One of our esteemed editors has rightfully asked that a particular (and familiar) thread in an excellent diary be relocated to its own post.
The comment that began that thread is one of several that exemplify concern trolling (emphasis mine):
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The Concern Troll is a type, a very interesting type in our new media age. The Concern Troll has actually gone mainstream and there are many occupying global media positions. Example: Almost anything you read from Karl Rove these days are examples of a Concern Troll in action. He’ll write some Op-Ed for the WSJ warning the Democrats not to get caught up in this healthcare debate lest they lose congressional seats in 2010 – HEAVEN FORFEND! You know Karl would hate to see that, right?Thus, a Concern Troll: A troll who’s main technique is to employ insincere concern for the group he’s actually targeting.
Here are several canards that were mentioned today, and that happen frequently:
1. The extreme right-wing and “neoliberal” Democrats are the same
2. Democrats, especially “neoliberal” Democrats, blame workers for their poverty
3. The ACA is a “good example” of (1)
I get that we should not feed trolls. At the same time, I also get that sites like this reflect the commentary that they host. The audience of BMG — especially the many people who read our commentary and do not add their own (for most sites, the ratio of readers to writers is between 10:1 and 100:1, often more) — may be left with an incorrect sense of BMG in particular and Democrats in general (to the extent that we remain an opinion-shaper of Democratic thought).
I think that nearly all BMG participants support single-payer government-sponsored health care. I think that nearly all BMG participants support increasing the minimum wage, mandating a living wage, and mandated family leave. I think nearly all BMG participants and nearly all Democrats understand that making education and skills available to those who cannot afford them is a crucial part of society’s safety net.
Democrats are not perfect. We are also DIFFERENT FROM the right-wing and especially the extremist right wing. I’d like BMG to be a place where that can be said without provoking a long and repetitive chain of lies, misrepresentations, misquotes, and often personal attacks and abuse. On issue after issue, any effort to highlight the stark differences between “them” and “us” provokes this kind of concern trolling, and almost always from the same handful of sources.
I participate in BMG, and have for more than a decade, because this community values fact-based and reality-based discussion.
Let’s look at these one by one:
Nobody has ever argued that on BMG. They are simply saying that the neoliberal Democrats are better on some issues, but not fantastic. Surely we can all agree, looking at our own legislature as Charley aptly put it, that our own party can do so much better nationally as well as locally.
2. Democrats, especially “neoliberal” Democrats, blame workers for their poverty
That horrible conservative Robert Reich seems to be arguing that point in this piece.
Surely you cannot disagree with any of that analysis? It is one you have made repeatedly here since 2006 looking at our own anemic local party, which you regularly deride as a party in name only. There are next to no issues beyond semantics where you and John T May disagree. Trust me.
There is no accident that Bernie and Trump carried the same Rust Belt counties in their respective primaries. It is also no accident that Hillary Clinton ran as an agent of globalization and social progress against an opponent of globalization and social progress. We are primed to run that kind of campaign again and primed to lose again running that kind of campaign. Instead we should run a candidate who is against unfettered globalization and FOR social progress. Surely our party has produced such figures in the past. Men like Roosevelt and the Kennedys. Proud traitors to their class who wanted the people to have more power than businesses. Clinton and Obama actively made a truce with business that they could pursue social progress while maintaining economic moderation. This is similar to the bargain Charlie Baker and our legislature are making. It is a bargain that is failing the workers of this Commonwealth and this country. Hence the attraction to outsiders willing to break that stale binary apart and form a new coalition.
3. The ACA is a “good example” of (1)
Again, let’s look at the facts. The ACA is a paltry band aid on a terrible health care system that progressives right through President Clinton and President Obama agreed required some kind of public option or public takeover to be successful. You have repeatedly praised single payer health care system as the best possible policy outcome in the health care debate. Yet now that we are defending the band aid, some Democrats, sadly including you and Charley, have started deriding single payer advocates as unrealistic right when the polling and the momentum are on their side. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker can embrace it, why can’t BMG? We win when we go on offense, not when we defend our small gains from the right wing rear guard.
Nobody has ever argued that on BMG.
Yup, that’s as far as I read with the posting. I’m not into fake news. I’ll admit, I looked at the bait and I have the day off today with time on my hands….so I’ll mow the lawn instead!
Your Robert Reich quote is not responsive to the item.
I see nothing in the quote that blames workers for their poverty. In particular, there is nothing in that quote that attacks Democrats for wanting to make education and skills available for those who can’t afford them.
Here’s another Robert Reich quote (emphasis mine):
Here is the comment from the other thread:
I’m sorry, but there is simply no way to twist either comment to mean the other.
Your quote from Robert Reich is asserting the dominance of “Washington-based fundraisers, bundlers, analysts, and pollsters”. I agree with that. That has NOTHING to do with education. John is attacking — again — Democrats who, like Robert Reich, believe that education and skills training is an essential component of what we Democrats must do.
You assert that nobody here on BMG has argued that “extreme right-wing and “neoliberal” Democrats are the same”.
Here is the comment that spurred my item 1 (emphasis mine):
How else can that first sentence be read? In context, John is responding to this comment of mine:
He has said, as plain as day, that there are “plenty of” “neoliberals” who “don’t want to pay any taxes at all, and they don’t want any government at all”
Similarly, John himself cites the ACA as an example of this.
I won’t try to speak for Charley. I’ll tell you that my objection has never been to people who advocate for single-payer government-sponsored healthcare. My objection is, instead, to people who for two years have attacked me, insulted me, lied about me, called me a “wall street sellout”, and so on in service of their explicitly stated belief that the ACA is bad.
Here are his exact words, from this morning:
That is not “going on offense”, it’s simple nihilism. It’s demanding that we burn the village to save it.
The reason the GOP is having so much trouble dismantling the ACA is that it really IS the best that can be done today without a wholesale dismantling of our entire healthcare delivery system. That means that it is also that best that can be done when pretty much the ENTIRE US is red at the local level.
Adlai Stevenson once famously said“If the Republicans will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”
I’d like John to stop lying about the Democrats.
Reich attacks two Democratic presidents he endorsed over their failure to address wealth concentration, deunionization, oligopoly, antitrust, and fair trade. There are a lot of unaffiliated Americans tuning out of the two parry system entirely or who view both parties with disdain. We can praise these men as effective Presidents while also recognizing how their policies failed to stop the middle class hurt in many areas and this dissatisfaction gave us the present state.
I agree, and that’s still not relevant to this diary about concern trolling.
What Robert Reich most emphatically does NOT do is attack Democratic programs and proposals to make education and skills affordable for our least wealthy working-class families. Robert Reich does NOT blame workers for their poverty.
I like Robert Reich, and I generally agree with pretty much everything he says including the aspects you mention here.
The issue I’m focused on in this diary is not Robert Reich. It is participants at BMG who flagrantly and blatantly misrepresent what Democrats say and do.
A) that conflict was not one of the three you addressed’
B) You are again talking past one another on that score
To elaborate on B, you are saying we should make investments in education to ensure college is affordable for all. I am unsure if you agreed with Sen. Sanders plan to make universal or if you supported the more narrowly tailored free community college plan of Sen. Clinton. Either plan is good, quite frankly, America can afford to do both.
John is arguing that we should focus on increasing unions, living wages, employee ownership, etc. That this fight matters more than expanding education access which does not always lead to increased worker wages or power You are arguing education is the most important engine driving social mobility. I actually think you are both right.
I would argue we should do both. Start enforcing anti-trust, rebuild unions, mandate living wages. This is John’s point. Focus on taking power from the capitalist class and redistributing it to working families. Your point is also true. We should invest in public education, public healthcare, and public transportation. This will require substantial more social democracy than America is used to, but the time is ripe.
The old paradigm between center left and center right is dead. Our new paradigm is between social democracy or national socialism, I know which side I am on. The centrists have to figure out ASAP that they can afford to lose some money and power in exchange for saving the country from the racists. The sooner the left starts realizing what side we are all on, the better we can work together to beat the right.
You know Tom, I’d really appreciate keeping things on point without the overly-vivid characterizations: “lying”, “concern trolling”, etc. It’s just too much, too personal; it obscures your point; degrades the tone around here; and is pretty unreadable.
… and worse than anything, I am absolutely positive that it drives out more productive discourse. I have little doubt that this kind of things drives other would-be participants away. Heck, it drives me away. It’s deadly dull.
No more of this please. If one can’t be pleasant, be substantive; and if one can’t be substantive without making it personal, then it’s time for a vacation.
Of course, that goes for everyone.
Maybe it’s time for a vacation then.
I call “wall street sellout” perty personal. The statements I object to are objectively false. If I can’t say that, then I don’t belong here.
“Concern-trolling” is a relatively diplomatic accusation IMO.
The GOP (today in the person of the Justice Department) is now denying coverage to persons with pre-existing conditions.
Yesterday, our concern troll wrote:
What this means is that tens of millions of working class men and women will either not be able to get health care at all or will have to pay exorbitant amounts for it.
This is an example of what “tear it down” means. It exemplifies “insincere concern for the group he’s actually targeting.”
With “friends” like this, the working class doesn’t need enemies.
Yes, tear it down because things like this can happen when one bases health care on markets of any sort. It’s like a house with a faulty foundation. No matter how much one dresses up the kitchen or the carpeting, not matter how many people live in it, the fact that is has a faulty foundation means that inevitably, it will crumble. The ACA’s foundation is private companies operating in markets with the only objective of those private companies being the ROI of the owners. Pre-existing conditions adversely affects the profits of the shareholders and so, they are being denied.
Yes, tear it down.