Dear T,
Thanks for your email.
By and large I share your outrage.
We all champion our own values as "the right ones" and in this regard I am often as adamant as you are in promoting the same agenda.
Even so, every "bag is mixed" and so it is that we promote the Democratic Party's agenda even though Obama is Rockefeller Republican who is way too friendly with Wall Street, Homeland Security and the military-industrial complex.
It amuses me that zealous Democrats are not more critical -- even outraged -- that Obama's core positions on Capitalism are not enlightened in any substantive way and that Pope Francis -- the most promising figure on the world stage (despite his shortcomings as you and I see them) -- has hammered out positions on economic justice and most social services that shame the Democratic Party.
Pope Francis: Quotations On Finance, Economics, Capitalism And Inequality
"Pope Francis Links"
Above all, "Follow the money!"
Yes, "sex and gender" are important but they don't come close to the relentless importance of money/resource.
I have long held as a self-evident truth that when liberals and progressives replaced FDR's primary focus on "The Four Freedoms" with sex and gender issues, we lost our majoritarian advantage.
The Four Freedoms
Ever since, we've been stuck in a Mexican stand-off with dimwits, many of whom used to be party-line Dems.
At most, sex is a Big Deal for 25 to 30 years.
But we all need food on the table -- and 'medicine in the cabinet" -- for 80 years plus.
A cautionary note:
“There is also the Territory of historical self-righteousness: if we had lived south of Ohio in 1830, we would not have owned slaves; if we had lived on the frontier, we would have killed no Indians, violated no treaties, stolen no land. The probability is overwhelming that if we had belonged to the generation we deplore, we too would have behaved deplorably. The probability is overwhelming that we belong to a generation that will be found by its successors to have behaved deplorably. Not to know that is, again, to be in error and to neglect essential work, and some of this work, as before, is work of the imagination. How can we imagine our situation or our history if we think we are superior to it?” Wendell Berry http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/wendell-berry-best-pax-posts.html
Love
Alan
Statistically speaking, displays like this do not "win people over."
For most folks this kind of exhibitionism is intrinsically alienating.
Hard Lesson: The fact that we "can" do something does not mean it is advisable.
PS Not long ago, I was hot under the collar about some political outrage when 93 year old friend, Arthur -- a retired Air Force general and self-described "in your face liberal" (who has visited 200 countries and both poles twice) -- counselled: "Alan, the political order that you and I would like to see may require a hundred thousand years to take form."
On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 12:11 AM, NH wrote:
It is really sad what is happening in San Francisco now. The new Archibishop has said that same sex relationships, masturbation, contraception are "Gravely Evil" All these Catholics of the "baby boomer" genreation keep writing letters to the editor saying that that is not the Catholic church that they grew up in, that it was about social justice, peace and the teachings of Christ.
It is soooo painful.
***
Follow-up correspondence:
Dear Tig,
Thanks for your email.
I am looking at the matter politically - not sexually.
People are at liberty to do what they will with their sex lives.
I am not foolish enough to try to change anyone's sexual orientation.
Overarching The Groin, we find that people's sentiments are stuck where they're stuck -- just as you and I are stuck with heterosexuality -- and, therefore, for purposes of coalition building, we need to know (whatever we choose to do) that more political progress can be made by keeping economic issues central, not sex and gender.
Sex is, by nature, a red hot issue.
It gets people "worked up."
For better and worse, sex inflames us.
Carl Jung nailed it: "Sex is eternally problematic."
Sex, especially non-traditional sex, "muddies the water."
Sex is intrinsically "itchy" and it simply won't "stay scratched."
That said, if any person -- or party -- chooses to be less effective than otherwise by refusing to be "politic," I will not prevent them making things needlessly difficult for themselves!
Again, "Follow the money!" not the sex and gender.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- like Teddy before him -- put economics first. And with singularity of purpose they made phenomenal advances.
Both men struck ballsy, principled positions on "pocketbook issues" -- trust-busting and promoting "the general welfare" so that a decisive majority of Americans cheered them on.
Teddy gave America its first taste of progressive politics. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/03/teddy-roosevelt-best-thing-ever-said-by.html
FDR gave them The New Deal and in the process changed the very nature of American politics.
FDR was so successful re-constituting America's economic paradigm -- while alienating no one but The Rich -- that 80 years later Republicans are still flummoxed trying to un-do it.
FDR's determination to make things better for "people's purses" evoked such outpouring of love that the people invested him with nearly boundless political capital.
However, if it were known that FDR was a philanderer and that Eleanor's inner circle was comprised of lesbians, it would have been a different political ballgame.
An uphill fight... and probably a losing one.
Look. Anyone -- or any party -- that wants to rile people's prudish sensibilities is at liberty to so.
But let's not pretend that such liberty doesn't invoke a political cost.
By playing it straight and staying focused on economics, Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor had phenomenal cachet.
Imagine ANY contemporary politician getting away with FDR's "I Welcome Their Hatred" speech. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/franklin-delano-roosevelt-i-welcome.html
Or imagine ANY contemporary politician -- including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren -- imitating Teddy's biting candor concerning the monstrosity of capitalist self-interest.
"Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune, and putting his fortune only to the basest uses —whether these uses be to speculate in stocks and wreck railroads himself, or to allow his son to lead a life of foolish and expensive idleness and gross debauchery, or to purchase some scoundrel of high social position, foreign or native, for his daughter. Such a man is only the more dangerous if he occasionally does some deed like founding a college or endowing a church, which makes those good people who are also foolish forget his real iniquity. These men are equally careless of the working men, whom they oppress, and of the State, whose existence they imperil. There are not very many of them, but there is a very great number of men who approach more or less closely to the type, and, just in so far as they do so approach, they are curses to the country."
(Forum, February 1895.) Mem.Ed. XV, 10; Nat. Ed. XIII, 9.
Republican President Teddy Roosevelt
Spearhead Of Progressive Politics
Wikiquote
Teddy and FDR could "get in people's faces" because most people liked the way they looked.
Teddy and Franklin only threatened The Wealthy.
They did not threaten people's prudish sensibilities.
Love
Alan
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