Someone please explain to me that the Donkey wasn’t chosen by the Democrats to illustrate that the Party can be made to play along with what the Republicans want as long as they extend a carrot on a stick.
Are the Democrats so foolish as to accept happy words without bothering to parse the language?
In 2016, during his nomination acceptance speech, Trump pledged to fight against attacks on the GLBT community by foreign ideologies, and the members of the domestic GLBT Community, many of whom subsequently voted for him, and their Democratic allies got all excited. It was only when Trump immediately began his anti-GLBT actions upon taking office without violating what he had said that people had to accept that he had actually said nothing about domestic ideologies to whom he gave the ability to mistreat GLBT people through the exercise of “religious liberty”.
He got the vote. GLBT U.S. citizens got the boot.
Trump had not lied; he used our gullible naivete’.
I have been a political, Labor, and Gay Rights activist for almost half a century. During that time, I saw that the biggest ally of the other side and the most frustrating people on our side were those who were dazzled by the shiny bauble offered by the other side without assaying its value. Whether it was a diamond, or a piece of glass was hardly ever asked. It was shiny, so it had to be good.
Those trying to deny our rights or keep our hours, wages, and conditions of employment of employment below what was professionally acceptable during contract negotiations knew we were most vulnerable to word play at which they were adept and upon which they counted.
As the song says,
“Razzle dazzle ’em
And they’ll never catch wise”.
The common tactic of school districts was to pile on a few minor wants while suggesting that the major needs be put off for further study that would result in dealing with it next time.
In one school district a shiny raise, even the insulting pittance offered, helped get the rank and file to agree to delay what was in their best interest. In what was at the time seen as a betrayal, the Union negotiators, having been told that its suggestion on a better benefits package would be put off until later and the attempt was made to distract with a small raise, 1% higher than the previous one, reversed the tables by suggesting during that current biennial collective bargaining process that the teachers forgo a raise that go-around so long as the district paid the full premium of each teacher’s health insurance plan, a modification to this to be made in a future collective bargaining. This time, those who used the tactic fell for it themselves and accepted the shiny bauble that allowed them to crow to the public that they had saved the city money by avoiding giving the teachers a raise. With the realization that without having to pay its share of the insurance premium resulted in a raise higher than the union had ever sought as that money stayed in the teachers’ pockets, the school board attempted to reverse this during the next round of negotiations, and the union agreed to discuss it, only not this time but at a later one, and have been doing this for over 30 years.
“Down the road” works both ways, but you have to work it, not just accept it.
Discussing GLBT rights especially for students, one school board assigned the most homophobic administrator to head a committee to reevaluate and update school policy on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination, a man who, when GLBT students were brought up, called off the meeting in progress saying the committee’s job was to deal with students and not politics. The needs of all other groups to which students belonged fell under the umbrella of student concerns. The same for GLBT kids was “politics”.
The committee was disbanded as the school board called for a cooling off period without explaining why one was needed, or why one administrator’s hissy fit should delay necessary discussion, and “respectfully” requested that the discussion be put off for a while, again an undefined term that had no set ending date, and, so, the cooling off period could last until the end of time giving the school district administration what it thought would be a good defense for inactivity, i.e., they did not end discussion, but simply delayed it.
When, after much pressure, in public and in private, the committee began again with the same homophobic chairperson, and ,any time GLBT students were brought up, I was told that I would have to accept that, while my concern might be important, once every other group was dealt with, somewhere down the road the district would begin discussing the GLBT ones.
I was even told during a heated exchange in one committee meeting that I had to learn to accept compromise which meant, when explained, that the compromise did not consist in only getting some of what I was advocating, but with getting none of it now, but, perhaps, somewhere down the road.
Getting nothing is not compromise.
Results came from not falling for the ploy.
When there are school shootings, the response is generally that “now is not the time to discuss reasonable gun control”, and the implication that there will someday be such a discussion later, pleases people, and like shampoo we have shootings, refusal to discuss gun control, repeat.
The goal posts are on wheels and the road down which it will stop moving is without end.
As we mourn the death of Notorious RBG we are also faced with an impeached president in a position to appoint a Supreme Court Justice in the weeks before the election, and some on the Democratic side feel warm and fuzzy that some Republicans are advocating no nomination or vote until after the election.
The reality is, regardless who wins in November, Trump has 2.5 months after the election to nominate someone and the GOP senate, regardless of the results of local elections has almost 2 months to hold the vote.
When people complain after the fact, which seems to be the usual Democratic response to having, once again, fallen for the trick, the GOP can truthfully say that they were not violating their words, but holding to them.
I was brought up to be polite. I held doors, gave up subway seats to adults, and would often allow someone to go ahead of me even though it was my turn. One day at the now defunct Sandy’s Discount Store in West Roxbury, my mother gave me some change to go buy a tonic (pop, soda, soft drink) at the store’s snack bar. I was doing the polite thing and allowing others to go ahead of me that actually resulted in everyone but me getting what we were all there to get, when my mother pulled me aside and told me that while it was important to be polite, it was also important to see when that politeness was being taken advantage of by others. While everyone else was getting what they wanted, I was getting nothing and no one cared, nor did anyone simply and politely thank me for my offer and decline it, but just went in front of me.
To this day in traffic, at a store, approaching a door, I will let one car in, but not the one behind it attempting to take advantage of my politeness; will let a customer go before me at the checkout line; and hold a door for the person behind me. My politeness does not extend, however, to letting a whole side street into traffic, watch shopper after shopper push their cart in front of me, or hold a door for a parade. Others can be polite to those others, and those others can have their chance to be polite, not abusive of politeness.
Michele Obama said, “When they go low, we go high”.
She did not say, “When they go low, we go stupid.”
Democrats need to stop being predictably stupid.
The boast that objecting to any action on the Supreme Court will really get the GOP if we use their own words against them is the most naïve, political stupidity I have ever heard because it is based on the foolish idea that they care.