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Comments Posted By Beatriz09

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“At Last!”: How HP Continues to Cultivate Cynicism

As I agree with most of the comments below, I just wanted to add a couple of things.

The idea that Obama had “TWO FULL YEARS” to achieve his agenda (and, as a consequence, that all that wasn’t achieved during these two years could have only one possible explanation: “not caring”) is a myth that at times the HP took over too.

How many people know that at the end of Obama’s first year already, Ted Kennedy was replaced by ‘Teapartier’ Scott Brown? How many people know, for instance, that at the time the Dem had already a second stimulus ready, but that Scott Brown blocked a vote on it in the Senate?

The election of Brown gave the GOTP exactly the number of votes they needed to be able to block each and every vote through a filibuster, and that’s what they’ve done on almost all important issues NOT since January 2011, but ALREADY from Jan. 2010 on.

That means that Obama had exactly ONE year where he could work – in theory – on his own agenda. Which of course does NOT mean IMPLEMENTING that agenda each and every day, it means working with the Constitutionally INDEPENDENT Congress in order to find common ground on which moving forward can be possible.

Everybody knows that the Democratic party is a ‘big tent’. In the Senate for instance, there were more or less 15 progressive Dems, 30 moderate Dems, and 15 conservative Dems (Blue Dogs). Working as a Dem president with Congress, in such a circumstances, means trying to help create common ground among both aisles of your OWN party. THAT’s why the first stimulus was the biggest stimulus package in history BUT at the same time lower than what progressives wanted, AND higher than what Blue Dogs wanted. Obama got this through Congress in a RECORD time, fortunately, because when he came in, we were losing almost a million jobs a MONTH, GDP was at -9% (at -10% you have a depression), and became more negative each and every quarter.

And coming into office in the midst of the worst economic crisis in more than half a century, in other words in a state of EMERGENCY, is NOT exactly what you need to be able to start implementing your OWN agenda from day one.

These aren’t “excuses”, as some prefer to call them, it’s the very reason why Obama and the Dems achieved what they did (LGBT rights included). Which brings my to the second point I wanted to make.

In a democracy, the Constitution gives ordinary citizens the possibility to be part of the government – as a politician or as a mere citizen. But as we all know, it’s not because it’s written on a peace of paper that it will actually HAPPEN. Citizens still have to DECIDE to start engaging in the legislative process. Which means that somehow they have to at least understand a LITTLE bit how that process works. As a consequence, ‘activating’ the democratic potential of a constitutionally democratic country is only possible when newspapers, MSM and newsblogs invest considerable time and energy (read: money) in studying this process and explaining it to their readers/viewers.

Unfortunately, part of the reporters working for the HP do NOT seem to understand how the legislative process works. And as they’re nevertheless paid to explain what’s happening on Capitol Hill, they do what we all spontaneously tend to do (as some comments on this thread clearly show too): they ‘psychologize and moralize’, in other words, they try to explain complicated mechanismes by writing about the ‘character’ of this or that politician or person (WITHOUT even KNOWING him or her, of course, and often using merely pseudo-psychological concepts) … or reporter or CEO or whatever.

It’s when you start doing something like that that it’s very easy to become cynical, and once MSM start to cultivate cynicism, ordinary citizens don’t get informed about HOW a democracy works anymore, so they don’t see why they should go voting, and that’s how even ‘progressive’ newsblogs can become a HUGH factor in reducing voter turnout (especially on the left, as cynicism is playing a very different role in politics on the right).

If we strongly believe (as many of us clearly do) that getting the vote out is absolutely crucial in order to obtain a government ‘by and for the people’, then imho we have to urgently STOP playing the blame game, and start ANALYZING, calmly, the CONCRETE, non-psychological but fundamentally POLITICAL reasons why people stop voting, so that we can all together work on solutions that will have a real impact, rather than merely imagining that if WE go voting but they not, they must be ‘stupid’, point.

And I’m sure that somehow, Arianna Huffington might understand this herself. That’s why the end of my piece was referring to her new book: one of the wonderful things the HP has done is increasing awareness about the importance of meditation and mindfulness. But mindfulness means to constantly try to replace judging by non-judgemental UNDERSTANDING. Imho, that’s EXACTLY what we need on the left, today, when it comes to politics, and if we want to obtain bills that reflect the will of the majority of the American people.

On the other hand … practicing mindfulness means TRYING not to judge, and if you do, simply observing THAT you’re judging. So you cannot possibly tell someone else that he or she ‘should practice a little more mindfulness’ …

» Posted By Beatriz09 On June 18, 2014 @ 6:55 am

FYI: the HP just changed its headline into …

“Obama makes big move against LGBT discrimination”

» Posted By Beatriz09 On June 16, 2014 @ 4:52 pm

No Longer Lost: Finding a New Home at Daily Kos and PlanetPOV

Hello Helloise,

the only thing I’d tend to disagree with is when you say that there would be something wrong with FB as an enterprise. Imho, if well used, FB can be very interesting. As far as I’m concerned, I only use it for professional purposes, and if you want to keep up with what colleagues are doing and make your own work known, it clearly has some advantages.

But as others here already said: precisely BECAUSE your FB is (potentially) read by your employer, you cannot possibly use it to write about politics, and that’s why in my case too, starting to comment on HP articles using my FB account was completely out of question.

In the beginning, I was hoping that the HP would realize that they had made a hugh mistake, as most community pundits cleary refused to accept the new rules of the game. But they didn’t, and even ended up entirely destroying the former comment system. Apparently, posting more tabloid articles makes them earn a lot more than maintaining the best and most democratic comment system in the world… so they decided to get rid of it…

» Posted By Beatriz09 On June 16, 2014 @ 1:21 pm

Hi monicaangela!

Nice to meet you here, I remember you very well, it was always a pleasure to read your posts!

I truly hope that a lot of HP community pundits (and other posters – conservative or liberal) will discover planetPOV and turn it into some kind of ‘better HP’ …

Looking forward to reading you!!

Take care.

» Posted By Beatriz09 On June 16, 2014 @ 1:11 pm

Thanks Nirek!!

When AOL bought the HP, I was hoping for the best, which would have been more tabloid articles and because of that more traffic, and as a consequence more opportunities to talk with people you rarely meet in daily life.

It didn’t work out that way. Precisly because the tabloid articles attracted much more visitors, the HP didn’t need its sophisticated comment system anymore in order to increase trafic (read: to give its managing board a pay rise). And its managing board clearly decided that giving themselves a pay rise was MUCH more important than contributing to a democratic revolution through the combination of well-informed articles and serious debate among hundreds of thousands of citizens. So much for its desire to be ‘progressive’ …

Looking forward to reading you!

» Posted By Beatriz09 On June 16, 2014 @ 1:06 pm

First, I would like to thank MurphTheSurf and the HP for having contacted me and for the information about PlanetPOV, site I didn’t know and that I’m very happy to discover.

That being said, as a former ‘HP community pundit’, I profoundly regret the transformation of the absolutely unique HP comment system into an ordinary FB comment system.

The HP had a LOT of things that other sites cannot possibly offer, but to me one of its main assets was the fact that it was a site that wanted to be progressive but was founded, paradoxically, by a former Republican. As a result, it attracted all kinds of progressive posters AND a lot of conservative posters, which means that real debates among people who think very differently were perfectly possible, and that’s EXACTLY what you need to create a more vibrant democracy.

Its second biggest asset was the comment system itself: well-argumented comments were put on top of all other comments, which allowed you to immediately have an overview of the main arguments pro and contra, and to build on them. Having a list of the latest comments on your posts right on the home page made it possible to continue debates with one or the other poster for days, if that’s what was necessary to fact-check your own information and to try to find out whose argument contained errors etc.

The Daily Kos cannot possibly replace something like the former HP, for all the reasons I just mentioned.

And even though I agree that half of the HP articles were mere tabloid pieces, the advantage of a newsblog that combines serious topics with low quality ‘entertainment’ is that it attracts much more people than a ‘serious’ newsblog could ever do, which increases the number of people reading comments on ‘serious’ articles, and as a consequence intensifies the debate among people who otherwise wouldn’t be talking to each other even more.

Conclusion: I strongly regret the destruction of the HP comment section, and even if I’m happy to discover PlanetPOV (thanks again MurphTheSurf3!), I cannot but hope that sooner or later, Arianna (or someone else …) will become interested in using ALL possibilities of online newsblogs to improve the democratic debate among citizens again…

In the meanwhile, I’m looking forward to continue the debate with other ‘Huffugees’ here on PlanetPOV!

» Posted By Beatriz09 On June 14, 2014 @ 5:46 am