put me in mind of Charlie Brooker. Another Brit. In his various shows including “Screenwipe” he introduced the world to Philomena Cunk aka Diane Morgan. He also had an American comic, Doug Stanhope on. Stanhope is superb, if you have a broad mind and don’t mind a little bit of swearing!