Thanks to Steve S. for calling my attention to this terrific addition to the English language:
A Puritopian is a self-described liberal or progressive whose political orientation is to be angry, dissatisfied and unhappy with the state of the nation, because in their view, liberal policies are not being implemented quickly or forcefully enough. They have particular contempt for Democratic presidents.
They are ideological purists who disdain compromise and incremental change, which they see as "selling out" liberal ideas like full employment, an end to war, and liberal social policy. Their views can often sound like utopian fantasy where opposing views never exist.
Puritopians dislike Republicans but reserve their greatest disdain for Democratic presidents, whom they relentlessly attack for not meeting a set of ideological goal posts that are constantly adjusted to ensure that the president will be deemed a disappointment, "not progressive enough" or "just like a Republican" no matter what policy achievements are made.
Puritopians routinely dismiss or ignore congress' role in making or impeding policy, believing presidents can simply "use the bully pulpit" in order to overcome constitutional or legislative obstacles...
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12 comments:
The Green Lantern theory again.
I have been looking for the perfect word to describe the political cartoonist Ted Rall (https://www.gocomics.com/ted-rall), with whom I generally agree, but this describes him to a T. Thanks!
Not sure such a new word to categorize a specific scarecrow. Stuffed with a selective straw. hand stuffed by the patient hands of another category of political elves accomplishes what?
Personally, I do not call myself a Democrat, Liberal, Republican, conservative, or any of the limited boundaries set forth by those who require club memberships.
Although I identify and find more favorable future in the "left" spectrum, register as Democrat, vote that direction. I just do not run around calling myself any of those.
I leave that up to the category authorities.
I have been called a Malcontent . Carried the dirty hippie moniker from others. So many other titles of the damned. Long hair, protesting in Berkeley or Golden Gate Park Freaky people of anarchy.
My issues, goals ideas of change materializing at a Hendrix concert in Oakland enjoying
moments with all the categories of other malcontents that choose to not accept and assimilate to the faint remnants f Jim Crow ideology among those issues of change..
Impatience is as much as a friend as it can be an enemy. It begins with impatience for change. Those that would use ones impatience against them as a negative to silence the desire for progress own the impatience that wants to hang on to things like the familiar. As Jim Crow laws sufficed for a time after the Civil War.
If you are pointing out that some voters would chose not to vote between Hillary or Trump, .
Vote Trump in spite of their values for Hillary was not the perfect liberal. These are definately folks that decide to choose supporting the worst so to endure the punishment of that "worst" so next round powers that be will offer better choices they can support.
In my view, they want to punish others to make the future better.
I have never found any reasonable equation for this behavior would ever make better outcomes. The delusion of history bandits telling us that the rise of Hitler was great for the world because the effort to defeat and the defeat is the sole equation for all the improving progress which followed.
To put it bluntly, repeating history as Bringing back slavery, fighting another civil war is not required to move forward from the original historical change that came forth from that. We are capable of continuing improving and building on the foundation that exists.
The malcontent ( me) continues the notion "We the People" are capable of great things and should not set our goals and ambitions on Complacency.
Wigs, Bull Moose party, John Birch Society Federalist Society, Fiscal Conservatives, TEA party, QANON, White Nationalists, Putin-istas.
* Renaming the Covair would never resolve it's bad engine design that leaked oil faster than you could poor it in.
So a few things about this:
1. You're not talking about liberals or progressives, but those further left, such as socialists, anarchists and communists. I realize that liberals and progressives like to believe that they are the reasonable limit of left-wing thought, but they are in fact far more unimaginative and risk-averse than they care to admit.
In short, you're rearguarders: hostile to activism right up until the problem becomes too widespread to ignore. You don't blaze trails, you just co-opt them when it becomes comfortable to do so.
Case in point: the concern-trolling about the #DefundthePolice slogan. Liberals believe BLM thinks like they do and just want modest police reform. They're far more radical than you'd like to believe. Many are the very socialists and anarchists I described and are actually demanding nothing less than abolition of the constables that patrol their neighbourhoods and cause them so much harm. They've been ahead of the curve on this for years. They certainly were in my city, taking on the police force during Pride, stopping the parade to much gnashing of teeth. Fast forward four years, look where we are.
2. The reason that """Puritopians""" hurl more vitriol at Democrats than Republicans is that the liberal consensus already marks Republicans as blood-drinking monsters. Furthermore, they also realize that trolling Republicans on social media does nothing. Republicans won't listen to them, so what's the point? However, liberals might listen to a leftist who reminds them "Oh yeah, that Obama guy was kinda drone-happy, wasn't he?"
3. Votes are the only leverage you have. Don't take my word for it; Lawrence O'Donnell himself said it in a clip making the social media rounds. But as long as the Democrats can contrast themselves against the brutal cruelty of the Republicans, they can be merely passively evil and still expect a ballot. You really just going to let them take your vote for granted like that cycle after cycle?
4. We leftists can certainly play within the existing power structures rather than vote third party. It's called "primary challenging incumbent Dems"... which of course liberals hate, particularly if it's one of their celebrity Dems like Nancy Pelosi. At which point we can only conclude you're not as interested in change as you claim you are.
5. This is why I stopped listening to your podcast after ten years of weekly listening. Your politics just are not suited to the moment anymore.
Your self-righteous flounce is duly noted and cheerfully ignored.
Ahh...the sweet chirpings of the young and enraged. Just enough understanding to accurately point out the failings of the establishment left but experience anemic and lacking sophistication. Your post nearly got me burning to drill deep into your list but you clearly have your position staked out. I'm done wasting time talking to republicans and extreme right wingers and almost as equally done with entrenched, myopic, my view is the only valid view leftists. You must love Greenwald and Dore.
Re Anonymous 3:00. Your point #1 sounds an awful lot like the sort of ENDLESS bickering over what constituted the correct sort of leftist thinking that afflicted the Green Party where I live - which only served to chase a ton of people out, frankly. Coalition building? Who need that sh!t.
I'm an anarcho-syndicalist, so I'm probably to left of 99.9% of the population.
I also don't attack the people who are my natural allies, because I'm not an idiot who thinks my morals ethics and principles are more powerful than actual people who can donate time/money/effort to make things better.
You keep on thinking your as-always ineffectual holier-than-thou attitude means anything outside of your own bubble. I'll keep on appreciating the majority of people who are decent if not too traditional for me, who will help us get to where we need to be.
Keep making fun of the people who might help you, see how far your morals ethics and principles get you.
Just to dispense with the usual well-poisoning (which I should note do not actually address my points), I'm 35, Canadian, have been voting Liberal (the centrist party) since I was 18 because I am actually a believer in harm-reduction and I know my riding, and neither listen to nor trust Glenn Greenwald or Jimmy Dore (Greenwald's Brazil reporting notwithstanding).
In short, I am neither naive, nor given to youthful flights of fancy and parasocial relationships. What I am is exhausted of watching my career and future kneecapped repeatedly, first by educational cuts, then by the 2008 crash, now by climate change, and the current liberal paradigm clearly not up to the task of addressing any of these.
On the contrary, what I've come to realize over the past 10 years or so is that liberals cannot be counted on to be there when there is any degree of risk involved. Sure, they'll put on a pink hat and march when they can make a big show of it in a crowd of thousands maybe once a year, but when it comes time to face down either institutional power or a gang of neo-Nazis, it's the "Puritopians" that actually put their safety on the line and bear the brunt of rubber bullets and teargas.
And when I say 10 years, I mean 10 years. Occupy, Idle No More, BLM, the Unite the Right counter-rally. Liberals at best ignored and at worst concern-trolled each of these. They even gleefully put the torch to MeToo by deploying every rape myth in the book against Tara Reade when simply remaining agnostic would have sufficed! I've seen this movie over and over again and it always ends the same.
This is what I mean by rearguarders. Not that it's even necessarily a moral failing; it's simply a matter of risk analysis. If you're middle-class or have dependents, you won't risk as much because you have more to lose. I don't pretend to be brave enough to face a line of riot cops, nor have an inkling of the organizational expertise necessary to construct a people-fuelled movement from the ground up to take on the most entrenched moneyed interests since the Gilded Age. But what I do know is that nothing short of that is necessary if humanity is to survive the coming climate crisis, so I support them in whatever means I can.
The TL;DR is this: if liberals are my 'natural allies', n1ck, then they need to demonstrate by staying out of the way of the activist vanguard. MLK knew this 60 years ago in his letter from a Birmingham Jail. No concern-trolling direct action. No cute nicknames for those activists and organizers out there on the front lines of liberation movements. Lead, follow or get out of the way. Just stop being an obstacle.
--Katamount
I'm not saying ideology doesn't have to yield to practical matters of attracting and keeping people in the fold. Frankly, that's why Bernie was the big test. When leftists say "Bernie was the compromise", they mean precisely that: he was calling liberals on their commitment to one of the most basic tenets of humanism, that being the dignity of a full life that universal single-payer health care brings. M4A was the one thing that could rally practically everybody and Bernie was the only candidate you could be sure would fight for it tooth and nail. All liberals had to do was give up their vanity candidates, but they couldn't even do that much as they each imploded one after another.
If there's a coalition to be built, liberals will be the last ones to join it.
--Katamount
@ Katamount:
"If there's a coalition to be built, PURITOPIANS will be the last ones to join it." FTFY.
"Sure, they'll put on a pink hat and march when they can make a big show of it in a crowd of thousands maybe once a year, but when it comes time to face down either institutional power or a gang of neo-Nazis, it's the "Puritopians" that actually put their safety on the line and bear the brunt of rubber bullets and teargas."
Dispute. There have been plenty of "risk-averse" people getting their heads cracked and their lungs gassed over the past few years for simply being at the front "when they can". Not everyone "can", all the time (I know I can't). A crowd of thousands is what makes the point that it's a movement. I'm damn glad when I'm able to get out there, and I'm gratified to see hundreds or thousands of others. It makes it seem fully realized that's it not just us few who read DG or a few other candle-in-the-darkness sites out there and try and get quietly shit done for ourselves and those around us, helping to change minds one at a time, and get people out to vote, one by one.
"...nor have an inkling of the organizational expertise necessary to construct a people-fuelled movement from the ground up to take on the most entrenched moneyed interests since the Gilded Age."
Warren was the big test, not Bernie. There's your organizational expertise to take on the most entrenched moneyed interests since the Gilded Age, right there. And I'll grant you, we failed her; not the other way around. Please note: Bernie was not the "ONLY candidate you could be sure would fight for it tooth and nail." And Warren most certainly was NOT a vanity candidate. Full disclosure, I voted for Bernie. Twice ('16 & '20). I would have preferred being able to vote for Warren this time around, but she had already dropped out. I voted for Clinton. And this time I'll vote for Biden. No prob here.
And all that said, I'll stand by my opening "FTFY" statement. Many of us who are not on "the front lines" have had to compromise while we watch our future(s) decline for ourselves and our children. I believe that's what building a coalition is...compromise. We're trusting that we'll be able to move the mass of us forward a step at a time, not be racing to follow without establishing the sure footing for all. Change is far too slow for myself, too. And time is running out, I know this. I still contend it's better than actual anarchy or Balkanization of this country. Will the "puritopians" look at it the same way and make the compromise and vote for Biden and others down-ticket? And get others out there to do the same to insure that no matter how badly the Republicans try and ratfk the election(s), that our sheer numbers will leave no doubt?
We're all still supposed to be in this TOGETHER...right?
@ Unknown 3:33
Well, it's been a couple weeks. How many of you are still out there? Yeah, that's what I thought.
"Warren was the big test, not Bernie. There's your organizational expertise to take on the most entrenched moneyed interests since the Gilded Age, right there."
Oh dear, you actually believe that. Despite her lacklustre "grassroots" movement, retreating on M4A, humiliating losses including her own state.
I'll say it as plainly as I can: she's a bad politician. A competent administrator and alright in Senate votes, but awful on the stump.
"I believe that's what building a coalition is...compromise."
Spoken like somebody oblivious to the nature of political power. That's what it's about: power. The corporate Dems have it and we don't until we wrest it from them. Until then, they can count on you to support them no matter how far right they go, provided an even further right party is there to act as their heel. "It's either us or them." Once you realize the Dems exist to manage your expectations, their repeated failures and missed opportunities make a lot more sense.
"We're all still supposed to be in this TOGETHER...right?"
I dunno, are we?
--Katamount
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