oliv0128's Comments (61)

“I agree with this blogger's main point, which is that progressives make a mistake in counting out white working-class people. I have been party to the derogatory stereotypes that are thrown around in some "progressive circles" when people feel they are in a safe environment to mock poor whites. It makes me angry because I come from a working-cl­ass/workin­g-poor Southern family and I don't believe that they deserve blanket scorn. In my relationships with family members I dissent from and question their viewpoints but with empathy and in a way that may actually bring them around.”

“Cont....

That being said, the rest of this article is naive. Author buys into the whole discourse of progressive = latte sipping elitist and conservative = real American. This IS the poisoned pill in our political well. It's an ideology put forth by the right to divide and conquer the left. It is simply not true that the left is a movement of rich (or even middle-class) snooty people, limp-wristed and conciliatory. So, I think the thing to do is reject this binary and try to seek the common interests and experiences that bring different groups of people together into one movement.

As for the Democratic Party, I think we might all be able to guess why they want people to "calm down" and "wait it out", while they are more left (but just barely) than the Republicans, they all get their campaign funding from the same places. They are as much beholden to corporations as the Republicans. And this is why not only working-class issues, but also racial justice, feminist, GLBT, etc. issues, are continually put on the back burner.”

“That'll show 'em how Christian we are!! Yeah!!...oh, wait...”

“I wholeheartedly agree. I think the main problem is the people he's surrounded himself with, especially in the capacity of financial advisers. PLEASE get rid of the Clinton and DLC cohort. Their ideas and skills are not appropriate to the task at hand!”

“exactly.”

“Nope. But I am surprised that he seems to do whatever he wants without any repercussions.”

“I wholeheartedly agree with what you say. Pelosi put reps. on record about where they stand on the public option, so should Reid. It certainly does seem like (some of) the Dems are intentionally looking for any excuse to thwart this bill. Maybe not in terms of whether it eventually passes, but certainly in terms of how effective it will be. Who do we pressure to get the Dems to change senate majority leader?”

“I know! It's not a new economic team at all. It's Clinton's economic team. The same people who can be (partially) blamed for the deregulation of the financial sector and can be definitively blamed for driving the final nail in the Glass-Steagall coffin. They have a great deal of ideological, personal, and economic investment in keeping banking and investment as one system. I don't know enough to know what all of the potential consequences of Volker's plan are, but I do know that I don't trust the people who got us into this mess in the first place. I just don't understand why Obama can't change this? He has the power to appoint people, backroom deals be damned. This is serious business, and his choice of economic advisors should not be based on pleasing/placating other powerful people.”

“exactly.”

“exactly. i'm so sick of republican sophistry, although that term might even be giving them too much credit.”

“as per the study, it probably is true that people without health insurance are more likely to die because of long-term lack of access to preventative care. many illnesses are not fatal unless you wait until the last minute to go to the emergency room.

but I agree that the problem is not just the UNinsured but also the UNDERinsured.”

“frightening indeed.”

“I pledge monetary support to primary candidates in any of those races (although they are not my reps). And I think we should generally keep pressure on potentially wayward democrats by threatening to do exactly what you propose. I've already written to my democratic senator and told her that if she doesn't support a strong public option, I will find someone else to vote for in the democratic primaries.

However, I also want to hear your plan for pressuring the DNC to get rid of Harry Reid as senate majority leader, and to find someone who is more of a warrior for liberal causes (and more importantly, perhaps, is a senior member has won their elections by relatively wide margins). At this point, the house is not the problem, as much as the Senate. And Harry Reid, flat out, does not do his job.”

“Well, I do hope you are right!”

“I sure hope so. But I was responding more to Arianna's (and by proxy Biden's) opinion that we need to pull out of Afghanistan, so we can put the troops where they are "really needed," which now appears to be Pakistan. I admire the fact that Obama is reaching out to the Muslim world, but he's also working against a lot of inertia. And just because we have a change of power, doesn't mean that the machinery of war is going to come to a screeching halt.”

“Here's hoping. But it still sounds to me like the plan is to chase Al Qaida to the ends of the earth, no matter what the cost or destruction. Example: even if they do follow Al Qaida to Pakistan, they are leaving Afghanistan (not to mention Iraq) in ruins, with the Taliban poised to retake power. Who's going to clean up that mess? And god only knows what will happen in Pakistan. This is my point, maybe military intervention isn't the best way to go about this.”

“I have noticed, but how does that change anything that I said?”

“Part I

Pardon the repost, but I just feel like it's relevant...

I'm concerned about this never-ending horizon of war: Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan...I flat out oppose all of these wars, at the level of principle not strategy. However, as long as what we are debating is whether to shift military resources and personnel to yet another frontier, I figured I'd add my $0.02. In case the people in charge forgot, the original purpose of the war in Afghanistan (the war that Obama was so eager to get back to because it was supposedly the war we SHOULD have been fighting all along) was to route the transnational terrorist outfit, Al Qaida. And this is the reason that Afganistan is NOT the new Vietnam: Al Qaida is not a nationalist movement. Al Qaida doesn't have loyalty to or roots in any particular place, and given their mobility and their flexibility in recruiting and fund-raising, the geography of "War on Terror" would always be undefined ("we will fight them wherever they are!" and all that jingoism).”

“Part II

Now, we are told that shifting resources from Afghanistan to Pakistan will do the trick. Where to next? Yemen? The Horn of Africa? The Sudan? Where does this end???!!! And if you think the internal politics of Iraq and Afghanistan are complicated, just wait until the U.S. military traipses all through the Indian Ocean region and messes with ethnic, race, class, and political tensions that harken back to colonialism (and before). We will leave a trail of devastated and unstable countries in our wake. It is never going to get better or easier, it's Pandora's Box. And, I'm just thinking out loud here...maybe war is not the best way to address this problem.”

“oh yes. good ole' everything is relative argument. well-played. purple, green, black, white, what's the difference? congratulations, as well, on knowing some African people that you can conveniently trot out as further evidence to support your nonsense. because the whole "hey, I have black friends argument!" isn't flaccid and predictable at all. But then, you're not really making an argument because it's all just in good fun, right? What's a joke (about how overly sensitive those silly people in the "black club" are. I mean calling blackface racist is just as crazy as calling mimes racist. wink-wink, nudge-nudge) between a couple of white folks anyway?”

“sorry, reverse the order of my posts below!”

“Continued...

Now, we are told that shifting resources from Afghanistan to Pakistan will do the trick. Where to next? Yemen? The Horn of Africa? The Sudan? Where does this end???!!! And if you think the internal politics of Iraq and Afghanistan are complicated, just wait until the U.S. military traipses all through the Indian Ocean region and messes with ethnic, race, class, and political tensions that harken back to colonialism (and before). We will leave a trail of devastated and unstable countries in our wake. It is never going to get better or easier, it's Pandora's Box. And, I'm just thinking out loud here...maybe war is not the best way to address this problem.”

“I'm concerned about this never-ending horizon of war: Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan...I flat out oppose all of these wars, at the level of principle not strategy. However, as long as what we are debating is whether to shift military resources and personnel to yet another frontier, I figured I'd add my $0.02. In case the people in charge forgot, the original purpose of the war in Afghanistan (the war that Obama was so eager to get back to because it was supposedly the war we SHOULD have been fighting all along) was to route the transnational terrorist outfit, Al Qaida. And this is the reason that Afganistan is NOT the new Vietnam: Al Qaida is not a nationalist movement. Al Qaida doesn't have loyalty to or roots in any particular place, and given their mobility and their flexibility in recruiting and fund-raising, the geography of "War on Terror" would always be undefined ("we will fight them wherever they are!" and all that jingoism).”

“Please. You are implying that these acts are all equal, and they are simply not. There is a history behind black-face, one that is linked to portraying black people as simple-minded baffoons. Furthermore, in its more contemporary manifestations (i.e. Fred Armison on SNL etc.) it often reflects the unwillingness of higher-ups to employ people of color. I mean, why not just hire a black model for this shoot. The whole point of her article is to say that the actual fact that they did this shoot in black face was probably not intended to be racist, but that the real problem is that no real effort is made to employ black people in positions of power, where they might be able to offer alternative perspectives on this sort of artistic decision. And comparing black-face to miming is just dismissive and willfully ignorant.

Beyond this article, I would venture to say that these photos represent a kind of colonialist nostalgia, as (especially the center one) they resemble some of the orientalist (semi-erotic) photography or different peoples in France's African and Middle-Eastern empire. So, even if they are not making a specific reference to America's sad tradition of black face and minstrelsy, that doesn't get them off the hook for reveling uncritically in France's own legacy of oppression and racism.”

“He doesn't seem to divided to me. Seems pretty clear whose side he's on.”