Yeah...that describes it. Life has been blah lately. Last week was a fiasco. It is amazing how a series of delayed flights on Sunday night can affect the rest of the week
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Re: Right on...kakistocracyDecember 7 2005, 19:49:09 UTC
I don't think New Paltz is a good example necessarily. Jason West isn't a Democrat-hater. He's a sharp guy with legitimate political acumen and who views the party as a sustainable independent party.
A lot of people within the Green Party simply hate the Democrats more than they hate the Republicans. They are psychologically drawn to "outsider politics" and thrive in conflict roles. They are more interested in attacking the Democrats' views on the war than on articulating nonviolent solutions, as a good example.
Reality is that a lot of those people were logically drawn to the Nader camp in 2004 because Nader epitomized "outsider politics" in a lot of ways. So the overlap between that ideological construct and the Nader/Cobb breakdown is pretty strong; but the Nader/Cobb thing is really just a proxy for the real issue. The real issue is that there's a large number of people who aren't really interested in building the party up except insomuch that it can be an attack pulpit. That doesn't mean that there aren't people on the soft left who were attracted by soft oppositional politics and embraced safe states or whatever. Both of those extremes within the party are dangerous to the party's long-term growth, but they're also going to continue to stick around. That's politics.
But what do I know? I'm a clique insider who gets my positions because I have friends in connected places. They made me co-chair of the Ballot Access Committee, after all! Nevermind that I was the lone voice demanding we have that committee and am the lone person doing anything to make it a reality, clearly this is all just a power ploy on my part!
A lot of people within the Green Party simply hate the Democrats more than they hate the Republicans. They are psychologically drawn to "outsider politics" and thrive in conflict roles. They are more interested in attacking the Democrats' views on the war than on articulating nonviolent solutions, as a good example.
Reality is that a lot of those people were logically drawn to the Nader camp in 2004 because Nader epitomized "outsider politics" in a lot of ways. So the overlap between that ideological construct and the Nader/Cobb breakdown is pretty strong; but the Nader/Cobb thing is really just a proxy for the real issue. The real issue is that there's a large number of people who aren't really interested in building the party up except insomuch that it can be an attack pulpit. That doesn't mean that there aren't people on the soft left who were attracted by soft oppositional politics and embraced safe states or whatever. Both of those extremes within the party are dangerous to the party's long-term growth, but they're also going to continue to stick around. That's politics.
But what do I know? I'm a clique insider who gets my positions because I have friends in connected places. They made me co-chair of the Ballot Access Committee, after all! Nevermind that I was the lone voice demanding we have that committee and am the lone person doing anything to make it a reality, clearly this is all just a power ploy on my part!
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