I thought so. But then this makes this more an exercise in drawing out those who either disagree with us to make their case and perhaps enlighten us if they can, or draw out discussion by those who have delved deep in this world-view of theirs to explain how it is that large numbers of very vocal and activist people believe things we believe are mistaken at best.I'm going to take this as high praise. Actually, I very much bat politically from the left side of the plate! Yes, really.Writers, thinkers, journalists, and activists who I've learned from include Gloria Steinem, Ralph Abernathy, Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky, Rachel Maddow, Amy Goodman, Gene Sharp, Howard Zinn, David Dellinger, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Henry Spira, and Jonathan Glover.
So, I think I may have done a pretty good job simply laying on the table some of where conservatives were coming from.
I've only just recently come to internalize the site rules that relegate this sort of thing to "Chat" and may not properly understand them even yet. Certainly I never used to worry about taking time and space to try to elucidate my own position on matters without worrying whether all that was "meta" to a direct conversation about probable evolution of an ATL! To me it was always self-evident that one needed to argue from data and also from interpretations, and people either would not understand the bases of my interpretations because they'd never heard of them, or that they'd disagree for reasons that would affect our estimation of what is likely to happen and what is not. Either way, germane. But also repetitious, and perhaps dangerously toxic to the discussion of items at hand in an ATL. Finding that balance is part of our responsibility as participants I guess. A lot of people don't like how wordy I tend to be, and I know anything I write benefits from editing with a cool head and filtering stuff out. Against that, that process delays a post and often causes stuff to get lost completely!
Anyway I still don't see the ATL-ness of the challenge. The way I see it, they did an excellent job of accomplishing what they wanted, as I see it, certainly relative to the results I think they deserved to get. They could want to have accomplished more, but then again there are plenty of things I want I don't get because they are unrealistic. I don't think they could realistically get a lot more than they did, and could and IMHO should have accomplished less.
I believe being disingenuous, on many levels, including a huge dose of self-deception as well as conscious cynicism and lying, was a necessary part of their even existing as they did. So greater transparency, flexibility and accountability would have forced them to rethink their position and goals. Vice versa they found and exploited the niche they did because powerful social factors encouraged them and it is these, rather than the mouthpieces of the movement they represented, that need to be looked at for meaningful AH trajectories to be plotted out.
But trying to define and describe these seems doomed in this context to bog down into philosophical argument with little traction onto any plausible POD I can see.
Clinton ran and won on by talking about people who were playing by the rules seemed to be sliding behind. Don't understand why movement conservatives didn't try and rebut him specifically on middle-class economics? ? ? Maybe they thought they were being both entertained and educated by talk radio. Should have been more insistent on the second point!
I say that on that vague and isolated point, Clinton and his broad coalition of supporters (including say me at the time and now, as far as this isolated question goes) was correct, to argue otherwise would be incorrect and thus either a confusion or a lie.
Of course, taking this one talking point, describing a fact is merely a starting point; one can argue in many dimensions.
Some might argue that there is nothing wrong with this. After all, when one plays a board game or a game of cards strictly by the rules with no cheating, someone emerges as the winner, others come out losers. That's what everyone expects going in, the only argument is about who should win and who should lose, and presumably if the rules were followed, the game itself determines that. Fairly!
Or, they might agree the wrong people are winning and the wrong ones losing, and propose to change the rules (or enforce them, on the claim that cheating is happening) to rectify that--without participants in the debate agreeing on either who should win or who lose, or how and why the undesirable outcome is happening. As I understand the (sanitized, disingenuous) position of modern American conservatives, there is a proper and known set of rules that should be applied, and if they were the outcome would be just and good by definition, and our problems arise from the wrong people cheating, by applying wrong rules or breaking the ones agreed upon, to win instead, causing an inferior and thus wrong outcome.
I perceive that it has been demonstrated time and again that either these people honestly lay out the superior system of rules they believe in and then at some point, a majority of people fall away from agreeing to them. Some see something right up front that seems manifestly unfair and wrong about them that causes them to reject this system and argue against it right away. To others it sounds good but later they see instances where they realize they were mistaken to accept it.
Or--they misrepresent what is they are about, and win bigger support that way, and rely on people not having good information or lacking power to change bad outcomes or reach the majority unaware of their circumstances, or uncaring about them.
We get a whole lot of the latter and little of the former when people are far, far off base.
Now as for the point that maybe instead of being serious about rectifying matters so things are "The Way Things Ought to Be" to quote one Limbaugh title (or paraphrase anyway, damn if I will look it up now) they are just in it for notoriety and money, to entertain. Why not?
I forget right now if I posted my belief that people often support positions not in their direct interest because they perceive they lack the power to rectify matters, and settle for a compromise. And that under these circumstances, they have an aversion for serious political talk, because it painfully reminds them of their humiliating and harmful impotence, and prefer instead to construct fantasy worlds where they can have the power and influence and respect they can't get in real life.
Yep, I for one feel I am describing myself quite as much as anyone I think is wrong-headed. In case anyone was wondering at my own stupidity or hypocrisy or whatever they might feel it seems to be.
And one possible mode of fantasy is to construct a parallel perception of the real world as it is, and more or less believe it is real despite painful contradictions others might bring up, and go with belonging to a circle of allies who share the delusion, more or less, and be gratified by their status in this alternate world.
In this context, entertainment and actual politics fuse. And some might argue this is inevitably and philosophically what real world politics is all about, that everyone necessarily has their subjective view and there is no ruling on whose are more correct and whose less, only the outcome of the interaction of clashing views can judge. Not me, I stubbornly cling to ideas of their being truth and falsehood, and that at any rate one can measure objectively who is more honest and who less so by the number of lies they tell and the number of false delusions they cling to. But for instance, is my notion that there is a bit more to human behavior than relentless seeking of personal self interest a fond delusion I'm guilty of clinging to despite contradictory data? If I believe there is a brass ring of absolute truth out there, that one thing is true and others false, I also believe in the fundamental inability of human beings to ever prove they've actually got it in hand, indeed that by its nature it cannot be grasped. To cite Taoism! "Seek it and it retreats, grasp it and vanishes. The way that can be named is not the True Way."
Anyway, entertainment for its own sake is a thing, a very big and profitable thing in normal human society. Just look at how much work I've put into a couple Star Trek ATLs over the past few weeks versus any useful real world thing I've done publicly! During Limbaugh's "Reign of Error" as I think of it (title of an anti-Limbaugh criticism in his own words I had at the time and may still have packed away somewhere) the post TOS and movie Trek Franchise really got going, with two series on the air at any time. I'm pretty sure, though I find it amazing, that the fan bases overlapped. At the same time Trek shows were to a great extent my own entertainment/fantasy alternate world I perceived as better expressing the world I thought we should all be living in. (I pretty much equated Cardassians with the dominance of the Republicans in Congress and of course Limbaugh et al. And every time I saw a huge SUV on the road, I thought, "there goes another Cardassian!")
Now if anything remains of all this as an AH challenge, why not take it forward yourself? I have no heart to, and don't think there is much probability of doing so even in the American mind, without falling off the edge of the world as it were. We pretty much did, and still are sliding on down a rough, slippery and stinking slope toward ruin. IMHO!
I still don't get what you mean by "brass ring." Objective fact, in my opinion, was not their friend. To quote a later GW Bush spokesman, "You keep looking at reality. We aren't reality-based!" Their traction in the wide American public was already absurdly high. Why grasp for a brass ring when they've got the gold one in their hands anyhow?