It's an essential part of the democratic party's role as controlled opposition

The part obama got wrong here is that the point of activism is to make the establishment come running to you with offers of concessions.

when I first heard this Obama clip I had gotten it in my head that this was a sort of sage knowing advice coming from someone with a background of activism. When I began to hear them being used to spurn leftward movement my heart hardened 

accusing leftists of purity testing is purity testing 

It's so weird to see it clearly in hindsight. He really did condescend pretty poisonously with regards to actual activism, all couched in his smooth voice and winning smile.

I think at least some of this stems from neoliberalism convincing its adherents that their ideology is actually a *lack* of ideology and is somehow purely rational.

You don't want us in the room, motherfucker. And you work hard to assure were not.

Almost every wealthy country in the world has some type of universal healthcare system--except for the United States. With over 170 million of its citizens left to fend for themselves in a sprawling and complex maze of Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, tax credits, child care subsidies, co-pays, deductibles and cost-sharing, the U.S. has not only the largest uninsured population, but also the most expensive system on Earth per capita.

Why America doesn’t have a universal healthcare system has historically been explained away with a reductionist mix of pathologizing and circular reasoning. "America hates big government," "we love choice," "Americans distrust anything that reeks of socialism." And while this is true in some limited sense, it avoids the bigger question of why has American so-called "democracy" rejected the numerous proposals to enact a single payer or other forms of universal healthcare?

While there may be some innate Protestant work ethic or rugged individualistic mentality at work here, there’s also been a decades-long multimillion dollar campaign funded by big business, doctor, pharmaceutical and hospital industry interests, and the insurance industry to convince the public to reject universal public healthcare. Indeed, if Americans were somehow intractably opposed to the notion––if they were hardwired to reject socialized medicine––these forces would never have had to spend so much money in the first place.

On this episode, we explore the 80-year long campaign by capital to convince you to not support universal health programs, how these campaigns have historically fear-mongered against Communists, immigrants and African Americans, who benefits from a precarious, employer-controlled healthcare insurance system, and how this propaganda war on the American mind is anything but over.

Our guest is Ben Palmquist, Director of the Health Care and Economic Democracy Program at Partners for Dignity and Rights.

Episode 134: The 80-Year PR Campaign that Killed Universal Healthcare

One of the most prized professional norms for journalists, particularly the United States, is the preservation of neutrality in reporting. While the concept of “objectivity” has fallen out of fashion among mainstream reportage in recent years, related concepts that convey a similar idea such as “impartiality” and “neutrality” have come to replace it. In their mission statements and codes of ethics, corporate and government owned outlets routinely proclaim the importance of impartiality and balance, in the sanctified pursuit of fair, unbiased reporting. 

In theory, this can be a healthy idea. Distinguishing between so-called opinion or editorial versus neutral, down-the-middle reporting –“objectivity” or “impartiality” can give the reader a sense that a series of facts are being reported rather than some guy’s opinion. 
The fundamental problem is when this vaguely aspirational genre morphs into an unchecked ideology––an ideology that requires one to think we live in a world where said facts are curated and created outside of long-existing power structures; that those who produce, on an institutional scale, knowledge products via think tanks and academic institutions are without bias. That journalistic institutions, funded by large corporations and billionaires themselves, don’t decide which neutral facts are important and which aren’t. 

“Objectivity” that doesn’t calibrate power asymmetries or attempt to account for its own institutional ideology isn’t a mode of reporting, it’s conservative conditioning that––if not in intent, in effect––does little more than advance prevailing ruling class ideology. Indeed, anyone who’s ever studied marketing or PR or propaganda will tell you the most effective messaging is that which appears unbiased and impartial.

On today’s show, we’ll examine how objectivity came to be a defining principle of Western journalism and how U.S. media’s understanding of impartiality provides an urbane veneer for racism, homophobia, anti-poor policies and other reactionary currents.

We are joined this week by journalist Lewis Raven Wallace, author of The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity.

Episode 102: The Conservative Sanctimony of Journalistic Impartiality

"Obama Warns Against ‘Purity Tests’ In Democratic Primary," Spectrum News reports. "Spare Me the Purity Racket," Maureen Dowd opines in The New York Times. "'Purity Tests' Divide Democrats," US News & World Report announces. "Political purity tests are for losers," bellows The Hill.

We hear it all the time: progressives, leftists, radicals — and even liberals — are told they must not engage in the siren song of "purity politics." Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, we are told. We must be pragmatic, realistic, we must lay down our ideological arms and stop pining for Nirvana when so much is on the line in November. 

Evoking purity politics functions — more often than not — as a catch-all defense against any and all criticism of establishment Democrats. In 2016, Hillary Clinton partisans used it against Bernie Sanders supporters; in 2020, Bloomberg’s flacks use it against Sanders again, and even Sanders partisans use it against leftist skeptics of electoralism. Put simply, purity politics is a Get Out Of Jail Free card, a perennial lesser of two evils narrative of an inherent impossibility of anything other than incremental change.

At their core, charges of purity politics are ahistoric and anti-intellectual, pathologizing alternative theories of change that don’t require political compromise as youthful vanity. Indeed, how to balance compromise and ideals has been, for centuries, the central question of the Left, everyone from French revolutionaries to Russian socialists, Black American radicals and Indigenous struggles in North America to Third World liberation movements around the globe have struggled to answer: when do we compromise and when do we not?

But "purity politics" ignores this essential and rich question altogether, brushing aside morally fraught debates about political strategy and reducing anything short of the path of least resistance to unserious solipsism and juvenile stubbornness.   

On this episode, we discuss how demands that people drop "purity politics" only go in one direction; how moral urgency has historically been pathologized as youthful narcissism; and how our jaded, broken media elites routinely conflate preemptive defeatism with political savvy.

Our guest is attorney and writer Malaika Jabali.

Conservativism of Criticizing 

Episode 103: The Glib Left-Punching of “Purity Politics” Discourse

This is a very complicated case, you know, a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-you's.

We're doing a show at Murmrr in Brooklyn this April 22nd, come thru: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chapo-trap-house-tickets-98714514771

Chapo Trap House

400 - The Stand (3/9/20)

"Economists' forecasts for GDP growth in 2020 vary widely," says The Economist. "Algeria's GDP growth falls to 0.8% in 2019," one Reuters headline reads. "GDP — the broadest measure of economic activity — grew at an annual rate of just 1.9% during the third quarter," NPR warns. Everywhere we turn for economic news, the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is held up as the key proxy for prosperity and sound fiscal policy. 

Since its codification as the new gold standard for measuring prosperity at the Bretton Wood conference in 1944, the GDP has been the most popular metric used by American and British media when measure a nation’s prosperity. The GDP, and its close cousin, the Gross National Product, have not been without its critics for decades, but prying it from its top position as The Most Important Policy Goal has been an impossible task. Despite many labor activists, environmentalists and economists leveling critiques at its myopic, capitalist ideology, the metric has remained central to how the media and lawmakers determine fiscal policy. 

But what is the GDP exactly? How did it become the go-to proxy for prosperity in Western media? What are its ideological inputs, and how did post-war notions of colonialism and extractivism helps cement its place in our collective mindset? And what, more importantly, do activists argue we should replace it with? On this episode of Citations Needed we will explore these questions and examine how centralizing Gross Domestic Product––by its very design––obscures climate crisis, labor abuses, racism, drudgery, and a whole host of society's ills. 

We welcome economic anthropologist Dr. Jason Hickel back to the show.

Episode 108: How GDP Fetishism Drives Climate Crisis and Inequality

We're unlocking our April 19, 2019 Patreon episode with the late, great Michael Brooks in which we discussed the "Intellectual Dark Web" and one of its stupidest practitioners, Dave Rubin.

Check out "Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right" by Michael Brooks - https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/zer0-books/our-books/against-web

Michael and Us

UNLOCKED - #98 - The Intellectual Dork Web (w/ Michael Brooks)

Part two of…the Song Machine! We track pop music’s muddled fallout from 9/11 (again), the reign of Max Martin and Dr. Luke, track-and-hook songwriting, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Kesha and the f u t u r e  of pop.

NEW YOUTUBE CHANNEL, please subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-sYl6WVNG_-okzBwm4SiTg

Songs in order:
Kelly Clarkson - A Moment Like This
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone
Ted Leo - Since U Been Gone/Maps
Rihanna - SOS
Rihanna - Umbrella
Rihanna - What’s My Name
Beyonce - Halo
Kelly Clarkson - Already Gone
Katy Perry - I Kissed a Girl
Flo Rida (FT KESHA) - Right Round
Kesha - Tik Tok
Kesha - Raising Hell
Juice WRLD x Marshmello - Come & Go

And Introducing Podcast

#75 THE SONG MACHINE! pt. 2

This week we discuss the theory of NEOFEUDALISM, company towns, EPCOT center, and the gig economy.

SOURCES
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/neofeudalism-the-end-of-capitalism/
https://lingojam.com/EnglishtoShakespearean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept)

HELP THE GEORGIA SENATE FIGHT:
https://Janemcalevey.com

ALEX'S MOVIE SPACE TRASH:
https://vimeo.com/295924793

MERCH:
Poddamnamerica.bigcartel.com

PATREON EPS
Patreon.com/PodDamnAmerica

GIVE ME FUEDALISM GIVE ME FIRE GIVE ME THAT WHICH I DESIRE

In this News Brief, we talk with journalist Ashoka Jegroo about Giuliani's long history of racism, white liberal New Yorkers providing cover for his carceral sociopathy because they liked the results, and the pathetic, inevitable final chapter of the former New York mayor.

News Brief: It's Not a "Fall From Grace", This Has Always Been Who Giuliani Was

This week with Alex Ptak of Pod Damn America we cover the life and misdeeds of Jonathan Tisch. Find out all about how the Tisch family initially made their riches, (Friends & Family LLC) the 6 billion dollar net worth of the family does all sorts of horrible things including a insurance racket where they wouldn’t pay out on hazard insurance to contractors in warzones. Find out all that and more right here on Grubstakers.

https://www.propublica.org/article/us-insurance-firm-neglects-survivors-of-iraqi-translators-may-face-criminal

Episode 204: Jonathan Tisch & the Tisch Family feat. Alex Ptak

We are joined by Breht from Rev Left Radio and Brynn Nieboer from Beep Beep Lettuce to discuss Vladmir Lenin's 1901 pamphlet, What Is To Be Done?, and how it relates to how we currently need to do things.

BREHT
@RevLeftRadio
@Red_Menace_Pod
https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/

BRYNN NIEBOER
@WeedPod
@GenLossPod

THAT INTERSTITIAL MUSIC WAS
STAY DEAD
by
DOG MAN PIZZA PARTY
https://dogmanpizzaparty.bandcamp.com/track/stay-dead

NYC DRIVER'S CO-OP FUND
https://ioby.org/project/help-nyc-drivers-launch-platform-cooperative

MERCH
PodDamnAmerica.BigCartel.Com

PATREON FOR BONUS EPISODES
Patreon.com/PODDAMNAMERICA

@PodDamnAmerica
@feraljokes
@ptakjokes
@andersleehere

What Is To Be Done? Do We Need To Do Things? Let's Find Out! w/ Rev Left Radio & Brynn Nieboer

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Episode 103: The Glib Left-Punching of “Purity Politics” Discourse

Citations Needed Podcast

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