As long as people like yourself see the lives of transgender people as a "misdirection" or other distraction that needs to be avoided at all costs, MAGA will just keep doubling down on it knowing they "own the libs" on this.
The Christian Right wanted to publicly avoid the issue like you do until recently because publicly advocating for genocide is normally quite the costly losing agenda. That is only true though if opponents see it that way and go on full offense rather than the defensive (read: losing) avoidance strategy that you and the Democrats keep deploying.
How can you go on offense? Call the MAGA people out as the real transgender predators by bringing up the prison practice of v-coding and the fact that conservatives view transgender porn more frequently than the left.
V-coding is the practice of assigning trans women placed in men's prisons to cells with aggressive cisgender male cellmates as both a reward and a means of placation for said cellmates, so as to maintain social control and to, as one inmate described it, "keep the violence rate down".[120] Trans women used in this manner are often raped daily; and this process has been described as so common that it is effectively "a central part of a trans woman's sentence".[121]
Calling MAGA out for using transgender women as chattal sex slaves to make their more violent transgender porn fantasies into a real world practice that they often port to cisgender women might be a start on offense? The anti-abortion movement combined with cutting off government benefits for a sexually abused women to be independent of her abuser is another example of the MAGA sex slave agenda that their male voters believe they are entitled to from the government.
I am by no means a political person let alone a strategist so I apologize for not having a more coherent and detailed offensive attack plan on the transgender issue. I just know that some kind of offense is absolutely necessary because avoidance is a defensive strategy and playing defense means you are losing. If MAGA wins on the transgender issue which they are certain to do if defense is the only response then they will be emboldened to attack even more aggressively on other issues until they win on everything. This cannot be allowed to happen. For that reason, I am imploring you to think about devising offensive tactics and strategy for the transgender issue.
I sympathize with everything you're saying here, and more importantly, if it came to it, I would be a shield to any transgender person, even if I didn't know them at all.
The loudest I have been, in person, in arguing with other people has been precisely in defense of transgender people.
Having said that, EVERYTHING you said here, without exception, is NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT going on the offensive. It's ALL still defensive.
Let me use something that applies to me to try and demonstrate:
I'm former DACA. The treatment of undocumented immigrants hits close to home to me. Yet, if you look throughout all my messaging, you will see VIRTUALLY NO mention of the treatment of undocumented immigrants in it. Why? Because that would be defensive. I do have a few things/resources for people on OUR side to do to protect undocumented people in their communities, and I would/will say the same about anyone in the LGBTQ+, especially transgender people. But I WILL not include anything about "Hey look how badly they're treating immigrants, sending them to Gitmo" in the offensive messaging that I keep calling for.
There are 2 main reasons:
1. The fragmentation of the messaging. We need a SIMPLE, CONCISE, MESSAGE. That's impossible to achieve if the message is to include what they're doing to immigrants, what they're doing to LGBTQ+, what they're doing to black people, what they're doing to the working/middle class, what they're doing to unions, what they're doing to the economy, what they're doing to the Constitution, etc.
2. To some degree, BECAUSE they are fascists, that cruelty that you're citing is, to a degree, the point/goal/objective. You're not going to beat them by rubbing on their face the fact that they are achieving something that deep inside, they actually want. It's like yelling at a cannibal that they should stop eating people... it's just going to make them think about eating people more.
ON THE OTHER HAND: I can fit ALL of those things in a SIMPLE message that calls them out for being FASCISTS. THAT, is what an offensive message looks like. A Laser focused, simple, repeatable message that cuts through/past ALL of the culture war issues. Americans have an ingrained hatred of fascism, and we CAN/MUST use that to our advantage, especially when the R party is, IN FACT, fascist.
"As long as people like yourself see the lives of transgender people as a 'misdirection' or other distraction that needs to be avoided at all costs, MAGA will just keep doubling down on it knowing they 'own the libs' on this." On this, I'm going to assume you haven't read enough of my work to see that I despise the spineless Democratic Leadership for being unwilling to fight for anything. It may seem to you that we're the same, because they don't want to talk about transgender people (because they're cowards without a spine or strategy), and I appear not to want to talk about transgender people (we should talk about them within ourselves and view their struggle as our struggle, but not in the messaging to fight against the fascists). All I can do is suggest that you read some more of my work and take the time to reflect on it and ask yourself what's more important to you: to have Transgender Issues BE PART of the messaging, or to have Transgender Rights successfully protected. Because as it stands, I'm fairly confident that you WILL NOT get both.
Now, you're free to communicate however you want. But here's what I will tell you:
If you want V-Coding to stop, consider using my strategy. If you want it to continue and BECOME much worse, by all means, proceed precisely as you suggest here. This siloed messaging is EXACTLY what Dems have been doing for decades, and we now have fascism with a foot in the door and if you think Transgender people have had it bad, you're about to get a real lesson on what fascism looks like.
Thank you for a nuanced response especially considering that I just came across this website and have yet to read any other article from you or anyone else.
You could very well be right in what I am saying is still on the defensive rather than going on the offense. As I stated in my last post, I am not a political messaging strategist. Transgender people were $215 million dollars of specific messaging for the Trump campaign. There is no winning strategy that employs $0 in return. $0 cannot compete with $215 million in anything let alone political messaging.
If you are convinced that transgender people cannot both be protected and messaging around them is necessary to protect them, then you may as well just concede defeat not only on this but abortion, DACA, and everything else. Republicans perceive transgender as the weak link in the coalition to everything else and will continue to break everyone else after they genocided a large portion of the transgender population.
I certainly agree that simple and concise messaging is the way to go and these people are most certainly fascists. The problem is that "fascist" has little resonance outside of left wing echo chambers especially in the United States. When the skinhead movement was rising in the United States during the 1980s, the American counterpart to European Anti-fascist Action that would later become Antifa was renamed Anti-racist Action precisely because of the lack of resonance to fascism in the United States. It also doesn't help that establishment Democrats constantly cried "Trump is Hitler" repeatedly throughout his first term. That only causes further desensitization to fascism.
I am not suggesting siloed messaging or even a major focus on transgender people. I am stating that it cannot be completely ignored is all since this is what right wingers will keep going back to when they are losing on messaging until this specific issue becomes a loser for them as well.
You may not and I may not have an answer as to what successful tactics and strategy looks like to address this specific vulnerability but something from someone needs to be developed urgently. The first step though is acknowledging that this issue is a vulnerability.
Trump = Hitler is idiotic messaging, which Democrats did, in fact, try
Trump = Nazi is also idiotic, which Democrats also, did try
There was virtually nothing done as far as Trump is a Fascist, because Democrats are bad at messaging. Now, you may think that all 3 things are the same, but they are not.
If you call Trump Hitler, or like Hitler, you will immediately get the pushback that he hasn't killed millions of people and that you have Trump Derangement Syndrome, which, to a degree I would have to largely agree.
If you call him a Nazi, you will get the pushback that he's great with the Jews and Israel and has shown no effort to persecute either and that you have Trump Derangement Syndrome, to which again, I would unfortunately have to agree.
Language matters, words matter, and you can easily set yourself up on a trap.
Now, to the other part of what you said. Let me point to two specific things:
1. Trump won the election, essentially running a fascistic platform against one of the most pro worker/middle class presidents that the US has ever had, regardless of whether or not you agree with things that Biden did.
2. He ALMOST NEVER talked about things going on in the Republican Party. He barely talked about pushing Christianity. He barely talked about pushing Corporate Welfare. He never talked about Great Replacement Theory. These are all things that are extremely important to the MAGA base, the things that would be comparable to LGBTQ+ rights on our side, or DACA, or whatever else. That's because HE WAS ON THE OFFENSIVE.
By being on the offensive, he was able to divide the left without ever drawing any scrutiny to the things that could divide the right. We on the other hand, allowed all the things that we care about to be scrutinized and used for division, whether it was immigration, or LGBTQ+ Rights, or Gaza, or whatever else. And what's sad is that we have the moral ground on all those issues, and yet, rather than these values being something that united us or that gave us appeal with the voters, it ended up being used to divide us and make us weaker/toxic instead.
WHEN YOU'RE ON THE OFFENSIVE, YOU'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE THINGS YOU CARE ABOUT. You're attacking the things that the OTHER SIDE cares about. That's why I say that if you're talking about Transgender Rights, or DACA or Voting Rights, or anything else we care about, YOU'RE on the DEFENSIVE.
And yes, it might even be hard to think about what our message would be if we're NOT TALKING about ANY of these things. And I'll that you that this RIGHT HERE is the biggest problem on the LEFT. Everyone has been so conditioned to be on the DEFENSIVE that people can't even fathom or comprehend what it means to BE ON THE OFFENSIVE.
And that's just 1/2 of it. The RARE occasion that we do get on the offensive, the LEFT will crumble at the first sign of pushback, instead of pushing harder and repeating the message. Either that or they'll switch the messaging around, again, instead of repeating, repeating repeating.
Consider what the right did to WOKE and DEI. They completely bastardized the terms to mean WHAT THEY WANTED IT TO MEAN, through sheer repetition despite the fact that their definitions DO NOT MATCH what those terms mean at all.
We don't even have to TWIST what the right cares about. They are straight up fascists (not Nazis, not Hitler), and we can show that this is true. And we can use the things that they do to minorities and vulnerable communities TO SUPPORT that claim. But again, the message should be simple: they're fascists who actually hate America and the Constitution, and the first rule of being American is that we crush fascists. The full strategy should be simple:
1. Make it clear that they're America-hating fascists
2. Force people to pick a side
Repeat it mercilessly, until being a Republican becomes absolutely toxic.
There's quite a few things that go into it (you're welcome to read other articles), but this is the gist of it.
When you talk about things you care about, you are on the defensive? FDR campaigned extensively on promoting his New Deal agenda and how it is necessary to alleviate the suffering of the poor. JFK also publicly championed civil rights that he cared about. FDR ended up being the only president who served more than two terms and JFK arguably has more historical legacy than any other 20th century president. Most of America stopped voting Democrat precisely because they believe the party abandoned them.
I do agree that the left has become a bucket of crabs that keeps pulling each other back down because their issues aren't being perceived as the most important. This is precisely why the "big tent" mentality especially by establishment Democrats needs to be spurned. Trump didn't come to power being a Reagan "Big Tent" Republican. Quite the opposite. The Republican Party rose by getting smaller from purging but more in line hence loyal, obedient, and cohesive going back before Trump to the Tea Party. They had no problem refilling their ranks by doing so each and every round they did that.
Gaza is the epitome of this problem. It has lead to a delusional big tent that can fit both sides of a genocide yet somehow win popular elections. Democrats sure take a lot of money from Zionist donors but the problem is a substantial amount of Zionists are left wing. Bill Maher might be the personal paragon of left wing Zionism and the New York Times the institutional face of it but they aren't limited to elitists. They do have activists that infiltrate every left wing group that is emerging.
This is why the bucket of crabs keeps pulling down. Can you blame Palestinians for pulling down the larger left wing structures when those larger structures demand that they treat their genociders as allies by purported peers in their activist groups? Does it really matter to Palestinians if Jewish workers in Israel have more collective bargaining power against their employers if they are going to be genocided? Before a solution on messaging can be successfully developed, some hard choices on message or agenda needs to be made. Many will fear being labeled an anti-semite for doing so and the bucket crabs will most certainly spring into action.
Left wing Zionists are the biggest pushers of the "drop the T from LGB" agenda as if a line can be drawn between the two. Far more than right wing Zionists are. Ironic though that Breitbart which was described as a Hasbara outlet and the go to rag of right wing Zionism was the first and most aggressive at ramping up transphobia. Then their are Christian Zionists trying to genocide transgender people. A different kind of genocide more comparable to what Christians did to Native American children than what is happening in Gaza but still a Zionist genocide none the less. DACA is a consequence of Left wing Zionists collaborating with right wing Zionists going back to the 1970s on an issue that matters more to both than left and right does. Building global sympathy for nationalist movements worldwide is essential for expanding "Greater Israel".
Making the left tent smaller to make it more cohesive should obviously start with left wing Zionists. The problem is that is essentially what establishment Democrats and other similar establish parties around the world are so building new mainstream parties is probably the only way to have an electable message before getting into messaging.
I think you're still missing my point because it seems like you think that I think that we should make our "tent" smaller.
That's not at all what I'm saying.
1. You can't compare FDR/JFK to politics today. Up until the 80s, the media was MUCH less fragmented, and they were LEGALLY required to cover both sides fairly (look into the Fairness Doctrine and how Reagan put an end to it).
Now that we have extremely compartmentalized echo chambers, things are very different.
2. Add to it the fact that political discourse started changing very drastically, first with Rush Limbaugh and AM radio, then the vitriol was taken to the maximum starting with Newt Gingrich. That's where the necessity for being on the offensive really became a thing, which Dems have up to this stay still refused to adapt to.
I wish we could go back to such a time when politics were civil, but that time is long past, and the Republican party seems to have no intent to return to that. And at least until they do, WE MUST adapt and stop fighting with a hand tied behind our backs by trying to be civil and nice and bipartisan when they are not.
Much more importantly though, you make a MASSIVE mistake thinking that Rs have narrowed down as much as you say. They are NOT a monolith, at all. I recommend reading the article below for a general idea of what I mean. There are multiple sub-groups in the R party that actually don't like one another very much, but who have united to achieve their common goals even though they each have goals of their own.
The fact you don't realize how non-monolith they are is proof of the power of the strategy they utilize, which is similar to what I'm suggesting we should do.
And if you look, right now, most of those subgroups are getting what their subgroups want:
The libertarians are getting government to be severely cut down (even if they'll come to regret it eventually)
The neo-nazis are getting to see immigrants sent to Gitmo, Transgender people treated like trash and voter suppression being ramped up against black people.
The corporatists are about to cash in a massive tax break.
The fake Christians are getting Jesus back in the classroom and book bans against LGBTQ+ (they overlap with the neo-nazis on this)
The conspiracy theorists are having a blast with the anti-vaxx shit and the election fraud shit and all their other smaller conspiracies.
And guess, what? They're each getting what they wanted, without ever having to run ON ANY OF IT. Why? Because instead of DEFENDING WHAT THEY WANTED, the ATTACKED WHAT WE WANTED.
And
It
Works
If we do the same, WE WILL CRUSH THEM. Because where we're just trying to let people live with dignity, they're f*ing fascists.
Back to what you were saying though, again, you're still missing my point. We don't need to make our tent smaller. We just need to attack the R tent instead of focusing on our tent. Let whoever wants to be on our side aid in the attack of the other side with whatever they have to offer. It's not that complicated.
By making the tent smaller, I mean kicking out the people that not only have a place in the Republican tent like million/billionaires, TERFS, Zionists, and others whose agenda is antithetical to any left wing agenda. They did purge their tent of nearly every element that wasn't onboard and were able to refill their ranks.
What you said about media is mostly true for JFK but not so much for FDR. Few people had radios in 1932 and almost no one had TV. Newspapers were also very localized and quite diverse. The political movement to establish regulating radio wave frequencies began with the Titanic sinking since every frequently was legally available for CB radio transmission back then and vital survivor communication was obstructed due to that. Of course World War 1 happened 2 years later so probably mostly political pretext. Racist Father Coughlin was the most popular radio show for the few that had radio access. In other words, the media landscape of 1932 more closely resembles today's rather than 1960 in regards to fragmentation.
I know quite well that Republicans are no monolith. It is more extreme than even you seem to realize. Below is a link to a Gab group called "Christianity is White Genocide". They are basically saying that Christianity including Jesus himself was Jewish so white Christians are race traitors who worship the enemy's god. They call them Christcucks and MIGA (Make Israel Great Again). They don't believe Christians are weak; just racially corrupted.
The corporatists will indeed get a massive tax break and one that roughly equals how much Medicaid and SNAP that so many MAGA cult worshippers voted for depend on. Then there is the defunding of NOAA due to "climate alarmism". Ironic since most tornadoes and nearly every hurricane is solely a red state event.
You are correct that they are anything but MAGA so should not be referred to as such. I disagree that MAGA is the glue holding that coalition together. It was limited mostly to white Boomers in his first campaign and is now kind of an unwanted relic for them.
I am sure you seen the rift between Trump/Musk and their base over H1-B visas. That is most definitely the weakest dividing fault in this fake "MAGA" as you stated in your other article that I read coalition. I just don't know what tactics and strategies to use for that. If that can be found, it is game over for them. This is where offense as you define it needs to be focused.
I love this plan. Also, we need to take away their term “pro-life” and call it something else…”pro-control”? “Pro-fetus”? IDK
I'm working on it 😉
As long as people like yourself see the lives of transgender people as a "misdirection" or other distraction that needs to be avoided at all costs, MAGA will just keep doubling down on it knowing they "own the libs" on this.
The Christian Right wanted to publicly avoid the issue like you do until recently because publicly advocating for genocide is normally quite the costly losing agenda. That is only true though if opponents see it that way and go on full offense rather than the defensive (read: losing) avoidance strategy that you and the Democrats keep deploying.
How can you go on offense? Call the MAGA people out as the real transgender predators by bringing up the prison practice of v-coding and the fact that conservatives view transgender porn more frequently than the left.
Transgender porn viewing by county map:
https://lawsuit.org/general-law/republicans-have-an-obsession-with-transgender-pornography/
V-coding is the practice of assigning trans women placed in men's prisons to cells with aggressive cisgender male cellmates as both a reward and a means of placation for said cellmates, so as to maintain social control and to, as one inmate described it, "keep the violence rate down".[120] Trans women used in this manner are often raped daily; and this process has been described as so common that it is effectively "a central part of a trans woman's sentence".[121]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_people_in_prison
Calling MAGA out for using transgender women as chattal sex slaves to make their more violent transgender porn fantasies into a real world practice that they often port to cisgender women might be a start on offense? The anti-abortion movement combined with cutting off government benefits for a sexually abused women to be independent of her abuser is another example of the MAGA sex slave agenda that their male voters believe they are entitled to from the government.
I am by no means a political person let alone a strategist so I apologize for not having a more coherent and detailed offensive attack plan on the transgender issue. I just know that some kind of offense is absolutely necessary because avoidance is a defensive strategy and playing defense means you are losing. If MAGA wins on the transgender issue which they are certain to do if defense is the only response then they will be emboldened to attack even more aggressively on other issues until they win on everything. This cannot be allowed to happen. For that reason, I am imploring you to think about devising offensive tactics and strategy for the transgender issue.
I sympathize with everything you're saying here, and more importantly, if it came to it, I would be a shield to any transgender person, even if I didn't know them at all.
The loudest I have been, in person, in arguing with other people has been precisely in defense of transgender people.
Having said that, EVERYTHING you said here, without exception, is NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT going on the offensive. It's ALL still defensive.
Let me use something that applies to me to try and demonstrate:
I'm former DACA. The treatment of undocumented immigrants hits close to home to me. Yet, if you look throughout all my messaging, you will see VIRTUALLY NO mention of the treatment of undocumented immigrants in it. Why? Because that would be defensive. I do have a few things/resources for people on OUR side to do to protect undocumented people in their communities, and I would/will say the same about anyone in the LGBTQ+, especially transgender people. But I WILL not include anything about "Hey look how badly they're treating immigrants, sending them to Gitmo" in the offensive messaging that I keep calling for.
There are 2 main reasons:
1. The fragmentation of the messaging. We need a SIMPLE, CONCISE, MESSAGE. That's impossible to achieve if the message is to include what they're doing to immigrants, what they're doing to LGBTQ+, what they're doing to black people, what they're doing to the working/middle class, what they're doing to unions, what they're doing to the economy, what they're doing to the Constitution, etc.
2. To some degree, BECAUSE they are fascists, that cruelty that you're citing is, to a degree, the point/goal/objective. You're not going to beat them by rubbing on their face the fact that they are achieving something that deep inside, they actually want. It's like yelling at a cannibal that they should stop eating people... it's just going to make them think about eating people more.
ON THE OTHER HAND: I can fit ALL of those things in a SIMPLE message that calls them out for being FASCISTS. THAT, is what an offensive message looks like. A Laser focused, simple, repeatable message that cuts through/past ALL of the culture war issues. Americans have an ingrained hatred of fascism, and we CAN/MUST use that to our advantage, especially when the R party is, IN FACT, fascist.
"As long as people like yourself see the lives of transgender people as a 'misdirection' or other distraction that needs to be avoided at all costs, MAGA will just keep doubling down on it knowing they 'own the libs' on this." On this, I'm going to assume you haven't read enough of my work to see that I despise the spineless Democratic Leadership for being unwilling to fight for anything. It may seem to you that we're the same, because they don't want to talk about transgender people (because they're cowards without a spine or strategy), and I appear not to want to talk about transgender people (we should talk about them within ourselves and view their struggle as our struggle, but not in the messaging to fight against the fascists). All I can do is suggest that you read some more of my work and take the time to reflect on it and ask yourself what's more important to you: to have Transgender Issues BE PART of the messaging, or to have Transgender Rights successfully protected. Because as it stands, I'm fairly confident that you WILL NOT get both.
Now, you're free to communicate however you want. But here's what I will tell you:
If you want V-Coding to stop, consider using my strategy. If you want it to continue and BECOME much worse, by all means, proceed precisely as you suggest here. This siloed messaging is EXACTLY what Dems have been doing for decades, and we now have fascism with a foot in the door and if you think Transgender people have had it bad, you're about to get a real lesson on what fascism looks like.
Thank you for a nuanced response especially considering that I just came across this website and have yet to read any other article from you or anyone else.
You could very well be right in what I am saying is still on the defensive rather than going on the offense. As I stated in my last post, I am not a political messaging strategist. Transgender people were $215 million dollars of specific messaging for the Trump campaign. There is no winning strategy that employs $0 in return. $0 cannot compete with $215 million in anything let alone political messaging.
If you are convinced that transgender people cannot both be protected and messaging around them is necessary to protect them, then you may as well just concede defeat not only on this but abortion, DACA, and everything else. Republicans perceive transgender as the weak link in the coalition to everything else and will continue to break everyone else after they genocided a large portion of the transgender population.
I certainly agree that simple and concise messaging is the way to go and these people are most certainly fascists. The problem is that "fascist" has little resonance outside of left wing echo chambers especially in the United States. When the skinhead movement was rising in the United States during the 1980s, the American counterpart to European Anti-fascist Action that would later become Antifa was renamed Anti-racist Action precisely because of the lack of resonance to fascism in the United States. It also doesn't help that establishment Democrats constantly cried "Trump is Hitler" repeatedly throughout his first term. That only causes further desensitization to fascism.
I am not suggesting siloed messaging or even a major focus on transgender people. I am stating that it cannot be completely ignored is all since this is what right wingers will keep going back to when they are losing on messaging until this specific issue becomes a loser for them as well.
You may not and I may not have an answer as to what successful tactics and strategy looks like to address this specific vulnerability but something from someone needs to be developed urgently. The first step though is acknowledging that this issue is a vulnerability.
Trump = Hitler is idiotic messaging, which Democrats did, in fact, try
Trump = Nazi is also idiotic, which Democrats also, did try
There was virtually nothing done as far as Trump is a Fascist, because Democrats are bad at messaging. Now, you may think that all 3 things are the same, but they are not.
If you call Trump Hitler, or like Hitler, you will immediately get the pushback that he hasn't killed millions of people and that you have Trump Derangement Syndrome, which, to a degree I would have to largely agree.
If you call him a Nazi, you will get the pushback that he's great with the Jews and Israel and has shown no effort to persecute either and that you have Trump Derangement Syndrome, to which again, I would unfortunately have to agree.
Language matters, words matter, and you can easily set yourself up on a trap.
Now, to the other part of what you said. Let me point to two specific things:
1. Trump won the election, essentially running a fascistic platform against one of the most pro worker/middle class presidents that the US has ever had, regardless of whether or not you agree with things that Biden did.
2. He ALMOST NEVER talked about things going on in the Republican Party. He barely talked about pushing Christianity. He barely talked about pushing Corporate Welfare. He never talked about Great Replacement Theory. These are all things that are extremely important to the MAGA base, the things that would be comparable to LGBTQ+ rights on our side, or DACA, or whatever else. That's because HE WAS ON THE OFFENSIVE.
By being on the offensive, he was able to divide the left without ever drawing any scrutiny to the things that could divide the right. We on the other hand, allowed all the things that we care about to be scrutinized and used for division, whether it was immigration, or LGBTQ+ Rights, or Gaza, or whatever else. And what's sad is that we have the moral ground on all those issues, and yet, rather than these values being something that united us or that gave us appeal with the voters, it ended up being used to divide us and make us weaker/toxic instead.
WHEN YOU'RE ON THE OFFENSIVE, YOU'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE THINGS YOU CARE ABOUT. You're attacking the things that the OTHER SIDE cares about. That's why I say that if you're talking about Transgender Rights, or DACA or Voting Rights, or anything else we care about, YOU'RE on the DEFENSIVE.
And yes, it might even be hard to think about what our message would be if we're NOT TALKING about ANY of these things. And I'll that you that this RIGHT HERE is the biggest problem on the LEFT. Everyone has been so conditioned to be on the DEFENSIVE that people can't even fathom or comprehend what it means to BE ON THE OFFENSIVE.
And that's just 1/2 of it. The RARE occasion that we do get on the offensive, the LEFT will crumble at the first sign of pushback, instead of pushing harder and repeating the message. Either that or they'll switch the messaging around, again, instead of repeating, repeating repeating.
Consider what the right did to WOKE and DEI. They completely bastardized the terms to mean WHAT THEY WANTED IT TO MEAN, through sheer repetition despite the fact that their definitions DO NOT MATCH what those terms mean at all.
We don't even have to TWIST what the right cares about. They are straight up fascists (not Nazis, not Hitler), and we can show that this is true. And we can use the things that they do to minorities and vulnerable communities TO SUPPORT that claim. But again, the message should be simple: they're fascists who actually hate America and the Constitution, and the first rule of being American is that we crush fascists. The full strategy should be simple:
1. Make it clear that they're America-hating fascists
2. Force people to pick a side
Repeat it mercilessly, until being a Republican becomes absolutely toxic.
There's quite a few things that go into it (you're welcome to read other articles), but this is the gist of it.
When you talk about things you care about, you are on the defensive? FDR campaigned extensively on promoting his New Deal agenda and how it is necessary to alleviate the suffering of the poor. JFK also publicly championed civil rights that he cared about. FDR ended up being the only president who served more than two terms and JFK arguably has more historical legacy than any other 20th century president. Most of America stopped voting Democrat precisely because they believe the party abandoned them.
I do agree that the left has become a bucket of crabs that keeps pulling each other back down because their issues aren't being perceived as the most important. This is precisely why the "big tent" mentality especially by establishment Democrats needs to be spurned. Trump didn't come to power being a Reagan "Big Tent" Republican. Quite the opposite. The Republican Party rose by getting smaller from purging but more in line hence loyal, obedient, and cohesive going back before Trump to the Tea Party. They had no problem refilling their ranks by doing so each and every round they did that.
Gaza is the epitome of this problem. It has lead to a delusional big tent that can fit both sides of a genocide yet somehow win popular elections. Democrats sure take a lot of money from Zionist donors but the problem is a substantial amount of Zionists are left wing. Bill Maher might be the personal paragon of left wing Zionism and the New York Times the institutional face of it but they aren't limited to elitists. They do have activists that infiltrate every left wing group that is emerging.
This is why the bucket of crabs keeps pulling down. Can you blame Palestinians for pulling down the larger left wing structures when those larger structures demand that they treat their genociders as allies by purported peers in their activist groups? Does it really matter to Palestinians if Jewish workers in Israel have more collective bargaining power against their employers if they are going to be genocided? Before a solution on messaging can be successfully developed, some hard choices on message or agenda needs to be made. Many will fear being labeled an anti-semite for doing so and the bucket crabs will most certainly spring into action.
Left wing Zionists are the biggest pushers of the "drop the T from LGB" agenda as if a line can be drawn between the two. Far more than right wing Zionists are. Ironic though that Breitbart which was described as a Hasbara outlet and the go to rag of right wing Zionism was the first and most aggressive at ramping up transphobia. Then their are Christian Zionists trying to genocide transgender people. A different kind of genocide more comparable to what Christians did to Native American children than what is happening in Gaza but still a Zionist genocide none the less. DACA is a consequence of Left wing Zionists collaborating with right wing Zionists going back to the 1970s on an issue that matters more to both than left and right does. Building global sympathy for nationalist movements worldwide is essential for expanding "Greater Israel".
Making the left tent smaller to make it more cohesive should obviously start with left wing Zionists. The problem is that is essentially what establishment Democrats and other similar establish parties around the world are so building new mainstream parties is probably the only way to have an electable message before getting into messaging.
I think you're still missing my point because it seems like you think that I think that we should make our "tent" smaller.
That's not at all what I'm saying.
1. You can't compare FDR/JFK to politics today. Up until the 80s, the media was MUCH less fragmented, and they were LEGALLY required to cover both sides fairly (look into the Fairness Doctrine and how Reagan put an end to it).
Now that we have extremely compartmentalized echo chambers, things are very different.
2. Add to it the fact that political discourse started changing very drastically, first with Rush Limbaugh and AM radio, then the vitriol was taken to the maximum starting with Newt Gingrich. That's where the necessity for being on the offensive really became a thing, which Dems have up to this stay still refused to adapt to.
I wish we could go back to such a time when politics were civil, but that time is long past, and the Republican party seems to have no intent to return to that. And at least until they do, WE MUST adapt and stop fighting with a hand tied behind our backs by trying to be civil and nice and bipartisan when they are not.
Much more importantly though, you make a MASSIVE mistake thinking that Rs have narrowed down as much as you say. They are NOT a monolith, at all. I recommend reading the article below for a general idea of what I mean. There are multiple sub-groups in the R party that actually don't like one another very much, but who have united to achieve their common goals even though they each have goals of their own.
The fact you don't realize how non-monolith they are is proof of the power of the strategy they utilize, which is similar to what I'm suggesting we should do.
And if you look, right now, most of those subgroups are getting what their subgroups want:
The libertarians are getting government to be severely cut down (even if they'll come to regret it eventually)
The neo-nazis are getting to see immigrants sent to Gitmo, Transgender people treated like trash and voter suppression being ramped up against black people.
The corporatists are about to cash in a massive tax break.
The fake Christians are getting Jesus back in the classroom and book bans against LGBTQ+ (they overlap with the neo-nazis on this)
The conspiracy theorists are having a blast with the anti-vaxx shit and the election fraud shit and all their other smaller conspiracies.
And guess, what? They're each getting what they wanted, without ever having to run ON ANY OF IT. Why? Because instead of DEFENDING WHAT THEY WANTED, the ATTACKED WHAT WE WANTED.
And
It
Works
If we do the same, WE WILL CRUSH THEM. Because where we're just trying to let people live with dignity, they're f*ing fascists.
Back to what you were saying though, again, you're still missing my point. We don't need to make our tent smaller. We just need to attack the R tent instead of focusing on our tent. Let whoever wants to be on our side aid in the attack of the other side with whatever they have to offer. It's not that complicated.
Anyway, here's the article I mentioned earlier:
https://americanmanifesto.news/p/stop-calling-them-maga
By making the tent smaller, I mean kicking out the people that not only have a place in the Republican tent like million/billionaires, TERFS, Zionists, and others whose agenda is antithetical to any left wing agenda. They did purge their tent of nearly every element that wasn't onboard and were able to refill their ranks.
What you said about media is mostly true for JFK but not so much for FDR. Few people had radios in 1932 and almost no one had TV. Newspapers were also very localized and quite diverse. The political movement to establish regulating radio wave frequencies began with the Titanic sinking since every frequently was legally available for CB radio transmission back then and vital survivor communication was obstructed due to that. Of course World War 1 happened 2 years later so probably mostly political pretext. Racist Father Coughlin was the most popular radio show for the few that had radio access. In other words, the media landscape of 1932 more closely resembles today's rather than 1960 in regards to fragmentation.
I know quite well that Republicans are no monolith. It is more extreme than even you seem to realize. Below is a link to a Gab group called "Christianity is White Genocide". They are basically saying that Christianity including Jesus himself was Jewish so white Christians are race traitors who worship the enemy's god. They call them Christcucks and MIGA (Make Israel Great Again). They don't believe Christians are weak; just racially corrupted.
https://gab.com/groups/3989
The corporatists will indeed get a massive tax break and one that roughly equals how much Medicaid and SNAP that so many MAGA cult worshippers voted for depend on. Then there is the defunding of NOAA due to "climate alarmism". Ironic since most tornadoes and nearly every hurricane is solely a red state event.
You are correct that they are anything but MAGA so should not be referred to as such. I disagree that MAGA is the glue holding that coalition together. It was limited mostly to white Boomers in his first campaign and is now kind of an unwanted relic for them.
I am sure you seen the rift between Trump/Musk and their base over H1-B visas. That is most definitely the weakest dividing fault in this fake "MAGA" as you stated in your other article that I read coalition. I just don't know what tactics and strategies to use for that. If that can be found, it is game over for them. This is where offense as you define it needs to be focused.
This is amazing!!! I will put this into my toolbox to use in future engagements!! 💜
Thank you for taking the time to read it!