AriannaOnLine reg'lar Cenk Uygur's hard-on-again off-again relationship to his president has gotta cause him post whiplash-like numbness. Like a cartoon of the gallery watching a tennis match, but instead they're analysing Bo Rama's in-&-out on Merry Matrimony or his record of I'mingratiating or, per the Young Turk's latest reckoning in da vigil man dates:
Keen to point out that some black activists never bought what the Rama was hawking, one of the commenters pasted something that former Northwestern poli sci prof Adolph Reed Jr. wrote in '96:
So, this brings us to the central problem with President [Bo Rama]'s administration. They were under the unbelievably mistaken impression that if they worked with the Republicans, compromised with them and gave them what they wanted, that the Republicans would react likewise.It's hearty of him to remind his readers of the origins of the health insurance mandate, but by coloring Bo Ramney's Afford If I Care Act a sellout, Cenk falls into the category of Second-or-Third Most Critical of a Politician He's Gonna Vote for Anyway (2nd-3rd MCPHGVFA). A standard for these club members is a "belief in the narrative", which Matt Stoller addresses in his Our Willingness to Be Tricked:
[Bo Rama] didn’t get the money back, and never intended to. In fact, the administration had weeks earlier asked Chris Dodd to insert a provision into law ensuring the AIG bonuses would be paid – and then blamed Dodd for the fiasco.I assume that Stoller's choice of pronouns in the title of his post is journalistic habit, not because he's one of the 2nd MCPHGVFA.
Keen to point out that some black activists never bought what the Rama was hawking, one of the commenters pasted something that former Northwestern poli sci prof Adolph Reed Jr. wrote in '96:
In Chicago, for instance, we’ve gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program — the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics, as in Haiti and wherever else the International Monetary Fund has sway. So far the black activist response hasn’t been up to the challenge. We have to do better.But it is the Stoller piece I'd like to recommend in it's entirety. Here's another excerpt in case y'don' feel like clickin':
This alternative narrative is a hard truth to hear, because it carries with it an implicit rejection of American exceptionalism. Yes, American institutions are no better, and in many ways are more malignant, than those of many other countries. Yes, our political leaders, our press, our military leadership, operate in service to sociopathic aims. Yes, our freedoms are often an illusion, unless you fit a very narrow criteria. Yes, our banks are run to rob us, yes, our CIA spies on us, and yes, our government is fundamentally anti-democratic. Yes, our President is a con artist, and yes, nearly every reporter who writes about him participates in this set of lies, because of careerism, social financial reasons, or a simple lack of competence or imagination.
