anaxarchos, the board wars are not going to die down. You've given us a couple of teases of stuff you want to post when that happens. There are always going to be people that insert themselves into any/all threads based on "human nature", "your plan" and"purity".

We have a few choices. We can delete sub-threads that are based in these views, we can ignore them or we can continue to engage them. What saddens me is that we are not moving forward, because of these people. There is a tension between "The distinguishing thing must be the objective of debating ideas and not the (changing) perspective of individuals." and allowing an environment that quiets us to avoid the mess those people create.

Do we have to solve this problem first?

I mean, at this point I don't think we should be sniping with omega or Prospero any further.

Agree that we need to get past this hurdle and that its time to discuss it as an issue unto itself

I agree with your assessment... though the board wars offer opportunities as well as headaches (such as a chance to revisit some basics).

Pinko has a very good thread up at the moment (as well as a more arcane but important piece by Pisarev which exists nowhere else on the web). It is a good place to start in the near term. Meanwhile, give me a few days to put up my teaser on the Crisis (I need to write some commentary). The teaser thread points directly back to the economic crisis thread based on ToSV. It is a very good way to move forward and we can talk about whether we want to resume Capital as well.

On the "wars", I would suggest simply ignoring them unless it proves impossible to do so. At the moment, I have no confidence that we can "solve" anything, nor am I convinced that anything needs solving. I know this seems to be a change of position for me but I openly admitted to being somewhat arbitrary about all of this. Of course, if we see open disruption on serious threads... we first prune sub-threads and then posters... at least in my opinion. What do you think?

all the damn time as an issue. Show 'em the door. Maybe I am not understanding what you are saying...

Not seeing anything worthwhile in engaging with the likes of omega et al.

... but, can you stick your tongue out this far?

http://www.know-britain.com/general/images/maori.jpg

I appreciate everyone putting up with my relentless (obsessive?) pursuit of elusive and maybe illusory opportunities and understand the frustration.

It looks to me as though we are very close to ending the split between the two - where anything that shows up will be opportunities and not headaches.

Everything the disruptors post is a perfect object lesson, a basis for analysis and discussion.

It may be grist for the mill rather than a hurdle or distraction.

Herr anax...

...and look where it gets me.

http://pics.blameitonthevoices.com/062009/small_long%20tongue.jpg

is complete crap in my experience.

Some of it can be that grist you allude to but after a while it just makes for spinnin' your wheels.

Hell, I've spent many an hour on that merry-go-round.

We have both spent half our lives on that merry-go-round it seems.

Something is shifting. It is all coming apart at the seams. Liberalism is self-destructing. I don't think it is going to be an issue anymore of dealing with them or not. I don't think they are a threat anymore.

All the King's horses and all the King's men, can't put liberalism together again.

But they can't interfere anymore, either.

They kept giving me dozens of opportunities in the latest exchanges. That is going to increasingly be the case from here on in.

also, it is easy lo these centuries later to overlook exactly how important to the Enlightenment Voltaire was. He was sort of a pitchman more than a font of ideas, but Pisarev is certainly not cooking up his allegory from a bare plate.

And it may be premature, but I am in the pro-resuming Capital camp

I tell myself that next time I won't get sucked in and I do anyway.

Maybe it is just a way for me to review the basics, and I'm certainly getting better at that.

But I understand how disruptive it is to the rest of the board - particularly when it bleeds into more serious threads about other things.

I have a lot more thoughts on this than I have the time to write.

It is definitely getting clearer to me how precise and huge the split is. I think Mike has made some serious headway in identifying what's happening (eg the language of the bosses post). So it's not all for naught.

I don't know what the answer is, but I'm of the mind that if we want the board overall to focus more on the nitty gritty and less on the left/lib wars, people shouldn't hold off on posting other things 'till it's over', becasue curt's right - they'll keep coming back. We do have to practice some discipline and figure out how to handle threadjacking. And most of all, ENFORCE those decisions - eg remove off-topic posts, ban people quicker, etc.

However I think PI may be doomed since it's been around for 5 years, it's a well known url among progressive libs and disgruntled dems, and we may never avoid this phenomena.

Which is why I've always been in support of the idea of a new site instead of fixing this one up.

Changing the graphics and featuring the about us page will only accomplish so much. No one seems to give a shit about the About Us page, and our patience just encourages them.

Scattered, early mornin thoughts. I need more coffee. I'll be back later.

I am not sure, but I am starting to think that the nitty gritty and the left/lib wars are one and the same when approached the right way.

I've always been ambivalent about it as well. The problem is when threads like your "Splitting the Left", become unreadable. It's a serious premise, that we should discuss, but it's just impossible.

That the Left and liberals are not on the same side of the political continuum has to acknowledged, before that and many other discussions can be fruitful. Every time someone or several people come into threads and attack that premise, it goes to hell. There has got to be a way to allow people to question it (presumably to understand it), and still recognize that repeatedly attacking it is out of bounds.

Anyway, like always I defer to the people who think it's useful to confront RW posters and who participate in it more than I do.

Since the disruption is all about the same topic - people attacking the premise that the Left and liberals are not on the same side of the political continuum - why not just set up a section of the board for that topic, and as soon as it surfaces in a serious thread move the posts there? Quick, easy, clear, done.

Liberals are always trying to negotiate with us. I really noticed that with PH's posts - "if I agree with you guys about this, will you then let me promote my liberal ideas and not challenge them?" People want to be able to say "look here, see here, I believe in Socialism, just like you guys do" and then proceed to attack the left and argue aggressively for liberalism. There must therefore be something they want to hang on to, don't want to give up or let go of. Whatever that something is, it must be very personal and very emotional judging by the reactions when it is challenged. Whenever the subject comes up, it very quickly become about their careers, their lifestyle, their personal story, all of which they claim has been attacked or invalidated by something one of us said.

I say that one thing is not negotiable - liberals and leftists are not allies, are not on the same team, are not going in the same direction. It is not negotiable because it does not work to compromise on that, and because that is the foundational premise for what we are doing here. The insistence by people that liberals and leftists are allies, on the same team, and going in the same direction is a way to disappear and silence the Left.

The response is then "oh you radical weird people all in rigid lockstep insisting on ideological purity and casting out all who do not agree with you on every little thing, you are alienating friends and allies and you will never succeed at what you are trying to promote because you will never win anyone over with this tone and attitude you are taking." That is not a serious argument of course, but a maneuver, a tactic.

Clearly there is a split between leftists and liberals, clearly they are no going on the same direction. Were that not true, we would not be seeing the frantic attempts at merging the two - always on their rigid terms, of course. Why would they be trying to bring us back into the fold unless we were in fact out of the fold?

This one thing is not negotiable - liberals and leftists are not allies, are not on the same team, are not going in the same direction. That seems rigid and unacceptable to liberals because for them promoting liberalism is the only thing that matters, the only thing they want to do.

..."common knowledge": "There has never been anything called reform", "The Democratic Party is the worst party in the world", and so on.

I wouldn't take the same positions over dinner. It's not that I think those propositions are not true. It is that they are not simply true. Everything is complicated and full of contradictions. That is the subject of historical materialism. We simplify our perspective out of political necessity. The Left MUST split from the Democratic Party and from the loose traditions of the 1960s... it MUST constitute itself independently, and based on socialist ideology. But, that is mostly about institutions and ideology. People are a more complicated kettle of fish. We have to be able to talk on a broad basis... and we have to be able to debate the real state of the world without administrative sanction.

On the other hand, when we get uninterruptible spew in something like the Capital thread... well, I humbly admit that I was the first to act. We need more discipline and a greater resolution on the ability to distinguish between debate and "work".

"Confronting" is an entirely separate thing, too. In my opinion, it has the greater value as the size of the web site increases. At the very least, it is an advertisement for where the EXIT sign is...

That's like thinking that heliocentric astronomy is a belief system. Socialism (as I understand it so far) describes conditions created by capitalism. If you look at examples of the workings of Capitalism, you can see these conditions demonstrated at all levels. What is in there that people think requires some "leap of faith" to "believe"?

not thought

I really started noticing this with the rise of the Reagan-ator and the religious right, the sudden influence of the fundamentalists on politics and the msm. Line up your "thoughts" about something based on little or no information.

Take it far enough and now you've got people being polled "Do you BELIEVE passing the health care bill is a good thing?" Everyone's expected to have a response, yet nobody actually knows wtf is in the bill. And on the off chance there's a polling option of "not sure" it's never "not sure, because I don't have enough info." You're meant to think your unsureness is your (personal, failing) lack of belief.

It's so much easier to manipulate "beliefs" than thoughts based on information and analysis.

LOL places like DU and KOS seem like modern day tent meetings to me.

If we see liberals as confused, as an annoyance or a distraction, doesn't that suggest that liberalism is benign?

I now think that liberalism is the main threat. I also think that here, as nowhere else, it has met its match. They aren't a threat to us.

Liberals are the enemy. They are not confused, misguided potential allies or friends. They are no less the enemy - more the enemy - than "Palin" or tea baggers or whatever. When I say "liberals" I don't mean people like Meagan, Mary and TBF, who were swept along and identified vaguely with liberalism over the years (that is true to one extent or another with all of us), I mean the small faction of people driving and controlling and promoting liberalism - the very people we have trouble with here, because we are seeing them as mere trolls or disruptors. But they are not trolls or disruptors. They are adversaries.

I think that the people actively driving and controlling and promoting liberalism are first and foremost owners and bosses, and that is what they are arguing for - more effectively and aggressively than anyone anywhere.

I am ready to take on liberalism. That is an important part of the work, not something to be brushed aside as a minor annoyance that is interfering with the work. Liberalism is a threat, those promoting it - especially those doing so by creating an uproar and making such absurd and illogical arguments - are the enemy, and we should take them on.

I thought it was funny when people started in on the "brainwashing us into their Socialist cult!!!11" nonsense. Hell, if we were really trying to do that, this would be going a lot more smoothly. Starting a cult is child's play. Trying to get get someone out of one often results in the kind of hostile and reactive behavior we see though...hmmm.

http://www.capcatchers.com/v/vspfiles/photos/GTB-1.jpg

...and a new site is not gonna save you. "The prevailing ideas of any age are the ideas of its ruling class." No shit. They are everywhere. If I spent my time here "correcting" screwy "liberal" ideas, I would do nothing but that... and that's before the fabled liberals show up.

In truth, it's not all that "disruptive".... if you don't get "sucked in", as you put it. As far as the site goes, as long as we have an archive that we can pull up (like the PopI archive but in many hands), then we can decamp like Mongols with their Yurts and move on. Eventually, it will be forced on us many times.

It is fetishism to think that a new site, a new URL, a new "about us" page, a new rule, or a new policy will change anything... ya bunch of liberals.

http://www.wildernesstravel.com/images/trips/asia/mongolia/mongolia_altai-alison-wright-mon-006881-pano.jpg

I was like "Does he really say this stuff at the kitchen table?" (Having tried, if not no other reason than it can be fun to be contrarian from time to time, I can tell you it doesn't go over well)

:)

What then is so surpring about their belief in their church of economics?

just sayin'

http://www.insuremycalicar.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/screenhunter-apr-13-1119.jpg

I would just like a site overhaul of the "progressive" crap...then, take whatever comes down the pike...

The board wars are not going to die down...