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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Hillary isn't any more of a warmonger than the regular politician which means yes, she's a warmonger but so are most of them.
You won't get anywhere without feeding the military industrial complex. It's a bit like how the US likes to kiss Israel and Saudi Arabia's feet despite their many atrocities because they're our monsters.
x9 It's not a clear dogwhistle. That defeats the purpose of being a dogwhistle. It does set of alarms for people use to/ trained to pick up on what "working class" and "ordinary/everyday Americans" mean for their future health.
Sanders (and others like him) may or may not intend that, but please note, you yourself remind us that politics is murky business, and we have no way of knowing whether he's a socialist just waiting to work his magic or a white socialist with narrow ethnic appeal. There is evidence, but the nature of evidence is to be interpreted one way or the other.
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:21:22 PM by CenturyEye
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives@Capsase- Sanders has used the term white working class explicitly and even when he doesn't, it's clear who he means because he'll often bring up Democrats losing working class support in the context of claiming that no Trump supporters are bigoted.
When people like myself say it's a dog whistle, we're not making it as some kind of bad faith rhetorical point even though of course that's how you are framing it.
Edit- Also, this from Mad Skillz kind of says everything about that appeal- "Hell, my dad is a staunch Republican that thinks Obama is a Kenyan and a Muslim but even he thinks Bernie is a good, honest guy."
Sanders is indeed popular with a lot of racist people who hate the Democratic Party. The problem is is that Sanders whole shtick is reassuring them that they aren't racist and are totally right to hate the Democratic Party.
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:21:25 PM by Hodor2
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Literally everything that doesn't come with a racial qualifier is a dog whistle then with enough mental gymnastics, and at some point you'll eventually run out of words which aren't taboo.
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I don't recall that particular phrase coming up (white working class), though if it was used in the context your suggesting it was, there's certainly reason for criticism.
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:25:48 PM by CaptainCapsase
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The point was, despite your claims, using Hillary's support of the Iraq War against her is not an exclusively left-wing strategy.
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Probably anything can be used that way, but that's slippery slope par excellence. There's no rule to discerning dogwhistles. Tis a matter of metis.
Working class in particular and everyday Americans though have been used repeatedly with implied racial qualifiers. Even if Sanders is using "working class" as a term in the socialist sense, its still rather like trying to bring back the Roman salute (its the only example I can think of) as a symbol of anything but the obvious.
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:29:18 PM by CenturyEye
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our livesIf they were smart they'd find a way to marginalize his ass. Giving up their integrity to piggyback on Sanders' BS would make them no better than the Republicans who play along with Trump for the sake of keeping their positions.
You know, putting Israel and Saudi Arabia in the same category is pretty much the worst sort of BS. One's flawed democracy. The other's a theocratic nightmare.
Nice try at a dodge. The right pushed the idea that she was somehow a terrible warmonger. It even became an official part of Trump's strategy. The Internet left ate it up. Case closed.
And here it is again. "Bernie marched for Civil Rights 50 years ago, therefore he can't be racist". It's amazing to me how this particular dodge gets deployed any time his questionable record on Civil Rights comes up. He does not get a free pass because of something he did five decades back.
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:29:48 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
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Is it really though? "Everyday Americans" is something that's much more clearly been used in a dog-whistle sense (and even then to what extent that's really meant to refer to whites and to what extent it's phrased to be ambiguous enough for the voter to self-insert is debatable), but "working class" isn't just used by the GOP; it was used heavily by Trump; I've only started seeing people refer to it as a dog whistle very recently.
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:30:41 PM by CaptainCapsase
@Capsase- Well, this is an earlier instance of Sanders on that theme
and this is a new comment of his on the same theme
.
You could probably also throw in his comment about Democrats and "identity politics
", as well as his thing stated that Trump won because people were tired of political correctness (which he oddly defined as relating to economic policy).
I doubt it will convince you if you want to accuse myself and others of arguing in bad faith when pointing to a dogwhistle, but there seems to be a definite correlation between Sanders dinging Democrats on losing working class support (even if he doesn't explicitly use the therm white) and making comments that are critical of the Democratic Party's social and civil rights stances and/or defending Trump voters.
Edit- Really good Twitter thread on the problems with Sanders' comments
.
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:35:01 PM by Hodor2
Good point.
Actually thinking about it these people can be manipulated to vote against their self-interest then perhaps they could be manipulated to vote for the country's self-interest.
Give them something else to hate.
Now Bernie has a target (corporations) which I agree with him on.
Who are the targets for other Democrats?
Other democrats? So much for party unity.
Republicans? Well that doesn't work because they are republican right now. You're attacking them.
Homophobes and racists? Well many of them are homophobes and racists.
But then that could lead us a very dark road.
At the least, we'd be closer to recreating an FDR-like coalition and at worst we'd leave ourselves open to a takeover.
We have to peel them off somehow and Republicans have an exit strategy in case their white base falters.
Latinos. Might take a decade or two to rebuild trust though.
Just some random thoughts that occurred to me.
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Can't tell you about their history. I never even heard the terms "overton window" or "dogwhistle" before joining this thread. The one was just context specific alarm bells and the other exceptionalism of a sort.
That ambiguity is exactly what dogwhistles rely on. The only really consistent (and still not infallible) clue is a term showing up as part of an othering discourse. And "working class" support certainly came up in opposition to "minority privileges" often enough.
Again, I know little of Sanders, especially outside this thread, but his using terms like that sets off instinctive alarm bells. How he means it is relevant, but it still leaves me with conflicting evidence of what he intends to do with any power.
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:40:28 PM by CenturyEye
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives@Mad Skillz- Well what he should be doing (or at least what I'd like him to do) is at least temporarily drop attacks on Democrats and double down on how Trump is screwing over his supporters/the working class he claims to support.
And like don't put as much focus on the angle of Trump's advisers and appointees being elites/millionaires/billionaires, because a lot of people are going to think (not completely wrongly) that the Democrats are just as bad in this respect. Instead he should focus (or I wish he'd focus) how Trump and his cronies are abusing the office for personal gain and hurting the country while doing it.
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:43:47 PM by Hodor2
Edit: I should probably drop this issue. One of the mods already warned me that this thread really isn't the place for my view on US foreign policy.
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:53:08 PM by henry42
One does not shake the box containing the sticky notes of doom!![]()
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Serious question, does that even matter anymore? I've said before that negative comments re: Clinton ring hollow in the face of Trump.
Hell, even if she's every bit the warmonger you say she is, you could at least count on her to pick her battles, whereas Trump is creating incidents among enemies, allies, and everything in between
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:51:42 PM by sgamer82
And? By this logic, Bernie helped start multiple wars and has voted numerous times to keep the military industrial complex going, more specifically, there are major parts of the F-35 that is manufactured in Vermont and he's voted to keep the program going despite it being over a trillion dollars in fraud and waste
New Survey coming this weekend!They had integrity?
The answer is parties don't have integrity.
And I'm going to point out the hypocrisy again. You keep talking about a lunatic alt-left fringe and advancing this idea that your side is the side of pragmatism and compromise. But you also want your side to shoot itself in the foot if it means giving the left an inch so you end up being no better than these leftist obstructionists.
I didn't put them on the same level.
You know if I called Grima Wormrongue and Sauron bad guys that's not putting them on the same level.
Re-read it again. Did I say he's not racist because he marched in the Civil Right Movement?
No, I did not but nice try strawmanning. Good luck next time.
I specifically said "I doubt" that he's an advocating for a white only form of socialism.
edited 3rd Apr '17 3:55:24 PM by MadSkillz
A reminder, this was posted here soon after the election: Demoralized Democrats have a road map for success in Trump’s America.
Farmers, you seek fair prices, and you are right—but you cannot stand alone. Your patch is not big enough. Workers, you fight for fair wages, you are right—but your patch labor is not big enough.
Women, you seek comparable worth and pay equity, you are right—but your patch is not big enough. Women, mothers, who seek Head Start, and day care and prenatal care on the front side of life, relevant jail care and welfare on the back side of life, you are right—but your patch is not big enough.
Students, you seek scholarships, you are right—but your patch is not big enough. Blacks and Hispanics, when we fight for civil rights, we are right—but our patch is not big enough. Gays and lesbians, when you fight against discrimination and a cure for AIDS, you are right—but your patch is not big enough.
Each struggle, for Jackson, is part of a larger whole. He’s not making an individual appeal to black Americans or an individual appeal to white workers. He’s asking black Americans to see that their struggle is the struggle of white workers and vice versa. That higher wages and civil rights (and affordable education and programs for families) are inextricable. And to that end, Jackson proposed a broad agenda that linked material uplift for all Americans to a civil rights agenda, to the fight against South African apartheid, to the Equal Rights Amendment.
“Policies that are designed to be universal too often fail to acknowledge that different people are situated differently,” he wrote. “What is required is a strategy of ‘targeted universalism.’ This approach recognizes that the needs of marginalized groups must be addressed in a coordinated and effective manner.”
It’s not enough to offer free college or a higher minimum wage. A higher minimum wage still leaves us with high structural unemployment in black communities. Free college still leaves us with vast inequality in public education. If inequality is shaped by place, gender, and race—which is to say, if it is shaped by identity—then any effective approach has to address those constraints in particular. But this doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice universalism. It means we have to tailor universal programs to those particular constraints.
As it stands, the debate among Democrats is torn between a moderate approach that disdains all “identity politics” (except those for white Americans) and one that hasn’t absorbed the deep ties among race, gender, place, and class. Both may win over some Trump voters, but one would do so at the cost of accommodating Trump’s white nationalism and the other at the risk of being blinded by its patina of populism. At the same time, there are thinkers who want to deny the reality and force of Trump’s white nationalism, full stop. This is despite the fact that Trump intuitively sees the interplay between economic interest and identity, pandering to white workers as whites and workers, who want racial hierarchy and economic revival, who see the weakening of the former as a threat to the latter, who exist in a society where economic advantage often follows the isolation and segregation of nonwhites.
@Hodor: I still get the impression that you're reading some hidden meaning into what Sanders is saying when you insist he's a closet racist. Perhaps he's naive about the degree to which Trump's base was racist, xenophobic, and sexist*, but I don't see any reason to assume he doesn't mean what he's saying, and as a matter of course it's generally better to go with that assumption unless you have a good reason to think otherwise.
The issue with that particular article's proposal is that going down that particular route of tying absolutely every issue to race (and gender and sexual orientation and so on) will, I suspect, only further fragment the democrat's base, and the left in general already has a serious problem with party cohesion well beyond the United States, perhaps even to the point where elections become completely unwinnable.
Edit: Actually I need to reread that article because I'm not sure that's what was being proposed. "Targeted Universalism" actually sounds quite interesting, though I'm not sure it'd actually end up working in practice. I also feel like there's a certain amount of "talking past each other" going on here, because this doesn't actually sound particularly different from what I'm hoping the democrats try.
edited 3rd Apr '17 4:07:50 PM by CaptainCapsase
Now, I wasn't saying her voting for the Wars was a Good or Bad thing. I was simply telling the guy above me that, technically, she does have some responsibility when it comes to the Wars that defined America in the early 21st Century.
When compared to Trump, it absolutely doesn't matter though, I want to make that absolutely clear.

edited 3rd Apr '17 3:16:09 PM by Kostya