The argument has been put strongly and with sufficient documentation that my friend Tony is divisive. And I’ll be the first to agree.
I would also add that even an organization whose tenets are cohesion, consensus and agreement, needs stimulus.
You need divisiveness when you want expansive discussions of controversial matters. How else do you spark innovative thinking but by asking the unorthodox questions? In a meeting meant to galvanize resolve, I prefer truth to soft-pedaling, although like anyone, I’m more comfortable with the latter.
If you think Tony is a contrarian, naysayer, or malcontent, I’d say you are likely on the wrong side of the fence. Even as you might protest you are sitting evenly on the fence, that’s wrong side enough, for you are sitting. Argument can be tedious, agreed, and seems unnecessary when a group is otherwise of one mind. But if that mind is complacent, or befuddled, or misguided, what better thing is there to do but mix it up?
Somebody’s got to be divisive when it comes to sorting wheat from chaff. It may seem horribly un-idealistic to separate when we aspire to unite, but is there room for everyone at the table if the table is a political agenda that requires effort and temerity? I’ll assert there is not. If the average disposition is inclined away from audacity or resolve, why lead it to water?
Everyone follows their own drummer, but if the march is on, those who hear a slower drummer have to be spun unto a side street to let the movement past.
‘Contrarian’ and ‘divisive’? These are labels that others may well put on me because those who do that and I, are simply not on the same political tracks together. By themselves, these labels are pretty damn meaningless IMO.
These are the sort of tags used against opponents of The System (or any system, for that matter) by those who want to be players in The System (reformists, in short). Reformists always want respectability (consensus), and not opposition (‘divisiveness’).
Kind of funny that we are talking about that one day after Obama’s speech…LOL. Obama represents reformism so dilute that it itself will have to be ‘reformed’ from the word GO. Am I being ‘divisive’ and ‘contrarian’ to point that reality out? Is that being against real CHANGE? Is that being a Republican of some sort? Hardly.
In the J&P, it is an umbrella group of sorts dominated by those many that find wisdom in people like Gore, Carter, Eisenhower, and Henry Ford. Expressing an attitude counter to that is considered ‘divisive’ and ‘contrarian’. So be it. Who really cares? I certainly don’t, since there simply is no reason to be building consensus with such a mindset. A new and different consensus should be strived for, and I do.
A thank you to Tony for being the antithesis we need to move that pendulum.
You loyal Democrats are always trying to move some ‘pendulum’ or other, and by that, you simply mean voting for ‘the lesser of two evils’ that the party hierarchy picks out for you. Yes, I am part of the antithesis of that mindset, Diann, and you are the proponent of it. You will be voting for Obama or Clinton this fall, and I will not be. That’s what you call ‘moving the pendulum’, and that’s what I call stalling the moving of that pendulum.
Liberal intellectual types have been stalled in that ‘loyal opposition’ mindset in America for eons now, and it has produced national and cultural stagnation on a grand level. What our little dialog online at this level actually underlines is that is that there really are political issues behind any personality issues here.
Quite frankly though, people who do the same non-productive prayer and vote Democratic Party politics over and over again do tend to have different personalities than mine. I am tired of trying to cooperate with people who are basically not in opposition at all to current corporate America, even as they think that they are the grand opponents of our current president and his policies. I think that you are not true opponents of that power that rules over us all, and it will be irritating to you if that opinion (mine) is expressed.
Democratic Party liberals are essentially collaborators with the System even as they talk at times as if they were the Grand Opponents of it. Sure, you don’t like Ann Coulter, Dubya, Rush, and O’Reilly, but that hardly makes you people that want to change things in America that much.
There is a paid staff member for the J&P that you as J&P board member authorize salary for, that is a big one for snidely suggesting all the time that I am ‘contrarian’. He has all of the group talking ‘sustainability’ (though he means sustainable capitalism, which by definition really isn’t sustainable at all), discussing Jimmy Carter and Al Gore Thought through group book readings, too. Those are his politics, and they simply ain’t mine. Yes, to him I am ‘contarian’.
I simply don’t think that Carter and Gore Thought are moving the pendulum forward, and that I am not when I say what I truly think about their politics, and your politics, too, Diann. In short, your idea of ‘divisiveness’ is when others who might disagree with your type of politics don’t just shut up as you would like them to. Instead, we keep saying that we disagree with your politics and agendas. Oh, well…. because America simply is going nowhere forward under liberal politics as currently defined by those eternally voting DP and those cooperating with powers that be as a loyal opposition bloc.
Dianne, I don’t think that you and people who share your politics are subversive (of the corporate American ruling class) and it is only subversives that will move the pendulum forward if it is to ever happen once again. You are national ‘patriots’ just like the people you make noise about supposedly opposing. You just think that the ruling top should be kinder to us all, where as, I think they should have their power over us all done away with altogether.
You want a better business climate and social climate with business still ruling us than we currently have. You just want more social workers and an environment where small businesses don’t get eaten by bigger fish. An environment where the J&P might not only keep its paid staff, but expand it yet more perhaps… a business working for ‘PEACE’… LOL.. divisively. …A bigger paid staff that could spend more time working with City Council members like Jan Martin to promote ‘sustainability’ in our Lockheed/ Pentagon run town. Where’s that pendulum movement once again?
So I hope I have fleshed out some of the real issues here for you, Diann?
Tony ~
Unfortunately, you and I haven’t had a true conversation about what I think about many of those issues. You’ve made an assumption….a wrong one.
I am more than aware of the inclusion of “corporate rights” to the theory of political pendulum swings and it’s subsequent harm.
I am more than aware of the problems within the J & P and am working to try in my little way to make things change and I agree with you.
I have just recently declared myself as a Democrat after years of being an Independent or Green Party proponent, to try working from within to effect at least some change, rather than none, which is exactly what has happened in the past.
Naturally, because we haven’t talked, you don’t really know my personal politics, but let me say this. I will vote this time for anyone other than Hillary or McCain and not because I think Obama is the answer I would truly want, but that he is the closest that allows me to still exercise my privilege to vote
and have it count for something. Aside from a true revolution, which we could be closer to than we all think, that is my viable option at this time.