Nor a Putin loving Russian stooge…
I sometimes think you go too far and kind of get into truther-like territory, but at a basic level I agree with you and your analysis of the problems that plague us.
This labelling by our own left is pretty awful, and I don’t think they realize how much this is doing to fracture what should otherwise be a coalition. I don’t think they realize how much damage it did to Hillary in the election — I did vote for her, but because of the rhetoric against Sanders supporters on her side, I was really tempted not to.
Here’s Howard Dean on Twitter toward Glenn Greenwald:
Would be interesting to find out if the intercept gets money from Russia or Iran
Seriously — that’s our left essentially red-baiting. The red baiters were the people we, people who voted for Howard Dean, hated growing up.
Like you, I don’t agree with Trump supporters, or the alt-right, but there is common ground to be found. Trump and Sanders got support from a similar angst about the way the world is being run. That the people with blue checkboxes didn’t represent us anymore. We need to try to tap that angst and turn it toward our side. We need to take it from the twisted racism, to a progressive, tolerant left that understands that the what plagues women and the minorities is what is coming to us all if we don’t change the path. Their fight is our fight.
Our side also needs to remember that these people on the right are not some different biological species. Their genes are not determining their politics — believing so is just another form of racism, of dehumanization. They are us, they just have a different view, and that means we should love them like they are us, and believe they can change, just like us. Rejecting them, calling them “horribles”, will not win this fight. This fight will only be won through hearts and minds. We must remember that they are, at least in my case, quite literally their fathers, their brothers, and even their friends. They are not evil, they just chose a different baseball team, a different religion.
Which is to say, we must also remember that politics is faith based. That is true on both sides, which is why we see our own side slinging the same kind of nasty rhetoric that their side slung 40 years ago. It’s a hard, hard, road to convert someone, but you won’t convert them by calling them evil.
When FDR put through the New Deal, it wasn’t because he destroyed the right, it was because he knew how to get the right to his side. It was because between the depression and WWII we saw that we actually had to work together. There were disagreements, but essentially it lasted over 30 years.
We need that back, which means less fracturing, not more. You are not a black hating neo-nazi. And even the Trump lovers or even black hating neo-nazis, aren’t generally evil — they are just massively misguided and we need to bring them back on track, not through labelling, but again, through winning hearts and minds.
Not by becoming them, as the blue checkboxes are accusing, but by bringing them to us.
