Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 343: Guilty Spark

(+) Yeah! (+)

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Well I can't speak for activists but I can tell you right now that they're only going to change the slogan if it isn't doing work for them. I'll disagree with AOC on a point - activists probably do "focus testing" in some form, and for all I know it's a good slogan for the ones still using it. Maybe their goal is specifically to be radical, as BLM was initially. So that isnt happening, Democrats have no control over it.

So who are you telling to drop it?

If we're going with your hypotheticals, no one.

In the real word, the premise behind "defund the police" was polling really well until the actual slogan came up. So I'm telling those activists to get a better slogan on that premise.

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red13n posted...

If we're going with your hypotheticals, no one.

In the real word, the premise behind "defund the police" was polling really well until the actual slogan came up. So I'm telling those activists to get a better slogan on that premise.

The slogan is always going to exist, dude. That is what you don't seem to get. It's out there, and everyone has to deal with it.

The police and prison abolition movements did not spring up overnight! The concept of abolishing police isn't going anywhere either.

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On Biden's lockdown, he can't force that either so I'm not sure what the story there is beyond a pipe dream.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

My point is their goal isn't PR. Activists have to be centered on building a strong and persistent movement. BLM was like this too. Why do they need to change so Democrats get better PR?

So they can actually enact the change they're fighting for? You do realize how important it was for MLK to sway the court of public opinion, right? Yes, I am aware he was still not popular while alive, but his marches were orchestrated in a manner specifically to sway public opinion and empathy and they did that just enough to succeed in the long run. The court of public opinion is arguably the most important thing for any mass movement to succeed. Just think about slavery, women's voting rights, and on and on.

I could not agree more with red13n having caught up on the discussion. Both things are true here: the Dems are garbage at fighting back at their opposition's messaging and activists can pick better slogans which ultimately help manifest the actual outcomes they want.

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https://twitter.com/jamesoliphant/status/1326666064260964359

Charge these fuckers with fraud

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

The slogan is always going to exist, dude. That is what you don't seem to get. It's out there, and everyone has to deal with it.

Huh? I get this.

It doesn't mean you have to keep using it. Come up with something better. They have the power to frame public opinion. Use it (A bit more intelligently this time though).

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StartTheMachine posted...

should've specified he's a libertarian socialist, if this was a jab at that. so this is certainly not out of his ballpark of critiques

No jab, it would just be useful to link to friends

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Corrik7 posted...

It's even funnier when that it meant what it says initially until moderates realized it was god awful and wanted to support their "team", so they slowly tried to find a less extreme position for what it means.

This is really the sad part, and it exemplifies the problem with trying to be anti-establishment under the Democrat umbrella.

Police DO need to be defunded. They are actively making things worse and get an absurd amount of tax dollars. Not just reorganized but defunded. Even moreso with the military.

But it's impossible to have this position now, since it was decided that the palatable version of "defund the police" is to hire a bunch of police psychiatrists. Yes that would be a huge improvement over what we have now, but it's still giving the executive branch disproportionate power and money.

That said, if the actual "defund the police" ends up nowhere and the baby-proofed "defund the police" does end up creating major improvements, then you can't really complain. The marketing people have their job for a reason I guess.

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StartTheMachine posted...

So they can actually enact the change they're fighting for? You do realize how important it was for MLK to sway the court of public opinion, right? Yes, I am aware he was still not popular while alive, but his marches were orchestrated in a manner specifically to sway public opinion and empathy and they did that just enough to succeed in the long run. The court of public opinion is arguably the most important thing for any mass movement to succeed. Just think about slavery, women's voting rights, and on and on.

The civil rights movement was absolutely massive and had a lot of different leaders and strategies making things possible. None of them were "right" or "wrong" approaches. I will concede that a lot of action came due to politicians reaching out to activists but...that still puts the onus on the politicians. It doesn't matter WHAT the "agreeable" activist faction does if politicians don't want to associate with ANY of it because they're generalizing on the most extreme parts. Enormous difference.

Also, have you read Letters from Birmingham Jail?

red13n posted...

Huh? I get this.

It doesn't mean you have to keep using it. Come up with something better. They have the power to frame public opinion. Use it (A bit more intelligently this time though).

Politicians also have the ability to frame public opinion. My point isn't that Dems should use the slogan. My point is they could have prevented it, and didn't, and now they need a new slogan. Conservatives will always try to co-opt "Defund the Police" as a weapon. That is not the fault of the activists, and it is no longer their problem if they don't want it to be.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Politicians also have the ability to frame public opinion. My point isn't that Dems should use the slogan. My point is they could have prevented it, and didn't, and now they need a new slogan. Conservatives will always try to co-opt "Defund the Police" as a weapon. That is not the fault of the activists, and it is no longer their problem if they don't want it to be.

Again, not disagreeing. The politicians could have and need to be better.

I just don't like the framing like "the acitivists had no impact". They do. There is a lesson to be learned for them here too.

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red13n posted...

Again, not disagreeing. The politicians could have and need to be better.

I just don't like the framing like "the acitivists had no impact". They do. There is a lesson to be learned for them here too.

What lesson is that?

Again, the initial message was ABOLISH THE POLICE. They compromised. They knew Reform wasn't good enough.. Went to Defund. This happened.

What lesson is there to be learned? Opponents will always co-opt your shit?

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

What lesson is there to be learned? Opponents will always co-opt your shit?

Yes.

They actually took some Republican bait here too. There was a lot of talk of "well we don't even know what you are marching for" which was a lie. They were already winning in the court of public opinion for a multitude of policies.

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As far as I can tell, there's a not insignificant minority of activists that really do want "abolish", and they basically successfully maneuvered the rest of the movement into defending the "defund" language, which the average person hears as "abolish" and is way more freaked out than they would be by "reform." But now everyone's committed to defending it even though it's the biggest messaging self-own in recent memory.

I agree in principle that activists don't have an intrinsic responsibility to have palatable messaging for the purposes of getting politicians reelected (that's the politicians' job), but it's in their best interests to do so. Having toxic messaging creates a very strong incentive for politicians to distance themselves as far from these activists as possible.

What I very strongly disagree with is that it's the public's job to do the work to find out what the activists "actually" mean by "defund the police." It's very obvious what the surface meaning will be to people, it's obvious that it would be unpopular, and it's obvious that most people aren't going to put in that work and are going to be turned off from a cause they might otherwise support. If activists are the ones that want the change, and their priority is to actually succeed in affecting that change, then it's their responsibility to be effective messengers.

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I really don't know how else to spell it out that no slogan is ever going to be good enough, because the right's strategy starts at demonizing the opponent.

Black Lives Matter? All Lives Matter!
ACAB? Back the Blue!
No Justice, No Peace? Pretty uncontroversial IMO. The cops in my city put up a fucking billboard that said "No Police, No Peace"

You can't win this game

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LordoftheMorons posted...

What I very strongly disagree with is that it's the public's job to do the work to find out what the activists "actually" mean by "defund the police"

What is the job of politicians

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Looks like Alaska was called for Trump and the Repub Senator so its officially 50-48 Republicans atm based on projections and concessions.

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Guys I just had a very productive conversation with a conservative on YouTube after giving him a shout out for being subscribed to both Kyle Kulinski/David Pakman and Michael Knowles/Ben Shapiro, and at least trying to understand the perspective of lefties.

He is now subscribed to Vaush. Free Sorosbux for life imho

The things that are possible when we still live in the same reality.


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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Black Lives Matter? All Lives Matter!
ACAB? Back the Blue!

They were winning in the court of public opinion on both of these. Maybe not ACAB specifically, but ACAB is vague enough that the public doesn't understand either way on a surface level til they look it up).

"All Lives Matter" and "Back the Blue(more specifically, the dumb blue line flag)" are both considered extremist movements.

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StartTheMachine posted...

Guys I just had a very productive conversation with a conservative on YouTube after giving him a shout out for being subscribed to both Kyle Kulinski/David Pakman and Michael Knowles/Ben Shapiro, and at least trying to understand the perspective of lefties.

He is now subscribed to Vaush. Free Sorosbux for life imho

The things that are possible when we still live in the same reality.

god every day I fuckin' WISH that soros was paying us for the shit we have to put up with

red13n posted...

"Back the Blue(more specifically, the dumb blue line flag)" are both considered extremist movements.

No.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

I really don't know how else to spell it out that no slogan is ever going to be good enough, because the right's strategy starts at demonizing the opponent.

Black Lives Matter? All Lives Matter!
ACAB? Back the Blue!
No Justice, No Peace? Pretty uncontroversial IMO. The cops in my city put up a fucking billboard that said "No Police, No Peace"

You can't win this game

How can you not see the difference between the first one here and the second two? The first one is a statement with which nearly everyone will agree in its literal form, as written. The second one is a statement 95% of people will think is literally false, as written. The third one advocates lawbreaking and violence.

And what do you know, one of these slogans has gotten mainstream support. The other two have not.

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Yes.

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okay I am now choosing to stop thinking about politics for the rest of the night and choose to believe in the innate good of people and the possibility that we can at least have conversations with one another

Alex Jones becoming the GOP nomination in 2024 and horrifying us all when he gets 60 million plus votes is totally not in the back of my head

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

What is the job of politicians

The job of politicians is to actually enact policy. They're responsible for defending their own policy positions and messaging, but in reality will be tied to the messaging of less popular groups with which they are aligned (or imagined to be aligned). If those groups are pushing messages that are going to make it very hard for them to be elected, they have a strong incentive to dissociate from those groups, which makes the groups less powerful. I'm saying that messaging like "defund" goes against the activists' own interests.

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Man if you guys are gonna sit here and say BLM was never controversial or radical I really don't know what to say

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Man if you guys are gonna sit here and say BLM was never controversial or radical I really don't know what to say

They typically have had relatively broad public support.

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Black Lives Matter is a fine slogan; in retrospect "Black Lives Matter Too" would have headed off some attacks, but that one became so divisive because of a combination of the power of the right wing media machine and people just sucking.

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Man if you guys are gonna sit here and say BLM was never controversial or radical I really don't know what to say

It was radical in the 1860s. Controversial through the 1960s. But if you go back to 2005 and ask anyone if they agree with that, the answer you're going to get is like 95% yes. Sure, there will be some white supremacists who don't agree, but uh, there's a big big difference between 5% of the population and 90% of the population.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

The job of politicians is to actually enact policy. They're responsible for defending their own policy positions and messaging, but in reality will be tied to the messaging of less popular groups with which they are aligned (or imagined to be aligned). If those groups are pushing messages that are going to make it very hard for them to be elected, they have a strong incentive to dissociate from those groups, which makes the groups less powerful. I'm saying that messaging like "defund" goes against the activists' own interests.

So what happens when dissociating from those groups still hurts their election chances, specifically because their opponents do not believe they are actually unassociated?

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The reason the Democratic Party is so bad at messaging is because it's a Big Tent Party. Republicans largely are in line with one another, with only a few differences. Democratic voters can range from people who like the ACA as it is, to people who want a public option but wouldn't touch Universal Healthcare with a ten foot pole, to people who want Universal Healthcare. We kind of have to fight each other over messaging, and it comes across as confusing to the American People. But then we also have to unite to fight against the Republican Party because they are antithetical to everything we all stand for.

Americans get mixed messaging, and Republicans know how to take advantage of that and split our big party into smaller parties. And a lot of people play into it. But it's hard not to, when we disagree on so many things at a fundamental level, even when we also agree on a lot of things. It's those things we agree on that keep us from falling apart. But as soon as you get outside that realm, the game blame begins and the people in charge aren't going to listen to the voice of reason saying "Our messaging is a problem. Not our platform."

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red13n posted...

"All Lives Matter" and "Back the Blue(more specifically, the dumb blue line flag)" are both considered extremist movements.

Really? Who thinks of those as "extremist" ideas? They seem pretty mainstream to me, and much more popular than "Defund the Police".
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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

So what happens when dissociating from those groups still hurts their election chances, specifically because their opponents do not believe they are actually unassociated?

Then they're kinda screwed, the opposing politicians win, and the activists get to deal with someone who isn't even willing to give them the time of day instead of someone with whom they might have been able to compromise

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LordoftheMorons posted...

The job of politicians is to actually enact policy. They're responsible for defending their own policy positions and messaging, but in reality will be tied to the messaging of less popular groups with which they are aligned (or imagined to be aligned). If those groups are pushing messages that are going to make it very hard for them to be elected, they have a strong incentive to dissociate from those groups, which makes the groups less powerful. I'm saying that messaging like "defund" goes against the activists' own interests.

And then those activists don't vote for those politicians, and those politicians lose their own power.

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Xeybozn posted...

Really? Who thinks of those as "extremist" ideas? They seem pretty mainstream to me, and much more popular than "Defund the Police".

If you say "All Lives Matter" on TV, you are going to be immediately cancelled forever.

This is pretty much the best take I could give you on which is considered "Extreme".

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all I know is my brain is always going to go first to Assigned Cop At Birth

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Ashethan posted...

And then those activists don't vote for those politicians, and those politicians lose their own power.

Well, yeah, that's kinda the problem. As you noted in your last post, it's a big tent. The politicians need to keep as much of the tent happy as they can. If the people on opposite ends of the tent become so irreconcilable that no politician within the tent can keep a majority in their community, they're gonna get someone totally outside the tent instead.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Then they're kinda screwed, the opposing politicians win, and the activists get to deal with someone who isn't even willing to give them the time of day instead of someone with whom they might have been able to compromise

LordoftheMorons posted...

Black Lives Matter is a fine slogan; in retrospect "Black Lives Matter Too" would have headed off some attacks, but that one became so divisive because of a combination of the power of the right wing media machine and people just sucking.

I dont understand why you guys continuously paint the Democrats as completely powerless in comparison to Republicans and activists. Republicans have a powerful media machine and thr Dems have nothing. The mere existence of activists causes Democrats to lose elections and they can't do anything about it. I'm clearly not gonna change your minds on this so I'm done

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

I dont understand why you guys continuously paint the Democrats as completely powerless in comparison to Republicans and activists. Republicans have a powerful media machine and thr Dems have nothing. The mere existence of activists causes Democrats to lose elections and they can't do anything about it. I'm clearly not gonna change your minds on this so I'm done

yeah dude, activists just have the same resources and motivations as the democrats so like, they need to just pick up their end of the bargain man! their side is dragging us all down

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Republicans have a powerful media machine and thr Dems have nothing.

I know you were being sarcastic but this is actually true.

There is no Democratic equivalent to Fox News.

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Looks like Biden's CoS is likely going to be Ron Klain.

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red13n posted...

There is no Democratic equivalent to Fox News.

I mean what would that even look like?

I guess Palmer Report?

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Ashethan posted...

I mean what would that even look like?

I guess Palmer Report?

Never really contemplated. I'd prefer a world where Fox News doesn't exist to a world where you have a network that is basically government sponsored propaganda.

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red13n posted...

I know you were being sarcastic but this is actually true.

There is no Democratic equivalent to Fox News.

only because they don't care to have one. fundamentally, the democratic establishment (and their media arms) don't care for progressive policies. why would they spend money fighting it?

it's not some like...magical inherent thing that the republicans are better at the media. the democrats absolutely have all the same resources. they just squander them because it doesn't actually suit their interests to do otherwise.

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pxlated posted...

only because they don't care to have one. fundamentally, the democratic establishment (and their media arms) don't care for progressive policies. why would they spend money fighting it?

it's not some like...magical inherent thing that the republicans are better at the media. the democrats absolutely have all the same resources. they just squander them because it doesn't actually suit their interests to do otherwise.

This is basically Donald Trump's argument that they rigged an election solely against him while ignoring all the Senate races that were more important.

And you had the nerve to call me delusional.

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...what?

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Ashethan posted...

The reason the Democratic Party is so bad at messaging is because it's a Big Tent Party. Republicans largely are in line with one another, with only a few differences. Democratic voters can range from people who like the ACA as it is, to people who want a public option but wouldn't touch Universal Healthcare with a ten foot pole, to people who want Universal Healthcare. We kind of have to fight each other over messaging, and it comes across as confusing to the American People. But then we also have to unite to fight against the Republican Party because they are antithetical to everything we all stand for.

red13n posted...

There is no Democratic equivalent to Fox News.

Just going to leave these 2 quoted messages together, for no reason in particular.

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You are basically trying to argue Democrats have a whole bunch of power and aren't using it.

Its an overestimation of their ability.

The fact is the left doesn't want a biased network like Fox news, we'd never tune in. We are anti-authoritarian in that regard. It goes against our principles. We don't have left wing fox news because we -cant- have left wing fox news.

This isn't to say Democrats arent ineffective at using the media. This is the correct take. But to believe the left could have a fox news equivalent is delusional.

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i'm not saying the democrats could have a hyper partisan news network if it wanted to i'm saying the democrats absolutely could have the equivalent presence and control over the media narrative if they wanted to. they already *do* have the same kind of influence over the media narrative, they just use it badly.

also the idea that people on the left don't want partisan news is definitely not true, but not particularly relevant to the point i was making.

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pxlated posted...

also the idea that people on the left don't want partisan news is definitely not true, but not particularly relevant to the point i was making.

It is true or else these networks would have gone that way already.

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And I'm not saying partisan as in "Far left mouthpieces", I mean it as in "mouthpiece for the democratic party".

If the Democrats could get away with making a network do that, they absolutely would have.

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