On my recent post Trump Redux. Trump Redefined. Trump the STATESMAN!!!, The Voice In The Wilderness posted the following comment:
Please read this:
Berlusconi, perhaps a better fit for Trump than Caligula. Berlusconi liked the young girls too (it’s legal in Italy).
I hope Marie3, mino and Karl Pearson read it too. It’s very apropos with what they have been saying, particularly mino & Karl.
I did read it.
Here is some of what it said:
What the left can learn from Italy
Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 04/19/2017 – 6:39pmThere are few who will deny the similarities between Donald Trump and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Both grew their fortunes on allegedly mafia-linked real-estate developments, transitioned into successful careers as media moguls, and, against all odds, ascended to the helm of their respective national governments. Then there’s the common penchant for vitriol, misogyny, philandry, aggressive tanning, and pompous neckwear.
That’s just the start. You could also include scapegoating immigrants, corruption, fake populism, attacks on the news media, etc.
There is also another similarity that is on the verge of repeating: The left’s failed response to a corrupt demagogue.Back in November, an Italian gave this advice.
Political opposition: `Stop crying and try to understand his voters’
For years, Berlusconi’s boorish behaviour was a gift to political opponents and journalists who were free to ridicule him. But ultimately they did not prove an effective opposition.Opposing Berlusconi by ridiculing him, Orsina said, was a way to preach to the converted, as were attempts to warn that Berlusconi’s rule represented the end of Italian democracy.
“The most powerful way to oppose him, but it was never really done seriously, was to try and understand what his voters want and try to address the need of his voters. No jokes, stop shouting, stop crying, stop saying: `It is a horror and disaster’; try and seriously understand what his voters want, and the left was never really successful in doing that,” Orsina said.
Democrats were already preaching to the choir inside their bubble before the election. It didn’t start with Hillary’s ‘deplorables’ comment.
It seems to be getting worse.“The question neither Maloney nor Luján will answer is whether they should recruit moderate to conservative candidates in rural districts or just abandon them altogether,” reported The Washington Post in an article titled, “Should House Democrats write off rural congressional districts?” This piece, and the DCCC strategies it outlines, embodies what is wrong with the Democratic Party: Their elitist arrogance is why Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election and why the Democratic Party is in the position it is in now.
This elitism and arrogance is on display almost every night on cable TV.
Trevor Noah’s Daily Show, Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal, and John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight are full-throated liberal polemics against Trump. Fair ’nuff. Trump is an easy target and much deserving of the abuse, even if it does devolve into childish name-calling at times.That isn’t the problem.
But somewhere along the way, the hosts of the late-night shows decided that they had carte blanche to insult not just the people within this administration, but also the ordinary citizens who support Trump, and even those who merely identify as conservatives….
Though aimed at blue-state sophisticates, late-night comedy shows are an unintended but powerful form of propaganda for conservatives.
This is the end result of a belief system built upon moral superiority. It only works if it is unquestionably morally superior (which it isn’t), and even then the lack of humility is a huge turn-off.
Liberals can’t see it because they are too busy signaling their virtue to each other.
—snip—
The neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party must be defeated, and it must be defeated soon.
I replied to Voice, and now I am posting that reply as a standalone.
Read on.
Exactly!!!
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are trying to do precisely that.
Oppose on the issues, not on snark.
And they are failing.
Why?
1-They are outnumbered and outmoneyed in the DNC.
2-The media…the so-called left-centrist media particularly…oppose Trump mostly on behavioral grounds. (When they do oppose him, of course…an increasingly rare phenomenon as he gains “War President” stature. So it goes. Business usual in Omertica. War business.)
My posts The Trump Problem. You Cannot Laugh A Clown Offstage. (July, 2015) and Trump-You Cannot Laugh A Clown Offstage. Pt. II (January, 2016)…and many more that I have made since the Trump phenomenon became a serious threat…made precisely that point.
Snark is weak. It is a weakling’s weapon. I have no use whatsoever for MSNBC, SNL, the late night shows and the various snarky media outlets that continue to “oppose” Trump by ridiculing him. They are preaching to a millennial/yupster choir, and that choir is paying them royally for the privilege.
The privilege of losing!!!
But…they’re so clever!!!
Idiots!!!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
The major leftiness, rightiness and centriness media continue to potshot at the single most admired politician in the U.S. today, Bernie Sanders.
Why…you’d almost think that they don’t want him to effectively oppose what is happening here!!!
Oh.
Nevermind.
I forgot.
They’d rather deal with Trump.
Why?
He’ll play ball.
That’s why.
Yore freind…
Emily Litella
P.S. Meanwhile the centrist fools here continue to try to downrate people who are simply trying to point out the game.
Unbelievable.
But true.
Post in your Part II diary:
○ Bernie Sanders more authentic on certain issues than Clinton, says Biden
Naughty Joe!
Of course, blame me!
[All links added are mine – Oui]
But, but … not Comey but Putin is to blame!
Democrats out-of-touch with plight of millennials and the reason Brits voted FOR Brexit …
○ John Kerry: Brexit could be ‘walked back’
○ Fed ‘Mystified’ Why Millennials Still Live at Home
○ In the 1960s and 1970s, the culture shifted decisively leftward, but American voters shifted
to the right and answered a cultural revolution with a political Thermidor By BooMan on Sept. 21, 2016
I posted it earlier, got hit by the troll(s) settled in @BooMan.
A couple of things
1 – Scott Adams (yeah, yeah) points out that Trump is effective in part because of his storytelling/narrative ability. I think Adams is on to something. Data and spreadsheets may not cut it. GW Bush was somewhat like this too. It doesn’t work for me, but then I’m way outside Trump’s target.
2 – This all sounds like the Prisoner’s Game to me. In that case … we are stuck with tit for tat. We can understand the pro-Trumpers for the value it brings in understanding reality, but using that to try to create a cooperation agreement with them is very, very unlikely to succeed.
Now what would be the right tit for tat?
Here is ours master story teller in action:
Looking for easy solutions, excuses, tit-for-tats does not help with providing compelling stories, emphatically. As some specialist in game theory, I can tell that games typically have a multitude of Nash equilibria. The winners are not those who play for the nearest equilibrium, but those who do whatever needed to reach their preferred one.
Obama was also a master at this – but –
some people seemed to be immune to his message.
I have a similar response to Trump (and Bush
for that matter). Story telling may not be
enough either.
One can do multiple strategies – they don’t contradict. The Republicans seem to get this.
Don’t we need to change the balance of this?
The progressive side has made a poorer choice
of strategies and, as you say, we find ourselves
in poor Nash equilibrium spots.
In other words it might be good for the Republicans
to feel consequences for betrayal.
Or…when betrayal turns to trust.
(Read my Rumi sig, nasruddin. Think on it. I am…)
AG
Obama was also a master at this – but –
some people seemed to be immune to his message.
I have a similar response to Trump (and Bush
for that matter). Story telling may not be
enough either.
One can do multiple strategies – they don’t contradict. The Republicans seem to get this.
Don’t we need to change the balance of this?
The progressive side has made a poorer choice
of strategies and, as you say, we find ourselves
in poor Nash equilibrium spots.
In other words it might be good for the Republicans
to feel consequences for betrayal.
That’s a simplistic conclusion from the article. Possibly correct but yet to be demonstrated.
While Berlusconi is a more apt object lesson for Democrats at this time, they tried and failed to laugh off GWB and to a lesser extent Reagan and it didn’t work either time. Those US precedents is what informed my thinking in concluding that the current D strategy is a loser.
However, the article on Berlusconi crystallized something for me that I’ve mentioned but didn’t put into the context of raw politics. In part because it’s been with us since at least 1972, predating the rise of clown presidents. Why has the GOP succeeded by mocking and demonizing Democratic Presidents (by succeeded, I mean gained power during the term of that president), while it fails for Democrats?
The GOP has a different relationship with it’s right flank than Democrats have with their left flank. The GOP coddles theirs and Democrats mock, demonize, and seek to kill off theirs. The GOP only needs their votes because regressives aren’t an idea engine or petri dish for anything that will ever gain acceptance by 80+% of the public. OTOH, all good things/ideas generate from the left. Take it away and Democrats/liberals are left flinging mush and waving bataka bats at GOP clowns. And clowns have no difficulty dodging both.
The DNC has a lot of work to do if they are going to redeem themselves and it will take more than Unity rallies being staged across the country. Tom Perez is repeatedly getting booed at these events, so this should be a warning. The Dems have no choice but to change, unless they want to be in the wilderness for 40 years. This article provides some evidence of the Dems’ dilemma.
http://freebeacon.com/politics/dnc-unity-tour-crowd-boos-when-sanders-thanks-tom-perez-for-his-remar
ks/
Here’s Sanders appearing with DNC/Democratic Nothing, (unless overlooking the man sitting next to him isn’t quite nothing).
In Italian politics, Operation Gladio has been a secret powerful (and macabre) factor in suppressing Communist, leftish activism.
It involved massive drug production and trade (globally), financial transactions via Vatican, false flag violence.
Recommended reading:
Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia
by Paul L. Williams
Berlusconi was a known member of the notorious P2 lodge. We can only guess how networks of the same kind of people look know.
If similarities with the Trump situation are deep indeed… oh boy…
Incidentally, they say Arkansas was a big center of the Gladio-ish drug traffic in the 1980s.
That increases the suspicion that the DNC dysfunction is a feature, not a bug.
Democratic (David Brock) strategery for 2018:
It will fail. I hear absolutely no talk about Russia among ordinary non-political people. The only thing I do hear (rarely) is concern that we will go to war with Russia over Syria. This Putin “interference” baloney has absolutely no traction in the blue collar MidWest. In 2018, the economy will probably be a wreck but I expect the (R)’s will blame that on Democratic scorched earth opposition. Watch that happen with the government shutdown if the (D)’s are united in voting against a budget. I’m not saying they should vote for a budget, but it will be played that way. Any failure will be blamed on “liberals”. God! It sets my teeth on edge to see Clinton and Pelosi called liberals.
Instead of this Putin nonsense, they should be calling out Trump for failure to keep his campaign promises on jobs and the like, including “fixing Obamacare”. But that would require the (D) politicians to follow a genuinely liberal agenda, so they won’t.