u/tapdncingchemist

I keep seeing claims that they stopped teaching civics , government, and politics in schools but have no visibility into whether it’s actually different now.

I went to public school and graduated in 2006.

We had multiple courses in government throughout k-12. In eighth grade we had to learn the articles of the constitution and what they said along with all the amendments.

We also needed to take a semester of government in high school where we learned about landmark Supreme Court cases, other founding documents, all the different levels of government, the different levels at which political parties are organized, basic data analysis, and popular ideologies.

Also US history courses had to include a fair amount just as context for understanding major events. Furthermore, there was a heavy emphasis on critical analysis of text and extracting relevant facts to separate them from opinion.

This is inspired by the DSA platform post and other conversations I see on this subreddit.

There’s a lot of tension right now between party factions, where the left flank has criticism of Kamala for offering what they considered to be meager incremental goals whereas the more moderate flank views the anti-establishment rhetoric as naive and unserious.

A prime example of this is a situation like “defund the police” where there are a concrete series of reforms that are less controversial, but unless the person saying it has earned your trust that it will be carried out responsibly, it sounds asinine on the surface.

For me, the answer to many of those policy slogans was highly dependent on the specific way it would be implemented and how destabilizing the change would be. So I would prefer that a candidate run on the specifics of the incremental steps they would take.

I understand the value of communicating a larger vision as well. This is a key step in organizing. Where I think the anti-establishment candidates lose my trust is that in the “inoculation” phase, it’s important to call out that the change will take many years and lots of consistent effort to set people’s expectations about the road ahead. And the populist candidates instead preemptively blame the democrats in office because they know their pie in the sky goals will not immediately come to pass and will want a scapegoat.

This is something I think Obama did well and you see evidence of it in all his speeches to this day. He lays out a vision, reminds everyone that durable progress takes consistent effort over time, and focuses on the concrete thing he is pushes for and ensures that the listener knows the specific ask being made of them.

I see so much destruction in the political sphere, either being carried out by the Republican assault on our government, militaries across the world, terrorists, and even with the way we speak to each other.

I firmly believe that “the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation.”

So tell me about the things you’re doing that are creating something or bringing people together, especially as a counter to the negativity we’re all facing.

The internet and this subreddit are full of people saying that "the party" hasn't done enough. I see more than enough criticism and finger pointing.

So: What are you doing to help your local party apparatus? What lessons have you personally learned and how will it change the way you personally show up to make things better and prevent the kinds of situations that lead to the blame game?

Local and state parties are primarily made up of volunteers who also have full time jobs and are doing what they can. How will you assist them in being better?

This came up based on a few different conversations I've had in the sub this week. I'm curious to see where some of you end up falling too. I think a big thing with online discourse is that intent gets lost.

While my values haven't fundamentally changed, my understanding of how the world works has developed a lot over my adult life. The last few days on the internet have really demonstrated how easily people on the internet will try to flatten someone into a cartoon villain for acknowledging a fact that they don't want to hear and it's really just made me exhausted of online discourse and the extreme reactivity of it all.

Another curious thing I'd like to find out is how much of people's view is shaped by online discourse vs real world experiences in organizing and in the behavior of complex systems.