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No ideals

6 comments on No ideals

No ideals
: Scott Rosenberg finds acidly practical political advice from Tony Kushner (Angels in America) in Mother Jones:

Kushner: Listen, here’s the thing about politics: It’s not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this. The GOP has developed a genius for falling into lockstep. They didn’t have it with Nixon, but they have it now. They line up behind their candidate, grit their teeth, and help him win, no matter who he is.

Jones: You’re saying progressives are undone by their own idealism?

Kushner: The system isn’t about ideals. The country doesn’t elect great leaders. It elects f***ed-up people who for reasons of ego want to run the world. Then the citizenry makes them become great.

6 responses to “No ideals”

  1. billg Avatar
    billg

    I’ve learned to distrust anyone whose politics are rotted in ideology, any ideology. Anyone following an ideology inevitably wants to compel people to behave according to their own conception of how the world should be. Take the world as it is and give people as much freedom as possible.

  2. paladin Avatar
    paladin

    I always thought the ultimate “lockstep” moment came when Democrat/progressives lined up behind Bill Clinton on the White House lawn after he dodged the conviction bullet on impeachment.

  3. Roger L. Simon Avatar
    Roger L. Simon

    Zzzz…. maybe the most banal graph I’ve ever seen you quote, Jeff.

  4. rossi Avatar
    rossi

    you know thats the best thing ive read all day
    and most likely quite true

  5. Otter Avatar
    Otter

    Talk about missing the point!
    Of course governing is “not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future.” It’s about the ability to effect positive change! The problem with “progressives” is that their self-image is far more important to them than the good or bad (or catstrophe) that results from their actions.

  6. Mitch H. Avatar
    Mitch H.

    There is nothing more tedious and banal than a progressive worrying over an imagined excess of idealism among fellow-progressives. Kushner, like all such moral idiots, confuses pragmatism for corruption. The rest is a mere exercise in contrarianism.
    In a way, it’s reassuring. I hate to think what the Kushners of the world might be capable of if they ever discovered the power of focussed pragmatism.