SocraticGadfly: Texas Progressives look for a few good members

January 29, 2022

Texas Progressives look for a few good members

The Texas Progressives Alliance, as far as regular contributors, has fallen down to me and Kuff. Stace is semi-regular, and John Covarrubias is occasional.

Some fell away from blogging. That was for a variety of reasons, I'm sure. Others, not actual members, I lost track of when Brains got butt-hurt, and also started limiting his blogging to collections of Tweets plus his Sunday funnies roundups, and thus had less to contribute to himself.
 
That said, blogging isn't easy, even if one is a natural, or experience-honed, writer. Kuff often violates the spirit of fair use with the amount of text he copies from commercial news sites, though not engaging in Brains' regular extended Twitter posts. Speaking of such, I've done that on occasion in the past, and the occasions may be increasing, though still rare. I don't do as much deep dive political blogging as in the past, in part because I feel that it's all been said about the duopoly, and my predictions of Green party irrelevance plus implosion (which increases its irrelevance) are coming more and more to pass. I'm as likely to go longform on my philosophy blog as here, even though, throwing out roundup posts and taking COVID posts at 50 percent value, I still blog only about one-third as much there as here.
 
Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

I can critique a person's actions, but not hate them. I can certainly critique their political stances, but not hate them. So, no, I don't hate everybody.

That said, per Brains, I do distrust people who threaten me with emotional blackmail. (And, I still have receipts.) Plus, the comments Brains made to me were the same he made about other TPA members or associates in the past, like Trey. Or Ted the socialist ex-hippie from the Panhandle who's also a Hillbot. Or Noah Horowitz. Or Coby. Or Kuff.

I don't even hate Brains. Beyond distrust, I feel sad for him, as much as anything. I think his increasing hearing problems, plus I believe worsening Meniere's disease, were isolating him more and more pre-COVID. And, now that hits.

But, enough about him.

I would like to do more of what he did, and that's to have Texas bloggers who truly are "progressive" as part of these roundups. But, I have to know who you are. To be "progressive," you don't have to be a Green. I no longer consider myself one, and I was more of one than Brains. You do have to be someone who's NOT a Blue Anon Dem. Beyond that, you do have to be someone who doesn't think the Movement for a People's Party is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

As for Brains and myself? Long before our falling out became real, I think it started when I called him out for election conspiracy theories, which his blogging buddy Brad Blog also believes. Specifically, I said nothing was hacked in Ohio 2004. We also disagreed over third-party candidates needing to invest their money, if they have enough money to have serious investment income, into "ethical" mutual funds. It's why I didn't vote for Nader in 2000, and wouldn't have voted for Stein 2016 had I known earlier she had the same issues.

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