Here are the latest victims of the teahadists:
Standing in the living room of their house, now full of mud, slime and debris, Helen and Peter Kelly cannot believe that Congress is bickering over disaster aid to people like them.
The roaring waters of the Susquehanna River burst into their home more than two weeks ago. “Water — you work with it every day, and then it destroys your whole life,” Mrs. Kelly said.
Her husband, still looking shell-shocked, said: “We lost everything. Stove, washer, dryer, TV. Hot water heater, clothes, dishes, refrigerator. Everything, just gone.”
The Kellys also lost confidence in government and politicians.
“I wish they would understand that people like us are really in need of assistance,” Mr. Kelly said, pointing to a bathtub filled with mud and to the blades of a ceiling fan twisted out of shape by torrents of floodwater.
A few miles away in Falls Township, Pa., houses were upended, lifted off their foundations and carried a few hundred feet downstream. Huge piles of rubbish, furniture, mattresses, carpets and clothing line the streets.
Michael J. Golembeski and his family spent the weekend cleaning up. Mr. Golembeski offered a sardonic take on the fight that has brought the federal government to the brink of a shutdown, a dispute between Republicans and Democrats in Congress over money for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provides aid in disasters.
“Neither side wants the other side to get credit for doing anything good,” Mr. Golembeski said. “Elections are coming up.”
If you want to know why the GOP and the tea party do what they do, read that piece. They do it because it works. The entire article is filled with anger at “both sides,” and not one sentence is dedicated to what actually happened.
Corner Stone
Maybe the people in PA should do some protests or something.
Zam
Well yea, these people actually want citizens to think the government is incapable. Pretty certain that is their endgame.
balconesfault
Vote for the people who say government is too big, and shouldn’t be expected to help out Americans in time of need … and then whattdayaknow … government doesn’t have the money to help out Americans in time of need.
Who would have expected that?
geg6
They are being told that it’s both sides’ fault. The MSM says it thousands of times a day. Even the liberal Maxine Waters was on my teevee saying it this morning. However, she pointed to herself as a sterling example of an exception. Did you know that Maxine Waters speaks for the entire Congressional Black Caucus? And that she didn’t think he got much applause for his speech at their awards dinner?
Methinks Maxine is unaware of YouTube.
Emma
I understand — living with two of them, God knows I understand — how people get taken in by the lies and the innuendo that seems to be the daily bread of Republican politicians and their enablers. But I am running out of patience. The majority of Americans stumble along, electing Republicans because, hey, it will allow them to act on their most negative impulses without having to think about it. Then they get buyer’s remorse and elect some Democrats, and in a short window of opportunity and against Republican and conservative obstructionism, they fix as much as they can. And then the cycle begins all over again.
The adult answer is we do this again and again because the alternative is too dire to contemplate. But there’s a side of me that would love to look at them straight in the eye and tell them to shut up, because this is a problem they created and they have to live with the consequences, and then walk away. I dream about it with a ferocity I don’t think I can muster in real life.
I won’t do it, but Lord, I do want to.
some guy
yup, playgrounds and parks are inessential, but bailing out homeowners living in a floodplain (or a coastal estuary, or a waterfront Mcmansion, or substitute your federally-subsidized flood insurance victim here) is absolutely essential. fuck the schoolkids, where’s mine, Jack?
Chris
@Zam:
And it’s working, and in fairness, they’re right. I mean, government doesn’t have to be incapable, it hasn’t always been incapable, it needn’t be incapable for the rest of its days.
But look, the average person is looking at Washington and seeing a Congress which can’t even seem to get its shit together on things as simple as disaster relief, passing a budget or raising the debt ceiling – never mind the big picture stuff like wars or broken economies or whatnot. If you’re the average person (who doesn’t follow politics closely like the wonks on this website), “Washington is incapable” is conventional wisdom up there with “fire burns” and “don’t forget the parking brake.” So really, mission accomplished.
wrb
@geg6:
Maxine was upset that he visited unemployed white people in the midwest instead of her district.
Really
With friends who are such petty, me me me, colons who needs…
Jim C.
I know I’ll probably get slammed by this comment…but the old adage about, in a Democracy, people get the government that they deserve is true.
If you’re stupid, then you earn a stupid government. If you’re unable or unwilling to take the time and effort to find out who is TRULY responsible for what’s going on, then, frankly, you’re partially at fault for the end result.
Yes, there’s whiffs of conservative “individual responsibility” rhetoric in what I’m writing. Yes, there’s a taint of lack of compassion. But damnit, take some responsibility for your own damn education on the issues.
Our national media sucks. How do I know that it sucks? I went out and learned it was so. I actively sought out other sources of information and other viewpoints. Yes, it’s a little much to be expecting people in their situation to do such. But what about the millions of other people who are whining about the “Obama Recession” and his failed economic policies?
The Tea Party is our penance for a god damn lazy electorate that wants to take the easy route to knowing what is going on. They yearn for some Bill O’Reilly “Papa Bear” to tell them what they need to know and how they should think. Well damnit, the church of Democracy is like any other kind of church out there. You have to want it to work, and you have to put in effort to make it work. That involves more than taking the 15 minutes needed to drive to your local polling place and vote every two years.
I have a certain lack of sympathy for the people in that article because, to a certain extent, they DESERVE a dysfunctional, awful government because they’re a part of the problem. They never really took the time to learn the issues and make their government work the right way until they had a personal emergency and then they’re shocked, SHOCKED, that their government has issues.
It’s like someone who never bothered to buy insurance and then has a disaster happen. Educating yourself and participating actively in politics is how you buy insurance.
Chris
@balconesfault:
Yeah, I know. What’s that, if I spend thirty years stuffing a government with jackasses who’ve staked their careers on the notion that government doesn’t work, government’s going to get a lot shittier than it was before? Much like what would happen if you hired a lifelong Yankees fan to coach the Red Sox? WHOCODAFUCKINGNOWN…
some guy
“I was employed fulltime by the US taxpayers, before I went to work for a company that uses taxpayer financed roads to operate. The taxpayers are also paying a percentage of my pension and my health benefits. When are the taxpayers gonna pay to fix my damn house?”
henrythefifth
Wonder how many of these people begging for help are the same people who voted these Republicans into office? Oops!
Emerald
I admit it: our media terrifies me.
They kept up their “both sides do it” theme throughout the debt ceiling crisis, when only one side threatened to crash the entire world economy, and studiously avoided explaining to their audience that the entire world economy was seriously threatened.
It’s clear that they’re bought, and it’s clear that they’re nothing but propagandists. It’s also clear that they’re trying to sink Obama. But how do we fight them?
I really don’t know, and I’m becoming very afraid.
gogol's wife
Yes, this article is what had me screaming first thing in the morning.
Culture of Truth
Robert Pear you are why we can’t have nice things
RareSanity
@Zam:
This is why firebaggers are nothing but myopic, selfish, spoiled children.
Can’t look past their own hurt feelings or disappointment to see the bigger picture of what is going on.
If Obama fails, it will be further proof that government is bad. If that happens, the outcome is not, “now we can elect Al Franken”, the outcome is, Republicans gets elected with “mandate” to further weaken government. Only this time, the even have those that were liberals cheering them on as well because, they want to teach that damn Obama a lesson.
ProTip to firebaggers: If you succeed in everything you aspire to, what will be left is a government that the majority of the country views with disdain. That government will be run, completely by Republicans, that also disdain the government. Even if, in 2016, you get Al Franken to run and he gets elected, your liberal utopia will not be possible. The government President Franken will take over will be a gutted, publicly hated institution that will achieve none of your fantasies.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
I keep seeing stories about how none of this would have happened if the Democrats had just gone along with all of the cuts the Republicans wanted to make. It’s absolutely maddening.
I proved my Obot credentials this weekend, though — I bought one of these at my knitting convention. Now I’m all prepared for 2012.
Zam
@some guy: If we give him a handout now he will just get addicted like all those drugged out minorities.
Bulworth
Obviously a vote for the teabag candidate will “send a message to Obama” about this. //
cleek
in the NYT comments: good for “Lisa”, who has almost 700 recommendations for writing this:
Davis X. Machina
I recommend drum circles.
Chris
@Jim C.:
Agree with this whole thing. It does come back to the voters.
Culture of Truth
Not as many billboards, though.
some guy
@Culture of Truth:
exactly. Lamarr Alexander, for fucknozzle’s sake. how hard would it be for Pear to make it clear why FEMA funds are about to dry up this week, and who, exactly, is responsible for that.
Just because a majority of NE PA voters may have elected teabaggers, and for years voted for those dedicated to strangling government in a bathtub, does not mean we should turn our backs on these folks now that they find themselves drowning in the same bathtub. Their weird and twisted ideology does not spring from the ground uncultivated, but the Robert Pear’s of the world pretend it does.
geg6
OT, but here’s the Prez channeling a bit of Elizabeth Warren:
youtube.com/watch?v=EeRi1WU7aNw&feature=player_embedded
some guy
one would think that now that Obama has started talking like a Firebagger we would see a bit fewer “Tips to Firebaggers” from the Center Right crowd on BJ. one would think, but one would be wrong.
Calouste
Methinks Ms. Swithers would also be complaining if there was no playground for her kids and instead the money was spend on disaster assistance in another state.
Satanicpanic
I’m all for letting voters suffer for their stupid votes as long as I don’t have to suffer too.
Stefan
Ms. Swithers said Congress should set spending priorities, just as she does in paying household bills. The government, she said, would have more money for disaster assistance if it spent less on inessential amenities: “a park where people sit to watch the river and eat lunch; a playground in the middle of an empty field.”
Shouldn’t this simply read:
Ms. Swithers said Congress should set spending priorities, just as she does in paying household bills. The government, she said, would have more money for disaster assistance for her if it spent less money on people who were not her.
Villago Delenda Est
Unfortunately, this is a typical attitude of the low information voter. Low information because that’s what the MSM tells them and they’re unwilling to look beyond what the network anchors tell them each night.
No critical thinking skills, at all.
Davis X. Machina
@some guy: Oh, perhaps he’s started talking like a firebagger –it’s too late. And he’s doing it wrong. Besides, he doesn’t mean it. You can tell.
OzoneR
@Satanicpanic:
Sorry, that’s part of living amongst them. We have to suffer with them
Gin & Tonic
Not saying it’s the case with the quoted folks, but every time I see a catastrophic-flooding story and they interview people who live on “River St.” I can’t help thinking: hey, when you moved there, did you think for a second about why the fuck it’s called River Street?
Stefan
I know I’ll probably get slammed by this comment…but the old adage about, in a Democracy, people get the government that they deserve is true.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” H.L. Mencken
FlipYrWhig
When was the last time Republicans did “anything good”?
cleek
@some guy:
one would also think that firebaggers would be a little more charitable in their comments about Obama. but no, instead we get bullshit like “we don’t trust him!” “we know he’s lying! etc..
it’s more obvious than ever that firebaggers will always find a way to express their irrational hatred of Obama. if he does what they say they want, they’ll change what they want. if he says the things they want him to say, they know he’s lying. if he signs a bill they like, they know he’s been forced to do it.
fuck em.
Davis X. Machina
@FlipYrWhig: I dunno, I’m a big fan of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. That was a while ago, I guess.
Gilles de Rais
Jesus. These people deserve everything bad that happens to them. Both sides do not do it.
Just one.
some guy
@Davis X. Machina:
ok, yeah, whatever. I find a lot of really funny snark on this blog, and some great arguments too. It’s just all the Center-Right Fight Club schtick that grates.
We can all agree: Jane Hamsher is History’s Greatest Monster. now let’s move on.
geg6
@some guy:
You are delusional. He’s not talking like a Firebagger. I’ve seen how they talk. Like two-year-olds with a racist streak and a schoolgirl crush on a groupie of Grover Norquist. Be pretty hard for Obama to talk like that. He’d have to lose about 150 IQ points.
Satanicpanic
@OzoneR: Then it’s settled- I want people to vote for better candidates.
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
I live (relatively) near a street called Oceanview that’s at least 30 miles from the ocean. But it is true that, on a very clear day, the valley is laid out in such a way that you can get a nice “pocket view” of the ocean.
Not really disagreeing with you, I just find it funny that someone can live on Oceanview 30 miles from the frickin’ ocean.
Southern Beale
Well on that note, The Guardian UK is taking a poll asking who you blame for the pending shutdown, Dems or GOP?
Right now 100% say Republicans. Guess not too many people have taken that poll yet.
some guy
@geg6:
claim, meet evidence. evidence, meet claim.
Culture of Truth
This same logic is applied to health care. Until they need it, the answer is small government and personal responsibility. When they do, the answer is less government waste and ‘I paid my dues.’
Southern Beale
Well, I kinda addressed the whole “blame the voters” syndrome today …
I don’t blame the voters, I blame the system.
Brachiator
@Jim C.:
And the alternative is, what, exactly? You talk about how you have found a way to cut through all the lies, but the government still sucks.
How are you going to help make it better?
Zifnab
@henrythefifth:
“Dear Constituent –
I’d love to give you some money for repairs, but all them darkies stole your money so they could buy welfare tiaras and cadillacs and t-bone steaks. If Obama hadn’t spent so much money on people who aren’t you, I would be happy to spend money on you. Better elect more Republicans or you’ll never see a red cent in relief.
Love,
Your GOP Congressperson–“
General Stuck
If Obama would just know his place, the wingnuts wouldn’t be going crazy and shit, and all this wouldn’t be hap hap happening. /average white people.
Stefan
@Mnemosyne:
You should move to California, where the developments on some of the most barren, sun-blasted stretches of arid desert in this country have names like Arden Estates, Whispering Glens and Nottingham Glades.
Apparently developers think that everyone wants to live in places reminiscent of Ye Olde Englande…or an air freshener.
RareSanity
@some guy:
Damn right, “one would be wrong”.
Since Obama has “started talking like a firebagger”, the Republican controlled House, has responded like Republicans. You know that jobs bill that Obama “talked like a firebagger ” about?
Republicans still said no…
Maybe it has nothing to do with how he talks, and has a lot to do with Republicans telling him to pound sand, regardless of how he is talking.
Possible, no?
Tuffy
This has been mentioned in the comments, but Maxine Waters seems dumb as a bag of hammers. Heavily gerrymandering districts gives you the same result as incest for procreation.
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig:
Eisenhower administration.
Mnemosyne
@Stefan:
I do live in California — the San Fernando Valley, to be exact. I thought the whole “Oceanview” thing was typical developer BS until I was up there on a particularly clear day and, whaddayaknow, you actually could see the ocean way off in the distance.
Dexter
@Southern Beale:
I guess teabaggers don’t hang out at a lefty British newspaper site.
some guy
@RareSanity:
and yet you offer ProTips to firebaggers. how astute.
Gilles de Rais
@FlipYrWhig: Eisenhower, Interstate Highway System. Or maybe Teddy Roosevelt, founding the National Park system.
There’s really not a whole lot in that pile, but I’m looking.
harlana
Landrieu (I know not everyone’s favorite) is calling this “The Cantor Doctrine” – i think i like it
General Stuck
The wingers tried this once with Clinton, shutting down the government, and the media, and voter types rallied under the flag of wingnuts behaving badly, and it didn’t happen again.
Now? When Obama sneezes and the goopers holler, “shut er down”, and we get nothing but clutched pearls, and Obama dropping in the polls. I mean, how can the GOP get away with playing politics with disaster relief? And it’s both sides do it. You figure it out.
RareSanity
@some guy:
What does that even mean?
Nobody is going to get everything they want…nobody.
However, even a firebagger’s, best chance to get anything they want is to get and keep Democrats in charge of government. If Republicans control any part of the government, you get nothing.
If you firebaggers continue to shit on your own, the result will be more Republicans in control. More Republicans in control mean, not only do you not get shit you want, but they intend to take shit you already have.
Why the fuck are you so damn obtuse?
cmorenc
@RareSanity:
Not merely that, but if a GOP President gets to replace just one more moderate justice, or even the often-conservative Anthony Kennedy with a Scalia/Alito/Roberts clone, you’ll likely see a rapid, radical judicial reconstruction of US Constitutional law back to something much more like it was before the New Deal, with full-on Lochner substantive due process used to radically restrict the federal government. SCOTUS with its insulation from electoral control may wind up doing to social security and medicare what so many GOP hard-core wingers like Paul Ryan wish they could accomplish but find politically impossible.
General Stuck
and don’t nobody tell me, if Obama and dems just messaged better and preached some good ole liberal religion, and even if the media halfway did their fucking jobs, that it would be any different.
The hard truth is, we are a shallow racist country, still, with a majority willing to feed their prejudice than save their own asses. And it’s not just that Obama is black, it is that he is the leader of a party representing Americans of all colors and heritages, and that is as far as any message can get through to too many anglo voters. Let’s hope it’s not too late when it finally does get through.
And fuck politics.
harlana
i don’t get what’s with all the fighting, we should be unified as ever, just look at what republicans are doing right this very minute
repeat after me:
“they want to deny help to disaster victims because they hate jobs for Americans, i.e., they hate America”
rinse, repeat
keep that handy for your winger friends and relatives
jeebz, anytime i agree with Blue Dogs, I know something’s up
FlipYrWhig
Ya know, it’s certainly tempting to say that people like those described in the article are just reaping what they sow… But I feel like we’re getting close to a Republican-debate-audience-like reaction, where we’re told, “These Republican-leaning citizens lost their house in record flooding,” and we all say, “Yeah! Serves ’em right! Booooo!”
Corner Stone
@some guy:
Oh, it’s going to get much worse indeed. Campaign season is in full effect. Watch them get out ahead.
Corner Stone
@some guy: I love it so hard you stuck this dagger in right ahead of the insufferable geg6.
I love it and I want to have its babies.
goblue72
I have zero sympathy for most of the folks in that article. They sound like typical IGMFY Republicans.
You vote for the Teahad, don’t come crying when it suicide bombs your government.
Corner Stone
@Davis X. Machina: We await your detailed powerpoint with baited something or other.
daveNYC
It’s stories like this that make me just want to let the whole damn thing fall apart. Dial the federal government down to nothing and kick the red states off the teet. Then we’ll see how they like their underpass living, sparrow eating lifestyle. Guh.
wrb
@some guy:
He’s talking like a Firebagger?
When did he say “I’m An inept, ineffectual black man who has no balls?”
No, he’s not talking like a Firebagger.
He’s attacking Republicans.
RareSanity
@wrb:
Well played, Sir.
Well played.
Jim C.
@Brachiator
I don’t have some magical new form of government if that’s what you’re asking, but I don’t completely excuse uneducated folks for their own ignorance either.
This might well be a situation where it will get worse before it gets better, but the solution is a better educated, more engaged, higher information electorate. Too many people are of the “pox on both houses” viewpoint from the article John linked in the original blog post above.
If you look at the polling data on how many people STILL believe that Obama is a Muslim or not an American citizen, it’s downright frightening.
But that’s the entire point of Democracy. You get the government that your electorate deserves. In terms of how we fix the situation, part of it is what is already being done by (among others) folks like the bloggers here at Balloon Juice doing things like highlighting that the “liberal media” doesn’t exist, pushing back against engrained stereotypes, etc. It doesn’t happen overnight, but the reason that people create blogs like this one and others is to move that needle a tiny fraction.
I don’t mean to come across as glib, but this sort of stuff matters in the big scheme of things even if it is somewhat analogous to turning a monster SUV…our political discourse is not the most nimble and it takes time and a great deal of repetition to steer the subjects and eliminate certain “common wisdom” misconceptions.
Jim C.
@FlipYrWhig #64
That’s a fair concern. Where I think this is something different is what is within the individual’s ability to control. Using your example, many people just flat-out can’t afford health insurance and therefore the “let them die” and cheering is obscene since it’s blaming them for things that they have no ability to fix.
On the other hand, blaming folks for being too damn lazy to determine who’s really responsible for their problems and voting intelligently? That IS something that many folks COULD take steps to remedy and therefore I don’t think it is a fair comparison to say that us partially blaming folks for reaping what they’ve sewn is a direct equivalence.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Haven’t the people in Pennsylvania ever heard of bootstraps?
Corner Stone
I say we encourage PA to secede and just get it fucking over with!
FlipYrWhig
@Jim C.: It’s not a direct equivalence, no, but considering that we all got so excited about the interdependence/togetherness rhetoric of Elizabeth Warren, it’s a shame to swing this hard towards contempt. And I’ll indict myself in the process. Believe me, I have A LOT of contempt. I think of it as the difference between The People (whom I love and respect) and persons (who are almost universally a load of bollocks).
RL
You should have heard Cokie and the Nice Polite Republicans (NPR) clucking about both sides this morning. It made me want to kick the radio from the dashboard.
Jim C.
@FlipYrWhig
I understand where you’re coming from. I’m not trying to cast these folks as the main villain either but rather not wanting to cast them 100% as victims either.
It’s a tough line to draw between holding folks responsible and not becoming our own version of the “let them die” rhetoric either. You’re right to point out that at a certain point it’s just piling on someone who’s suffering through a real tragedy and that it IS our ability to empathize and view compassion, even for those somewhat undeserving, as a virtue that elevates us.
In an ideal world, I’d love for these folks who have just suffered a heartbreaking loss to be motivated to look and find out who is truly deserving of blame and go after the group playing politics with this tragedy and move beyond the blaming both sides equally.
Of course in an ideal world that New York Times article would go on to explain that it is ONE side playing politics and engaging in political terrorism again and the other is simply refusing to bow again to the “shoot the hostage” rhetoric.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim C.: Yeah, we can certainly agree that the media is only making things worse, and no longer has any idea what its function is supposed to be — in the same spirit of Warren’s notions of the public and the social compact, journalists need to take a good long look at what the fuck they’re doing, because their whole raison d’etre is to shape public opinion, and they do it in such a warped and half-assed way. Feature, bug, who knows at this point.
Brachiator
@Jim C.:
What if people get “smarter” and still disagree with you? What if the numbers of “uneducated voters” increase and simply drown you out?
Also, some of the “pox on both houses” springs from a view that the efforts of the Democrats have been ineffective or self serving. There is some truth to that. And there is a core of people, including some Balloon Juicers, who feel that the lack of accomplishment by the Democrats don’t matter as long as the Republicans don’t win. And one can easily see that there is a degree to which there are Democrats who are content to simply become part of the Beltway.
It’s come down from its high, and there also appears to be some expression of fear if not outright racsim here. I don’t know how these people can be educated out of their fear. But hell, there are a dismaying number of people who believe in JFK conspiracies, UFOs, creationism and other foolishness. It is just part of the background.
I think this is facile, untrue, and unsupported by history. But your mileage may vary.
I agree with you here.
Anoniminous
Going to use quote marks since FYWP gags on blockquotes.
Barlettta is the GOP House Representative for Tunkhannock, Pa:
“Local area U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, after what must have been intense pressure from his Republican leaders late last night, changed course and supported his party’s funding bill with less disaster funding than he originally wanted.”
“Rep.-elect Lou Barletta (R., Pa.) cited the raising of the debt limit during the campaign in saying that “Congress and the president are spending our country into servitude.””
“Barletta signed Club for Growth’s “Repeal-It!” Pledge
The Club for Growth’s “Repeal-It!” Pledge for candidates states, “I hereby pledge to the people of my district/state upon my election to the U.S. House of Representatives/U.S. Senate, to sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government.”
Barletta “Voted YES on the Ryan Budget: Medicare choice, tax & spending cuts.”
So the good people of PA-11 are getting what they voted for.
They should be happy.
Calouste
@Stefan:
Well, Nottingham is the city with the highest level of gun crime in England, so there might be more truth in advertising there than you think.
Alex S.
It’s really sad.. I mean, maybe Obama should tell these people that their conception of politics is false and that their comfortable frustration at both parties is misplaced. It would be the truth, but people wouldn’t want to hear that. It really takes a wise man to govern well and effectively.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@FlipYrWhig:
Probably during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration. National Park system expansion, trust busting, etc. But that’s the last time they did anything good and TR did most of it over his party’s objection.
Jim C.
@Brachiator
I’m looking for where I used the word “smarter” and not seeing it. You’re implying I called these people dumb. I don’t think I did that. There’s a world of difference between “dumb” and “ignorant and uneducated”. One implies a lack of ability to understand given the facts and the other implies a lack of full information.
I didn’t call these people dumb. I said that they were ill-informed, and that’s a judgment I stand behind. It is a verifiable fact that one party (Democrats) want to provide disaster relief with no strings attached and the other is insisting on gutting other programs that are a part of the social safety net.
As for my stating that Democracy gets people the government that they deserve, I don’t see how that is at all “facile, untrue or unsupported by history”.
Granted, there are things that can work against a fully functional democracy such as voter ID laws that prevent full participation and gerrymandering, but when you have a government that is elected, then part of the problem for the government being bad is the responsibility of the individuals that put that government into existence in the first place.
Here’s an example from my own background on the subject of education to answer how you educate people out of ignorance.
Back before the current Iraq war, I had a friend whose opinion I highly respected telling me that the entire thing was a bad idea and stupid and unjustified. For the first time, I started actively trying to find out more information. I WAS one of those low-information voters that I criticized in my earlier posts.
Lo and behold, some digging into comments from folks like Hans Blix and other UN Weapon Inspectors later, and I was convinced my friend was right. From there, I started being much more active in seeking out verification of things I saw in the news or my local paper. I availed myself to the wonder that was the Internet and deliberately chose to hunt down various viewpoints on any subject I came across.
More to the point, I started sending what I was finding to my parents and my younger sister. Initially, they questioned my patriotism and asked me how I could possibly believe what I was saying. But they also, because like with me with my friend, respected and cared for my views and opinion, started reading what I was sending them. I, in turn, tried my best to be very open with the sourcing. When something was coming from a liberal source, I was open about that. When I felt I had a good nonpartisan source, I said that too. Occasionally I’d send over stuff from conservatives. (And by the way for those who hate Sully, he’s great for using as a conservative source for things like this. He’s like a political halfway house.)
And now they’re folks who are doing the same thing. They’ve actively campaigned for Democratic causes and Democratic politicians, worked phone banks, gone to protests, etc. Hell, they’re more active in more meaningful ways than I am anymore.
So to answer your question, THAT’S how you educate folks out of ignorance. One person at a time and by starting with those folks around you. Politics is a touchy subject, so sometimes it takes one friend or one family member to get the ball rolling.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne: Oh, a knitting convention (yarn!)… which one, may I ask? The bag looks nice. Have fun using it.
Admiral_Komack
NYT, 9/26/2011:
“We are basically homeless at this point,” said the owner of the house, Kenneth S. Eisenman, who had been planning to retire after 31 years as a driver for United Parcel Service.
Mr. Eisenman said he was not unsympathetic to the Republicans’ argument that Congress should partly offset the cost of disaster relief by cutting lower-priority programs. Some programs, he said, are as useless and wasteful as providing “treadmills for seahorses.”
**The Republicans and Teabaggers are the reason you don’t have disaster relief.
Pick youself up by your bootstraps, think of your grandchildren, and shut the fuck up.
Admiral_Komack
@cleek:
I am not surprised.
Mnemosyne
@PurpleGirl:
I went to Vogue Knitting Live here in LA because there was FINALLY a big convention that didn’t require me to fly somewhere. I’ve been to a couple of Stitches conventions and they were fun, but it became a huge expense between the flight, the hotel, and the convention itself. Came home with lots of yarn (Noro! Elsebeth Lavold! Knitter’s Brewing Company!) but didn’t go too nuts.
If you’re a sock knitter, Cookie A. is very very nice. I got to sit at her table at the gala dinner.
Matt
Of course these folks don’t want to admit who’s actually causing the problem – rural PA is Red State country, so they’d have to own up their own inability to think past GAWDGHEYZGUNZ and vote for their own interests…
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
My long dead granny would have loved you. She was a knitting fool, in the way she would be knitting every spare moment she had. When I was little, she taught me how to crochet, but I later denied that claim.
OzoneR
@Admiral_Komack:
but sure it’s all a messaging problem
Brachiator
@Jim C.:
I understand the distinction and the point you were making. I apologize for any unnecessary confusion.
But here’s the thing. Some people are not simply ill-informed. Their entire being, their sense of themselves, their deeply held beliefs often entail holding onto a wrong belief. Easy examples are creationists and some progressives who believe that single payer is the only correct health care model even though many nations with universal care have chosen different paths.
Some conservatives, maybe some moderates, refuse to believe that the Republicans would deliberately do something that would hurt the nation. And sadly, there are people who are convinced that the Democrats in general, and Obama in particular, hate America, or at least the part of America that is white and working class and above. For some of these people, facts don’t matter.
It’s simply not that easy for citizens to keep elected officials efficient and honest.
On the other hand, I greatly appreciate your personal example and thank you for sharing it. These are strange, hard times we live in, and I hope that there is a critical mass of people who are willing to re-examine their assumptions, consider the evidence, and make decisions based on a sense of the general welfare.
But the clock is ticking. I get the sense that we are engaged in an ideological civil war, and there are those who don’t realize what chaos they might unleash as they fight for power and position. And there are those who understand all too well, and don’t care.
Scuffletuffle
@OzoneR: Aaaaaand, he’s a union guy who votes republican…head/desk.
jrg
Where I’m from, we call these people “morons”.
I hope so, too, but every experience provided to them that encourages them to take their heads out of their asses, without first turning this country into a theocracy or a fascist state is positive.
Morons learn by getting fucked. I suspect it’s always been that way.
Dan S.
nb: Mr. Eisenman’s bizarre comment about seahorse treadmills is a (garbled) attempt to repeat a debunked GOP talking point originated by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).
To be fair, I’d guess neither Oklahoma nor Mr. Eisenman particularly want incredibly miniscule amounts of their tax dollars going to fund research on “economically important seafood species” (with the tiny treadmills – for shrimp, actually, to test how they dealt with changes in water quality – only one small, rather cheap part of a bigger university research grant). Not, of course, that this has anything at all to do with why the GOP was holding disaster relief for Mr. Eisenman and his neighbors hostage. But at least it’s not something really wasteful, like that silly idea about hooking up computers so they could talk to each other! What were those pointdexters at DARPA thinking?!
jame
Just a replay of what happened on a larger scale to the Gulf Coast in 2005 and 2007.
MarkJ
@Gilles de Rais: Nixon created the EPA.