Charlie, I hate to say it but you're doing it again. 'Democrats are in their own echo chamber.' Question. Is the GOP not also in an echo chamber? You quite literally go from 'Cheney is no longer a republican, the architect of the CRT panic wants to abolish public schools, and Paul Gosar is a member in good standing, while GOP elites are …
Charlie, I hate to say it but you're doing it again. 'Democrats are in their own echo chamber.' Question. Is the GOP not also in an echo chamber? You quite literally go from 'Cheney is no longer a republican, the architect of the CRT panic wants to abolish public schools, and Paul Gosar is a member in good standing, while GOP elites are backing the president and the pillow salesman' to 'Those democrats are just so out of touch!'
Let's be quite clear. The issue is not that Democrats are in an echo chamber, because if anything, they at least feel a need to look outside of it. The right wing media bubble is larger, and more potent, than any democratic echo chamber. The issue is that the right, by virtue of being a monolith and having spent decades creating this bubble, can now live entirely inside of it.
Which is why millions of voters look at someone like Gosar and go 'yeah that's my guy' and look at Cheney and go 'Rino.' Because their bubble is bigger, and stronger.
If anything, the problem is not that Democrats live in a bubble. It's that they've failed to make their bubble larger and more durable, and thus shape the conversations in society the way the GOP have. If the Democrats have a vacation house in their bubble, the GOP has one they live in year round.
The other problem is that we're dealing with an asymmetrical playing field. I posit that it doesn't really matter what the democrats do or don't do at this point; the issue is that half the country doesn't particularly care about elections or voting or democracy. Saying 'democracy is at stake' to most people is just code for 'the people you don't like are going to win.' This isn't a good arguement if most people can't tell the difference between the GOP and Democrats. We're about a hundred years into the idea that government has always been broken and what we need are more outsiders, that political parties don't matter and whoever is in charge things will stay the same. Which means that trying to talk about democracy to a population that shrugs and figures there's not much difference between right and left isn't a good idea.
On the left, this mentality has traditionally taken the form of the 'politics is a scam' 'the military industrial complex' ect. On the right, it's now become a matter of a deep state and new world order ideas. But in general, both sides have a problem where the voters don't particularly see any difference between America and say, Russia. Do elections matter? Do people care? That's a bigger issue than bubbles, because it's undoubtedly true that the right has primed their people to think that it really doesn't matter, and that force is justified in order to 'save' the republic.
In other words, the right doesn't want a Caesar. It wants an Octavian. And much like Caesar and Octavian, they were beloved by 'the people' who didn't care about democracy.
You can't sustain a democracy when the people don't care about it. And when you talk about 'elites' you miss that the elites are simply trying to maintain their own power over things, because they know that if they all turned against Trump and the tide of nationalism, they'd simply be replaced or killed by the people who no longer have a need for them. It's a choice between a slow decent and a french revolution scenerio, but in the end, the problem is not 'the elites' but the people beneath them who no longer see any benefit in democracy or any value in things like republician ideals.
The democrats aren't the problem. The problem is that our people don't care about who's in charge.
"You can't sustain a democracy when the people don't care about it."
You can't care about a democracy when things like Vietnam, 50 years of Reaganomics, Vietnam 2.0 (Iraq), and the 2008 crash happen. Except that's an oligarchy, not a democracy.
Get back to me when guys like Bill Kristol start supporting unions and living wages, and stop treating healthcare and housing as investment vehicles. Everything has been commodified, at the expense of human dignity, in the service of an insanely radical economic ideology, and you wonder why people have checked out?!?
If you want to save democracy, you have to stop supporting ALL the corruption and greed that got us here, and stop sabotaging the incorruptible candidates, even if you disagree with their philosophies.
Hmm, I read it as Dems are NOW in their echo chamber, as the GOP has been since the founding of Fox News. For a reader like me, that's a given.
And the echo chamber they're in isn't MSNBC. It's their party leadership. They've failed to make their bubble larger and more durable because they're so tied to the identity politics of the base.
Tell me how the Dems, in their electoral strategies, have looked outside of that bubble.
Charlie, I hate to say it but you're doing it again. 'Democrats are in their own echo chamber.' Question. Is the GOP not also in an echo chamber? You quite literally go from 'Cheney is no longer a republican, the architect of the CRT panic wants to abolish public schools, and Paul Gosar is a member in good standing, while GOP elites are backing the president and the pillow salesman' to 'Those democrats are just so out of touch!'
Let's be quite clear. The issue is not that Democrats are in an echo chamber, because if anything, they at least feel a need to look outside of it. The right wing media bubble is larger, and more potent, than any democratic echo chamber. The issue is that the right, by virtue of being a monolith and having spent decades creating this bubble, can now live entirely inside of it.
Which is why millions of voters look at someone like Gosar and go 'yeah that's my guy' and look at Cheney and go 'Rino.' Because their bubble is bigger, and stronger.
If anything, the problem is not that Democrats live in a bubble. It's that they've failed to make their bubble larger and more durable, and thus shape the conversations in society the way the GOP have. If the Democrats have a vacation house in their bubble, the GOP has one they live in year round.
The other problem is that we're dealing with an asymmetrical playing field. I posit that it doesn't really matter what the democrats do or don't do at this point; the issue is that half the country doesn't particularly care about elections or voting or democracy. Saying 'democracy is at stake' to most people is just code for 'the people you don't like are going to win.' This isn't a good arguement if most people can't tell the difference between the GOP and Democrats. We're about a hundred years into the idea that government has always been broken and what we need are more outsiders, that political parties don't matter and whoever is in charge things will stay the same. Which means that trying to talk about democracy to a population that shrugs and figures there's not much difference between right and left isn't a good idea.
On the left, this mentality has traditionally taken the form of the 'politics is a scam' 'the military industrial complex' ect. On the right, it's now become a matter of a deep state and new world order ideas. But in general, both sides have a problem where the voters don't particularly see any difference between America and say, Russia. Do elections matter? Do people care? That's a bigger issue than bubbles, because it's undoubtedly true that the right has primed their people to think that it really doesn't matter, and that force is justified in order to 'save' the republic.
In other words, the right doesn't want a Caesar. It wants an Octavian. And much like Caesar and Octavian, they were beloved by 'the people' who didn't care about democracy.
You can't sustain a democracy when the people don't care about it. And when you talk about 'elites' you miss that the elites are simply trying to maintain their own power over things, because they know that if they all turned against Trump and the tide of nationalism, they'd simply be replaced or killed by the people who no longer have a need for them. It's a choice between a slow decent and a french revolution scenerio, but in the end, the problem is not 'the elites' but the people beneath them who no longer see any benefit in democracy or any value in things like republician ideals.
The democrats aren't the problem. The problem is that our people don't care about who's in charge.
"You can't sustain a democracy when the people don't care about it."
You can't care about a democracy when things like Vietnam, 50 years of Reaganomics, Vietnam 2.0 (Iraq), and the 2008 crash happen. Except that's an oligarchy, not a democracy.
Get back to me when guys like Bill Kristol start supporting unions and living wages, and stop treating healthcare and housing as investment vehicles. Everything has been commodified, at the expense of human dignity, in the service of an insanely radical economic ideology, and you wonder why people have checked out?!?
If you want to save democracy, you have to stop supporting ALL the corruption and greed that got us here, and stop sabotaging the incorruptible candidates, even if you disagree with their philosophies.
Hmm, I read it as Dems are NOW in their echo chamber, as the GOP has been since the founding of Fox News. For a reader like me, that's a given.
And the echo chamber they're in isn't MSNBC. It's their party leadership. They've failed to make their bubble larger and more durable because they're so tied to the identity politics of the base.
Tell me how the Dems, in their electoral strategies, have looked outside of that bubble.