Good Morning Glenn fine post as always!
Happy Fathers day to all the Lake’s Dads…. ☺

Thanks, nahant. And a tip of the hat to all the fathers and all the mothers who make us look good.

Thank you for this:
“Safe behind their tinted windows and already tense from the traffic that delayed their arrival, they can be impatient and vicious parking space hounds. Then, upon entering the store, their faces take on a certain Deepak Chopra glow.”
That describes it perfectly. Perfectly!

Thanks, RL2! Humans are entertaining critters.

Where would we be without the Moms??
Hope you are having a great Sunday Glenn.. We will be meeting family at a local park for a BBQ this afternoon.

It’s so hot here we could cook the bbq without a smoker or grill. In fact, somebody put some cookie dough on baking sheet and left in their car the other day. The cookies baked in a couple of hours!

Still, we’ll manage to celebrate somewhere cool.

Have a great Sunday in the park!

Wonderful, Glenn. This is a great reminder that things could be different – which seems to be a lesson that lots need to learn. Too often, we talk as though persuasion involves completely changing how others views the world, when it is really about activating frames they already have in more contexts. That too is difficult, but it is achievable over the medium term.

You’re absolutely right. It is achievable over the medium term.

We have to connect on the value level and not approach others with simply the facts and figures (as if reason alone will lead them from the “facts” to our conclusions — it won’t).

Many have better angels, and we have to appeal to those angels. But that requires the courage to speak our own values and the courage to listen rather than demand immediate consent.

great post.
I even enjoyed the video. “pay $80 for 6 things” – how apropos.

the courage to listen rather than demand immediate consent

That right there really gets to the heart of it. Middle class, as opposed to working class, norms suggest we must come to immediate agreement lest things become uncomfortable. In addition, the sense that ’we are right so those who are not already on board must be fools’ is also foolish, because it cuts us off from those who could become allies (and who may have some things to teach us too.)

I have spent more time thinking about the first part of that sentence (’the courage to speak our own values’) – I will be deploying the full line from here on out.

I thought that line was gut-funny too. From the early days of Whole Foods we called it “Whole Paycheck” or “Whole Frauds.” But then, I still shop there, I just reserve the right to poke a little fun now and again.

A state representative here in Texas told me that there were several GOP grassroots activists politely working the crowd at a recent Hispanic rally against the extreme right’s immigrant-bashing. A parallel would be Democrats putting together an infrastructure and having the wisdom to send polite but earnest activists to right-win evangelical churches.

Your line is right on target:

’we are right so those who are not already on board must be fools’ is also foolish

If we believe in our vision, we’ll see it’s not enough to be self-satisfied with our own insight. If our values are driven by empathy, and I believe they are, then we need to employ those values in our tactics, in our relationships with allies and antagonists alike. Not to the point of capitulation, of course.

Good morning, Glenn. I have been to Whole Foods twice and that was enough. Very nice store but I won’t pay for the “privilege” of shopping there. I shop at places where the people are helpful, knowledgeable, and nice. I think at our local Whole Foods people shop there to be seen.
I have mentioned at FDL many times that we need to learn to talk to conservatives. Since I am from the south, I know how southerners, for instance, hate being TOLD things about how they should think. But there is much to gain by leading them to the point where you want them to be. JMO.

We know how to talk to conservatives, don’t we? I mean, most of us do it all the time — in encounters with colleagues, neighbors, strangers in a movie line, teachers, service industry workers etc. etc. etc. We don’t launch into a political polemic. Instead, we do what humans have always done: we engage, we are alert to verbal and physical reactions, we adapt to those reactions, we move the conversation along.

I don’t know why we leave these skills so far behind when the subject is a political one. I wish so many didn’t.

I have been to the Whole Foods in Mill Valley, CA. several times. It is the ultimate of the ultimate yuppie duppie, newage, healthy glow bullshit place to be and be seen. Money falls from heaven to pay for the goods. BMW’s and Subaru’s fill the very small parking lot. White, White, white and entitled. blerg and boring.

There oughta be dozens of possible dissertations for sociologists, social psychologists and economists, that’s for sure.

What’s in a name? Conservative. Liberal. Can be both in different scenarios.

But that’s because we use a word which carries a definition, and these two words and their definition sets up a mutually exclusive tension which is artificial. Drop the definitions then consider anew.

I do this on a regular basis, and it sets up it’s own tensions. Tensions which arise when, having been tagged with a certain label, like progressive (which now sets that person apart from a liberal as well) simply because I choose to frequent these pages or similar, denies me creditability when I take exceptions, especially wholesale exceptions. I’ve seen it happen here and other blogs as well.

So to be human comes before all else, except to be one with your self. And being one with integrity denies, ultimately, a place in politically defined circumstances.

Even having a name carries connotations. Who are you? I am Starbuck.

What does that tell you?

Some have attempted to pigeonhole me because of Starbuck in Moby Dick.

But Starbuck is also present in more than one starship TV program, and in one case, a woman. Starbuck is a main character in a series of Western novels.

So will the real Starbuck stand up? Can one of them be conservative, one liberal, one progressive, or maybe a chameleon like character embodying all of them?

Probably should head out to Starbucks for a late morning lift!

A parallel would be Democrats putting together an infrastructure and having the wisdom to send polite but earnest activists to right-win evangelical churches.

You are right, but we would probably need to get folks a little closer to home engaged first. At this point, we don’t have much of anyone doing that sort of thing with our core constituencies, outside of battleground states in presidential election years. (There are exceptions, of course).

Ditto to your thought.

It is said to have been “shown” by scientific experiment that the purpose of intelligence is found in communication where it’s purpose is not survival – but is instead to win arguments.

I believe liberals have the better of the brains in this world, but we do not seem to be using that advantage very well. We shot down Hillary for a bogus Obama because we wanted to sell first black president rather than first women president – yet many, many pointed out that Obama was bogus and that the attacks by the Obama camp were loose on the facts(Obama staff saying blacks should vote for him because he was black and that request was just asking for group loyalty, and Hillary supporters, when noting that he had asked for such loyalty, are called racist… indeed we noted both are DLC members with Hillary on record pushing single payer, but half the part countered by assertions of how conservative she is and praise of Obama as he took her policy positions for his own).

There does not seem a policy position that we will not toss in order to advance a friend or screw an election opponent. Makes it hard to get to work for the Party in 2012 – at least at the Presidential level.

But as to “we need to activate the progressive morality of folks who currently behave conservatively in the parking lot of the political sphere. This means having the courage to hang our banners on the light poles and speak up for our values.” – well I’ve been doing that for near 60 years. But banners do not seem to mean policy positions – they only mean get this person elected. I do not know how we can change that.

Friends of mine used to work at Whole Foods. They called it the Food Hole.

But I dislike going there because it’s identity shopping. You’re supposed to care about so much, and if you don’t, you don’t belong. It’s the worst of ‘liberalism,’ though I’d hesitate to say that Whole Foods is ‘liberal.’ It’s simply a big giant grocery chain in yoga pants, as the video says. If you don’t fit the marketing, you don’t fit.

The area where I live has a real actual local/organic-foods co-op grocery chain. I go there instead. Gettin’ real in the PCC parking lot!

The CEO (former, i think), John Mackey, is a big fat conservative asshole.

“By analogy, we need to take the in-store Whole Foods morality into the parking lot.”

No thanks. Behind the aging hippy/enlightened yuppie veneer of Whole Foods is the sneering face of anti-worker, anti-union Glibertarian CEO John Mackey.

Boycott Whole Foods

Fuck you finger flipping might just be the most appropriate and productive response to Whole Foods IMO.

BTW, Mackey’s also a climate change skeptic.

Mackey told me that he agrees with the book’s assertion that, as he puts it, “no scientific consensus exists” regarding the causes of climate change; he added, wind a candor that you could call bold or reckless, that it would be a pity to allow “hysteria about global warming” to cause us “to raise taxes and increase regulation, and in turn lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty.” One would imagine that, on this score, many of his customers, to say nothing of most climate scientists, might disagree. He also said, “Historically, prosperity tends to correlate to warmer temperatures.“

What a dick.

Love that music vid. What I like too is this vid by Lisa Nova about being poor and going to a Whole Foods.