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Van Jones is Trying to Lead Lost Liberals Back to Reality
This is not good for our side, I prefer them to be lost in their misconceptions, but I must give Van Jones credit for trying to move the Left into the acceptance phase. He might be the face of a new regrouped Left. Below he is helping them see the silliness of college safe spaces:
He is helping them overcome the denial that Trump is president and to perceive how serious a foe Trump is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-BnBmw-R2c
Here is an example of the battle in the Left. As an opponent of the Left, I hope Angela Rye’s side wins and continues to convince the Left that Trump is a mean mad fool. That way Trump can continue to destroy them and they won’t know what hit them (just like Republicans and conservative elites in 2016).
If this plays out like it has on the right, the Left will split between those who see reality and adapt and those who believe in “their old reality” and become irrelevant. This is a great example of a red pill / blue pill scenario.
Published in Politics
Van Jones is an Obama protégé and is very crafty. If he is the voice of reason, good for him, but watch him carefully. I don’t like the word destroy or prefer them to be lost. We don’t need more division. Isn’t it the goal of the conservatives to make things better for everyone? Bitterness doesn’t move people forward, but backward.
Fear not, Van Jones is a self-described communist (though somehow a millionaire..?) and he can’t control himself for long. I don’t think we have to “worry” about him being the voice of reason from the left.
So how can a man subscribe to an ideology that specializes in impoverishing and oppressing people and then claim to be a reasonable pragmatist?
Hating Trump is not enough. You need to criticize everything he does or says. You need to hate everyone who is related to him or who works for him. Most of all, you can’t even acknowledge that he is president because that will “legitimize” his presidency. But remember, “Love Trumps Hate.”
Democrats are weird.
I thought about your comment to see if I mis-typed. Nope I didn’t. They are the political enemy. The Left needs to be defeated and the movement destroyed. If they remain lost in their confusion, all the better for us. Wanting the complete defeat of an enemy is not bitterness. Defeating them, will move us forward.
Conservatism is notoriously hard to define. The most often reference is Kirk’s 10 principles. None are goals, none reference making things better for everyone, though the effect would be to improve the human condition.
Everyone has their role. There are warriors to fight (not me) and the healers after the win (not me). We need both and the variety in between on our team.
Their hate is part of what disables an effective response.
Van Jones spoke at my niece’s graduation from Middlebury College in Vermont last year. I thought it was a good speech.
But anyone who self-describes as a Communist should be ejected from polite society – in the same manner we eject one who ascribes to National Socialism or pledges fealty to the Klan.
This point can never be made clear enough.
Has anyone pressed him on this subject? Does he support Mao’s invasion of Tibet or Stalin’s forced famine of the Ukraine?
I don’t think so. I have never seen it, although I am not motivated enough to google it.
He’d probably say that Mao and Stalin weren’t real communists.
No reasonable man could do that, yet Jones does. Hence he is not a reasonable man.
If I remember right, he was more or less made “famous” by one Glenn Beck (and we see how that all worked out for Beck) before he was exited early on from the Obama administration. But far from fading away, Jones seems to hang on somehow, often appearing on panel shows to represent the left viewpoint. Its a good gig for him actually, he’s looks good in a suit and is articulate, but sooner or later he’ll return to his “this is a white-lash” persona of election night, in the end anger is his bread and butter.
My first thought was that he would somehow blame capitalists from the “west” for interfering. To answer your question though, I don’t think he’s really ever been pressed on the communist thing.
You’d think ABC when cutting paychecks would look at him and say “Wait, you don’t really even…want a paycheck…right?”
He’s far from it.
This a great set of glimpses into how Van Jones is trying to help liberals to re-calibrate now that they are not in power.
Van Jones on safe spaces – He knocked that one out of the park and I am hearing more people including Obama that echo those sentiments, i.e. you never learn how to defend your point of view if you live in a bubble.
Van Jones on democrats should worry – He is right liberals have so far have only played the “Trump is a monster” card and it is so worn out they need to focus on not being the just the “we hate Trump” party. Hopefully other’s anger will not subside enough to allow this to happen and they will continue to be slow to respond to his growth.
Van Jones and Angela Rye – Poor Angela she just wants to howl at the moon, but what concerns me more is CNN is now becoming the therapy channel for liberals with Van in the role of Dr. Phil. I much prefer the CNN folks and their guests to continue to rant and rave like Angela.
By the way did you notice Ms. Rye say that Obama was “my president”, I am sorry he may have been her “candidate” for president, but once he entered the office he became “our president” no matter if you voted for him or not. To me that part of being an American and being respectful, inclusive and not divisive.
Despite the list of weaknesses previous comments have listed – Van Jones is articulate, handsome, young, able to think outside the bubble, and (we must not forget) black… He is the best the democrats have right now. I can easily see how he could take a leading roll in what will surely be the emergence of a new “neo-Left.”
If Van Jones is pushing “listen, argue, fight back with words” and people listen to him, I’ll be thrilled. The most obnoxious and deleterious habit of the left right now is it’s determined unwillingness to shut down (sometimes violently) any view other than its own.
It’s better for everyone if the Van Jones wins—better for conservatives, because arguments only get better when they have to be defended, and better for the progressives because…engaging with conservatives tends to pull them toward the middle.
Go, Van!
Well… I believe you might be projecting your good intentions and reasonableness onto Van Jones. A quick look at his current twitter feed will dispel the thought that he wants engagement with conservatives. I don’t think his goal is openness to the discussion of ideas, but a sharpening of rhetorical skills to attack opposing ideas. He knows the Left is losing and he needs better warriors and a better battle plan.
That title is all one needs to realize how far the modern Left has fallen.
Probably. I don’t really do Twitter, so I miss a lot. We can hope that the middle-aged Lefties also miss a lot, and only catch what I caught? also, I misspoke: I meant to say that the most obnoxious and deleterious habit of the left is its WILLINGNESS to shut down any view other than its own.
Still, if I’m honest I could say that I originally joined Ricochet in part, at least, to sharpen my rhetorical skills or at least with the expectation of doing so. Look how that turned out?
Any engagement, at this point, with conservative ideas is better than angrily demanding (and receiving) a safe space from which to lob insults.
Naw, most educated Brown people, myself included, have always thought safe spaces were stupid as hell. Its just the left is so demoralized they are actually listening to the people they have self-ballyhooed for “protecting” — I’m sure once they pick their chins up off the floor they will shout us down again.
The modern form of Communism as practiced by young progressives is totally disconnected from the past as well as from reality. It has morphed into a syrupy, quasi-religious communitarianism that is very non-specific in its methods but will usher us towards a world where no one has to worry about hunger or not having a good high speed internet connection. There will be no icky billionaires or oil companies, and we will all live in pastoral university settings like Greek aristocracy, living sustainably and eschewing the materialism advertised into us by grubby corporations. We will all live in a global village, raise our children together, and eat our vegan meals under the gentle breeze of a windmill while talking about fascinating things like the awesomeness of the rainforst and how cool it was that the world came together to stop climate change. And besides, they would say, the world needs subsistence farmers too: they keep us humble and connected to the Earth.
And since it is so obviously the scientifically correct way to live, everyone will eventually realize it and there will be no need for a violent bloodbath.
As for Van Jones, it seems to me that his motivation is simple: He thinks this new breed of soft whiny liberalism is a big liability to the left. He needs confident soldiers, not whiny brats. He needs allies who understand the other side’s arguments and can fight back against them, not tantrums from know-nothings who have never heard the other side’s arguments because they have been protected from them by safe spaces both physical and mental.
Van is a smart guy. I could easily see him emerging as the voice of a new Democratic party. Still far left, still militant, but playing the game much more intelligently and with a lot more nuance than most of the people in the Congressional Black Caucus and even Obama.
Van is the kind of guy smart enough to possibly cross the aisle for school choice or better policing or something like that simply because he knows that he has to get in front of the inner city problem before the Republicans start peeling off black votes.
He’s also smart enough to see that it’s good for his side as well to fix these problems, as they mostly redound to Democratic governments and policies.
He’s also smart enough to know that he needs more middle class, educated black people on his side, and lifting them up out of the inner city isn’t a bad way to do it.
And he’s certainly smart enough to see just how much political damage has fallen on the Democrats for their encouragement of the ‘safe space’ culture.
Yeah.., what Dan said above is exactly right.
Dan, you must have a Black auntie cause this is the most spot-on analysis of a Black intellectual I’ve seen from any political forum: left or right.
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter, sir.
You live in a world that I want to live in. Your approach is good. But that is not the world of the Left. We on the right think “they” are wrong and we need to correct them. The Left thinks we are evil. You don’t converse with evil. You destroy evil. That is their opinion of us. So I don’t want them stronger. I don’t want them to have better leaders so they can fight more effectively. I want them confused, in disarray, and their narrative of reality to break.
I usually agree with you Wiley, but I’m going to differ here. I said this somewhere else: The nation is divided. Between those who are fighting to destroy the enemy and those making a sandwich. Its impossible to get an accurate tally of who’s who because those fighting the enemy use every resource to report their battle — while those of us making a sandwich are too busy enjoying said sandwich to answer the fighting polls. I’ve fought enemies, made sandwiches, and fought a sandwich — most found in the vast middle don’t think people who vote differently are their enemy.
Know your enemy. If you do not understand your enemy you will lose. Trump has a great advantage are present, because the Left does not understand him. If that blindness continues, he can beat them.
“Know your enemy” or else you lose. That advice is for us too. We need to not project our good intentions on the Left. We need to listen and see them for who they are. You can see how they think by what they project onto others. It is the liar, who first thinks others are lying. It is the thief, who first thinks others are stealing. It is the hater, who thinks others are hateful. It is the bigoted, who see bigots.
I’ve seen this show before. We have a recent example what happens when you do not know your enemy. During the campaign, the Republican and conservative establishment did not understand Trump and they lost. I’ll let you recall what they projected.
As a left defector, one who finally spit in disgust over 1st and 2nd amendment disregard, along with having my advocacy work criticized by SJWs because the word advocacy meant I had a “misogynistic outlook” — I would advise to hand em the rope to do it themselves. Implosion is imminent.