Nancy

Documentation. Witnesses. Facts. Truth. That's what they're afraid of.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

The NYT Is Deliberately Trying to Undermine #TheResistance

It's hard for me to conclude otherwise...


Two weeks I took down a ridiculously misleading piece of slop by Kenneth Vogel about the perils the Democratic Party faced because some money was going to new groups like Indivisible. My response to it (which was the most read thing I've ever written, thank you!).


Mr. Vogel or his editor could have easily run a Twitter search and found Democrats from basically the entire spectrum of the Party, as well as independents both to the left and the right of the Party, and even some #NeverTrump Republicans. But he didn't. It wouldn't have been as juicy a story.


At the time I stated, "The New York Times Doesn't Get #TheResistance."


I think I may have gone too easy on them, as they really can't help themselves. Today's headline: "Is Donald Trump Turning Liberals Into Radicals?"

Short answer: NO, GODFUCKINGDAMMIT.
This enthusiasm has gotten the traditional Democratic donors and fund-raisers excited: From longstanding groups like Democracy Alliance to liberal tech entrepreneurs, money is pouring into Indivisible and similar organizations. But often these groups have focused on influencing Democrats or getting them elected (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) rather than building a broader movement.
Aside from referring to Vogel's awful slop here, The Nation's Sarah Leonard is contradicting her headline like Vogel did two weeks back. The above paragraph would indicate that these groups are NOT radical... they're supporting Democrats. Democrats of all stripes. But in order to answer her question in the affirmative, Leonard tries to encourage liberals to become radicals:

The Indivisible activists should be making common cause with another movement that has surged since the election: the Democratic Socialists of America, an activist group that works on both national and local levels, has grown to about 30,000 members from about 5,000 since the election, largely driven by its association with Bernie Sanders, who, though not a member, also identifies as a democratic socialist. (Disclosure: I’m a member.)

New members of the D.S.A., most of them millennials, have instinctively recognized the need for radical wealth redistribution, forming what the group’s national director, Maria Svart, calls “the left wing of the resistance.”
Nearly every goddamned Democrat supports significant wealth distribution. I'm not going to use Leonard's word "radical". This is not "radical." It's "being a fucking human being and a mainstream Democrat."
Two weeks ago, Vogel tried to cite an irrelevant entity, Third Way, to make his point. Leonard pulls the same shit -- The Democratic Socialists of America. 30,000 members? 30,000 members? The NRA has 5 million members. Nearly 66 million people voted for Hillary. But we're supposed to take 30,000 people seriously? But wait, it gets worse:
The D.S.A. — which isn’t a political party — has supported some left-wing candidates across the country, from the Brooklyn City Council to a Virginia House race.


"Which isn't a political party." "Some left-wing candidates." "From the Brooklyn City Council to a Virginia House race." Sounds like a groundswell to me.

But even as it is willing to work with some Democratic candidates or with Democrats on specific issues, its focus is pushing a broader agenda for equality, such as making the case for single-payer health care, while criticizing capitalism itself for driving upward redistribution of wealth. That might make some traditional liberals and Democrats uncomfortable, but in order to resist Mr. Trump, we ought to be thinking about how we ended up with a yawning wealth gap in the first place.


Once again, every goddamned Democrat, other than the wealthy Upper East Side NYT readers for whom each David Brooks 800 word column is their only generator of warmth between their legs they ever feel, is pretty comfortable with reducing inequality. But maybe 30,000 Democratic Socialists of America should apologize for scaring the boners off that crowd.

How can one at this point read another NYT column like this and not conclude that they're actively trying to split the Democratic Party? I can't.


And no, Trump is not turning liberals into radicals. He's put us in a place where we need to defend our small-d democratic principles and institutions so they continue to protect those who need protecting from those trying to hurt them. I can't think of anything less radical.

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