Below are my two cents, posted as a comment on Spandan (@thePeoplesView)'s excellent post about the Emotarian left's contribution to the great government shutdown of 2013.
Since I originally coined Emotarian as a replacement for the more imprecise and awkward-sounding "Emoprogressive (often shortened to the ghastlier sounding "Emoprog")," which I once co-defined with Joy-Ann Reid (before trying to repace it with Puritopian, which never really took off), I felt it appropiate to contribute to the comment stream. So I did.
Thank you, Spandan, for this eloquent summation of what really ails us. Conservatives are doing what they have always done; rationalizing and institutionalizing greed. But they've taken 40 years to learn how to message in a way that resonates with low-information voters well enough to seize state houses, and through their issues and redistricting, control Congress as well.
And rather than focusing on ways to counter that messaging, progressives have acquiesced to a climate of cynicism and mistrust, fueled by a massive industry of these poutragers who are given a louder and louder voice by what I call the Liberal Industrial Complex; an economy of fundraising establishments role-playing as progressive activists.
Together with its counterpart of the right, the Conservative Entertainment Complex, they've combined to thoroughly obfuscate the real problem: finding enough critical mass and focus to overpower the right's dominance of local politics, elections, and thus, our Congress and national policy.
Until we stop squandering emotion and resources on the issues at the margins such as the NSA, Gitmo, and drones, which only serve to feed the liberal industrial fundraising beast, we will never build coalitions powerful and motivated enough to change the elected legislators who could fix those problems in a matter of weeks.
But our national priorities are not the same as those careerist bloggers, pundits and slacktivists who would have no audience at all, if not for their ginning-up easy outrage about exaggerated crimes they can routinely pin on sincere presidents and other public servants who are doing their level best to tread water in a conservative cesspool until Progressivism grows up and learns how to fucking swim.
@Shoq
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Criticism from the left by @root_e via Krebscycle
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