Yea, verily.
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
So. The Pope told Congress to welcome immigrants, house the homeless, feed the poor, and stop selling weapons to murderous regimes.
It is almost as if he is Catholic.
Now I’m not Catholic, or even Christian, but I had the standard Sunday school upbringing and I’ve read both the the New and Old Testament.
Reading both is a good way to leave yourself with a lot of sympathy for the Gnostic types who believed there was no way the God of the Old Testament (bash out their brains) could be the same guy that Jesus was talking about.
Because I don’t believe that God made sure the Bible is inerrant (I know just a little too much about early church politics), I tend to concentrate on the parts that seem closest to what Jesus actually said.
Perhaps, like many, I read in what I want to see. But I think it’s minimal, because I got imprinted young. It’s more likely that reading about Jesus as a child formed my opinions of right conduct than the other way around.
It seems to me that what Jesus was most concerned with, in terms of the way to treat other people, is summed up pretty well by the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would they do unto you), and the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
It’s always seemed to me that it’s better to be a good Samaritan (a non-believer who is kind to those in need), than to be a Pharisee, obsessed with the rules, but not kind in action.
Francis isn’t a radical Pope. He hasn’t said abortion is ok, or even birth control, or homosexuality. He’s pretty doctrinaire. What he has done is shift emphasis to the issues Jesus spent more time talking about, and extended those issues to modern concerns like climate change.
A good person, according to the Sermon of the Mount, can’t be a climate denialist, let alone be funding climate denialism. The people who are going to suffer the most from the climate crisis are “the least of these.”
To put it crudely, if you make climate refugees homeless, you’re making Jesus homeless. Those who die, well, you just killed a lot of Jesus.
When you lock people up in solitary confinement, you are locking Jesus up in solitary confinement.
When you torture someone, you’re torturing Jesus.
When you rape someone, yup, Jesus.
But when you feed someone who would have gone hungry, yes, you’re feeding Jesus.
When you give a refugee a home, you’re giving Jesus a home.
This is a powerful, and simple message. Everyone was made in the image of God. Everyone is God’s child. What you do to them, you do to Jesus, God’s only begotten son.
The holy, sacralized life, is one where you see God in other people, in the environment, and so on. Everything you see is God’s work. To mistreat it is to disrespect God. To mistreat God’s children is to mistreat Jesus.
We have had a number of Popes who a harsh, judgmental man might consider virtual Pharisees themselves. Picking no bones with church doctrine (though I might another day), emphasis matters.
Benedict, as Ratzinger, oversaw the destruction of liberation theology. This is how he made his bones, taking hope away from those who needed it most in the Latin American world. Depriving them of much of the powerful ideological, theological, and practical support of the church.
As you do unto these, the least of my children…
I suspect a result of the dismantling of liberation theology and its practitioners has paved the way for Evangelicals to make vast inroads into parts of Latin America, while the church can’t fill its ranks.
Young idealistic men, the sort of people you want as priests, don’t seem to want to be in the church.
My approval is unimportant, but I do approve of this Pope, despite the fact that I certainly disagree with him on many issues. Kindness is always admirable. Forgiveness is at the heart of the Church, and Francis has moved towards that. Yes, the Church disapproves of abortion, divorce, and so on, but Francis, step-by-step, is turning those back into sins which are much more easily forgivable.
We all sin. We all do wrong. What sins the Church, as God’s voice on earth considers more serious, as cause for being cut off from the sacraments, tells you what the Church thinks is most important.
It is here that I suggest one watch Francis’s efforts most closely, because it is here that will tell you what he most believes. He probably won’t change Church doctrine (some deny he can, that’s not an argument I care to get into today, especially as I’m hardly an expert on the Catholic church), but he can change its emphasis significantly.
Is abortion more important than war, homelessness, or the murder of the already born?
These issues, and how they are handled, will be the truest guide to Francis’s own soul, and for those who believe in the Catholic church and its version of God, they will matter greatly.
So, I pray for Francis. Under his care, may Catholicism come to treat Jesus far better than it often has in the past. And in so doing, may many lives be blessed with the kindness and love that should be at the heart of any religion’s teaching.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
BlizzardOfOz
Ian, your article here is part of a well-established genre of anti-Christians lecturing actual practicing Christians on true Christian values. And, no surprise, the writer invariably determines the meaning to be nothing more nor less than secular leftism.
The rise of secular leftism has corresponded with the collapse of Christianity in the West. The fact that secular leftists are gushing with praise for the current Pope should be a strong indicator.
The bureaucratic left, which takes the fruit of working people’s labor, and then redistributes it to whatever Godless cause they see fit (after taking a generous cut for themselves and their friends, of course) — does not equal “kindness”. As a long time reader, I know that, in your thinking, kindness actually is statecraft as a first approximation. Did you ever notice Jesus or the apostles teaching statecraft? Petitioning Caesar for more bread?
You left out a crucial step, without which there cannot be forgiveness, and that is repentance. It’s with this handy elision, that the modern left distorts the cause of Satan (equality) to that of Christ.
Surely you do not seriously count disapproval of divorce as a weakness? Sexual morality has been a non-negotiable underpinning of Christianity since the beginning. I wonder how much you have considered this, or if you understand why it should be. I would say that sexual license is the gateway to all sorts of untold horrors, and what we are seeing today in the West is only the beginning. But again, it illustrates the absurdity of the Pope seeking approval from the left, which only seeks to subvert and destroy what remains of Christianity in the world.
Except Francis did not mention Jesus once in his speech to Congress. Contrast this to Paul the apostle who said “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”
Mandos
Or perhaps it was Christianity that collapsed and instead bequeathed the important parts of its legacy to secular leftism. Which hoc is post and which is propter?
BlizzardOfOz
Mandos,
Christianity has survived for 2,000 years — how long will secular leftism last? Its adherents can’t even muster the motivation to reproduce, and are literally dying out. Meanwhile, there are still actual practicing Christians, and you may have noticed that secular leftists hate them above all else.
Ian Welsh
Thanks Blizzy. But I can hold Christians to Christianity’s tenets in the same way I can hold any ideology’s adherents to their beliefs. It is not required that I be a member of their movement.
In fact much of what liberals claim as /their/ accomplishments would not have happened so quickly without the social gospel. The end of child labor, the end of slavery and so on were all strongly driven in part by Christians who believed that Christ had told them to care for these “the least” of his. These people had a huge influence on FDR, by the way.
The Progressive movement was strongly driven by currents of Christianity as well (in both good and bad ways. See the Temperance Movement.)
In fact, of course, the Enlightenment and so on rose while the Church was still plenty strong, in part in reaction to it.
Most people thru most of the last two centuries in the West were Christians. The struggle of liberalism, even when led by non-believers, was often to get the vast majority to live up to the claims of their own ideology: to bring out the best of Christianity, rather than the worst.
You appear to be running around with a chip on your shoulder. I am a secular leftist, and hey, I don’t hate practicing Christians. Practice away. Just keep an eye on what you do to Jesus, or be called out for it.
Mandos
There are religions that lasted longer. But I don’t think Christianity is in danger, nor do I think that secular leftism is as susceptible to dying out as you think. I think there are conflicts over certain issues that people of some religious perspectives hold to be central, and we’ll see if in the modern world, they really are. If the modern world survives, that is.
Peter*
This Modern Pope along with his Authoritarian Capitalist Church have been losing market share and as all good capitalists know you either grow or perish. This Pope is the smiling snake oil salesman with excellent PR support to project the image of someone who cares about the poor rubes who if they would only follow the leader will enjoy the riches of the bountiful Capitalist/Christian world.
Women don’t fare so well under this authority but just as under capitalism the Church views women as a means of production, vital to growth even if viewed as lesser beings to be controlled or they might show their evil tendencies to control their own bodies.
The Church doesn’t have the market power to force its brand on the peons anymore and flailing Indians to death for not producing enough wealth for them is bad PR today so we see this new approach to keep their profits flowing.
The support he displayed for the US bishops and clergy for their behavior during the child rape investigations is the most telling example of this Pope’s lack of character and morals but he has a corporate solution for Global Warming so piss on those so called victims of Church abuse.
EmilianoZ
The Pope has already had a profound effect on US politics: Boehner’s resignation.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/25/house-speaker-john-boehner-to-resign
Boehner is a devout catholic. He was crying all the time during the visit. Talking with the Pope elevated his soul above politics:
On Friday, the speaker broke down while recalling his meeting with Pope Francis, an encounter that aides said moved Boehner closer to his decision to announce his resignation the following day.
“The Pope puts his arm around me and says, ‘Please pray for me,’” Boehner, a devout Catholic, said. “Who am I to pray for the Pope? But I did.”
He added: “I woke up and said I my prayers … and I decided, today’s the day I’m going to do this,” Boehner said. “It’s as simple as that.”
That’s transcendence.
Tal Hartsfeld
One of the biggest dilemma with the Catholic Church is not only its long history of dogmatisms, but also as being at the heart of the notorious medieval “Inquisition” period. Clearly a precursor to the methods currently used by groups like ISIS, for example.
Sort of a “medieval ISIS”. And perpetrated and carried out by European whites no less. Another “irony of the times” I guess.
BlizzardOfOz
Ian,
Christianity has been concerned with the primacy of Christ and His resurrection, the salvation of souls, sin and repentance, and the Kingdom of God. Can secular leftists reject all of that and still claim the mantle of Christianity?
You mentioned that the Enlightenment partly grew in reaction to Christianity, and I agree. Clearly Marx and Marxism were extremely hostile to it. Modern leftism is the heir to these two, so how can it be their heir of Christianity?
It should be clear that Leftism attempts to appropriate certain aspects of Christianity to subvert, invert, and destroy it. This is evident from the very beginning, when Judas Iscariot attempts to invoke the poor and has to be rebuked by Jesus:
Another example is Milton’s Satan, whom modern readers not surprisingly find very sympathetic — all he wants is Freedom and Equality, is that really too much to ask?
I think it is evident that you are attempting a similar kind of subversion with this argument. You start by appealing to the Christian virtue of charity, distracting from the centrality of Christ. By the end, you are implying that the Pope should embrace sexual immorality.
EmilianoZ
To have glued together this New Testament, a sort of rococo of taste in all respects, with the Old Testament into a single book, as the “Bible,” and “the essential book,” that is perhaps the greatest act of daring and “sin against the spirit” which literary Europe has on its conscience.
Friedrich Nietzsche
BlizzardOfOz
Mandos,
Maybe secular leftism can stave off extinction by continually acquiring converts from more-fertile religious traditionalists. But it seems to lack the will even to secure its own existence.
Do you think secularism can survive if it secular countries continue to bulk-import Muslims? If (when) it comes to a Camp of the Saints scenario, do you think Europe has the will to kill invaders, or will it lay down and allow itself to be overrun?
Nationalist
IN ENGLAND ONE MUST REHABILITATE ONESELF AFTER EVERY LITTLE EMANCIPATION FROM THEOLOGY BY SHOWING IN A VERITABLY AWE-INSPIRING MANNER WHAT A MORAL FANATIC ONE IS. THAT IS THE PENANCE THEY PAY THERE. —WE OTHERS HOLD OTHERWISE. WHEN ONE GIVES UP THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, ONE PULLS THE RIGHT TO CHRISTIAN MORALITY OUT FROM UNDER ONE’S FEET.
—Nietzsche
Leftism is christian morality but without the pay off in the after life that Xians get for being so good. What do you liberals get? Just the moral high and ales sense of superiority?
Mandos
So you’re advocating…what, here? Not that I believe in the plausibility of your scenario, of course.
Mandos
What Blizzard is basically arguing is that for secularism to survive, secular societies must take a page out of conservative religious perspectives and appropriate women’s bodies (and will), thereby negating a primary motivation of having a secular society (in order not to construct a society around appropriating women’s bodies).
But birth rates are more or less dropping everywhere but a few places in Africa, as I understand it, secularism or no.
Ian Welsh
And in two generations your Muslims will be Muslims in name only. In 4 generations, not even that in many cases.
Secularism is stronger stuff than people make out.
EmilianoZ
a Pharisee, obsessed with the rules, but not kind in action
Can we say Germany’s treatment of Greece was Pharisean?
BlizzardOfOz
@EmilianoZ,
That quote from Nietzsche illustrates the problem of anti-Christians interpreting Christianity. They don’t have to take it seriously. They don’t have to consider the whole of the canon and the history, but can just cherry-pick bits of it to suit their agenda.
The blood-and-soil harshness of the Old Testament is the foundation for the New Testament. Cut free of the foundation, and you see the result: secular leftist “Christianity” that rejects tradition, and embraces every trendy new cause, including sodomy (next up: pedophilia).
Stirling Newberry
He is the most peaceful of rightward.
Mandos
I feel that attempting to suggest that modern-day ultra-nationalism is directly justified by religious sources is at least not less problematic than claiming that secular left-wing ideologies are.
cmcg116
I see problems but also truth with what Blizzard says, particularly the sexuality part. I’ve been doing some research on the SJW movement, and it is much more disturbing than I had been led to believe. They are now trying to legitimize pedophilia, which is unacceptable. Look up Sarah Nyberg, and how SJW closed ranks and defended Sarah’s pedophilia. When one SJW who was molested as a child complained, she was ostracized and rejected by SJWs as intolerant and bigoted. They have gone insane, they are a secular movement, and they’re trying to push their sexual agenda to include protection of pedophiles. The left is going insane. They’ve taken the mantle of extremist political correctness in order to not talk about war, poverty, and other things that neoliberals, who are an extension of SJWs, don’t want to talk about because profit. And now they’re allies with pedophiles. It’s time to clean house.
http://theralphretort.com/confirmed-her-name-is-sarah-nyberg-shes-a-pedophile-but-sjws-still-defend-9015015/
Mandos
This is Gamergate propaganda and comes from people with no credibility.
https://medium.com/@srhbutts/i-m-sarah-nyberg-and-i-was-a-teenage-edgelord-b8a460b27e10
Mandos
Here too:
http://idledillettante.com/2015/09/11/5-reasons-i-stand-with-sarah-nyberg/
cmcg116’s tone is too precious and sounds like some kind of Gamergate campaigner attempting to boost the signal from that online movement.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
“Cut free of the foundation, and you see the result: secular leftist “Christianity” that rejects tradition…”
God hates shrimp.
~
willf
What the heck is SJW? Is that some new acronym for Mormons or something?
Ian Welsh
Well, I really didn’t think a post about “love your fucking neighbour” would quite so swiftly go to not being the sort of Catholic who thinks ass-fucking is the most important moral issue because now, now the evil people who think rape threats on the internet are bad are tryng to make pedophilia acceptable.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
@cmcg116: Please get a brain, and a life.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
I think “SJW” means “Social Justice Warrior”, which is a term used by nasty little fascists whose Mommies and Daddies don’t know what the nasty little fascists are doing on the Web down in the basement.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Though perhaps I shouldn’t use the term “fascist”. Unlike the original fascisti and storm troopers, these punks may drink beer, but they would make lousy Putsch material. I would be surprised if 1% of them could punch their way out of a wet paper bag.
Mandos
You didn’t? I automatically assume and expect that’s where these things are going to go. I thought you had decided to set your foot in this sort of thing this time.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
I have some questions for our “Blood And Soil” traditionalist brother: 😉
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/drlaura.asp
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Was Thunder referring to this site?
http://godhatesshrimp.com/
Ian Welsh
Yeah.
No, I thought “love your neighbour and do nice things to people and don’t rape and torture people because Jesus would want you to be kind” might be a feel-good post, at least for sane people.
Hopeless Polyanna, that’s me.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Well, there’s your problem, Ian.
“sane people”
We talking apes have the same powerful emotions of love of life and fear of death as any other mammals, but we, perhaps alone, know that we must die sooner or later.
I hold a pet hypothesis is that this knowledge drives the majority of us more or less crazy. Only a minority of us are capable of becoming Stern Sturdy Stoics. I do not count myself in that minority. My rather heretical Christianity is the lesser madness I use, rather like a vaccine, to keep myself safe from greater madness.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
*sigh* I forgot to edit out an extra “is”.
I can haz edit feechur, plz? 😛
ArtS
It was a feel-good article to me, till I read Blizzard’s and some of the other comments.
I am always surprised at what flaming a-holes so many of the self-proclaimed American
“Christians” are.
In my personal religion, they can all just go straight to hell, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Mandos
That’s because you (subconsciously?) believe that the culture wars aren’t a Thing, but just a distracting and ephemeral bauble designed to fool the masses out of their single payer health care. Blizzard just reminded you that they’re real.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
The Vala-wannabe frosts me sometimes, but yeah, he’s right this time.
I also tend to dismiss the culture wars as purely a confidence scheme designed by disciples of Edward Bernays, hired by the real-world equivalents of Scrooge McDuck and Montgomery Burns, to bamboozle my fellow non-elite white Americans into forgoing a Scandinavian-style welfare state.
My fellow pale peasants, in their vacuum-skulled bigotries, fall for the con because they don’t want those *BONG*s and other “unworthies” getting any of the goodies, even though that means my fellow palefaces don’t get any goodies either.
There is some rough justice here, as the knuckle-walking bigots can be said to get what they deserve.
Unfortunately, people like moi, who deserve better, get the same things the bigots get. 🙁
(*BONG* is a Blazing Saddles reference. “The sheriff is near!” “No, goldang it, I said the sheriff’s a *BONG*!”) 😈
wendy davis
@Peter*
Yes indeed. ‘ The Pope is Dishonest About Zero Tolerance for Child Sex Abuse’; Pam Spees of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Barbara Blaine of SNAP say the Catholic Church and Pope Francis are not serious about addressing the church’s on-going struggles with child sexual abuse
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14775
There’s also a story/interview at TRRN saying that a Vatican spokesperson said that they will not divest fossil fuels from their extensive portfolio. Hard not guffaw at that.
But Francis’s canonization of Junipero Serra was hideous, and so hypocritical after his ‘apology’ for the abuses the church had wrought upon the Indigenous of the Americas.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
@ArtS: If Matthew 25:41-46 is literally true, you’ll get your wish.
However, I expect Hell is something different from the traditional description.
The culture in which the Bible originated did not know that torture was always sinful, just as it did not know that slavery was always sinful.
Also, if Hell reflects the nature of God, then it must be redemptive, rehabilitative, in intent. Torture would just make people meaner, harder to redeem, hence defeating the purpose.
None of that means I don’t very much want to avoid Hell. If nothing worse, the rehab process must be terribly tedious.
Of course, a God Who is genuinely loving and forgiving is a god who is useless for frightening exploited laborers, both formally enslaved and nominally free, into obeying an unrighteous social order, which–sadly–has been a primary purpose of Christianity ever since it became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Mandos
But as I said: the conflict has content of its own outside of its instrumentalisation in class warfare.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
I cheerfully confess ignorance, Namo-sama. What is that content? 😕
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
(An edit feature would be nice for afterthoughts, as well.)
I think I see a little of what our faux Vala is saying, though–something else had to pre-exist independently of the class war, in order for that something else to be weaponized by the hired liars of the plutocrats. I still admit ignorance as to what that something is.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
I find it interesting, in the account of the Last Judgement given in Matthew 25, that Jesus says absolutely nothing about whether you believed in Him as the Son of God, or in His Heavenly Father.
Nor does He say one word about what you and other consenting, age-appropriate peers did with your genitals.
No, His concern is with “How did you treat your fellow humans?”.
You don’t suppose He’s one of those long-haired hippies, do ya? 😉
Ian Welsh
Oh, I believe in the culture wars. I just didn’t think they had infected my tiny commentariat to this extent.
Robert
This is why I am an anti-natalist. Geez Louise this should have been a very straightforward “Love thy neighbor ” discussion. Is it just me or does EVERY discussion on the ‘net eventually boil down to sex. I thought this post was about “love thy neighbor” not “make love to thy neighbor”.I guess it’s like Gore Vidal said ” a big problem with Americans is everything with them is about sex ” (or, I will add, about screwing someone figuratively or literally.).Great post Mr. Welsh (sorry it got hijacked ), Cheers !
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
As any discussion on the Internet lengthens, the probability that the discussion will involve human sexuality approaches 1.
Shall we call it “Robwin’s Law”?
Spinoza
Aren’t much of the culture wars, especially as related to religion and sex, the strange descendants of the older fight between liberalism and the church? It’s not class war or culture war but both at the same time. The fight has always been against the cleric and capitalist, landlord and slavemaster, patriarch and aristocrat. One single grand war since the beginning of time, or, at least, since the first asshole declared himself the king and the rest as slaves.
markfromireland
@ Spinoza
Two words:
Bismarck, Kulturkampf
mfi
markfromireland
@ Ian:
Why on earth not? Attitudinising is what your commentariat does. It’s what North American “liberals” and “progressives” are for. Well, that and fulfilling their structural function of providing a helpful combination safety valve and fig leaf to your ruling class.
mfi
anonone
This discussion might as well be about the philanthropy or lack thereof of Leprechauns and their pots of gold except for the seriousness and murderous barbarity that Christianists have used throughout their history to spread and defend their superstitions.
Lisa
SJW means ‘Social Justice Warrior’, an alternative for ‘feminist’ and ‘progressive’ (etc). Basically anyone that challenges the the established misogyny, gender and sex roles.
This is a hate term used by MRAs (Mens Rights Activists). Gamergate crowd, conservatives and of course many on the religious right. It is particularly aimed at and anyone supporting womans rights, as well as gays/lesbians/transgender/etc (LGBTI).
Bizarrely it is also sometimes used by some radical anti-transgender feminists (called the TERFs, Trans Exclusionary Radical feminists, though some are now calling themselves ‘gender critical’ and dropping he ‘feminist’ part) as a derogatory term against transgender activists and their feminist supporters.
Any relationship between what they say and actual facts is tenuous at best.
Lisa
Well being part of that group (transgender) specifically and repeatedly picked out by the Pope as a nunber #1 enemy, our response is quite different to all this fawning praise.
“Pope Francis Compares Transgender People To Nuclear Weapons In New Book”
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/02/20/pope-francis-compares-transgender-people-to-nuclear-weapons-in-new-book/
And: http://www.advocate.com/politics/religion/2015/06/18/popes-environmental-encyclical-anti-transgender
Nothing new as far as we are concerned, the offical position of the Cathlic Chruch is to eliminate us.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Does the Pope’s blunder mean Lisa has become a “Person Of Mass Destruction”? 😉
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PersonOfMassDestruction
Lisa
“After years of study, the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation has sent church leaders a confidential document concluding that “sex-change” procedures do not change a person’s gender in the eyes of the church.
Consequently, the document instructs bishops never to alter the sex listed in parish baptismal records and says Catholics who have undergone “sex-change” procedures are not eligible to marry, be ordained to the priesthood or enter religious life, according to a source familiar with the text.”
“But one of the things not mentioned is that the Vatican was being advised by a 30 year enemy of the transgender community: Dr. Paul McHugh. ”
“McHugh has ties to neoconservative Catholic groups, not surprisingly is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, and is frequently quoted by anti-transgender groups such as NARTH and the Concerned Women for America”
http://transgriot.blogspot.com.au/2007/11/why-is-catholic-church-hatin-on.html
Noting that we are number #1 hate target for the Southern Baptists Church too (and the WBC, etc) ….
Lisa
MFI: “a helpful combination safety valve and fig leaf to your ruling class. ” Yep.
But the real activists in the US are not in the mainstream, which has been totally coopted.
You’ll find those getting things done (or at least holding the line) in all sorts of other areas, well away from the spotlight. The LGBTI ones are a classic example of this, amongst many.
The saddest example of this coopting are the mainstream feminists, who are badly letting women down in the US. Those in Govt, academia, poltical parties, ‘official’ organisitions (etc) are just sitting back watching poorer women getting their reproductive rights and health care issues steamrolled by the right wingers.
Mandos
Whyever not? You attract commenters who belong to various “alternative” ideological standpoints, secular progressive left-liberalism included. But clearly not everyone is that. There are Putinistas and reactionary nationalists (among others) who also seem to come by here. Which is not surprising: all of these ideological standpoints are minority ones and ones that agree broadly that the current hegemonic ideology is no longer fit for purpose.
But some of them have very clear ideas about the connection between reproductive strategy, the good life, and ideological success. And these ideologies are at odds with one another. So of course you got the culture wars here too, right away.
Mike
I love religious nutters in small doses, but reading multiple comments gets tiresome after a while.
All that doublethink required to be right wing Christian must hurt after a while.
Lisa
Mike this might help understand heir mind set:
“Psychologically these
followers have personalities featuring:
1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in
their society;
2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and
3) a high level of conventionalism.”
“But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence
of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning,
highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a
profound ethnocentrism, and–to top it all off–a ferocious dogmatism that makes it
unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.”
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Mandos
The authoritarian follower thing may have something to it, but I think its promotion promotes intellectual laziness: one need no longer engage with the content of the opinion and the perspective of the alleged “authoritarian follower”.
In this case, the perspective of the would-be religious conservative right is that the good life is to be found within a particular family structure, with the, uh, mechanics of human reproduction offering us a clue as to the basis for this family structure via the right reason given us by God. Then modern movements—in particular, feminism—demand the exercise of liberty outside the bounds of right reason and poison the social well, so to speak, impeding access to the good life that can only be maximized by acceptance of the natural law. In so doing, there are no different from other kids of moral ills from the past that the modern secular left also decries.
From the perspective of Catholic social conservatives, this Pope, in reducing emphasis on the full package of the moral rules required to access the good life, is assisting the secular left in appropriating the sacrifice of Christ — in the manner exemplified by Ian’s post above. The Christ of the New Testament didn’t die to abjure the Old Testament moral order in order to usher the modern notion of human freedom, but rather to temper or balance it with a message of mercy and universality, and of course universal mercy. So with an emphasis on what the modern liberal has in common with the Christian message, this Pope presents an unbalanced perspective that doesn’t include a call to the natural law, and thus the good life in a well-ordered society.
Hopefully needless by now to say, this worldview crucially revolves around what happens in the uteruses of women, since it effectively connects the good life and world peace with family structure and hence reproduction, and hence upbringing, birth, pregnancy, conception, …
If we omit Christian universalism, then we get an argument for exclusionary/racist nationalism. Indeed, any accounting of ideologies that attempt to link access to the good life with the world order is incomplete without a thorough discussion of reproduction, patriarchy, etc.
JustPlainDave
Quite apart from being intellectually lazy, it seems to me that more than a few of the promotors of the “authoritarian herd” view are vulnerable to becoming authoritarian followers themselves and very amenable to “solutions” that predispose others to be as well – the big difference is that their views are not currently the ones with power.
zot23
I’ll just drop a line to say thanks for the post Ian.
I think the point made was no matter who says (or practices) “Do unto others…” with an open heart and compassion, it’s still the best policy. There need be no asterisks to denote the exclusion of *gays, *muslims, *progressives, *liberals, *mexican, *poor, or *whatever. Putting that doctorine into practice IS the word, regardless of what flavor of Christian (or even if Christian at all.)
Peter*
Lisa, you might examine your own group for these authoritarian patriarchal tendencies especially in the conflict with Radical Feminists who you brand as TERFs. They support Universal Human Rights and seek to be your allies but demand that women have those important rights to exclude males, whatever their chosen gender identity, from some limited women only gatherings.
Claiming to seek acceptance while using the patriarchal authoritarian rhetoric of branding and bullying women who have honest disagreements with you is certainly not productive.
Susan of Texas
It’s not that hard. Respect everyone. Help everyone. Value everyone.
I don’t believe in gods or goddesses or (of course) a God-given natural law and I think the Catholic Church has yet to learn the lesson it is trying to teach everyone else but that lesson is still important.
The authoritarian view divides people into a hierarchy, with the inevitable ranking and mistreatment of people to keep them in their artificially created place. That includes male over female.
Religious organizations usually elevate obedience over the golden rule; goodness is obedience, evil is disobedience (the fallen angel’s sin was thinking his wants were equally important to god’s wants). Thus people find it easy to break the golden rule if they think it is necessary for obedience.
Jesus had one rule: love one another. If your actions are contrary to that rule you are not being Christian. If you refuse to help someone because it’s “redistributionist” or whatever you want to call it you are not being Christian. The pope said we must take care of our elderly and our children; if you want to take away Social Security from the elderly you are not being Christian. If you demand repentance before forgiveness you forget that only your god can grant forgiveness and you are not being Christian.
The pope’s talk on the family did not mention the unborn; he talked about treating right the people already in your family. He did not talk about control or power; loving people and helping them means giving up the desire to control them. If we ever manage to follow the most basic rule we can start to worry about the details.
Policing sexual morality has nothing to do with love and care. It has a lot to do with control, division, and power-grabbing.
Lisa
Peter* “and seek to be your allies”, if only. Many of us (including myself at times) try and reach out to find some common cause and always get attacked and rejected.
Trans people are natural feminists and and have great and close alliances and common cause with them. But these are all third gen ones, many of the 2nd gen ones reject us.
Somewhere along the line the 2nd gen feminists (Raymond, Greer, Jeffries, et al) took a wrong ideological turn, what are now know now as the TERFs are the children of that.
There has been much speculation and analysis as to why this happened (yes many books have been written about it).
The common consensus was that it combined an extreme anti-male viewpoint along with a dose of religious inspired internalised misogyny and conservatism.
This damaged the feminist movement as a whole, damaged women as a whole and it took until the 3rd gen of feminists to start to repair the damage.
Janice Raymond was the vanguard of this, virulently anti-trans women (her stated position was to ‘morally mandate transsexuals out of existence’).
Also, and this is where a lot of the damage to women overall came from, virulently against the new reproductive technologies then becoming available in the 70s/80s. In that area they were identical to the various churches and misogynists. Raymond is on record as being against the contraceptive and ‘day after’ pills for women (as well as IVF and many others).
Many of them also advocated separatism from men and ‘political lesbianism’, which alienated a heck of a lot of women over and above their anti-reproductive technology stance.
This movement badly split and weakened feminism as a whole for some time. Many women took the point of view that ‘on that side we have the misogynists trying to force me to act the way they want, on the other we have these so called feminists trying to force me to act the way they want, I just want to be free to be myself and make my own decisions’.
As time has gone by they have disappeared into irrelevancy in terms of feminism, but they have maintained their anti-trans women stance. In fact this has become obsessional for some of them, so much so that some are now rebranding themselves as ‘gender critical’, dropping the feminism part.
This is because to maintain such an anti trans women stance they have to (and many do) ditch a lot of feminism and embrace a lot of misogyny to argue that position. The classic example are the US ones. I could give you a list of a lot of TERF blogs and sites, endless posts and comments that are anti-trans women….any mention of the attack on Planned Parenthood? Nope……
Or the ‘feminist’ supporting the argument that trans children are caused by a lack of ‘masculine’ role models and that it is ‘neurotic’ mothers who are at fault because they have not been ‘proper feminine, submissive to their husband’ role models (yes really).
Note the obsession is largely only with trans women, not trans men who along with ‘butch’ women (an unknowing outsider could classify them as crossdressing and masculine acting women) are all perfectly welcome…this is strange logic.
This leads to contradictory stances where they want to exclude trans woman (on estragon, testosterone blockers, surgery and all the rest) because of their supposed ‘maleness’, but accept bearded, large hairy testosterone filled trans men…..go figure the logic.
To argue that trans woman are ‘patriarchal’ is a logical stretch, since we voluntarily give up male privilege and thus we totally challenge the patriarchy…hence why partriachy supporters hate us so much. That is why (eg) the Catholic Church sees us a bigger threat than even gays and lesbians.
But as to the TERFs, their visceral hatred of trans women is amazing at times going far beyond any logic or reason. I could show you horrible articles using the suicides of young gender questioning and trans adolescents (such as Leelah Alcron) as ways of attacking trans people overall and saying terrible (absolutely horrible) things about those kids.
I have walked away in tears from some of the things they have said, where their hate is so great as to misuse the tragedy of a young person’s death as a method of attacking transgender people overall.
You’d think that whatever differences in opinion we may have we would have common cause in grieving over such tragedies. Not to be though.
As for ‘bullying’, it is not transgender people who are doing the doxing, outing and attacking or making common cause with hate groups. It is not transgender people having a web site showing pictures of young (as young a 15) trans people and outing them with the stated aim of ‘socially pressurising them back into the closet’…… But as I said, many have abandoned all pretence at any actual feminism, or in some cases humanity.
So a sad chapter in the history of feminism, that distracted it (particularly in the US) from its true aims, alienated a lot of woman and played right into the hands of the misogynists.
They are now irrelevant now, except where they are used as ‘tools’, ‘useful idiots’ and ‘attack dogs’ for those right wing, religious, misogynist, etc anti-LGBTIQ+ and anti-women groups.
Mandos
(but only if said trans men accept in turn that they’re really women)
Your post gave me a bit of nostalgia—there was a time when massive wars over theoretical gender issues raged across the internet, as you may recall back in the day. Now it’s Gamergate.
Lisa
Being a bit more ‘big picture’ the saga of US feminism is an example of why activist/political/etc movements have to inclusionary. This can, of course, take a lot of internal compromising and negotiations, but it is worth it.
You can see this with the development history of US feminism. The 2nd gen feminists were largely a reaction to the more radical feminists and lesbians being excluded from the first gen, where the drive to present a white, middle class, unthreatening face of feminism was thought to be the correct strategy….it wasn’t and set the seeds for the fracturing of the movement and handed a gift to those opposing it.
You also will note both the 1st and 2nd gen feminists excluded (or ignored) working class and women of colour.
But it meant the ‘radical wing’ created its own format, structure and ideology, untempered by more moderate others and the discipline required for effective political lobbying (as well as being exposed to healthy doses of reality).
This was a gift to the misogynists, since all feminists could be (and were) painted as ‘extreme’ and ‘all lesbians’ and hence marginalised. Their ideological ‘own goals’ (such as, for some, anti reproducive technology) did not help at all.
All of which I suspect would never have happened if they had become a part of mainstream feminism right from the start*.
Plus, whatever their faults many of those 2nd gen feminists had lots of drive which (properly channeled) would have energised the whole feminist movement.
You see this pattern time and time again, movements excluding those considered ‘too radical’ lose all their drive and energy. Those who are excluded then disappear into their own ideological black holes and irrelevant obsessions.
A sensible movement includes all ‘wings’, yes tempers them, internally negotiates and compromises. The radicals are kept in touch with reality, the conservatives are not allowed to go to sleep (or sell out) and the whole movement benefits.
* I exclude Janice Raymond from this analysis, because she was (probably due to her Catholic background) in many ways an extreme conservative masquarading as a radical feminist. And you can’t help but wonder if some of her views really just reflected an emotional desire to inflict a form of convent life on all women.
But many others of that era would have done a wonderful job if they been allowed to be included right from the start. Exclusion is an ‘own goal’ of the highest order.
DMC
“Its like deja vu all over again”
Mahayogi Berra
markfromireland
@ Lisa
I disagree with you about North American “progressives” or “liberals” or “left-wingers” or “feminists” or whichever label they happen to be sporting at the moment being coopted. (This is perhaps one of the few occasions when I take a darker view than you do).
To be coopted implies that they were struggling against the established order. Nothing could be further from the truth, what they wanted was to become part of the establishment and reap the rewards that accrue therefrom. Having got what they wanted they’re simply reverting to type and kicking away the ladder.
mfi
markfromireland
@ Susan of Texas September 27, 2015
Actually he had two:
” The first commandment of all is, Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy God is one God.
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment.
And the second is like to it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Mark: 12 29-31
Other than that I agree with you.
mfi
Mike
I think Douglas Adams had it right. He referred to a man getting nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be if we were nice to each other for a change.
So hey people, let’s all be nice to each other.
?
What’s the merciful thing to do? Sterilize the entire 1st and 2nd worlds if you believe destructive climate change is induced by mankind. What sense does it make to allow them a 1st world lifestyle that will only hasten manmade destructive climate change, not to mention the culturally deleterious effect culturally regressive 2nd and 3rd world refugees will have on western progressive reforms of the last two hundred or so years.
?
The pope’s message if you listen closely enough is to embrace poverty and serve others (others is defined as your superiors). Exactly the message of the elite ptb. His opposition to the wealthy is merely a pretense. He is in league with the global elite because he is one of them and at one with them. The pope is the metaphorical judenrat head administrator for the global elite charged with convincing us all to accept our fate graciously and without question. No whining. Offer your suffering up to god in return for his (never forget that god has a giant cock and huge bouncy balls) grace and the possibility of a better afterlife.
Lisa
MFI: wow…you being darker than me….
Yes and no, there are always opportunists that will jump aboard some movement, especially if it seems to be becoming successful. But they usually start out with ‘true believers’ at the helm and at the coal face but over time, if the organisation is badly set up, they will be coopted and the opportunists will jump ever more aboard.
So it is a bit of both factors.
The ones that remain successful are heterogeneous and inclusionary , so there are checks and balances and a dynamic tension to stop (or at least reduce) those tendencies.
Take a simple example, the whitewashed film Stonewall. Now there are a lot of white, successful gay males who would happily throw other gay males and trans people and lesbians under a bus. But, when they try to do it (and they do so often) they get hammered by activists from all over the LGBTI spectrum.
That film (which totally ignores the central and pivotal roles of trans women, lesbians and all those non white GLBTI people) is sunk because of a popular movement against it.
Wake up call to those white, successful nicely assimilated gay males……
Another, internal to the community, example. A major gay male activist, with a long and in many ways proud history. Unfortunately, like many of his generation he is very anti-trans women. He wrote an article about this prejudice of his and, despite his history and pedigree, he was kicked out….lost his writing gig and was pilloried within the community.
So successful movements have to have internal policing of some kind to stop these tendencies.
Now I will be the first to admit they can go wrong too, the policing used against women overall and especially trans women by the ‘Raymond’ radical lesbian feminists lasted 20 years and drove many women and trans people out and damaged the whole feminist and lesbian movements very badly. You will notice those exclusionists of that era were all white too….
So it is a delicate but still essential balance, but the tendency to go ‘overboard’ can be reduced by being inclusionary. If more working class and coloured women had been allowed into the feminist movement in the early days then neither the ‘sell outs’ or the ‘daft ones’ would have gotten as far as they did.
For example, Raymond’s mad screeds against the new reproductive technology being introduced back then would have been howled down by those women, shouting that ‘we really need this, piss off you ridiculous person’.
I saw an interview of one of those ‘sell out’ US feminists. White, attractive, middle (to upper) class, privilege dripping off her (almost certainly straight), complaining about all the young women in the university she saw being so radical and angry…..
In her own way she was as ridiculous and damaging to women overall as Janice Raymond, but the kids coming up now are on their way.
In the US social, political and economic change is not going to come through males, they are a lost cause there, mired in and conned into toxic masculinity, privilege, racism and bigotry, it is going to be women and LGBTI people that do the heavy lifting there.
Lisa
I’ll add …males in some other Anglo Saxon countres, England especially with Canada, Austrialia and NZ teeering on the edge, are also looking (from a positive change point of view) like lost causes.
Lisa
? “culturally deleterious effect culturally regressive 2nd and 3rd world refugees will have on western progressive reforms ”
I think in the US and the UK there are no worries about that…the natives elites are doing a real fine job by themselves destroying ‘western progressive reforms ‘. They don’t need any more help.
Ché Pasa
Yes, the Pope is Catholic, strangely enough. So was his namesake Francis of Assisi. And he has a job to do, much as the 13th Century Saint was commanded by the Divine Presence in the San Damiano Cross:
Ché Pasa
sorry for not closing the blockquote tag… need coffee…
Mandos
Just as a side note, the neoliberal Powers love the tendency towards betrayal narratives and the refusal to consider when ideology meets exterior political force that is exhibited by present-day left-wingers:
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/648439128892305408
Ian Welsh
You always need the radicals as a moderate of whatever movement.
“You deal with me, or you deal with them.”
“I can barely keep them under control, you’ve got to give me something to appease them.”
Subtext:
“They want to kill you, Jack, and your family. I’m the only one who can save you, but only if you give me the movement’s key demands.”
Mandos
That’s only if (a) they actually have the power to revolute like that and (b) they don’t condition their role as radical backup crew on the immediate implementation of their grand theory of life, the universe, and everything.
Unfortunately, for the left, both (a) and (b) are false. No BATMAN here. If history is any guide, Corbyn’s supporters will eventually curse him for the accommodations he has to make to come to power, or he won’t come to power and be rated as a failure, because the purpose of a political party is to get elected.
Jeff Wegerson
Another area of so-called feminist split is over sex work. What I call “corporate” feminists fought tooth and nail against the recent Amnesty International policy decision to support decriminalization of sex work. I have recently seen usage of SWERF, “sex work exclusive radical feminists.” The weapon of choice is all the money Homeland Security is pouring into anti-trafficking campaigns. See Laura Agustin and Millisa Gira Grant.
MojaveWolf
Hi Ian. Wanted to say thanks for this post. Brought back fond memories of my high school days long ago and far away when I considered myself a fundamentalist Christian, and even thought of going to seminary (I was a pro-choice, environmentalist fundie, who had trouble believing Jesus or God really cared about premarital sex, living in the deep South; made a quick calculation about the likely size of my congregations and jettisoned the seminary idea). And yeah, what Jesus actually emphasized above all else was to love one another (and God, yes, but God being perfect telling us to love our neighbors and ourselves as highest rule sort of merged the other highest rule of loving God into it). And when there was an obvious irreconcilable conflict between certain parts of the Bible, it seemed obvious the parts actually supposedly said by Jesus should take priority (I did, in fact, decide the old testament had to be jettisoned on purely moral grounds; these two books were not reconcilable and something had to go; still find it bizarre that a higher % of Jews hold moral beliefs closer to those of Jesus than do most Christians who are supposed to be prioritizing his teachings, sadly find it totally understandable that most “conservative Christians” are more concerned with ditching The Book of James, cause apparently Jesus’ half brother saying “faith without works is dead” is really, really troubling to them).
Jesus said some great stuff. He was much more concerned with the good people did than their imperfections. Too bad most of his modern followers are more concerned with the old testament stuff about shunning and stoning (and finding new things to apply the thou shalt nots to) and in love with the horrible “might makes right” being depicted in Job than the new testament god of love. This does, I suppose, explain the hatred of Les Miserables by many “Christian” conservatives, when that is one of the most Christian works ever written. Still haven’t quite figured out how anyone justifies a “prosperity Gospel” to themselves, or how people asking someone to send their last buck in as a donation in return for a miracle manage to sleep at nights.
But Pope Francis seems to be reading the same Bible I did, and while he certainly hasn’t repudiated all of the Catholic churches imperfections (and I accept he probably never will, and some of them are HUGE) at this point I’m more pleased that he is moving in a positive direction in most ways, and at worst holding steady in those ways he is not.
Best of all, he’s part of a larger backlash. Not long ago, I had decided to completely withdraw from most online interaction other than environmental/animal rights stuff. Cause death of biosphere = death of more than just humans, and no matter how bleak things look, that is one of those fights you can’t really dodge with a clean conscious. Humans I had pretty much given up on. Only decided to reengage because of the 2016 US presidential race (initially, I had no realistic hope of anything good but threw my support behind Bernie cause that old adage about “you can’t win if you don’t try” is accurate, and even when the odds looked hopeless I preferred unrealistic striving to complete despair) and then the recent populist surge around the western world, which has given me real hope, the idiots who fucked up Syriza be damned.There’s still your NDP, Bernie, Corbyn, and lots of other potentially good signs (the SNP, Catalonia, etc).
Oh, and also the Kobane Kurds, the YPG/YPJ. If I had been single with no dependents, I might have taken off to join them. They pulled off one of the great heroic stands of modern time. I had been wishing for a real life Quellist party, and they don’t seem that far off. Leftists actually fighting for what they believe in and rescuing others from genocide,these were inspirational figures like Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, actually doing something to try to make things right instead of sitting behind keyboards spending all their energy complaining about other leftists’ semantics and imperfections and trying to figure out who to shun/smear/pick on today, yay! The YPJ women fight alongside the YPG men with full equality, the whole group espousing workers rights, feminism and the whole justice for all thing my country used to cherish and seemed to have discarded somewhere along the way. (Admittedly, I have always been troubled that the Kurds seem to have more American cheerleaders on the right than the left; I fear much of the online left actually wants the whole semantic fight more than they want to fight for something real, and that they would actually rather sit in comfort and complain than get in the trenches and effect real change)
So, in one year, in one year I’ve gone from near complete despair over the future of the planet to having real hope, and whether he’s following the trend or helping to lead it or some mix of these (I lean toward mostly this being him trying to do good, fwiw, not just trying to keep the church relevant, tho I could be wrong), Francis is one of the positive developments.
Then I read the comments and am reminded of my earlier desire to completely disengage from the online left. But this is already too long so will end on a positive note & save my thoughts on that for another comment.
Soul Man
“Except Francis did not mention Jesus once in his speech to Congress.” – BlizzardOfOz
After all, today the President of the United States wears a lapel pin with the US flag. Surely the Pope should have worn a big button with a picture of Jesus, so people know whom he represents.
?
Surely the Pope should have worn a big button with a picture of Jesus, so people know whom he represents.
Franny has much better taste than BHO and he’s much more discreet. The word is, he wears briefs, never boxers, with images of the crucifix placard all over the tighty whities. I, for one, appreciate his modesty and respect his need to keep the boys snug, safe and warm with briefs versus boxers.
Otis
“That’s only if (a) they actually have the power to revolute like that and (b) they don’t condition their role as radical backup crew on the immediate implementation of their grand theory of life, the universe, and everything. ”
In those fantasy negotiations “the power to revolute” of “radicals” can be dramatized and magnified by the movement’s “moderate” leader to enhance a bargaining position or that leader may choose to ignore and mock those “radicals” in which case all the “revoluting” in the world ain’t gonna help.
And, of course, the “radicals” should stop being so darn radical.
To recap: Those “radicals” are needed as a negotiating tool but only if (a) they actually have the power to “revolute” and if they have that power they (b) understand that they are role-playing and they can’t expect their radical ideas to be taken seriously.
Lisa
Jeff Wegerson:
Yes that is the sub-group of the ‘crazies’ (back to Raymnod and Jeffreis and their woeful influence).
Mainstrean 3rd gen feminism realise that it is impossible to stop therefore ‘harm minimisation’ and ‘worker empowerment’ is the key.
The ‘crazies’ live in a world of utopianism where you can magically wave away things they don’t like.
Ian: ““You deal with me, or you deal with them.””
Yes that’s factor, but it is more complex than that.
The saddest thing is that ‘moderates’ and ‘reasonable’ people will just about always sell out in one way or another. They are always far to ready to accept (very small) bones being thrown at them. Also over time, ‘organisational neutralisation’ will become ‘individual coopting’ as the moderates get to realise the personal rewards of selling out.
You need the energy, internal policing and idea generation that the radicals provide to keep an organsation on path. A moderate involved in extrenal negotiations needs to feel the hot breath of a hungry young radical activist on their neck to be motivated to get the best deal.
A nig mistake that moderates make is that they think they are dealing with reasonable people when they deal with the ‘establishment’. Nothing can be further from the truth, ‘establishment’ people are always unreasonable and have to pushed (and carefully watched for the knife they always hold) kicking and screaming towards any positive change.
MojaveWolf
Was so hoping someone else would do this, since I really don’t have time, energy or patience, but since no one else is mentioning it, what’s up with the gratuitous smears?
They seem to be directed particularly at feminists who don’t tow some imaginary party line–I suppose that’s some of that anti-authoritarian “internal policing” Lisa was referring to.
To take the latest issue brought up in this thread, re: the Amnesty resolution on sexwork, I have read a fair amount from women opposed to this, including former sexworkers, am friends with some of them, and none of them are in the slightest “corporate” or “crazies” engaging in delusional thinking. All of the feminists I have read opposing that resolution favor harm minimization and worker empowerment. One of their primary reasons for preferring the Swedish model is that practice has indicated it works better. Strangely enough,iirc one of the points brought up by both sides of that debate is that sex workers generally charge more under the Swedish model. That would generally seem to be something anyone who is concerned with worker empowerment would want.
Likewise, I generally try to stay out of the whole thing between *some* radfems and *some* transpeople because I have friends who fall into both the radfem and trans category, and I think there are plenty of good people on both sides, including good people who disagree with each other. I daresay most of them don’t call each other names. But yes, some people do say some nasty and unwarranted stuff on each side. But the side on which it is most pervasive and most extreme isn’t the one you think it is. I see a LOT more rhetoric that could be called “hate speech” directed indiscriminately at radfems than visa versa, and a whole lot more flat out lies directed at people. (fwiw: not a radfem, here. Do consider myself a feminist, but not aligned with any particular wave or subset. I have very good friends who consider themselves both radfem and third wave. Am tending to get closer to the positions of *some* radfems as a I get older; contrary to what is posted above this is not a monolithic group).
There are a whole bunch of people on the left who are every bit as mindlessly tribal and indulging in vicious defense of their groupthink without regard for truth, nuance or end result as the people on the right. The rightwingers happen to be wrong about more things, and the things they are wrong about have much more catastrophic consequences, but that doesn’t make the leftwingers who play “smear my enemy” any better than the rightwingers who do the same.
Lisa
MojaveWolf : I use it as an example of what can go right and also what can go wrong with (for sake of a better word) reformist movements.
They are dynamic movements and organisations that change and develop over time. The feminist movement in the US after a great start went in some really wrong directions that damaged it badly, but is now coming back But it has taken decades for that to happen.
This is in contrast to the US environmental ones who also after a great (heck brilliant) start, have now faded to near irrelvance with no sign, as yet, of a revival.
Their incredible success in pollution controls on cars alone impacted the whole world postively.
In both cases the exclusion (or marginalising) of the ‘extremists’ in the early days later created great damage, with the early ‘mainstream’ centre eventually becoming coopted and those initally excluded disappearing into an ideological ‘madness’ of sorts.
The second phase in feminism was a bit odd though in that those iniitally excluded then managed (sod knows how) to grab and control much of the ideological debate of the 80s and 90s, even early 2000s. So there was this strange, during that time, situation where the ‘mainstream’ feminists who had gotten into positions of actual hands on power had largely sold out, while this odd ideological strand dominated the public (and internal) debates.
From the misogynist estblishment point of view this was brilliant. the fact that the idological (and very noisy) extremists’ postions on many areas were the exact same as their’s (eg on reproductive technologies) was a bonus.
I have a cynical suspicion that those radical feminist of that era would not have gotten as far as they did in terms of their public success, except that some of their positions did so closely mimic the misogynists, or so radical that they aliented many women from feminism entrely (also a win as far as the misogynists were concerned).
Anyone remember all those successful women shouting out that they were not feminists in the 90s and early 200s? The Raymond 2nd gen feminists had so tainted feminism that the majority of women wanted nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile those US mainstream ones, well embedded by then in the halls of power compromised away and/or sold out women overall (with some honourable exceptions of course) with no real heat on them to achieve more.
What has saved feminism are the large numbers of a later generation coming up and starting to supplant those ‘sell outs’ and ‘the crazies’ with much more inclusionary, practical and sensible but still very radical ideologies. I like to think the trans feminsts, intellectuals and activists have made a major contribution here too.
This has not happened (mostly) in the environmental movements, with those insiders still jealously guarding their positions and privileges and the more extreme (and energetic) ones totally marginalsed or, like Deep Green, have dsappeared into an ideological black hole.
The sex work issue is a classic division.
For some to argue for the Swedish model shows ether sophistry or stupidity. It has failed, just as as every other effort to criminalise sex work in history has ever done. And the losers, as always, are the sex workers themselves.
“In 2001 the Malmö police reported that there was no evidence that the law had reduced violence, rather there was evidence it had increased,[93]”
“In 2008 Kajsa Wahlberg,[95] of the human trafficking unit at Sweden’s national police board, conceded that accurate statistics are hard to obtain, but estimated that the number of prostitutes in Sweden dropped 40% from 2,500 in 1998 to 1,500 in 2003.[96] However, by 2010 she had conceded that the policy had failed, and that issues around prostitution were increasing [97] as noted in the media which carried out surveys on the street.[98][99][100] In Stockholm, police sources reported increased activity on Malmskillnadsgatan in the city centre (which with Artillerigatan in the Östermalm district was a traditional site for street prostitution in Stockholm).[101][102] Judges[103] and senior police officials have been caught purchasing sex,[104] [105] while most recently the Minister of Labour, Sven Otto Littorin, was also accused of purchasing sex (Littoringate). [106]”.
All totally predictable.
Again you can see this as the differences between being ‘inclusionary’ and ‘exclusionary’. The 3rd gen feminists, wthout all the sexual related baggage the 2nd gen ones had, were prepared to actually include and listen to sex workers and hence have a much more realistic point of view.
The 2nd gen feminsts start from an ideological position that sex work is ‘bad’ (at the Raymond extreme all sex with males is ‘bad’). This is no different from many other ideologists from religions, conservatism, etc. Hence compulsion and force is necessary to stop it…same old, same old as for centuries. Just the justification has changed, but the policies have not.
The 3rd gen, actually listening, have no issue with sex work iself, just the risks and harmful affects on the workers (mostly, but not all women). Therefore the issue then becomes how to minimise that harm and empower those workers. Again the way forward is to listen to and include the viewpoints of those actual workers…duh….
This is a sign of the feminist movement ‘healing’ and coming back to becoming a political force again, which is a major positive, though in the US almost at the last moment as the attacks on women’s reproductive rights and health issues enter new heights.
There are no such sign of renewal in the US environmental movements.
You can pick other examples, but those two are so well documented (being so public) they make great case studies of what works and what doesn’t for reformist movements and organisations.
Another classic of its kind was the sheer misogyny of the US union movements stopping them recruiting women as they expanded in the work force…..now that was a lose-lose strategy, well done boys.
Mandos
Otis:
I hope you realize that I quite agree with you. The point is, I am extremely skeptical of the political relevance of the highly abstract negotiation framework used by Ian and apparently by a lot of the other commenters here. For it to work consistently as a conscious strategy, there needs to be a certain degree of coordination between the radical/revolutionary forces and left-wing politicians working within mainstream political organizations in a context in which the radicals are powerful enough to pose a threat. These conditions do not often obtain. However, left at the abstract level of BATANs or whatever, I can see how the cartoon scenario might be very attractive.
To me, it remains an attempt at making an end-run around the constraints placed on people working in “normal” electoral politics, by folks who want radical change to occur through that means. Maybe, yeah, sometimes there is a correct celestial arrangement and then you have the FDR scenario (which I suspect to be highly romanticised). But most of them time, no—the only plausible means to make things marginally better, using electoral politics, is to convince likely voters to want deeper changes, and to prove that you are competent to make them.
Peter*
@MW
It’s sad to see some people in a group such as the Trans movement, who deserve support for many, but not all,’ of their goals take on some of the tactics and rhetoric of their worst enemies, the Xtian Right. Power and influence even in small increments can be misused as has been evident in the attacks and successful attempts to silence women and men who support the individuals but not some of the extreme medical and psychological manipulations performed by some doctors.
What adults do to themselves is their business but there is a growing movement to project these ideas onto children who have identity issues preparing them for doping and transition mutilation.
I’m not sure how to characterize the lecturing attacks on the feminist movements and some of the women in those groups who disagree with some of the Trans demands for those women to submit to male dominance and authority.
Jeff Wegerson
@ MojaveWolf
While I use the word “corporate” I do not use “crazies.” I am also not wed to the term and am happy to use another that might more neutrally describe what I suppose may not even be a real division.
My understanding is that “de-criminalization” is important as the preferred concept. I assume that “worker empowerment” is assumed as well by de-criminalization. It is my understanding again that many who use the term “sex work” find great fault with the Swedish model. Among the reasons for charging more (if that is true) would be the greater danger they must place themselves in because of the rush to seal the transaction because of the lessened ability to screen out bad clients.
As for gatherings of women that attempt to exclude based on perceived gender, well just describing it suggests the problems. Yet, at the same time, excluding those who make one uncomfortable, is extremely important in many situations of healing, I would think. For someone to be hurt because they are being excluded is regrettable.
Hardest are making decisions as parents. Of course no child is raised perfectly. We just have to hope we make more good choices for them than bad.
Lisa
Mandos You are (I thnk) making the common mistake of seeing these movements/organsation purely in political terms.
These are human social groupings, with all the internal bickering, pushing for power and influence, internal fighting, et al.
The dynamism of them and their resistance to ‘selling out’ (or disapprearing into ideological black holes) will come from whether they are inclusionary or exclusionary.
If the mainstream exclude or marginalise their ‘activist’ wings, instead of including and managing them, they will inevitably sell out one way or another.
The reason is not political it is personal, social and interpersonal. Those at the top will inevitably make the organsations more hierarchial, consolidate power into smaller hands and become ever more seduced by those they are supposed to oppose.
They will ‘compromise’ too much, but gain personal rewards from the ‘establishment’ for that. Bit by bit they will identify with that establishment more and more.
This is normal human behaviour.
But if the organsaton has a lot of ‘young Turks’, full of fight and energy then those will police and keep them on track, the smartest of them will replace those that don’t perform.
There is yet another factor, those ‘extremists’ tend to be more active in the community and more closely connected with it. Therefore they form an essential communication bridge from the ‘top’ to the community.
This counteracts the (again normal) tendency for those at the top to isolate themselves and ever more identify with the establishment elites.
You look at the UK Labour party and the US democrats, their voters are (as shown by polls) are far more left wing than the elites in those organsations (well until Corbyn came along that is).
This is because those elites have isolated themselves from their grass roots and spend most of their time with other elites.
Again this is natural human behaviour. Because it is so natural for this to happen you have to create the movement/ogransation dynamics to counter it. You have to resist any attempts to exclude others, since that is again the natural human way of dealing with those who give you a hard time and upset your comfort.
If those ‘energetic’ groups who have been excluded from the mainstream, then repeat the mistake of also excluding others then they just become ideological echo chambers and all that energy becomes wasted.
That was the story of those 2nd gen feminists, who after being excluded themselves repeated that mistake.
The 1st gen excluded those sexually (or gender) variant, working class women, women of colour (and a heck of a lot of others too). The 2nd gen then did the same …. albeit with some minor differences (such as the 1st gen excluded lesbians, the 2nd gen heterosexuals).
The effect was that the majority of women were (or at east felt) excluded from feminism for decades.
It has taken until the 3rd gen to start to repair those self inflicted wounds and neither those remaining 1st gen or 2nd gen ones are happy about it. But both of them failed women massively (to be fair after some great gains by the early 1st gen before they ‘gentrified’) and deserve to be consigned to the ‘dustbin of history’.
Looking around at other ‘progressive’ (or reformist) organsations and movements it is hard to see many successes in the last 20 years or so. I contend that if you exmine their history and decisions made (sometimes decades ago) you can tease out the reasons for their failures and it will usually boil down to them excluding their radicals at some point in time. It seemed to make their jobs easier at the time, but in the end it neutered them.
Ian Welsh
Ah yes. Normal political channels.
There’s always a reason why radicals suck and the status quo is the best we can do, for Mandos and others who believe that negotiating means capitulating.
markfromireland
They don’t actually believe that Ian but it’s a great excuse for upholding the status quo. Such folk are very very useful to the ruling class. Not only do they provide a fig-leaf and a safety valve but they also act as a political heat diffuser thereby neutralising (and discouraging) enthusiastic radicals. I’m spending a lot of time in the UK at present and unfortunately for my equanimity am having to spend a fair bit of time with Blairites. I despise them – the sort of person who would (to give one recent example) refuse to vote against one of the most savagely regressive “welfare” bills ever proposed because to do so might give the wrong impression to the electorate is to my mind morally more despicable than a UKIP supporter or a right-wing tory. Give me an honest left-winger who’s in politics because they believe in social justice over a Mandos or other of that ilk any day.
mfi
Lisa
Inclusionary feminist movement tactics, what a difference to the old turgid 1st gen remnants and the divisory and irrelevant to 95% of women 2nd gen ones.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33020-activists-decry-39-years-of-class-based-discrimination-in-abortion-access
“Activists united under the All* Above All coalition, which includes 44 national and 49 state and regionally focused organizations, are being just as unapologetic in their campaign to push back on stigma, recognize abortion as a fundamental human right and repeal coverage bans.”
MFI those B LIAR ites….What a bunch.
Ian: Mandos and that crowd never seem to realise that there are many tactics to negotiations and, if you are clever, can get a heck of a lot from a position of apparent weakness. You go into win, his lot go in having lost before they even start.
You have to be focussed, win the public debates, manage and manipulate the old and new media, get people on the streets when you need them (and sometmes when you don’t need them just to prove a point), include and release (but work with and help coordinate and focus) your ‘young Turks’ with all their energy, ideas and drive. Combine ‘big bangs’ along wth ‘dripping stone’ tactics. Work closely with the community.
Police yourselves to stop the ‘sell outs’ (and the external police, etc agents) and never give up.
Mandos
No, not “normal political channels”. “Normal politics” — as opposed to “crisis politics.” Vaguely in the sense of Thomas Kuhn’s scientific revolutions. You have been making prescriptions for years that apply, at best, to “crisis” politics, when the official political system might run into the sort of situation where some kind of textbook fantasy negotiating framework has any applicability. I am suggesting that this is not the way to see the route out of the status quo when crisis conditions do not hold (and they still do not currently, not politically, not even in places like Greece, really).
I never said “radicals suck”. I think (some) radicals are great and more power to them. However, expecting, as Otis notices, that radicals are just going to cooperate with your negotiating framework, be the “heavies” which in-system “moderates” use to threaten the powerful while presumably obtaining moderate goals—this is exactly what you suggested—is merely the bulwark you use to pretend your fantasy negotiating framework has applicability under normal conditions.
But for suggesting that this not the right way to think about it, that “negotiation” is the wrong mental framework under “normal” (as opposed to “crisis”) politics, I am accused of “capitulating”—I’d never thought I’d ever label you with this, but bluntly, this is pure intellectual laziness. But your followers have adopted it immediately, so *shrug*.
I still believe there is a way out of the status quo, even under “normal” politics, but it involves seeing “normal” politics for what it is—politics when the “state of exception” has either not yet been achieved or not been recognized, and work needs to be done to make that recognition. Thinking in terms of negotiation is premature, the crisis has to occur/be acknowledged first.
If you decide that saying that is “capitulation” to the status quo by definition, it is no surprise whatsoever that the perspectives you support have made comparatively little political headway so far, at least not in the manner that you have repeatedly demanded to see them.
Ian Welsh
Normal politics includes strikes, protest movements, shutting down shit (see what taxi drivers in France did to spike uber) and violence, both by the state and by private actors.
It includes the credible threat of all of these things.
If you are not willing to do these things you will have far less power.
Those who refuse to understand this (or who hand-wring excessively over it) will have far less power and wealth.
The inability of some to understand this, and to cede use of many of the actual levers of power is capitulationism. Quislings. Useful idiots who serve the status quo by explaining why those who oppose it must play within “the rules” set for them by their opponents.
Mandos
So you will simply define local “crisis” politics during local states of exception into an overarching “normal politics” in order to preserve your framework? And you will cite the French kibosh on Uber, a single obnoxious company in a single industry in a single country, while the whole of France sinks under the neoliberal waves, in service of this.
In the meantime, Marine le Pen accommodates the FN to “normal” politics in France, dramatically squeezes out her own inconvenient (and radical) father…and serves to push French discourse inch by inch to the far right more successfully than her father ever could! There’s no game-theoretic “negotiation” on her part — she will create her state of exception first! Negotiation when she has achieved the crisis she needs.
…that’s all you have for your theory? A theory that has failed repeatedly—don’t pretend that the reelection of Syriza-minus-Left-Platform isn’t a counter-example, the would-be threat-negotiators of LAE being completely unable on their own to achieve even a single seat in the Greek Parliament. The strongest evidence against it being a “counter-example” that you were able to present was…somewhat lower voter turnout! Um.
Nothing other than stubborn repetition and name-calling, as if that makes it more true. But this is just another instance of the same argument about the prospect of single-payer in the USA. You were wrong then and you’re wrong now, it’s just become more apparent. But those who don’t follow you into your increasingly obvious error are called “Quislings” by you.
Radicals do not exist to provide you with negotiating leverage, except in a game-theoretic fantasy played out on a frictionless service with spherical balloons at standard temperature and pressure. They march to their own drum. As they should. The only issue left is: what to do about normal politics? Eschew it? That is a logically coherent position.
Otherwise, step-away from the well-studied abstractions.
Lisa
Mandos :
I’ll repeat a poimt I made ages ago here. In virtually every area of society, politics and economics the ‘progressives’ have lost in nearly all western countries. And lost big.
Worse, in many areas (lke environmentalism and womens rights) they are being rolled back from the great successes of yesteryears.
There is almost only one area alone where progess has been made, in the teeth of entrenched (and powerful) opposition.
LGTBI, first gays and lesbians and now trans people. And apart from hate from many quarters we also suffer from being a very small group indeed.
One of the biggst reasons is that our activists don’t ‘play the game’ the way the others do, therefore we get wins. We are tougher, smarter, more determined, better organised, more energetic than other areas. We use every trick in the book (and make up more when we need) to get what we want.
We don’t go for ‘compromises’, we go for wins, like decriminalisation, anti-descrimiinaton laws, gender laws, marriage equality, specific LGBTI health and all the rest and we don’t give up until we get them. We don’t go for ‘tweaks’ we go for entire legalislative changes…..
All our positions are radical since they mean major societal and legal changes.
We know with 100% certainty that the people opposting us HATE us and would love to have us jailed or killed. We know there is no room for compromise one little bit with them.
We know politicians will support us or turn on us at a moments notice so we have ZERO confidence in them doing anything unless they are pushed, kicking and screaming usually, to do things.
.
So we go for wins, 100% wins. And we get them. Yep it can take decades to do so, but that is another thing, we never gve up and we will play the ‘long game’ when needed.
If other activists in other areas were half as good as ours then society would be a heck of a lot better than it is.
If our activists followed your prescription, strategy and tactics, then being gay would still be illegal…
Rostale
“We are tougher, smarter, more determined, better organised, more energetic than other areas. We use every trick in the book (and make up more when we need) to get what we want.”
It also helps, that unlike environmental activists, law enforcement doesn’t spend time entrapping LGBT activists into crimes, it’s a lot easier to organize when you don’t have the nation’s intelligence services infilitrating your groups with agent provocateurs. The simple fact is your cause isn’t really much of a threat to neoliberalism; decriminalisation, anti-descrimiinaton laws, gender laws, marriage equality, specific LGBTI health are a small price to pay for keeping evangelicals on the republican reservation and reinfocing this countries political duopoly. I support your progress, but it is entirely unwarranted to think that you enjoyed the success you have because of some special dedication that other groups lack. Instead you enjoy your success because you are not opposed by deep state or financial powers, but mainly by the Xtian right, who while they have numbers and fanaticism on their side, are too gullible and lacking in overall strategy to carry out more than a holding action.
Reverse Engineer
The Vicar Visits CONgress
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Once a thread passes 100 comments, the first 100 comments disappear. How can I make them re-appear?
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Oh, now I figured it out.
Click “Newer Comments”, which are actually older comments.
And to get to the actually newer comments from the first 100 comments page, click “Older Comments”. 😆
Someone who can fix that needs to fix that.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
The Questionmarks of the world and the Blizzards of the world deserve each other. 😈
Mandos
The “Newer Comments” button doesn’t actually load anything more than the first four posts for me so I can’t read anything after my last diatribe 😉 Or in fact, well before it.
Mandos
OK, now it came back.
Mandos
No, it’s gone again. Oh well.
The point is that different kinds of struggles have different contexts. I’m certainly not going to say that LGBT activism didn’t fight its own uphill battles or try to compare who had it worse, so to speak.
On the economic front, the problem is that the people whose principal historical model seems to be (an interpretation of) FDR have not reckoned with the current nature of Western developed societies, which are consumerist societies in a different manner, certainly, then Depression-era USA. A large swath of workers want to know if their Audible and Spotify accounts will still work during and after the revolution. This, yes, despite increasing economic inequality and stagnating employment and so on.
To me, this suggests that the model that Ian and so on have been using is not fit for purpose—because it entirely fails to address this kind of question. You could trust the old sorts of communists to keep the lights on, maybe, but no one trusts the present-day left to keep modern consumer commerce running or to substitute an equivalent. Instead, everyone secretly suspects that the left wants people to pursue the tedious-sounding goal of Happiness(tm).
This dramatically reduces the plausibility of framing left-wing political activity using a negotiation metaphor. No one is really going to trust the left to run anything until they believe that present-day global consumer society will somehow continue to operate under left-wing reforms and governance. Only a real, physical crisis can change this, one in which consumer society cannot function anymore anyway — but a lot of people overestimate how quickly such a crisis is going to register.
EmilianoZ
LGBT, feminism, blacks, … it’s all identity politics. The elites will allow some victories there. It often even serves their divide and conquer purpose.
A general economic victory of the middle/poor classes, that’s what they won’t allow. That’s the holy grail.
Lisa
EmilianoZ : “LGBT, feminism, blacks, … it’s all identity politics. The elites will allow some victories there. It often even serves their divide and conquer purpose.”
Racist and misogynist…because all them face terrible descrimination, at a level inconceivable to nice middle class straight white males.
You saying black people in the US or Australian Aborigines (etc) have no issues like greater poverty, shorter life span, jailed at Soviet Gulag levels, murders rates in the stratosphere…..?
You saying women being beaten up, attacked, raped, murdered, denied contraception, abortion and essential health care have no issues?
Obviously we mean nothing to you and our life and death issues are ‘not important’….
I am so tempted so say “well f**k you white, middle class, cis, straight male, you are part of the problem”.
Just taking we LGBTI people alone as an example (others please educate this ‘person’ about what women and coloured people face) :
{Note when I use the word ‘mainstream’ below it excludes coloured, natives, women, etc…we because we are all in the margins, just a shorthand term for all those so called ‘progressives that have sold out or are ineffectual…or dismiss our struggles as ‘identity politics’}.
The strength of the opposition, the sheer hatred we face makes what most of those other mainstream ‘progressives’ face look like a walk in the park. Murder, rape, physical attacks are commonplace.
Illegal for decades, classified as ‘mentally ill’, seen as ‘sexual freaks’ …… oh yes we got the lot.
You didn’t get (say) environmental activists being murdered just for being who they are, or getting banged up and being given hot and cold ECT everyday, which was happening right up to the 90s in some places for trans people (and for gay/lesbian ones just a decade or so earlier).
They don’t get presidential candidates and serious politicians in the US (and elsewhere) competing with each to be the toughest on abortion saying they’d ban it even it meant the mother’s life, in affect saying a woman’s life means nothing except as a womb.
They don’t face the OFFICIAL position of the Catholic church (and the WBC etc) openly being to totally eliminate trans people (and more quietly gay/lesbian ones too).
Compared to what we faced and what we face daily, all those other mainstream ‘progressives’ have no opposition at all.
Worse we had to change public opinion as a necessary precursor for many other changes. Not that long ago (going by the polls) homophobia and transphobia were ‘normal’ not just confined to a few minorities as now. That was very evident when the AIDS epidemic hit.
Our activists had to fight a long uphill battle to change that.
Other mainstream progressives worked (and currently work in) in a much more accepting environment. Even in the US polls have shown consistently that the majority of people are more ‘left wing’ than the so called ‘left wing’ politicians, being far more supportive of health system changes, welfare, environmental issues and so on.
We LGBTI people had to create that environment, changing a hostile one to a supportive one (and that is worth a book all by itself).
So I reject that argument, I think it is self serving and excuses failure…and helps avoid the necessary (and painful) self examination to work out what has gone wrong, then work out how to change.
I mean how did (as a classic example) the environmental lobby fail so badly over CO2? it wasn’t the opposition, they faced far worse over vehicle pollution controls in the 70s And all they had to do was to replace coal fired electricity generation, not that big an issue technically or economically. Yet they failed (and continue to fail) totally.
To understand that you have to examine the organisational, personal and inter-personal dynamics of all the various people involved and the bad decisions made sometimes decades before.
Why did all those US ‘progressives’ roll over when Clinton gutted welfare? When you look back at that time a well organised campaign could have stopped that dead easily.
And many, many other examples like that.
We LGBTI people haven’t been ‘allowed’ anything at all, it has been a long hard bloody struggle all the way and still is.
None of all those ‘progressives’, ‘left wingers’ and all the rest have ever faced anything like this (or ever will do):
http://www.christianpost.com/news/over-150-high-schoolers-stage-walkout-protest-after-trans-student-seeks-to-use-girls-locker-room-144253/
Lisa
On the good news front:
“WBC chased out of KC by supportive parents and friends of trans homecoming queen ”
http://planettransgender.com/wbc-chased-out-of-kc-by-supportive-parents-and-friends-of-trans-homecoming-queen/
????????
长期的不明缘由的牙痛可能由牙隐裂惹起,由于牙隐裂的裂纹常深化牙实质布局内,而牙冠外表的非生感性粗大裂纹,常不容易被发现而"