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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
You seem to be working under the delusion that "small incremental change" is a statement of goals and not simply a description of results. We do not set out with the intention of deliberately making less progress than we could, we are only able to make so much of the progress we want to while shackled with conservative opposition.
Politics is a tug of war where progressives are trying to pull the country uphill while conservatives are trying to drag it back down, and the uninvolved, apathetic, and uninformed are dead weight in the middle, which, because we're fighting on a hill, work in the conservatives' favor. Large leaps uphill are rare because the fight is stacked against us, and without the right conditions, trying to give a massive yank and failing just leaves us off balance to be dragged further down. We take the leaps where we can, but most of the time, small, incremental progress is all that we can do (and we can't get to the places where we can make those leaps without the sustained incremental progress). Not because we lack the will, but simply because we don't have the muscle to beat a combination of higher numbers and gravity.
Unless you're willing to shoot everyone who disagrees with you, poo-pooing incremental change is dumb.
"Did small incremental change finally get gay marriage federally legalized to the same status as heterosexual marriage? No, because while legislators in Blue states legalized gay marriage within their states in hopes that people in Red states would see it wasn't so scary, legislators in Red states did their damnedest best to ensure that they would not have to recognize those out-of-state marriages in their own state as much as possible and then waited for the next Republican-controlled House and Senate to find a way to make it illegal for states expect other states to recognize their gay marriage certificates at all.
What did finally get gay marriage federally legalized to the same status as heterosexual marriage? The SCOTUS making the radical decision that not only was it unconstitutional for there to be a such a law, but that not allowing gay marriage to have the same legal status as heterosexual marriage was itself in fact unconstitutional."
Gay marriage had no chance of being legalized nationwide if its proponents hadn't spent the better part of fifty years changing attitudes towards gay people in general. Obergefell v. Hodges was a 5-4 decision, rendered at a time when a majority of states had legalized it piecemeal. There was no way that case would have gone in gay marriage's favor if it was 2004 and only Massachusetts had legalized it. Small incremental change absolutely decided the outcome of that case. If it hadn't worked its way into being the consensus opinion, Anthony Kennedy would have decided that it wasn't constitutional.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."By the time of Obergefell vs. Hodges, 36 states and DC had legalized same-sex marriage, either through court cases, passing laws, or voter initiative/referendum. There's an argument to be made that the Supreme Court decision was the culmination of a decade of incremental change, rather than a single radical ruling.
You also have to take into account that too many big changes will cause massive social unrest, which will tend to undo your progress quickly. Slow change is not just the only politically feasible option in a democracy, it is also the only culturally sustainable one, because humans are naturally slow to change their world view and quick to resist too strong a change in outlook.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesIt really does seem that to some on the far left any change that doesn't instantly bring things to where they want it is trash and they hate it. Any kind of small step towards what they want is dismissed as terrible and not worth doing, which only serves to hurt the overall progress. Even the examples of the Civil Rights Movement and legalizing Gay Marriage don't work because both had been long running fights achieving each step bit by bit until they got to where they are now.
Sometimes you just have to keep taking things one step at a time and not stop until you reach the destination.
You should set radical goals as some kind of "platonic ideal" to reach for, so that whatever incremental change you do achieve has enough momentum to be more significant than if you began from a position of compromise. One should not be so inflexible that failure to achieve those ideals equals failure.
Except that's not true. They have been long running fights, but policy-wise they were not won 'bit by bit', they were won by landmark decisions that were too big and sweeping for conservatives to reverse without massively upsetting and disrupting the new power balance of society. Once Jim Crow was ended it was impossible to reinstate it without far more coercion and violence than it ever took to repeal it.
Small actions and events in aggregate aren't useless by any means... As a way of influencing society they're the premiere way any group of activists is going to affect meaningful change in the long run. Small incremental changes work because you're building up to big change in the long term... But that only works if you actually have the space to build and you don't have someone coming by every <multiple of four years> and pushing everything you've built over.
Small incremental changes on a cultural/social level work wonders. 'Small incremental changes' as a political policy? That's next to useless especially in a democracy with only two choices, because any small changes you make can, and often will, be reversed or subverted with relatively little effort or disruption by the opposing side when they get to power.
Not really, I'm simply aware that 'small incremental changes' as a policy mantra started getting used about a hundred years ago in Europe (right around a certain revolution to the east) by people who were well aware among themselves that it was never anything other than a stalling tactic, because if they didn't give the fed up populace something, they knew what was happening 'over there' could start happening 'over here'.
Have you ever considered that perhaps the reason why it feels like that is that liberals (not progressives) have been using the same old 'incremental changes' nonsense for decades now and all the conservatives have to do to eliminate all the incremental change that they've been trying to build up is give one good hard yank?
There is no hill. There's just a flat plane. The real issue is centrists and moderates constantly shouting 'Stop pulling so hard! We don't want to go too far in that direction!' at the progressives and then letting go of the rope (or worse yet, pulling in the opposite direction) if the progressives keep pulling. If things like the Civil Rights movement show anything, it's that those apathetic, uninvolved and uninformed people in the middle are just as much of an impediment to the conservatives if the progressives actually manage to pull together hard enough to move them in the right direction and the centrists and moderates realize that it's not actually as scary over there as they thought.
Wow, impressive. Not only did you manage to build a strawman, but you've built it entirely from straw that's passed through the digestive tract of a bull.
If... Eh... You don't understand why 'the far left' isn't exactly enamoured with small steps at the moment, it's because we're dealing with issues like unchecked police violence against black people that's killing hundreds per year, a fucking global pandemic that's killing thousands of people per day and maiming many more for life and an environmental crisis that, at the current rate, is going to kill a large number of us while leaving the assholes who caused it relatively untouched, because they're rich enough to deal with the consequences once they come.
It's not that these issues can't be solved through a long term series of small changes building up over time... It's that far more people are going to die if we do it that way than if we actually do absolutely everything we can, right now.
That's funny. The main objection to many of the changes that progressives want to implement is 'sure, it sounds good on paper, but how can we be sure it will work out exactly that way?'
Something about glass houses and throwing stones, I think.
Edited by Robrecht on Nov 29th 2020 at 8:38:22 PM
Angry gets shit done.How long is long running? I'm getting confused by what people consider too long and too fast here. Brown vs Board was in 1954, the Voting Rights Act wasn't until 1965. Heck, the ban on interracial marriage wasn't struck down nationally until two years after that. So that's a period of over ten years. Is that the slow approach or the fast approach?
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It's fast compared to the whole heap of nothing substantial that was achieved policy-wise from the 1870s to the 1950s.
For those eighty or so years, any time Republicans tried to implement small changes to better the lot of Freedmen, Southern Democrats would subverted or negate those small changes through methods like the Jim Crow laws and literacy tests for voter registration.
Activists made great strides in convincing people that the Jim Crow laws and such were unjust, but in terms of actual policy, i.e. in terms of stuff that most impacted people's socio-economic situation, nothing much changed that wasn't immediately undone, until the Brown vs. the Board of Education ruling and the subsequent Civil Rights movement.
And despite, as documented, centrists and moderates declaring the Civil Rights movement dangerous radicals who wanted too much change, too fast and who would tear the country apart and cause a second civil war, they got more done by demanding decisive action in ten years than eighty years of 'small incremental changes'.
Edited by Robrecht on Nov 30th 2020 at 9:42:12 PM
Angry gets shit done.Well to be fair, that would still be more humane than the electric chair.
x3
Like I said, Bernie didn't make it through the primary twice now. Warren had an even worse result. What do you think would be the outcome of nominating another progressive in 4 years, especially somebody as polarizing as AOC?
Edited by Forenperser on Nov 30th 2020 at 1:51:07 PM
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianThe big problem with firing squads... well, one of the big problems... is what it does to the people shooting the guns. The trauma is severe and permanent.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Nice to know where "our" "President" is focused and that he has his priorities in order. (I guess the coronavirus isn't killing enough people or killing them fast enough for his liking)
Someone did tell me life was going to be this way.And 70 million voted for this madman. Almost half of our country apparently never minded supporting this Jerkass wannabee-dictator who is an older, white version of Kim Jong-un.
"Wow, no Mega Togekiss in Legends Z-A. Or any non-Froslass new Sinnoh Mega Evolutions. Round of applause, everybody." - Dawn

Yeah, you can't simply force people to your way. It's unfortunate, but that's democracy.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times