I want to thank the news broadcaster Thom Hartmann for delivering good news in this strange time period. He has essentially become my only go to source when it comes to liberal news, and of course i only really shop on the Internet when it comes to that.
For a long time, and in fact, for most of the time, during the actual 2016 campaign, I followed the Young Turks and a site called Secular Talk pretty religiously when it came to my US news. The Young Turks is sort of like the evil Infowars to me (ironically enough) because it is run by relatively young people and most definitely ggeared towards young people, and the same can be said for Secular Talk....and yet, after the 2016 election wrapped up, I actually found myself not all that comforted by the Young Turks crowd, for whatever reason (mostly I think because of the character 'Jimmy Doherty', who to me actually seems like a Republican pretending to be a liberal). I still like the Young Turks, I think Cenk Uygur is fantastic, and I liek Ana Kasparian loads too, but it's just that one dude Doherty bothers the Hell out of me and I honestly...well, now since I never know when he's gonna pop up on me I can't watch it anymore.
Thom Hartmann does not seem to have as much of a following on the Internet as the Young Turks, perhaps because he's older, but he's easier to mesh with because it's often just him, and the whole message of the show he puts on seems...I don't know quite how to put it, but I suppose I would say that it seems a little more serious. I am not sure why. He has written books and seems to have traveled around a good bits, I suppose, I'm not sure. Thom Hartmann just seems like a very good presenter. He cuts right to the chase. He isn't there to supply laughs or jokes or any of that, there is no playing to some "crowd of youths". He's just there to give news, hard cold terrible news. Which is the way it ought to be and which to me, in a country like this, is surprisingly the way that seems to work... (just look at the success Bill OReilly after all).
To me I think that the Young Turks kind of get a bad rep you see because they get presented and also seem to present themselves as "radicals" (they often use vulgarity for instance, or make 'radical' style jokes) and , quite frankly, I think this radical presentation is what has destroyed the liberal party in this country.
I really hate to say this, because I myself am actually, I am a heavy metal musician and a long haired tattooed weirdo with huge ear piercings and what not, but I am pretty convinced that if more Democrats would just take what I guess you could call a "clean cut" approach to the **presentation** of the politics (and pull out the stuff that seems to be 'radical') that they would have already experienced some success. This is, in fact, why Thom Hartmann works so well, at least for what I need him to do (which is that I often send his videos to older conservative family members to pursuade them to go Demo).
Unfortunatley of course there aren't that many Democrats like Thom Hartmann around and a lot of the famous hosts seem to be people who, I am so sorry totell you, no one in the circle of so-called "deplorables" will ever actually lend an ear to.
Rachel Maddow and the guy Anderson Cooper --the Democratic heads actually on the TV---are unfortunately two prime examples of this ...dilemma. Now I want to make it very clear that I am not against either of these characters, for me they are just fine, they don't bother me *personally* at all, you could have a guy with a barbell through his nose and a mohawk on there and *I'd* listen to him, **but** you know, it's kind of obvious to me (even as an actual 'freak) that nobody in the Republican constituencies, who are the people that the Democrats have, for some time now, needed on their side, are going to listen to someone like Maddow or Anderson Cooper say anything about..well, anything. And yet Maddow, who has her hair cut like a boy, and Anderson Cooper, who for some reason we all needed to know was a queer, are the prime characters on the TV when it comes to the Democratic alliance. Well what did y'all think was going to happen? In my opinion it's almost as though it was all done on purpose, to further pull down the 'respectability' levels of the Democrats in the eyes of the Republicans who just might occasionally swing t o the left.
In my opinion, someone who is political should be wise enough to realize that politics are almost always, as a rule, 40 years behind popular culture and whatever is happening with it. This means to say that, if girls getting crew cuts became popular in, say, the early 1970s, some female in the highest end of the political sector (like the president herself) ain't gonna be "allowed" to have the crewcut until 40 years after, and maybe not even then, in fact. Recently we saw something like this play out, actually, when it comes to Satans little helper "Paul Ryan", also known as the guy trying to steal grandmas Medicare.
He appeared one day, I think it was last year at some point, with a fully grown (but trimmed) beard,and everyonemade a huge fuss of it, saying that he was the first man on the Senate floor or wherever he was, to have the beard, in 100 years since the 1800s. Well, Paul Ryan was just stealing something in the 2010s that hippies had started doing and making acceptable again back in the 1960s. But of course because Ryan is a politician it actually **took that long** for the beard to reach that sphere of soceity, and as we can see with our presidents, it might not reach the highest sphere for , who knows, another 20-30 years still. Cultural trends travel very slowly and always have. They typicalyl go from bottom to top. First the marijuana is accepted in the poorest neighborhoods, then it becomes middle class, and then finally you see people on TV smoking it and after that you got a president who can come out and admit he once got stoned (just like ours can admit they got drunk).
The way this ties in with the Democrats of course is because, as you can see, they are, in some respects, maybe pushing a little too hard on some of these cultural changes, at the expense of other ones, which I would consider far more important. Myself for example, I align with the Democrats mostly for three core reasons: 1. I want to see the War on Drugs come to an end, and they seem to be the party most likely to end it due to the marijuana policies 2. I want to see a public healthcare system like Canada or Europe has implemented here, and I believe it is URGENT and 3. I want universities opened up and made publicly accessible in the same way that European universities are publicly accessible.
In America at the moment, those three views are often considered 'radical' but, of course, theyre not nearly as "radical" as the LGBT movement or the Transgender movement and all of that stuff. Bill O Reilly, obviously, he won't listen to a single one of those ideas (public uni, public health, war on drugs or LGBT) because he's the top boss of the Republican constituency who is just gonna bark their one dogma alone ,but the "swing voter" Republicans, who sometimes swing Democrat every now and again, **will** actually listen to those arguments, at least a little bit, and they'll listen to them far more than they will listen, for example, to the LGBT argments.
Swing voters in my personal experience, which means to say my experience just talking to regular people who do not obsessively align with one party or the other, tend to often agree that the War on Drugs ought to perhaps end, and that public healthcare would probably be decent, and also that universities should be opened up. I've talked to many people who seem like swing voters to me and gotten very positive responses about all three of those things. These same people of course, the second I throw out the LGBT card, often become like wild and insane pitbulls . "I dont wanna hear it I dont wanna hear it! Those people are LUNATICS! I don't like that lifestyle! I don't like no transexuals! Thats scary!" One only imagines that these people probably ultimately pull the Republican lever at the end of the day for this exact reason.... not even caring about the other prominent issues....
Therefore, in my opinion, I am almost of the belief that the Democrats have, quite frankly, allowed themselves to be smeared by just how much they have taken to the LGBT movement and their desire to be presented, like Cenk Uygur perhaps wants to be on the Young Turks, as 'free living radicals', and I do think they're idiots for it in a way because, speaking from the sidelines here, and please wait a minute before you flip out and get angry and call me some sort of homophobe , but I think it's pretty obvious that the real resolution for the LGBT movement is to simply have a more highly educated populace, (which means access to public university!!) because it seems to me that the more highly educated a populace is, the more likely they are to accept the LGBT movement and not get up in arms about it. I have traveled in European cities and the Europeans don't seem to have nearly as much of a problem with queers as Americans do. Berlin is essentially a queer mecca, and Milano is certainly a comfortable city for a queer. You know why?? It is because the people in those cities are more likely to be educated, since college is publicly accessible, than the average Americans in some place like Kansas City or Baton Rouge or somewhere, who are all locked out of college unless they want to pull some bankrupting loan. They're also healthier than the average Americans and not as stressed out about this absurd healthcare debacle.
In other words one therefore sees, in my opinion, that the LGBT thing almost sort of falls into place, after a significant number of people have been adequately educated, or at the very least, made prosperous and comfortable. This is of course why the LGBT argument often springs to life on the wealthy and coastal college campuses in this country that are filled with people who read things and so forth. Out on the streets, however, beyond the campus walls, life is a tragically different story for many Americans: They're hungry, they're angry, they've never met anyone who is a queer, and they certainly could give less than a shit to be told how to vote by someone who looks like a queer or who talks constantly in favor of queers, and then insults church goers, etc, on the Television. I for one, having never stepped foot on a college campus, was sort of brought initially , years ago, to the entire LGBT argument by Bruce Springsteen. " You see how it works???? You see you educated liberals with PHds?? This is how ideas get introduced to the working class.
Just imagine, for example (though of course he's deceased) how many people a figure like Johnny Cash would be able to bring to the LGBT side, if he suddenly appeared on TV tomorrow in full support of it. Many, many people would , I suspect, experience a radical change of heart as a result of someone like that saying it. This is of course the same effect with Bruce Springsteen but to a slightly lesser degree. Yes, many people will suddenly go against that artist as a result of suddenly supporting this "out of character"t hing-- but many others will also suddenly 'see the light' and follow their favorite artist. It is human nature. There is no shame in admitting how powerful these figures are.
Hence we see that the truth about Democrats is that they have an absolutely fantastic set of ideas, and on paper I agree 100% with the party, but for some reason, they have an enormous image problem that they just can't get rid of. I suppose thet ruth about the Democrats is that they're simply **too open ** and ** too honest**. With the Republicans it is exactly the opposite: They send out a guy who talk like hes working class and pretends like hes working class, and that hes gonna fight for the working class, and then the second the TV flips off he flashes a switch blade and cuts the throat of the working class, and when everyone comes to find the body with its throat slit, he throws the knife into the Democratic pocekt, and says "it was him, that weird queer. He did it. " And of course everyone believes him because, well, they have not been educated enough, as a result of the Republican lockign them out and making sure they would never be educated, to see what has just happened.
It is in fact executed quite perfectly, and I think the Democrat would be able to get beyond it if only he would realize that, unfortunately, and I know it is sad, but he unfortunately **must wait** to do one slightly "radical" thing before the next "radical" thing. Thom Hartmann, this is exactly why I like the guy, because this is exactly what he does. He's as liberal as can be, but you can send him into the "respectable" pit of the suit and tie straight boys, and he blends right in. This is veryi mportant unfortunately...
In fact, my advice to the Democratic party as a whole would be: why not think of the game sort of like the Beatles and their history ? The Beatles are an extremely interesting phenomenon because, if you look at what they did, you're going to see that the original reason they were able to sneak underneath everyones door and become 'a part of the family' is because they dressed like conservatives in those suits, and they sang 'conservative' style sonsg as well (to a degree, doing some traditionals) and then the next thing you know , what on earth was happening, they were walking around in odd "hippie" outfits and tellling everyone to smoke pot and dream of walruses etc. Had the Beatles come out and presented themselves initially , from home plate, as the hippies, nothing would have ever happened for them at all, moer likely than not, and they would have lost, and lost bad.
They would have never been able to grab the ears of the people who mattered, you understand. But instead they curated an image with these suits and these nice boy faces and this "folks next door" thing, they sang some songs to make "Daddy" happy, got under the door, and the second they were in, and knew that they had cemented it, they revealed the next 'radical' step, and turned Daddys beloved daughter into a hippie flying a freak flag smoking reefer. The Beatles were a success because they worked in increments and music and literaturea nd film, the whole 9 yards, has essentially been working in such increments ever since.
In fact, this little increment game is visible in many artists taht might otherwise shock the reader, and even Kurt Cobain did the same ting to a degree: From an old persons point of view, Cobain was obviously always a little loony (all rockers are) but , within the rock circle of his time period, which was close minded in its own way, he had presented himself initially as a pretty straight forward rocker, even as a pretty masculine figure in some respects (the songs on his two opening albums being very aggressive) and then suddenly, the next thing everyone knew, they were showing up to his live concerts and he was standign there behind the microphone cross dressing with a pink tiara on his head. Freddie Mercury maybe even could be said to have done the same thing as well. These artists roped people in, made them fall in love, and then once they wre in love, they sent out the smoke grenade of quote unquote "real tantalization". Had Cobain prsented himself as a cross dresser at his first show, he could haev perhaps been killed. He certainly wouold have been rejected. He had to go in increments. Unfortuantely, that whole aspect of his act had to wait. It could not be presented before the other elements had been.....
The publicly presented Democrats, however, do not seem to totally fathom this incremental thing, and as a result of this they have now essentially screwed us and left us with 4 , or "God" help us, maybe even 8 years, of an absolutely ridiculous Republican regime, and every time I look at it, I just do not understand: Why in the hell couldn't they have sent someone like Joe Biden in? WhY? Why on earth did it have to be a battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, both of whom were, in their own ways, clearly going to be considered too radical by the Republicans who might just swing left? Why do they INSIST on having someone "radical" (again, radical in the eyes of the Republican swing voter) as the face of the party? Why can't they just present someone who wears the conservative suit... and who looks conservative... but who, deep down, on the written piece of paper, is not at all conservative? How is this character so hardt o find?? It makes no sense to me.
Remember: This is exactly what the Republicans are **already** doing! Their method is ridiculously simple to see through, the second you actually read something, but just from the TV, you would think that they were for the working class, because they pretend to be, with their public characters. They show up to stupid parade and make toasts to the working class and talk in the "language" o the working class, and then, as I said before, they shut the lights off the second they are elected and slit the throat of the working class.
So what the hell? Democrats shoud simply take the same approach except backwards: They should simply *pretend* that they are going to somehow play to Republican conservative interests, they should *pretend* that the main face they send out is a conservative or 'sort of conservative' , just like the Beatles did, and then..boom, the secnod they are under the door, switch into the hippie, LGBT outfit and do what they want.
How is this that challenging/???
--LOGGING OFF
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