I wanted to spoon DougJ in a gay love blogospheric circle jerk when he wrote this:
In light of all of this, I just don’t see why it’s sad that liberals and conservatives give to different charities, listen to different music, patronize different restaurants, etc. The two groups don’t agree on much and don’t like each other. That’s life. If people disagree with me about everything and dream of tasing/beating/shooting me, then why would they and I want to be part of the same organizations?
I don’t suck dick, but I might give a reach around when I read shit like that, because so many people just don’t get it at all. I was a winger for years, and we can discuss that particular psychosis at a later date, but what I can explain to you right now is that they fucking hate you.
They just do.
They hate you because you respect gay people as normal human beings.
They hate you because you respect African-Americans as normal human beings.
They hate you because you respect Asians, Latinos, and everyone else who isn’t a straight white male.
They hate you because you respect a woman’s right to choose.
They hate you because you respect the right of people to be with who they love.
They hate you because you respect the right of anyone to adopt a child.
They hate you because you respect international law.
They hate you because you believe in economic and tax fairness.
They hate you because you respect the right of anyone to worship any way they want.
They hate you because you respect scientists and their collective knowledge.
They hate you because you respect teachers and the work they do educating Americans.
They hate you because you respect the human dignity of every American.
They hate you because you respect the rights of people over corporations.
They hate you because you respect nature and think we have a duty to take care of the environment.
They hate you because you respect your right to vote, and they don’t think you deserve it.
They hate you because you respect the constitution and the rule of law.
They hate you because you respect laws against torture.
In short, they hate you. Period.
They masquerade their bullshit in the words of Jesus and the all-knowing free market, but it is transparent what motivates them. Not love for their fellow man, not love for their fellow citizen, not love for country- what motivates them is hate for the other.
You.
They fucking hate you. They want you, and everyone who speaks for you, and every institution that represents your values, whether it be Planned Parenthood or food banks or ACORN- you name it. They want it destroyed.
I just do not understand why more people do not recognize this. The Republicans have declared total war on America, and people are responding like this is politics as usual. It isn’t. It really isn’t. It’s really all or nothing at this point. We put the birchers/tea party/conservatives back in their place and destroy the current GOP, or we deal with this shit for the next forty-sixty years.
I know I am Godwining this post, but we are at the point where we know who is going to set the Reichstag fire. Are we up to stopping them?
Phoenician in a time of Romans
“Going to set”?
Pardon me, but was’t _Bush v Gore_ pretty much it? When a conservative-packed Supreme Court arranged for Bush to get the Presidency on the novel theory that actually counting the votes fairly might cast doubt on Bush’s right to the throne?
And, boy, didn’t *that* decision turn out well…?
Ejoiner
Sadly, in the past 10 years I’ve come to the same conclusion. I’m one of those crazy liberals that thought if you just discussed things with enough information being brought to light these people would sincerely respond. They claim to love Jesus who denounced falsehoods and touted the embrace of your fellow man. They claim to love America which has a rich history and tradition of civic participation and contributing to the Common Good.
Ten years, thousands of conversations, debates and “exchanges” later? It’s really all about the hate, dressed up in whatever sugar pill they can coat it to get the rest of us to swallow their swill.
Halcyon
What a great sermon for a Sunday morning. Preach it, Brother Cole. If you scream it enough, maybe it’ll start to sink in that no, for serious, they really do hate just about everyone who posts here regularly, they wish you were dead, and the thing that drives them is hate. A boy can dream…
Linda
Here’s why, John: we are conditioned to believe that anybody who’s white, has a nice suit, a college education and good dental work is essentially a nice rational person, like You and Me, and can be reasoned with. We can all sit around and split the difference with them. After the debacle where the Tea Party deliberately tried to sink the American economy last summer, with no more qualms than a kid sinking a paper boat in the bathtub, some light bulbs went on over folk’s heads. But it was a toughie.
MacKenna
It irks me every time I turn on the MSM and see someone pretending Tea Party Republicans are reasonable people running normal, reasonable, credible campaigns. They’re not normal. They are certifiable.
And I know that sounds really mean-spirited but I tried for a long time to pretend it was just a few bad apples holding up the “lyin’ African” signs. But it’s not.
Nicole
First of all, what are you still doing awake?
Second, yes, you’re right. I occasionally still make the mistake of venturing into the Off-Topic/Politics board on the horse racing website I frequent-it used to be fun and fairly polite- but now, if I am dumb enough to attempt to engage one of the conservatives ranting there about Kenyan Soshulist Fail Obama, or Solyndra, or whatever dog whistle they toss up there, I am rewarded for my efforts by being called bitch and c#nt and get sexually harassing messages. (And then there are the things the men say! Ba dum dum) Seriously, though, it’s exhausting, and not worth the effort on a site about horse racing.
And that’s the frustrating part- these people have an inexhaustible supply of anger and outrage, and I think they get a high from it- how else to explain Rush Limbaugh vs Keith Olbermann, success-wise? I enjoyed Keith back when he was the only TV face calling out Bush (who wasn’t getting fired for it, that is), but I got worn out getting angry every night for an hour. Same reason I can’t watch the Ed Show very often.
Yet, this is very important. A book on comparative politics I just read talked about how a stable democracy depends on a large middle class. Basically, the rich want to take all the resources, and the poor are hungry enough to resort to overthrowing a government, but the middle class want to live quietly and you know, enjoy life. The middle class is what stabilizes a nation.
I think the GOP is trying to destabilize the nation.
So what? Do we up our outrage tolerance? Get visors to protect our faces from the spittle when we engage with the Right?
Or, how do we get to those who identify as Republican, but really have no comprehension of what the party stands for? My sister-in-law is one of those, and yet, while she admits she and I agree on most positions, and she complains about the state of the modern GOP, I know she’s going to vote GOP in the fall, because that’s her party. How do we reach those people and get them to understand that switching parties is not like switching sports teams?
Napoleon
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
I have always had a problem understanding how people didn’t see this with the Clinton impeachment.
Sing it brother Cole.
dance around in your bones
It’s like Through the Looking Glass – everything up is down, you have to run like crazy to stay in the same place…..they create their own reality, and demand that we all conform to it.
Why can’t teh wingers just leave us aloooooooone?!
I’d be happy to leave them alone in their little Talibangelical world…..somewhere over the rainbow.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Nicole: Politics for so many is just tribalism. You pick a tribe based on how their slogans make you feel and whether or not you identify with their faces, and then you go to war against the other tribe. You can’t talk policy with people that think like this, because the policy is irrelevant. They might pretend otherwise, but it is. Republicans get this. Dems never really have as far as I can tell.
Napoleon
@Nicole:
There is no doubt that is what they are trying to do. Look at other nations with democracies where the right simply decides to not abide by democratically determined results that lead to a left leaning government, like, say, Spain in the 30s. The right in those countries did what the right in the US is doing right now.
the farmer
full blown fascist movements develop all the elements of a “perfect storm”. In the case of mussolini and hitler each were ushered into power by established conservative party elites that thought they could control the worst elements of that storm. they were wrong.
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amk
At this point, aren’t the current crops (teabaggers & corporatists) of rethugs doing it themselves ?
Let’s throw some gas on them.
Batocchio
Bravo. This can’t be said enough.
The big problem is the corporate media saying “both sides do it,” “both sides are equally to blame,” and similar crap. Most journalists know it’s bullshit, but they say it anyway. The liberal blogosphere has been pointing this out for many years, and made some progress on this, but it’s an uphill battle. Still, I’m very heartened by the Occupy movement, the SOPA/PIPA victory, and the victory over Komen. (I’ve seen people who don’t usually comment on politics cite good pieces on Komen.) Gotta start somewhere….
Nicole
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:
So what do we do? Because, as the comment threads here make clear, Democrats really are about the policy, and we’re ready to scream BETRAYAL! when our side doesn’t do what we want. We attack our own for being Obamabots. The Right just doesn’t do that. They present a unified face. Do we encourage that? We support our side no matter what?
In the case of someone like my sister-in-law, how would you go about pointing out the tribalism blocking the view of the policy? Without making the person feel stupid?
Villago Delenda Est
This was apparent back in the 90’s, when Clinton was hated simply because he was a Democrat who defeated a Republican and was sworn in as President of the United States.
The GOP somehow got the idea that the White House was THEIRS. It belonged to them because of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. It was the GOP’s branch of the government, exclusively. No Democrat who won that office could be legitimate. He or she would be an usurper.
Democrats, for some strange reason, did not see Dwight Eisenhower as an usurper even though they had held the White House for 20 fucking years. But the GOP had it for 12 years, and suddenly, a Democrat who was elected to the White House was NOT THEIR PRESIDENT.
Then, after the deserting coward was installed into the White House by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court, overriding the entire national election process, they insisted that he was everyone’s President because he was from the correct party, even though the process was utterly illegitimate and Fat Tony implicitly acknowledged that it was by stating that Bush v. Gore DID NOT SET A PRECEDENT.
Now you’ve got birther madness and deliberate sabotage of the economy by these people, and they don’t seem to think that it’s a problem. They’re upfront that they will do anything to prevent a second Obama term in office.
The current situation is the result of 30 years of making deliberate policy decisions to destroy what made this country great. Of undoing as many checks and balances on rapacious capitalism as possible for short term gain with not a scintilla of concern for the long term consequences.
Yup, it’s totally fucked up.
amk
from a conservative live blog on NV primary today, this admonition.
I’d say rethugs are pretty much enthused about 2012.
piratedan
well I do have to admit that it does feel a bit like we’re trapped in Helm’s Deep surrounded by thousands of bloodthirsty mindless orcs who are filled with mindless, reckless hate. The thing is, I’m pretty sure we can’t depend on Eomer showing up on the 5th day with Gandalf in tow, so we best be looking after our defenses and make sure to bring down any orcs running amok with flaming torches so we can keep the walls from being breached. Besides, John makes a pretty good case for Theoden doesn’t he?
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Nicole: Yeah that’s the hard part. I never was particularly good at finessing my way around that delicately. I remember then the teabagger rage about ACA was in full bloom. The rhetoric even infected my mom, who said something about government choosing your doctors and so on. So I said “Mom, Grandma’s on Medicare, right?” “Yeah.” “And Medicare is a government program, right?” “Yeah.” “Does Medicare tell her she can’t see {insert family doctor’s name here]?” “No.” “Does Medicare tell [family doctor] who he can or can’t refer her to for specialist treatment?” “I don’t think so.” “But insurance companies do that all the time, don’t they?” “Yeah they do.” “So who ya gonna believe?”
It got quiet after that. I really don’t know that that makes me effective at CONVINCING anybody of anything, I’m not the most tactful fellow on the planet. When people treat their political party like their sports team or like their Family (right or wrong!) then its their identity that’s at stake more than anything. I’m really not the right person to ask about convincing people to re-examine their political identity. I’m also not sure if it’s possible to nudge somebody into that process that isn’t open to doing a little evolving.
Citizen_X
Maybe the fact that they’re lacking enthusiasm means–dare I say it–we’ve passed peak wingnut?
I know, I know, wishful thinking and all that.
VidaLoca
John, I agree with the main point of what you’re saying here. I’d only add that I think there are some people who identify as conservatives who may yet realize that their interests are not represented by the conservative movement as manifested in the Republican party — but as to the Republican party, its core beliefs, and the people who align themselves with them — you’re right.
What that means is that we’re living in the early phase of the next Civil War — it’s just that the bullets haven’t started flying yet. But it is that bad. And you’re right, there is no point in talking about “compromise”, there will be no more “comity” (whatever those words mean any more); either they’re going to rule or we are.
Pretty much.
Applejinx
We have them outnumbered, and they have already been doing their worst, all this time. They are already literally murdering people as best they can, calling for it as openly as they can, and doing everything short of that as well.
It is ON.
If it comes to eye-for-an-eye ‘wingnut hunting season’, I swear I will not shed tears for these people. They’ve challenged my liberal instincts enough. I don’t owe their point of view a goddamn thing. They’ve been lying and/or wrong all this time and I’m fed up with it. I’m supposed to be alarmed if I say, ‘hi, I’m a socia1ist’ for fear they will claim my ideas are bad for everybody? Reality says THEIR ideas are bad for everybody.
Very beat down and frustrated by this point. Don’t want to go full reactionary, but I’m wondering why the hell not.
Villago Delenda Est
@the farmer:
The only thing they lack is a ruthless, charismatic figure to lead them and take the country by storm, then pass an American version of the Enabling Act and start tossing the liberals into the camps.
The 2012 GOP Presidential field has no one that can be seen as a Mussolini parallel, let alone a [removed due to Godwin] parallel. That’s a good thing. The fact that GOP turnout is down for their primaries indicates how badly they are off at this moment.
Some face in the crowd might yet appear and be that parallel yet.
John’s right, though. These people have to be pushed back under the rock they crawled out from under, and a perimeter established around it so that they can’t escape from it again.
Applejinx
Culture wars are pissing me off as bad as the actual bullet-firing wingnuts at this point- maybe more, because there’s no attempt to present plausible deniability there.
Try this on for size- in Bachmann’s home district they were hounding gay children to DEATH.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202
Raven
I went to the 10th Anniversary of the Vietnam Memorial in 1992 with three of my Vietnam Vet buddies. One of the speakers was Rocky Bleier of the Steelers and the 196th Light Infantry Brigade. Rocky was wounded by an enemy hand grenade and made an incredible recovery that led to his 8 year career in the NFL. In his speech he made a wonderful statement about “together then, together again”and “we were truck drivers, we were grunts, we were cooks, we were helicopter pilots, and man, we were scared”. The feeling in the large gathering of vets and their families was incredibly warm on the beautiful fall day.
I spent almost a decade thinking that the Memorial was indeed “The Wall that Heals”. Then came the Kerry Campaign of 2004 and all the shit that the Swift Boat Vets for Truth brought back to the surface, shit that had never really gone anywhere. I was part of the VVAW and I remember how the vets I was with in DC for Operation Dewey Canyon laughed at Kerry prancing around with his walky talkie and acting like he was in fucking charge. As an organization we did benefit from his articulate explanation of our cause but there was also a deep suspicion of him and officers in general. Anyway, his campaign taught me a lesson only equaled by my naive acceptance of Powell’s UN speech that led to the invasion of Iraq.
I still have good buddies who are right-wingers. I call them dumb add Nazi’s and the call me Peace Queer. We fuck with each other but, because we know each other and know we can count on each other, we are still good friends. I think this may be part of the problem John is talking about. We have a tendency to hang with like minded people and our perspective of “others” often comes from afar.
but I could be wrong
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Applejinx: This is actually something I’m hopeful of. Lefties in 1980 were hoping the Reagan would spark a revolution, but they didn’t realize that Reagan was the general voting population giving them the finger. But after 30 years of this, capped off with the criminal and incompetent, practically nation-destroying Bush Administration, now the persuadables are giving fingers the other direction. Plus, ‘movement conservatism’ is basically out of ideas at this point, aside from a couple New Deal programs they want to destroy. Reactionaries have to have things to react against. They’ve gotten their way on everything except abortion most of the time for the past 3 decades. It’s burning itself out. If Obama gets 2 terms and then another Dem president comes in after that and gets more stuff done, then I think you might start to see some push back the other way. Especially if some of it starts to go wrong. In the meantime, I think that unless the candidate matchup is bad, Republicans are going to be getting used to getting whacked in Presidential years, clawing back what they can off recycled outrage in midterms.
Napoleon
@VidaLoca:
This, or the beginning of the end of representative democracy in the US and the start of a “soft” authoritarian government like Russia, if our side gets rolled over.
Betty Cracker
All true. I think part of what animates their hatred is the knowledge that they are losing. They win many battles, but I think even they know they are losing the war. That’s why Pat Buchanan is so sad about “white America.”
In the daily scrum, it’s easy to lose sight of how much has changed. But look at how far we’ve come in just the lifetimes of ourselves and our parents. A black man is president, and gays can serve openly in the military. This would have been unthinkable 30 years ago.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
One other thing worth mentioning while we’re on this subject: People (especially those that are NOT politics junkies) will respond to the appearance of strength. My old man is still convinced that Jimmy Carter was a sniveling pinko coward because of the Iran Hostage crisis. He’s a solid Dem these days (railroad union man, he knows where his bread is buttered) but everytime Carter comes up on TV I hear him mutter ‘coward’ under his breath.
Raven
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: How’s he feel about Obama whackin OBL?
Raven
I’ve never seen this deep a level of posts at this time on a Sunday morning.
the farmer
VDE #21 The only thing they lack is a ruthless, charismatic figure to lead them and take the country by storm, then pass an American version of the Enabling Act and start tossing the liberals into the camps.
Yes. But. My point was that in the case of both hitler and mussolini that ruthless charismatic figure was not able to ultimately obtain power without first having the door opened for them by a standing power elite of conservatives (both intellectual and political) who thought they could open that door and control those charismatic figures. Both Hitler and Mussolini were essentially initially installed in power by standing traditional conservative rulers. Rick Santorum is the closest thing to a real fascist/falangist (in a true historical sense of what fascism is) i’ve ever seen run for president on the Repub ticket but he has no chance of being the nominee. But still, he is an indicator that elements of what contribute to the perfect storm of fascism are dangerously active in the atmosphere.
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Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Raven: Oh he ate that up with a spoon. He’s an ex-Marine. I think he’s re-evaluated Reagan after years of me ranting about what he did to unions, but he still hates Carter. He voted for Kerry too. Bush drove a guy that might vote Republican at least some of the time into a guy that went to Democratic caucuses and put a Kerry sign on his lawn. Don’t underestimate what Chimpy has wrought
Sarahproudandtall
I just threw up in my mouth a little….
Betty Cracker
@Raven: Maybe John’s insomnia was contagious.
Raven
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: Hating on Jimmeh is a full time job here in the Peach State! Bet it’s not hard for your dad to see through Newt’s chickenhawk bullshit.
Raven
@Betty Cracker: Maybe so, this is my normal launch time.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Raven: He and I both wanted Newt to win the nomination just to enjoy watching the Big Dog follow that buffoon all over the country taking a year long dump on him in the media. He can’t stand Gingrich.
WyldPirate
The worst thing about the hardcore wingnut teahadists is their imperviosness to facts, reality and history. Their beliefs are constantly reinforced by their media outlets like Fox News, World Nut Daily and a plethora of others who feed them a steady diet of outright propaganda, fabrications and conspiracy theories. It is reinforced by the constant “both sides do it” from the MSM.
We are in deep trouble as a significant fraction of the population revels in their ignorance and stupidity. The easily fall for the “big lies told often enough” method of propaganda pioneered by Joseph Goebbles. These motherfuckers who lap this bullshit up also vote.
Things will get worse, oo. The bigger the economic gulf gets and, (as someone rightly pointed out thread), the more the middle class shrinks, the angry and more susceptible the mob will be to the urging from propagandists to take their rather out on a scapegoat.
c u n d gulag
Amen, Brother John!
I believe we are at some sort of tipping point.
The demographics are going against the Conservatives. And, as usual, they’re ahead of the game – trying to change voting rules to their advantage.
This year, and for the near future, we have to do everything we can to win. Because they will do everything – AND MORE! Rules don’t matter to them. They live to bend, or break them.
If we win, the country moves ahead. They’ll always be around, but hopefully we can minimize their influence.
And it’s not just national – watch YOUR local elections, folks.
They are the breeding ground for future wingnuts. They have been working hard to seed the government ground with their human weeds.
If we lose, we’ll be living in some form of The United Dominionist Christian Corporate (read Fascist) States of America.
We’ll be the worlds biggest version of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
A bigger, nuclear-armed Iran.
Peace.
Out…
spek
I just do not understand why more people do not recognize this.
Cole you said it in your own post. Liberals respect other people’s views. At the purest level, liberals respect those views even when the views are about hating liberals. It why liberals don’t have the killer instinct and don’t fight hate with hate, instead trying to fighting hate with understanding even though in the case of wingnuts it is a completely useless exercise that can not succeed.
If one believes in the basic goodness of people, as liberals do, then you detach the wingnut hate from the wingnut, thinking that the hate is something to be fixed like a disease (which it is) to be cured so the good wingnut underneath can shine through. Hate is failure to the liberal view, a submisison to weakness. A “good” liberal does not give over to hate, preferring to embrace the goodness in everything. Until you understand that Cole, you can not fully cleanse yourself of your wingnuttia.
the farmer
#36 The worst thing about the hardcore wingnut teahadists is their imperviosness to facts, reality and history.
And ya know what else brought Hitler and Mussolini to power? The imperviousness of the purist Left to practical political facts and reality. It was the both the far Right and the far Left acting against the weakened center (especially in Germany) that ultimately brought the Right and the Nazis to power. The purist KPD (communist left) refused to reach any power sharing arrangement with the center left and therefore allowed the conservatives and Nazis to take advantage or that rift and fill the vacum. So all you lefty a-holes voting for a neo-confederate (potential proto-fascist) like Ron Paul should pay attention. You know who else was a big advocate of returning to the gold standard: Benito Mussolini.
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Samara Morgan
@c u n d gulag: the tipping point is the demographic timer.
Look at this retard.
In 2022 minorities will make up ~40% of the electorate. 33% of white people constantly vote democratic. If Tebow runs in 2022 it will be an even bigger blowout then the ass-whupping Brady gave him in the playoffs.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@WyldPirate: They lap it up because it appeals to their own paranoias, vanities, needs for validation and somebody to blame, et cetera… And they revel in their ignorance because it pisses off eggheads and liberals. Confirmation bias is real, and it becomes much more striking on stuff like global warming because it basically says data doesn’t matter. That makes people who believe in science and data for policy making just nuts, because without science and data, WHAT’S THE BASIS FOR MAKING AN ARGUMENT? (In their case it’s generally ‘values,’ which is code for whatever they want to do that will keep the other down and make rich people more money) So while we pinko wussy save the planet queers (I always love how not being right wing immediately makes you soft and feminine and weird and weak) sputter, trying to figure out a way around this impenetrable shell of stupid, they just point and laugh and throw out another bumper sticker.
I actually quite liked it when Obama tagged Republicans with being proud of their ignorance. I wish he did more of that. It might lose him some votes, but it feels SO righteous. And if enough other national voices carried that chorus for a while, it might even effect the national dialogue in a positive way. If it can become cool politically to know what the fuck you’re talking about, better things will be on the horizon.
Chuck Butcher
Nope.
Most of the “opposition” is so used to giving ground that what passes for progressive today is just a decade newer version of the right’s last bullshit. President Obama may have been the best available in 07-8 but treating a win then or now as a big victory is a low bar – based mostly on the alternative rather than doing well by the nation. Sure, I’ll take the President compared to the other bunch, but I sure won’t dance in the fucking street over it. I’m not satisfied with him or the Congress, just stuck with them for now. A rather large portion of Dems should be Primaried hard, won’t be and “you” won’t go there is why they won’t.
Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is insanity. I’m not one for purity tests, but if you’re standing on the GOPer ground of the previous decade I’d say you’ve missed the idea of Democrat.
Hillary Rettig
Betty Cracker 26: “I think part of what animates their hatred is the knowledge that they are losing.”
Privilege always fights tougher at the end.
The Internet is basically liberal in that it distributes information, and thus power. Fascists of all stripes know this, and it terrifies them.
Samara Morgan
so Cole, do libertarians hate us too? i think they do. they just pretend not to.
Rihilism
I agree with John’s assessment, but I think an important question to ask is why they hate us so much. IMO, as a recovering repub (twenty years clean and sober), it relates back to a profound misunderstanding of empathy coupled with a propensity towards moral dualism. So many of the repubs I talk to or have experience with, mistake projection for empathy. Instead of trying to understand what a fellow human being is going through, they simply try to imagine what they would do or feel or act in the same circumstances without any regard to their own biases or personal experience.
If they imagine themselves as a liberal, their assumption (driven by projection as opposed to empathy) is that liberals must hate conservatives, based not on the actions taken by liberals or their intent, but because liberals, in their view, embrace the opposing moral worldview (good must hate evil, evil must hate good). Since they believe that liberals are driven by hatred that results from their opposing worldview, they rationalize (most often preemptively) by “responding” in kind .
Of course, there are plenty of individuals that are simply drawn to, actually enjoy, and/or decide to make good use of hatred, regardless of empathy or projection. Unfortunately for everyone, far too many of these people have found a home in the current Republican leadership and intelligentsia (or for what passes for thoughtful, scholarly discussion in Republican circles)….
Virginia Highlander
John, I agree.
My parents are arch-conservative Foxbots and the hate is just overwhelming, like heat from a blast furnace. They despise everything I love and care for, with such passion and intensity, and brag about their hatred in my presence so, that I no longer see how they could possibly love their son. At the very least, they need and love their wave after delicious wave of ragegasm far more.
The question is, why do liberals have such difficulty understanding this simple, salient fact of our political existence?
Hillary Rettig
Agree with the post 100%, but want to add that it’s particularly weird and distressing when the wingnut is in your family, and a young person to boot. I have a young relative who had a hard upbringing – lots of rejection, neglect, verbal abuse and ridicule, etc. And now he’s pretty much full-on wingnut/Paulite, convinced of his own wisdom and righteousness despite not only his youth, but a life filled with huge mistakes and government dependency.
Samara Morgan
@WyldPirate: actually, conservatives are just not as smart, on the average. They are also prone to social dominance fixation, and right wing authority tendency. Lower IQ motivates mobs and envy.
Its the perpetual contest between Kylon and Pythagoras.
But that is not what it is turning them into a forevah rump.
its demographics.
Like Nate Silver says ….demographics is destiny.
AxelFoley
Shit, I fucking hate them back. Fuck ’em.
Kane
I would add:
They hate you because their hate is a billion dollar industry.
The hate at the top is largely motivated by greed.
HeartlandLiberal
A most righteous and compelling and truthful rant.
You forgot one, though:
They hate you when you point out these facts and truths to them, in fact, they hate you even more, and immediately start screaming that you are a racist for pointing out their racism to them, that you are an elitist for pointing out their elitism, and so on and so on ad nauseum.
Samara Morgan
@Rihilism:
actually, a lack of empathy. conservatives have less grey matter in the ACC and more in the amygdala. that makes them fierce emoters (enthusiasm gap?) and incapable of empathy.
red-blue genetics, neuropolitics and the sociobiological basis of political affiliation are going be hot topics this decade.
conservatives will scream that science is meaningless as usual.
also, within the next decade, the j-womb will be perfected…full human ectogenesis courtesy of the Japanese.
will it defang the abortion debate?
c u n d gulag
@Samara Morgan:
Samara,
That TeBLOW boy can’t pass a ball.
How’s he going to pass a bill?
HeartlandLiberal
@Virginia Highlander: “why do liberals have such difficulty understanding this simple, salient fact of our political existence?”
Because part of being a liberal is the willingness to carefully hear and weigh all evidence, and come to a rational conclusion, even if it means you have to change what was your prior opinion. It means you will bend over backward to protect another’s rights, because you would do no less for them.
In other words, you are operating on the golden rule principle.
The haters operate on a different principle: kill you before you get a chance to get them; no questions asked.
LGRooney
If true (liberal weasel words, amirite?), that would certainly explain why they blame us for the skulduggery in which they in fact constantly engage, i.e., they are so locked into that mind set, they can’t see another way.
SpaceSquid
Actually, I think they mainly hate me because I’m British.
Virginia Highlander
@HeartlandLiberal: Then perhaps a better question is, how do we get liberals to understand what drives their opponents and behave accordingly?
Samara Morgan
@Virginia Highlander: its partly organic.
conservatives have more grey matter in the amygdala so they emote (rage) rather than reason.
liberals have more grey matter in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex so they empathize and reason.
liberals often even empathize with libertarians and conservatives. Like Cole with greenwald and kain, and DougJ with Isquith.
Samara Morgan
@Virginia Highlander:
Science.
Virginia Highlander
@Samara Morgan: And more specifically?
WyldPirate
@Applejinx:
Goddamn, Applejinx, that’s quite possibly the saddest fucking article I have ever read.
Fuck a bunch of goddamned Evangelical Christian assholes and their goddamned 24/7/365 crusade of hate towards everyone who isn’t exactly like them.
Samara Morgan
A lot of my conservative friends simply went ape-shit when Obama was elected.
That was when I left GNXP as a front-pager and told Razib to take me off his blogroll.
Razib and i were perfectly covalent on genetics and general science until that point……we were even treating my reversion to Islam as kind of field study.
But Obama just made him mad with rage. He became unscientific.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Virginia Highlander: Find ways to make policy arguments that hit people in the gut. If they ask questions, then you can mention the data. Leading with data makes people’s eyes glaze over.
Samara Morgan
@Virginia Highlander: understanding the biological basis of behavior….admitting that there is a statistically significant difference in between group measurements.
Consider scientists. 94% of scientists are NOT conservative.
Why?
it seems like the difference must be at least partly brain morphology and function.
Michael Bersin
On Friday night, from one of the warmup acts, before Rick Santorum addressed a rally crowd of about 600 in Lee’s Summit, Missouri (suburban Kansas City):
“…And I’ve heard from a lot of moms and dads out there that they, they don’t want that, that urban flight, if you will, into our school districts…”
They’re that obvious.
Virginia Highlander
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: How will this convince liberals that their conservative opponents are driven by an all-consuming hatred?
Samara Morgan
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: studies have shown that that simply doesnt work. Because of fact blocking, cognitive dissonance and conservative backfire effect.
To repair this the news media must be weaned from handicapping the horserace and forced to report honestly and truthfully…bad, wrong, and stupid ideas simply do not deserve equal representation.
however, because of the freed market, i think that is impossible.
in a freed market for media, humans will only pay for what they want to hear.
harlana
hi, i was thinking about this the other day – what would they do if they had no one to hate?
maybe they would just expend all that energy fucking – i mean all the hangups they have about sex, maybe the closet gays would come out and just have a field day – the straight people, just screwing like bunnies all day long, in public places, wherever
it might be very liberating for them to have no one left to hate, all that pent up frustration loosed on each other! because they are clearly hung up on sex and control.
or maybe they would just get so bored, they would turn on each other – probably the latter
actually, in the real world, it would likely be a combination of both, they would just exploit and then destroy each other. the last man standing would then look around and say “i’m lonely! where are all the liberals?” :(
(actually, i think this would make an awesome movie)
amk
@Virginia Highlander: All that libruls has got to do is fucking turn up on the voting day consistently at all levels and deny these thugs the political space or platform. No need to change their fucking minds.
Virginia Highlander
@amk: Actually, I tend to agree. Now, if I can only pry the dopers off Ron Paul and convince the “voting only encourages them” crowd to stop disenfranchising themselves, we’ll be okay.
Right?
Samara Morgan
@amk: correct. all we have to do is GOTV.
white christians (the GOP base) are a shrinking demographic.
and demographics is destiny.
Samara Morgan
@Virginia Highlander: if minorities turn out and vote for O in 2008 percentages, it will be impossible for the GOP candidate to win.
whoever it is cannot get 65% of the white vote.
and in 2016, the GOP candidate will need 68-70% of the white vote, and in 2020 72-74%, and in 2024 when Tebow runs, an impossible 75-77%.
HeartlandLiberal
@Virginia Highlander: I am not really sure, but I think it is all contained in this video of Bill Maher reversing Romney’s father-in-law post-mortem conversion to Mormonism, especially around the 2:15 mark through 3:30, regarding Jesus’ possible appearance at the SuperBowl.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQp6GMzGPpU&feature=player_embedded
amk
@Virginia Highlander: Let them fucking vote first. Then we can
talk, indulge in navel gazing what it accomplishes or does not accomplish. No votey, no whiny.Senyordave
@Michael Bersin: “If you will” – what an unusual euphamism for people of color.
Virginia Highlander
@HeartlandLiberal: Having encountered many evangelical atheists over the years, Maher lost me.
Xenos
@the farmer:
This is a very good point. The German communists committed suicide by staging a mini-revolution when the government was already falling apart of its own accord. This essentially gave birth to the brownshirts.
Michael Bersin
@the farmer:
Rick Santorum in Lee’s Summit, Missouri: the Blutarsky sermon on the summit
Teabagger logic. It’s not a right, and if you don’t have it, the government can’t take it away from you. And if you’re not gonna get it, they can’t tell you that you’re not gonna get it.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Virginia Highlander: Demonization is something a lot of liberal folks aren’t comfortable with, but it hits in the gut. And the current iteration of the Republican party does a pretty good job of demonizing themselves everytime they speak. Make them deny that they hate poor people, for example. Let them defend their policy positions based on that kind of character assassination. Let them try to explain to a reporter that no, grandma won’t be stuck eating catfood after Paul Ryan hands her social security to Goldman Sachs. These might be caricatures, but not by much. Repubs have done much worse over the last 50 years. I’m tired of not seeing anyone on my side hitting back. I’m perfectly willing to own being a Godless hippy, but you’ll have to own the grandma starving, Mr Ryan. If the press sees their job as dictation, then give them something incendiary to dictate once in a while. At least the people in safe districts. I guarantee you Grayson would still be in Congress if he’d been in a safe Dem district. You don’t see New England Republicans going batshit the same way Steve King, or even Peter King does, because they aren’t in safe seats.
Napoleon
@harlana:
That is easy to answer, pick someone on their side like, say, cops, and then hate them.
moshe ben chaim
or maybe it simply is love. love for their money that is so strong that they can think of nothing else. they are forced to use an army of hate-monger ignoramuses because they need numbers to win elections. the haters are fed by the puppeteers so they don’t notice it is their masters they really should resent. (‘if you’re not liberal when young, you have no heart, and not conservative when older you have no brain’) translation : when you have little or nothing it makes sense to share, but when you have accumulated more than you need, now that you’ve got it you want to keep it. to illustrate this concept one need only watch toddlers on a playground.
harlana
they don’t use the words of Jesus because they can’t. They can pray to Jesus, sway to Christian rock and wave their hands in the air, get “saved,” self-flagellate over the cross because that’s where their sins get forgiven over and over again (so they don’t have to make any effort to actually be a better person towards their fellow man whatsoever) and all the other trappings, but they cannot use his words or teachings and apply it to their behavior/attitudes about others because what they believe does not follow, and is most often, completely at odds with the teachings of Christ.
Betty Cracker
@harlana: Take a look at this. Pretty deranged shit, and this guy is considered mainstream enough to be on CNN.
amk
@Betty Cracker: fuck t-n-n for validating this racist punk.
Virginia Highlander
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: I agree.
I find myself similarly on the offensive, these days. I don’t mind calling a Paulite a white supremacist, for instance, even if, or maybe even especially if, I suspect that they do not see themselves that way at all. Don’t think it’s the right thing to do, but it’s effective and at some animistic level it feels good to fight.
harlana
@Napoleon: well, yeh, i think they would just break up into smaller tribes and start raping and pillaging each other, since, eliminating liberals will mean the demise of what ever protections for the average human being are left (only the 1% will be able to afford real security) – they would just devour each other
harlana
@Betty Cracker: Betty, thanks for the link, i think, since you made me read Erickson ;) But I didn’t get far before I predictably saw this:
var
Amen, Brother Cole. I have been saying for about 10 years that they and their institutions need to be destroyed for America to work again. They are anti-truth. They don’t even believe the things that they say they believe in! They don’t believe in the free market, because if did, they wouldn’t condone tax incentives and the big wet kisses given away to big oil, big sugar, big pharma, and any corporation that provides wingnut welfare. They don’t believe in Jesus because if they did, they wouldn’t advocate torture, screwing the poor, ignoring the sick and the environment. They are nihilists. I can only think of one movement in world history led by the nihilists. Can you think of any others?
Corpsicle
When some friend, relative, whatever shoots off their mouth, dont let it slide. Don’t be afraid to piss on the parade. Calmly point out that the arguement they are making is wrong for a few specific reasons. Pointing out that conservatives are fucking stupid in general will just make them defensive, but rebutting a particular point can work. The important thing is to hold on to a zen like calm. And what’s the worst that can happen? Some fucking stupid racist never talks to you again? And what about the other relatives/friends in the room? They might not agree with you, but they will see the difference between a rational, calm argument and a meaningless rant.
harlana
Here’s what the Jesus of these people we are discussing really means to them:
A vehicle by which to feel better about all your misdeeds and sins – you can be “saved” by the blood of the cross and then you can go forth and sin again, over and over, as long as you come crawling back to the cross, preferably in a very public manner, and ask forgiveness and be “saved”, etc. over and over and over again as they “sin” throughout their lives. It’s a lot easier than trying to work on yourself and be a better person.
That part really pisses me off because I personally have been doing this sort of work on myself for years.
The cross is simply a vehicle – the teachings of the man don’t even enter into the equation, as far as I can see.
harlana
since we are discussing all this, all of my bf’s sons are completely taken in by a local megachurch – we are traditional Methodists – we pretty much loathe everything they (mega-churches) stand for but he tries to be accepting because he loves them so much. He is keeping his youngest this weekend and is going to have to go to the mega-church this morning with him! Poor thing. He hates it. That’s paternal love for you, I guess.
Conversely, if it had been me, my dad would have told me straight out I was wrong in the head and made me realize that it’s just a bunch of money-grubbing con-men out to separate me from my $ as soon as I was old enough to start pulling in cash.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@harlana: To me that particular brand of Christianity is just infantile bullshit. A version of the Santa Claus story for people that are scared of dying. Instead of the fat man seeing you when you sleep and knowing when you’re bad and good, it’s a vengeful God that loves you enough to give you a ‘get outta Hell’ debit card as long as you believe in Jeebus and pray for forgiveness. I have no patience for that crap, but I rarely say so in public, for obvious reasons.
Betty Cracker
@harlana: The moral obtuseness displayed in that post really is mind-blowing.
Woodrowfan
I used to read a lot of foreign press (in English and in translation) for research. Some of the government controlled press by various dictatorships was really quite something. Libya and North Korea really were out in LaLa Land, but other countries, the USSR, Syria, Cuba, etc, were less interesting but predictable in how they spun the news.
Then came Fox “News.” It’s scary how much they resemble the press in a dictatorship. Add in the RW radio talkers, sites like WND and FreeRepublic, and a significant proportion of Americans are locked in as much a propaganda anti-reality bubble as any citizen in North Korea.
This will not end well.
kdaug
@Raven:
Conceivable. I was wrong once.
amk
@Woodrowfan: Eiyup. american fourth estate = fifth columnists.
Michael
Having read the posting and the comments, I am struck by the sheer volume and consistency of animosity here. And you guys think it’s conservatives who are hate-mongers? LOL!! BTW, I am a devout atheist and a recovering ultra-liberal who used to believe that we shouldn’t HAVE property rights, much less the ability to defend them.
Jonny Scrum-half
This is a counter-productive post. It essentially assumes that we’re headed toward a real (shooting) civil war. That’s very unlikely, although I guess it’s possible. I think that it becomes more possible with posts like this, about how everyone on the “other” side “hates” liberals.
The way to win is to find a way to persuade the people who now vote Republican of the truth — that their “leaders” (talk radio, right-wing publications, etc.) — are lying to them and undermining the country. I agree with some of the posters above that the Republicans are doing a pretty good job of destroying their own credibility, with persuasion needed.
But to argue that the political dividing line between conservatives and liberals constitutes a full-bore “hatred” isn’t really true (most normal human beings are good friends with people of different political viewpoints). it also erects a serious barrier to ever succeeding in changing people’s minds.
jrg
@Jonny Scrum-half: Yes, I was thinking something similar… But I think both you and John/DougJ have points.
The last time I saw someone who used to be one of my best friends (a few months ago, I went over to help him move a couch), he was drunk and screaming “you’re a liberal, so you like paying taxes.” over and over again. I decided I don’t want to be around him anymore.
My wife’s brother in law’s father has gone pretty far down the rabbit hole, too. He’s > 60, into Glenn Beck, and has completely lost his shit.
Yes. A lot of them do hate “us”. Yes, it’s gotten to the point where it’s destroying relationships. But you have a point that the “they hate us” attitude “erects a serious barrier to ever succeeding in changing people’s minds”. The best way I’ve seen to combat this stuff (in online forums, anyway) is to take the winger’s BS a step further: “So, you want to kill me because I’m a liberal? How about my wife? Want to kill her too? How about my infant daughter?”
Expose it for what it is.
kdaug
@Betty Cracker:
Damn straight. Progressives.
var
@Jonny Scrum-half Which Republican party have you been watching? They are kleptocrats and nihilists. One quarter of their party WANTS a civil war and are armed to the teeth for it and are looking for justification to start the shooting (for some, it was the election of Obama in its own right). The elite leadership would just back down from any real resistance when their thievery comes to light. The rest are mostly delusionists and a small part is David Brooks-ites who don’t really believe that the Republican party believes what it says. The Brooks-ites may be persuadable. The rest are not. 27% of Illinois voted for Alan Keyes! How in the fuck do you persuade someone willing to vote for Alan Keyes?
Bludger
They hate everything I respect, I get that. I just don’t want to hate them. The natural order of things ensures that they lose in the end.
They may have infinite resources and win a lot of battles, but when the truth is against them, they will fail.
harlana
@jrg: great, see, my bf is going through the same thing – i think the hate is coming out more because of the upcoming election – this guy almost beat his ass (guy was drunk) at a party when he found out bf voted for Obama. then he started doing stupid, prankish shit like hiding my bf’s cooler and such – it was a fucked up night for him.
if it were me, they wouldn’t even be my “friends” but he is a lot more tolerant of blind ignorance than me – i guess that’s why i don’t have a lot of friends since we both live in the reddest area of SC
Woodrowfan
Just in the past year I’ve had people scream at me in traffic, leave hateful note son my car, flip me off at lights, even yell at me in a fast-food drive through line. Why? I had an Obama sticker on my car. There are a lot of people out there who are really stirred up by hatred of “the left”
HRA
The major problem is they are fed misinformation. I have an almost daily encounter with a coworker who has the adjoining office next to mine. At least once during our conversation I have to say that is not true. Her source of information is Fox News, Rush, etc. There is no heated argument in our talks. I lead her to the verification of the truth. I’ve known her long enough to know she is sincere in her surprise and admission of the truth.
Remember no matter our political affiliations, we all want what is best for our country and its citizens.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@harlana: Man, I’m a shut in now. If I lived in red South Carolina I’d actually be a legitimate hermit.
jrg
@harlana: Yeah, I haven’t spoken with him since then. That was probably 8 months ago.
It’s sad. He was in my wedding. I just can’t handle the bullshit. There’s no chance it will degenerate into fisticuffs, because we got into a fight about 15 years ago, and I won. Still, I just don’t need drama like that in my life.
Samara Morgan
@Betty Cracker: and harlana.
sry, but that is modern form christianity. Dominion, individualism, one true faith, salvation by faith alone, that Chosen People bulshytt, and missionariism.
You have to work with the “christians” you have, not the ones you wish you had.
harlana
also, there is no way in hell i would ever sit thru a mega-church service
he suggested it once, half-jokingly
i asked, “do i have to get up and wave my hands in the air? conversely, can i laugh at them? can i walk out the minute i get offended (probably less than 5 minutes into the “service”)?”
jrg
@HRA:
Bullshit. They put party over country all the time. Did you miss the whole debt ceiling debacle?
RSA
Tom Junod had an interesting post on Esquire last week (http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/liberals-smarter-than-conservatives-6649182#ixzz1l4cSRzXl). The opening offers an explanation of “the unspoken dynamic of American politics.”
harlana
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: seriously, you have NO idea!
harlana
this is the thing about me, don’t push me. it’s like, i will tolerate you, i have to tolerate you but don’t you dare try to drop me into your environment, make me swim in it, give me no exit, and NOT expect me to tear you a new asshole, cuz i will, right before i tear that door down
i’m not going to drink the kool-aid, i’m going to spit it in your face
HRA
@Woodrowfan:
It’s the hatred of the Blacks more so than the hatred of the Left. That hatred crosses party lines, too. It’s something that has disgusted me since childhood.
harlana
omg, i just saw a quote that David Brooks said Mitt was in reality a Jew! yikes!
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@harlana: I think I do. Enough of one to never ever want to live there or anywhere like it. Growing up in Eastern Washington was wingnutty enough. South Carolina is more than I could bear.
gnomedad
@Samara Morgan:
Wow, being a celebrity tribal representative is really the only qualification for office in their minds, isn’t it?
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@gnomedad: “I just want to thank Jesus for giving me the strength to compete in this debate” *Kneels*
harlana
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: i like to think of it as a “love/hurt” relationship; this is my home, i want to love them, but all they do is hurt me with their hatred and ignorance. i don’t know how much of my emotional torment throughout my life has to do with just having a different way of thinking than most, i wonder if things would have been different had i lived elsewhere, but my family is here and i will never leave them as long as i have breath in my body. but, when you run across a like-minded person, it’s like finding a precious jewel! you get so excited! it’s sad.
ErinSiobhan
They hate you because you are not just like them.
They are the Borg.
gnomedad
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:
Hahaha! I saw a cartoon somewhere depicting a Tebow-like character saying “first of all, I’d like to blame Jesus for our loss …”
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@harlana: Yeah, I’m an expat now and I only get to see my family bi-annually. I love them, but I don’t miss home much. I really don’t. I’ll get a little pang for something once in a while, but on the whole, I like where I am a lot better.
WyldPirate
@HRA:
While I applaud your faith in humanity, it is seriously misguided.
Most humans are selfish, tribal animals who put themselves first and their tribe second. Everyone else they could give a shit less about.
da
They HAVE to stay in their own bubble. They are agoraphobic in this way. Leaving the bubble is terrifying to them.
Reality has a liberal bias. Don’t forget, they’ve had to create their own wikipedia (conservapedia) and have re-translated the bible, taking out a lot of that “love”, “generosity” and “forgiveness” bullshit they can’t abide. They’ve had to recreate Jesus as their religious warrior.
Sir Nose'D
This post and thread are so full of win, I’m beside myself.
That is all.
SIA
Holy Jeebus John, you are SPEAKING some real truths in your last few posts. IMO some of your best writing ever. THANKS.
SIA
Holy Jeebus John, you are SPEAKING some real truths in your last few posts. IMO some of your best writing ever. THANKS.
redshirt
It’s fundamental at this point – the Republican party survives (and thrives in places) because they’ve perfected the Dark Arts of playing to some people’s darkest fears. Whether its race, sex, money, power, etc, they turn your fears and insecurities into their tools.
I know otherwise “good” people who remain Republican because of one or two issues. These issues are always represent some flaw in the person – greed, fear, hate.
That is, the Republican Party is genuinely an evil institution that uses Evil to perpetrate its designs and relies on the evil in all of us to do so.
Betty Cracker
@Samara Morgan: I’m an atheist, and it’s tempting to paint all religious people with a broad brush. But I try not to because I know Christians who are kind, loving and non-judgmental. They may be a minority (at least in these parts), but they exist, so to lump them in with the Dominionists strikes me as unfair.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Sadly, what pisses me off the most is that for all that’s said on the national scale about the winds shifting against the GOP, their message seems too seductive still, and feels more like post-’08 where jokers reject the GOP representatives and message not because of some revelation or moving leftward, but either Rove or Luntz-style message utilitarianism, or instead doubling the fuck down on the crazy….and it still seems to work.
Anecdotally, I’ve lost good friends who I thought were reasonably liberal who went on everywhere to libertarian screeds to screaming hysterically about the ‘War on Christmas’ to where I literally felt alienated from all of them. I may just be my perspective, but even with the supposed shifts, it seems like it’s nigh impossible to get anyone to actually move LEFTWARD on fuck-all anything, and even if you do, it’s in minute incrementals that get erased once the next right-wing outrage comes that throws the pendulum whistling back rightward to stay for-fucking-ever.
Throwin Stones
Dammit Cole, you’ve been on fire.
Preach!
harlana
@Betty Cracker: you made me read Erickson! on religion, no less. on Obama’s faith, no less. now i need a shower! ;)
seriously, we are talking sociopathic here, there is no other explanation
Mike in NC
Take it away, Governor Haley:
“We don’t have unions in South Carolina because we don’t need unions in South Carolina. They will do everything they can to invade our state and drive a wedge between our workers and our employers. We can’t have that. Unions thrive in the dark. … And we’ll make the unions understand full well that they are not needed, not wanted, and not welcome in the State of South Carolina.”
DaveinME
I could not agree with Cole more on this. These people are not to be reasoned with, and the smart thing to do is to realize that and act accordingly. Instead we have Democrats playing in to the charade and making up Super Committees that do squat, who sit idly by as our Constitution is shredded and as society is ripped to shreds by a bunch of mouth breathing idiots. Read this Charles Pierce book to get an idea of how we ended up here.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Mike in NC: Unions are roaches? That’s awesome right there. I’d make Nikki Haley a Republican spokeswoman in every Great Lakes state if I was a Dem strategist.
gnomedad
@harlana:
What conflicts me about the wingers in my family is my perception that they can be genuinely loving and genuinely hateful depending on context. Sometimes I think the real divide is between people who recognize their dark side and those who blindly justify everything they think and feel. At any rate I have to resist the temptation to tell myself that the loving side displayed by such people is just a sham. It’s not, at least not always, and that makes the hateful stuff harder to take.
harlana
@Mike in NC:
oh, we know, Nikki, we know
Angela
You are on fire, Cole.
Unfortunately, my whole family is evangelical wing-nut. I have limited contact and ties as much as I am able, because we also have the abusive web in our family that ties into those that lean toward authoritarianism.
But I won’t sever ties completely. So I am reading this hoping I will find a way to make it through this election speaking the truth to their wingnuttia without letting them pull me into responding to their hate.
Chris
Righteous rant, Cole. And absolutely true. The reason we can’t have a nice bipartisan talk about what we all want for America is that what one of the two sides wants for America is the other side dead.
@VidaLoca:
Like I posted a few threads back: the single thing that dissuades me from believing that is how full of shit the average conservative is. Taibbi had these guys pegged when he described them as “a hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment.”
The notion of these entitled jackasses starting a revolution should be terrifying, but in context it mostly ends up just being pathetic in a hilarity-inducing kind of way.
marv
This is the part I don’t get: white evangelicals are so filled with hate for people that aren’t white evangelicals that they are going to elect…a Mormon? I’m not religious myself and don’t mean to sound like a hater, but how can they not see that unless Jesus comes back, like, this summer, electing a Mormon at this stage in American history could turn out to be like Constantine adopting Christianity in 329, or whenever it was. Centuries on, Christianity might be just a quaint old memory from days gone by, a few tattered remnants still visible in the new mainstream truly American religion.
“There comes a redeemer and he slowly too fades away.”
rikyrah
yes yes yes yes
Chris
@spek:
This.
I’ve said this before, but… fundamentally, liberals are saps, who fundamentally believe in things like fairness and universal rights. It’s one huge difference between them and the Left (socialists/syndicalists/populists etc). Those guys do have the killer instinct, the winner-take-all, fuck-the-other-guy-by-any-means-necessary ethic. But we haven’t really had a significant movement of people like that since the fifties.
Chris
@spek:
This.
I’ve said this before, but… fundamentally, liberals are saps, who fundamentally believe in things like fairness and universal rights. It’s one huge difference between them and the Left (soshulists/syndicalists/populists etc). Those guys do have the killer instinct, the winner-take-all, fuck-the-other-guy-by-any-means-necessary ethic. But we haven’t really had a significant movement of people like that since the fifties.
different-church-lady
This is good: on the morning I finally decide to swear off Daily Kos for good (because there’s nothing much worth reading there anymore and because the commetariat increasingly acts like nothing more than the mirror image of conservatives John describes here) I come over here and find actual discussion and insight in the comments. (Which seems… unusual somehow…)
polyorchnid octopunch
@Samara Morgan: They’re Calvinists. Calvinists are fucking dangerous. There is literally no negotiating with Calvinists. Calvinism is totalitarian christianism.
RossInDetroit
A little nugget from K-thug that deserves quoting here:
So good!
As a bonus, he used the word ‘bogosity’ to describe the Right’s lies.
da
And also, in 2008, the black guy (may not be the term they would use) beat the war hero and the Lady Jesus.
gnomedad
@Angela:
Exactly: how do we defeat them without becoming them? Thanks for the book reference; I will check it out.
ETA: that is the evil jiujitsu often worked by religion and politics: to package our basest instincts as virtues when exercised in the name of the tribe.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@polyorchnid octopunch:
God. I fucking hate Calvinism. Predestination is the most pernicious thing I’ve ever heard of dogmatically and the fact that it’s become so fully fucking engrained in our country’s psyche despite it going against the ideals of both Christ and Country is just…guh.
different-church-lady
@Samara Morgan: I don’t understand how we’re going to achieve that without cadavers.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Preach it Brother John! rAmen!!
These people are in love with an idea so much that they hate people who don’t espouse it. That you are a fellow human doesn’t even register with them, if you aren’t part of their idea of what perfect is then you are not their equal and do not deserve to be treated as such. They really don’t care about any human, all they care is about their ideal world. If you agree with them then you get to be one of them until they find it convenient to turn on you.
If they created their perfect world with only the perfect people who they thought were perfect for it, they would be deciding which group of people are purer than another and be at each others throats within 24 hours. They have a need to feel superior to everyone that isn’t one of them. If everyone is just as pure them then they will have to create a new metric to measure the impure so that they are again ‘on top’ of the dogpile.
John’s right, they hate us. But then again, they hate everyone. Just some of us more than others.
RossInDetroit
@RSA:
Thanks for posting that Junod thing. I read that and liked it then forgot where it was. It bears repeating a lot this election season that the differences between parties extend even to a serious disorder in how they view each other.
Michael
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
what is this entire thread besides an expression of that very phenomenon?
OzoneR
The issue with this
Then why would we want to be part of the same country?
I’m not saying you or Doug are wrong, don’t think you are, but a country can’t survive if people who think differently politically hate each other personally. That’s called a civil war.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker:
Considering that CNN is slowly converting themselves into a political version of a circus side show, perhaps he’s not there because they believe he’s mainstream but because they see him as an entertaining freak.
RossInDetroit
@jrg:
Relationships lost to ‘winger politics.
I haven’t seen one family of in-laws in 18 months even though they live 5 miles away. They’re Paulites and think they’re Libertarians. I could see the conflicts coming and decided to just close that door and wait to see if they come to their senses rather than having pointless shouting matches. It’s a shame but I don’t consider it my fault. I never brought the battle to them, they brought it to me.
different-church-lady
@var:
No, they belive in Jesus quite a lot. It’s just that they don’t want to actually spend any time listening to him.
polyorchnid octopunch
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik: It’s what that so-called ‘prosperity gospel’ really is at its root… Calvinism. Predestination is a terrible terrible idea that gives people permission to fully indulge and feed their inner sociopath.
John M
BRAVO! Excellent post!!! Well done, John!
polyorchnid octopunch
@different-church-lady: No, they don’t. They believe in John Calvin. They just call him Jesus.
different-church-lady
@Corpsicle: Most people who drag right-wing politics into every conversation and situation are expecting one of two things: (a) enthusiastic agreement or (b) angry disagreement.
By presenting them with calm disagreement you completely sabotage their expected feedback loop. It’s as if they hit a diamond on their decision-making flow chart that doesn’t have a branch for that situation.
Michael
@polyorchnid octopunch: http://tinyurl.com/4rrt9vy
bob h
In time, probably well after I am long gone, the parties are going to have to seek a divorce along Blue/Red geographic lines. The South, including Texas, and the Empty states in the Midwest could be encouraged to go their own ways, deprived of the Federal subsidies the rest of us now have to provide.
Michael
@bob h:
Those subsidies go to blue enclaves within the red states.
After hearing claims such as yours, I went to the trouble to dig up the facts. There actually is a database showing the top 100 locations receiving federal funds and guess what? Over 80% of them were blue urban islands.
OzoneR
@different-church-lady:
Except they shoot back with paranoid schizo rants and personal attacks
SOMEONE ELSE: I’m sure the police had a reason for shooting that kid (an unarmed 18 year cops shot dead in his own bathroom in the Bronx after breaking down the door)
ME: I just don’t feel comfortable with the idea that a cop can break down the door guns ablazing over a little marijuana and shoot you dead because they have a hunch you might have a gun somewhere on your body.
SOMEONE ELSE: AND WHAT WOULD RATHER THEM DO? GET SHOT? YOU’RE PROBABLY THE KIND OF PERSON WHO GETS OFF ON WATCHING COPS GET SHOT. YOU MUST THINK THEY DESERVE IT, LIKE EVERY COP SHOT IS ANOTHER THING TO CELEBRATE! IF YOU HAD YOUR WAY, CRIMINALS WOULD BE RUNNING THE STREET. LOVE CRIMINALS, HATE THE POLICE, YOURE A REAL DICK.
that.
different-church-lady
@marv:
Think: why is the Not-Romney phenomenon so popular with the base?
Elie
Of course they have to start being a lot smarter than they have shown to actually be successful… they aint too smart it seems — they are scared and decades of intellectual inbreeding with only their own kind has resulted in essentially cognitively impaired followers with inability to do anything that takes long term planning and subtlety.
We don’t want to make this a war. They would like this to be a war but they don’t understand that the frontline is very complex. They want clean, short term battles with straight up or down consequences. That favors what WE value — we have to apply consistent pressure on their inability to think and strategize and behave always, as though they can’t make us back off in fear. We do not have to fight them in a pugilistic sense. We have to take over their space and take the oxygen from their emotional and poorly thought out stances by just inhabiting our values straightforwardly and with positive, assertive energy. Time is on our side, energy is on our side and reason and the laws of physics are on our side. That is why they hate, but it will not work. Their children are going to marry us, work for us and yes, learn with us.
different-church-lady
@OzoneR: Well, I guess I was thinking about someone who wasn’t obviously full-out paranoid to begin with. In those cases I find subtle social
orchestrationostracization to be the best tactic. “If you’re going to shout at me I’m leaving.”(Edited for spell-check fail)
Dominique
TESTIFY, BROTHER!!!
Oh .. and darlin’… the Reichstag fire has already been lit. It was the Twin Towers. Bush, et al, creating the beginnings of the 4th Reich.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan:
That is but one form of modern Christianity. Mainline Christians are historically and increasingly liberal.
You’ve been relatively cogent on this thread, but you really know nothing about religion, and you need to shut your mouth. There are important nuances you are missing.
Emma
@HRA: Lucky you. I tried that, and when my co-workers verified what I had said, she was angrier than ever.
OzoneR
@different-church-lady:
That usually ends up with the rightie saying “I shut that liberal up”
this is where we get hosed I think. When we think we’re above the shouting matches. This is what got President Obama in trouble, the idea of “I’m not going to devolve into this and respond to this nonsense.” We are above it, but the country isn’t. And that’s the problem.
Richard Bottoms
Preach it.
And for the record, I am so proud I pissed you off in the early days before your conversiom.
You see now, what I saw then.
Emma
@Michael: Don’t tell me. You’re here to preach the gospel.
different-church-lady
@OzoneR: What got Obama in trouble is thinking the ones who don’t rant and rave were negotiating in good faith. John Boehner is not Glenn Beck.
I have to admit, though, I usually don’t end up in too many “I shut that liberal up” situations because there’s usually something else that tips me off that I don’t want to engage with said person quite a long time before we get to that point.
Elie
@OzoneR:
You have to stop thinking that this or that approach is going to silence or control what they do. They are like a grease fire — if you throw water on it to douse it, all you do is spread it. You have to smother it with the weight of positive energy and just moving forward without fear. Sometimes, as we have seen Obama do countless times, you wait them out and apply firm pressure but not the hot screaming war they want. Since they are usually fighting against some rational approach, you have to wait for those “laws of physics” to catch up.
I acknowledge that history is not always kind to rationality and positive values.. but I like our chances… not easily… ever.
Villago Delenda Est
@suzanne:
She’s bought into the meme of the Fundigelicals that they are the only actual “Christians” in this country.
Which is sad, because they’re actually Mammon worshipers.
OzoneR
@different-church-lady:
He certainly sounds like him
Again, then that person’s viewpoints go unchallenged and people start to accept that. That was the thing about the town halls in 2009. I remember the blogosphere laughing them off and then suddenly people started believing their crap and it left liberals stunned.
They can’t go unchallenged, people believe the craziest shit.
BEG65
You can’t deliberately Godwin something, so you should be safe…
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Michael:
Why don’t you just come right out and say it, asshole?
Emma
@different-church-lady: and yet Obama keeps winning. Against the rage machine, he still manages to pull things off. Is it everything I want? Hell, no. I suspect it’s not nearly everything he wants. But he keeps rolling them, and keeps the whole thing moving forward, two steps forward, one back.
The man’s memoirs will be very interesting, I think.
Michael
@Emma:
Nah, I’m a confirmed atheist. But I don’t find the religious scary. I think we atheists simply need to create a better narrative, one that acknowledges the more spiritual and mysterious aspects of human life.
Lojasmo
@Michael:
Shorter Michael: ” I’ve always been a dumb-ass, just a different flavor.”
dearolddad
Excellent post…I hate them back.
chrome agnomen
@harlana:
never gonna happen, because (and this is the nut of the whole thing) it is themselves that they hate.
Michael
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
I simply posted the data that my research found. How does that make me an asshole? Data are data. There’s no philosophical or political agenda in raw data.
marv
@different-church-lady:
Yeah, and I’m starting to wonder if there might not be some hugely ironic “Bradley effect” where some of the most conservative white evangelicals in northern swing states actually pull the lever for Obama. I do rule that possibility out in the south just because my experience has been the white republicans there hate the you-know-who more than they love Jesus.
Michael
Speaking of good humanistic narratives, who do we have that reliably communicates one? Carl Sagan is gone. Timothy Ferris does a good job, and Alan Lightman. Richard Feynman was great, but he’s long gone, too.
Ash Can
I have a list of reasons that I will never, ever stop reading this blog, and John Cole’s posts are at the top of it. Last night’s pet post was one of the best essays on any subject that I’ve ever read, and now this. Simply outstanding. Bravo.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Michael:
Fine, I’ll play: Actually, no, you didn’t. There was no source, link, or attribution.
‘Data’ without a context and framework in which to present and interpret that data is just the plural of ‘Anecdote’. You might as well intone that “A is A”.
You went to the trouble of posting a claim. Now tell me your alleged conclusion.
Lojasmo
@Michael: @Michael:
First: you have not proven your assertion. Federal subsidies to urban and rural areas are almost evenly split, but per-capita spending is higher in rural areas.
http://www.dailyyonder.com/not-thinking-about-rural-subsidies/2011/03/09/3221
See how that works? Make an assertion AND back it up with a source.
Tommykey
They fucking hate you.
It reminds me of the end of A Soldier’s Story, when Sgt. Waters realizes that white racists don’t hate black people because there are black people like CJ, they just hate black people because they’re black.
He says to Denzel Washington’s character just before the latter shoots him, “THEY STILL HATE YOU!”
Michael
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: The original claim was that it is red states which receive federal subsidies – the clear implication being that it’s conservative voters who are practicing hypocrisy by voting against big government programs while receiving benefits from them. I pointed out the fallacy in that argument, namely that red states have blue-voting islands within them and that, in fact, it’s to those very islands that the most federal bucks flow. That IS what the data show.
Lojasmo
@Michael:
I don’t know who you mean by “we.”. I assume you are talking about republicans. If so, then you’ve got nobody.
That IS what the data show.
Back your assertion, or shut up.
trollhattan
Sorry if this has been said already, but I smell Moore Award!
Also, too, well-ranted and sadly, quite true. Polite people couch it all in meaningless “government needs to live within its needs” and “there’s too much wasteful bureaucracy” when what they actually want is to keep more of “their money” and stop “coddling the undeserving.”
Michael
@Lojasmo: What I said was that the top 100 concentrations were overwhelmingly blue-voting. And they were overwhelmingly urban, although there were some notable rural examples such as the lower Rio Grande Valley in south Texas.
Michael
@Lojasmo: No, I’m talking about atheists. But you’re right about Republicans.
trollhattan
@Michael:
Lay it out then with verifiable data, or it’s just more bullshit.
What you’re really saying is that poor folks always vote Democratic which we know to be counter to the mode of Republican success–convincing poor and low-income and undereducated white folks to vote against their self-interest by riling them up with a mythical war against “elites” and minorities. Which basically disproves your very claim.
Lojasmo
@Michael:
Post a fucking link proving your point, dude.
Michael
It’s been a couple of years since I went through that process so it may take a little time to find that database. Someone else had posted the claim on another web site and had linked to the article which I think was in Mother Jones. Anyway, I read the piece, then went through the list and looked up the 2008 election results county by county and found that they had gone for Obama by about 4-1.
SFAW
I think you need to understand that you posted no data. You only posted your opinion/conclusion, based on how you chose to interpret the “data”. Which, I might add, although your lack of evidence (since assertion is not evidence, one would hope you already know) has been pointed out to you multiple times since you made your incorrect statement (blockquoted herein), you have yet to provide any of the alleged “data”.
On the other hand, Lojasmo has graciously provided a link, within which is another link. And in that second-level link are data which, at least according to my extremely cursory analysis, indicates that per-capita spending is higher in rural areas than in both “metro” areas and “urbanized nonmetro” areas.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/ruraldevelopment/developments.htm
But thanks for your concern trolling.
Gust Avrakotos
See, this is why I hate Cole. Because yes I do get it so right there he clearly has a disconnect. The other thing is that you can’t be one of these retarded right wing nut jobs one day and suddenly say you have seen the light and are all better now.
You can’t fix stupid Cole which is why I hate you. Inside you that former winger nutjob still lives and breathes. Whether you know it or not. If you are still having trouble understanding go watch the Exorcist.
SFAW
I expect we’ll next be told that the dog ate (or peed on) your link, so you can’t bring it to blog today.
SFAW
I can only imagine how sucky it must be for you to be forced to read this blog.
TrueBlueMajority
Don’t hold back. Tell us how you (they) really feel.
Roddy McCorley
We had our Reichstag fire. It was the anthrax attacks. Luckily, some uberconservative religious extremists provided us with a much better Reichstag fire. We, perhaps coincidentally, returned the favor by giving their leader the things at the top of his wish list.
ramalamadingdong
Moore award for sure.
HeartlandLiberal
FWIW, a short diary pointing people to John’s most righteous rant today is sitting on top of the recommended diaries list over at the Great Orange Satan, Dailykos.com, as of 1:21 Eastern Time.
Kay Shawn
Print out John’s rant and nail it to every door!
No one has said it better.
And he’s sayin’ it even while he has a parent in the hospital.
There’s something deeply operatic about this monumental struggle, and Cole has captured it. Sing it loud.
Gus diZerega
@Rihilism: Really good post. Let me add something more.
I was a right wing conservative once, like John. I am older than he is and my shift came longer ago, but when I started college I was a Young Americans for Freedom chairman who worried about the international Communist conspiracy and feared “big government” as inevitably heading to totalitarianism. What changed me is a version of what I understand changed John: an event that expanded my ability to put myself in others’ places. In my experience it took several for me to transit entirely out of it, but the first one cracked the shell.
If I remember correctly, the Terri Schiavo episode began his transition. An interview on TV with a Black woman during the civil rights demonstrations began mine, when she said she didn’t want her daughter growing up the same way she had. That cut through all the bullshit about property rights that I parroted. I could really see how she felt.
I think being a right winger (not a temperamental conservative, but a real right winger) is fundamentally a disease of the soul. It rests on an inability or unwillingness to put yourself in someone else’s shoes if they are different from yourself. That is why many can be great folks to personal friends and family – it’s very concrete.
When that inability or unwillingness is added to self-righteousness the brew is even more toxic.
In their soul disease they cannot respond to facts or even honesty, but they can respond to examples that reach their hearts. But how to do that, that’s the rub. Until their hearts are opened they really do hate us and many fantasize a day of reckoning where they can kill us.
Privatize the Profits! Socialize the Costs!
Yup, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
Sorry, John, if we liberals disappoint you with our lack of appetite for the kind of confrontation that conservatives seem to crave.
But I think the truth is that most of us really aren’t attracted to that kind of confrontation… although if forced to, many of us won’t walk away from it.
And that’s because who we are: we are healthy, normal people.
We are the non-haters.
And yes, we have every right to feel morally superior to the haters.
Just like 1960’s civil rights workers had every right to feel morally superior to the KKK.
Just like the abolitionists had every right to feel morally superior to the slaveowners.
Just like we can look back at the Vietnam War, or the Iraq War, and see that us peace demonstrators had every right to feel morally superior to the lying president and all his chickenhawk pompom-waving supporters who called us traitors and all that other crazy shit.
John, I greatly respect the fact that you have had the courage to cross over from right to left, but I’m afraid you’re on the wrong track here.
A lot of these rightwingers are scary nuts, but sadly, we have no control over who they are.
The only people we have control over are the people WE are.
different-church-lady
@Gust Avrakotos: Jeez, it’s almost like you’re accusing him of having human faults and inconsistencies, or something.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Michael:
You’re presuming your conclusion. Often the sign of an implicit agenda.
One could look at your (still unpresented) “data” and just as easily make the claim that Red States don’t do enough to support their urban centers, because they can pass the bill onto taxpayers from other states via Federal grants. Which still makes those GOP voters total hypocrites.
Yet that’s not the claim you’re making. Wonder why that is?
Todd Dugdale
Politics and culture are firmly enmeshed, and each provides the justification for the other in a loop of circular reasoning.
The Right is essentially selling a return to the Fifties in cultural terms. We don’t live in the Fifties any more, so “something has gone horribly wrong”. The political “solution” is a ‘fill-in-the-blank’, determined by whoever has the money to finance the “return to normalcy”.
In the Fifties, there were severe penalties for deviation from the “norm”. “Uppity” women and minorities could be literally beaten down, and the “normal” people would wink and look the other way. Anyone crazy enough to openly admit to homosexuality was designated as fair game for any kind of abuse, including death. Any kind of non-conformity (males with long hair, women who had a career, people who failed to repeat jingoistic slogans, etc.) exacted a price, and that was seen as “how things just worked”. Without conformity, nobody knows “where they stand” and nobody can be presumed “decent” and, therefore, credible.
This is why the Right fears becoming a minority, because they know what happens to minorities in their world.
This is why their politics are defined as opposing ‘whatever the libs want’. It’s not so much about advancing an agenda as it is creating the idea that they are the majority. And the minority must be beaten down. That’s “how things work”.
They have thrown virtually everything they have against Obama and ‘the libs’, and the country still isn’t really buying it. Sure, a lot of people blame Obama for the economy by virtue of the fact that he is in office, but that doesn’t mean that they buy the Right’s narrative. And that scares the crap out of them.
So they fall back on this idea that, even though they are the minority, the rest of the people will ‘come around’ once they are in power. If not, they can be beaten down for failing to ‘respect authority’. Again, “that’s how things work”.
If they fail in 2012, it becomes very hard for them to continue to claim a cultural majority. They can’t blame an insufficiently conservative Republican President. They can’t claim that didn’t speak out strenuously enough. They can’t claim a “silent majority” that fails to vote, and they can’t claim that there are huge numbers of very conservative people who are turned off by “moderation”.
It all falls apart. And demographics continue to conspire against them. They become a minority, and minorities are powerless in their world. This is their last chance to avoid minority status, and they are starting to sense that they are blowing it.
SFAW
Todd –
Interesting analysis, seems to dovetail with reality, etc.
But my concern relative to this comment:
is that we end up with Gilead. And although liberals in a similar position would fume and rail, I don’t think they’d (ultimately) do anything with the intent of destroying the country. I am significantly less certain that the Rethugs or TeaBaggers would not attempt an overthrow.
AuntSis
FINALLY, let the church say Amen, Amen and Amen.
I thought I was the only one. They will never agree to even reason with us. So why try? There are more of us than them. The problem is our side has to be ‘motivated’ or ‘inspired’ to do our civic duty and vote for people who have our best interest at heart.
Seth
And Obama has spent three years compromising with them instead of kicking their asses. He has defined hatred downward.
RossInDetroit
There used to be a Potato Chip and Snack Food Council, the PCSFC. I think it’s now the Snack Food Association (SFA). In the ’70s they successfully lobbied the government to allow a wide range of prepared snack foods to be allowed under government food assistance. The argument given was that snack foods can be part of a healthy, balanced diet.
The real argument was ‘re-election is expensive’.
RossInDetroit
@RossInDetroit:
Snack Food Council. Here’s a clip from http://www.corporationsandhealth.org
Todd Dugdale
@SFAW: Absolutely. Guns are the obvious next option – to “defend themselves” against the beat-down that they “know” is coming as part of The Natural Order of Things.
I was trying to explain the mindset, not predict the future.
The Gun Option will thin the herd of the craziest (at a cost, of course) and dramatically hasten the public’s dismissal of every conservative notion. The first time that a wingnut paramilitary action causes so much as a traffic jam, they will have lost the PR battle. And it will create an insurmountable generational divide.
Remember, most of these people are old and in marginal health. There’s a reason that militaries don’t recruit 60-year-old men with diabetes and weak hearts and asses so big that you need a powered wheelchair to go shopping.
Ruckus
John
That’s not a rant. A rant has to have fire, spittle, adrenalin.
All you did was tell the truth.
SFAW
Understood, I was just nit-picking, etc.
Probably true. But I’m worried about said action taking out a lot more than just enough to cause a traffic jam, a la Margaret Atwood or “Debt of Honor”.
Yeah, I’m a little paranoid. But given the relative (lack of) grip on reality that the Teahadists have, might be understandable.
AA+ Bonds
Nice post, John. I have nothing to add to it
Citizen Alan
@marv:
Yes, this is so absolutely hilarious to me. On no less than three occasions in the last five years, I have heard Baptist ministers describe Mormonism as a satanic cult. And now, all three of those ministers and probably the majority of their congregations are going to vote for a bishop in that satanic cult rather than vote for a black man.
Citizen Alan
@different-church-lady:
I have suggested repeatedly over the last few years that far too many Christians actively worship Satan but delude themselves into thinking that Satan is actually Jesus. I mean, Jesus did flat-out say that “many will be those who cry, Lord, Lord, did we not preach and prophesy in thy name” to which Jesus will reply “I never knew you” before condemning them to hell.
Someone online, I forget who, once noted that if you take everything Jesus said about how to live your life and flipped it into its exact opposite, you get a plank in the Republican platform. “Blessed are the peacemakers” becomes “make sure we have the largest military budget possible.” “When you pray, don’t be like hypocrites and pray publicly so people can see you do it” becomes “we need mandatory prayer over the intercom every day at school and at every public event.” “Love your enemies and forgive them seven times seventy times” becomes “shock and awe.” The list is endless.
Todd Dugdale
@SFAW:
They have a grip on reality. It’s just a reality that doesn’t exist anymore, except in some old peoples’ memories.
I’ve found it fairly effective to point out that, during the Fifties, people who were their current age at the time were whinging about the decline of society – during the supposed Golden Age of All That Is Right. It’s what old people do.
Polar Bear Squares
And I fucking hate them, which, you know, I struggle with sometimes. Cause I’m an asshole but I rather reserve that side for moments of emergency like a fire alarm inna glass case.
But the amount of disgust they have with us for having the temerity to DISAGREE with them and be right about it really, really pisses them off. And naturally I’m the type of guy who likes to confront bullies. Not kiss their ass.
I tend to wanna tell some fat ass Republican who wants to come to the black community and tell us to get off food stamps to go fuck himself with his own 68-year-old limp dick. Not have lunch with the prick at some non-existent Applebee’s salad bar.
Sigh. I really need to stop cussing.
blogenfreude
I wrote this a while back:
“Conservatives exist to question, and undo, any sort of progress. Abortion finally legal? Not so fast, lefty. Segregation ended? Not according to Rand Paul and other bigots. Evolution and climate change proved real? Not according to the GOP. And the gold standard, attacking immigrants, immediately using their new House majority to target women, children, gays, and unions, and on and on.”
As long as the GOP exists, nothing will be done about climate change, and that’s a game-ender. I have no idea how to stop them.
rootless_e
Cole is right. And many of the commentators here need therapy or to just shut up.
Dear Political Commissars:
Next time you have the urge to explain liberal/progressive/left doctrine, please fuck off, ASAP.
thanks
Joel
On the internet, every man is an island.
Citizen Alan
Speaking of Tebow, the thing that I find most distasteful about him is that he is a high-profile adherent of a faith whose founder specifically told his followers NOT to make a big deal of praying in public because that was the province of hypocrites who were doing so just to show of their own piety by being seen to pray. Tim Tebow makes a point of praying ostentatiously at a time and place where he can be seen by MILLIONS of people, and he has made such a spectacle of it that the specific manner in which he prays now bears his name! I mean honestly! Tebowing?!? How is it not blasphemous to name a specific style of prayer after a mortal man who prays that way at football games?!?
Citizen Alan
One last point — The thing I hate most about Republicans today is the simple fact that they made me hate them. Fifteen or twenty years ago, I disagreed with Republicans on most issues, but it would never have occurred to me to question their patriotism, let alone their fundamental human decency. Today, after the events of the last twelve years? I just think they’re all evil. All of them, without exception. When someone tells me that they’re a Republican, I immediately feel sorry for their children because I assume they’re being molested or abused in some way. That’s just what I instinctively think about Republicans now. I really do consider them to be a death cult that seeks nothing less than the extinction of the human race. And it is all, 100%, a result of observing their own actions and listening to them in their own words.
rootless_e
@Citizen Alan: amen
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: dude.
the GOP is 50% WEC and 99% white christian. that is mainline.
Obama is a liberal christian. very few when weighed against the pre-tribs, K-Lo catholics, born-agains, judeo-christians and non-denoms.
IPOF the mainline christians in America despise liberal christians and deny that they are christians at all.
When one of the two political parties in this country is 99% white christian, then mainline christianity in America is political christianity.
LT
I just said this in another thread y’day – but This Is Balloon Juice. Some FPers don’t realize that.
Samara Morgan
@suzanne:
this is simply and empirically FALSE.
America is 70% self-declared christian. 50% of americans are conservative or conservative leaning. The 20% of americans that are non-republican, non-conservative christians ARE A MINORITY.
Kyrondo
@Citizen Alan: I’m there.
Samara Morgan
@Betty Cracker: even liberal christians believe in the mandate to proselytize and missionariism….even if they do not do it themselves.
even liberal christians believe in that chosen people bulshytt (Jeebus died for your sins) and the One True Faith.
Our last half century of fucked up foreign policy of regime change is just secular missionariism.
if everyone had a universalist faith it would be a better world.
much better.
is atheism a universalist faith?
i ax razib that once and he got so angry he deleted my sci-fi sub-blog from the GNXP archives.
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
Ever read this guy? It’s a longer, wordier version of what you just said, basically.
Samara Morgan
@Betty Cracker: is your version of atheism universalist?
meaning, people should be free to believe in whatever?
the New Atheists are militant evangelicals. (Dawkins, Harris)
they think everyone should be atheists.
i think some humans just dont have the substrate to be atheist.
Todd Dugdale
The best offensive strategy that we have against conservatives are the words “You are weird, and your ideas are unpopular”.
Most of us would shrug and mutter “whatever” if someone said to us. But, to conservatives, this is an ‘existential insult’ that cuts to the core of their beliefs.
They do believe weird things, and they aren’t perceived as unquestionably “good” people, or even trustworthy people. Their positions have been proved in polling to be minority ones.
But these words place them in the minority, and (in their minds) the minority must submit to the majority. They essentially disarm themselves mentally in response.
Calling a conservative a “weirdo” is what a conservative calling someone a “faggot” is equivalent to.
SFAW
I’ve been hearing some variant of that for 20-30 years. But feel free to believe it, if it makes you feel better.
Betty Cracker
@Samara Morgan: Actually, not all Christians believe in the mandate to proselytize, and not all believe that there is only one true faith or path to salvation. The vast majority do, but there are exceptions.
As for my version of atheism, I don’t give a crap what people choose to believe as long as they don’t try to give it force of law or use it to shame or bully people who are doing no harm. I have no desire to “convert” anyone.
Samara Morgan
@Betty Cracker: i totally agree with that version of atheism.
man cannot acquire what he cannot use.
but…can i offer you a simple and elegant proof that there is a god after all?
;)
T.O.M.
Wow, this is amazingly spot on in concisiveness, very well said, John.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: You clearly do not know what the term Mainline Protestant means. Look it up. Mainline =/= Majority.
Mary
I think rather than argue logic, people of all persuasions are more likely to hear when you find a point of emotional or moral or ethical contact. So someone may be anti-ACA. I could say something like, “I agree that health care costs are outrageous and I’m tired of insurance companies ripping us off”, or “I hate it when people with no insurance show up in the ER and expect all the rest of us to pay for it. At least now they’ll have to pay a little bit into the system”, or “Well, I’m just glad that my daughter is on my insurance for another year. It’s hard to get a job with good benefits in this economy”, or “At least my friends daughter, who has a serious pre-existing condition will be able to afford some sort of insurance”. Now the last two are closer to my reasons for supporting the act, but the first two my speak to their concerns about it. I’m sure this wouldn’t result in a blinding epiphany but it might give the person a slightly different idea to chew on without making them defensive and antagonistic.
FollowtheDough
And yet we still have Obama diehard supporters who think “Jeez we gotta move just a bit more right! ”
Keep moving and watch the trainwreck. You can’t have a centrist nation, it is a failed flawed premise. It works like this: The more and more you try to cater to republicans you will lose without even playing. And in turn the republicans will laugh at your face & say “Get out of here you far left communist” Failed philosophy and failed theory which is referred to as centrist.
Environmental Issues are already a lost cause because somehow democrats are scared to death to bring up any of these issues. Which gives the perception that Democrats really don’t stand strong on issues when the heat is turned up.
The centrist right isn’t your friend. Regardless what the Obama administration tells you. The Centrist right wants to dismantle everything you hold dear. There is no center,ladies n gentlemen. There is the fence and you better choose what side you want to fall off on. You can’t ride the fence forever.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: mainline christian.
christian.
Mary
And Dr. Martin Luther King called for love. “Hate cannot overcome hate, only love can do that”.
Chris Morgan
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:
Put in the language of Christianity, if not actual JC quote. Many wingnuts are so deeply invested in the idea they’re ‘good Christians’, their defense can’t stop your argument getting thru.
Doesn’t mean they’ll hear or consider it. The 1st time. But, keep doing it. Sooner or later, they’ll begin questioning their rigid adherence – its deathknell, no matter how long it finally takes – or their heads will explode.
E.g.: Thug argument: ‘The State of the Union was just the same stuff BO has been saying for 3 years”.
Reply: Are the 10 Commandments obselete then?
(Especially nice when with surface non-sequitors. If they listen, the non-sequitor response framed in terms of the heart of their mental identity (religion) means they can’t help but at least examine it, subconsciously, letting the devious little meme in.
And if they aren’t listening, you’ve done the only thing really appropriate for such a dangerous waste of deluded space: made them an object of ridicule , preferrably in front of many open minded voters. Seriously, don’t hate them, pity them. Loudly. It tends to piss them off to the pt they become unacceptable to anyone but their fellow travelers.
Mary
But votes are what counts. I don’t want to end up feeling good and righteous with President Romney in the White House. Compromise is the way forward and always has been. It used to be that the parties agreed on a lot of core stuff and it was the fancy work on the edges where the disagreements lay. This is not true anymore because the Republican party has demonized the idea of compromise and the far left responds by demanding that Democrats become more like the Republicans. You can’t move forward by taking an intransigent position in opposition to the other side’s intransigent position. You more forward by finding a place that allows the other side to find a reason to agree.
Patrick ONeill
Let’s see this week they are:
Protesting JC Pennys because they have Ellen as a spokesperson
Boycotting Starbucks
Boycotting Fucking GIRL SCOUT COOKIES
as Barney Frank says “We may not be perfect, but they are crazy”.
rootless_e
@FollowtheDough: Custerism. I fail to understand its appeal, but one cannot deny that it calls out to america’s progressives like a cliff’s edge calls out to Disney’s lemmings.
Another Halocene Human
A rather large portion of Dems should be Primaried hard, won’t be and “you” won’t go there is why they won’t.
You liar. A bunch of Dems DID get primaried in 2010 and a bunch that didn’t quit before they could get primaried. In the last 30 years there have never been less moderate Republicans and less conservative Democrats on the national level than RIGHT NOW.
You know what Democrats and all right-thinking people need to do this year? G.O.T.V.
Second priority: get involved in the districting process–assuming you can. In Florida, you can fucking well forget about it. I’m proud of my county, though… we showed Gaetz (pronounced “Gates”) the finger all right. Thousands of people crammed in a room delivering blistering public comment on his Potemkin public process. (No maps until AFTER the deadline to run for office! *waves hand* Forget what the US Constitution says about guaranteeing a democratic form of government. States’ rights! States’ rights!) Gaetz even embarrassingly cut off one of MLK’s children who had come up to speak. (The few ‘wingers who came to the mike were allowed to ramble off topic, however.)
Another Halocene Human
27% of Illinois voted for Alan Keyes! How in the fuck do you persuade someone willing to vote for Alan Keyes?
Well, he did jump in the mosh pit at Michael Moore’s urging.
Jordon Caccavalla
Mr. Cole,
I do hope somehow you see this. I am a republican and frankly find you’re accusations to be hateful and over emotional. The organizations that most members of the GOP would like to see gone are NOT America, they have been set forth with many other rules regulations and organizations to tear apart the fabric of what made this country great. Our country is facing great peril mainly it seems in part to whats been going on between government and private sector and yet people like yourself seem to only feel the need to promote the bifurcation that has been set in motion to blind us from the real problem. Grow up, get a grip and asses reality, I for one want to live my own damn life, not have to support the others around me who do not value a damned thing because its all done for them just as soon as they stop trying. I don’t want to pay into a system that has broken our country, I want my liberty. Democrat or Republican, social and economic liberty is what I want my children’s children to see in the great country of this USA.
Sincerely,
Jordon Caccavalla
polyorchnid octopunch
@Michael: Interestingly enough, 80% of the population of the US lives in urban areas. So… one would expect them to receive app. 80% of federal monies.
So what’s your point? Oh, wait, I know… it’s to try and use statistics misleadingly. Right.
Oh, and Calvinism still sucks. You should maybe find out what it is, and it’s history. Here’s a clue for you about that… when John Calvin was in charge of Geneva in the sixteenth century, it became known as the Reign of Terror and he and his co-religionists killed thousands.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Jordon Caccavalla: Yep, the US faces great peril. Mostly from people like you.
Privatize the Profits! Socialize the Costs"
“Private sector”— you mean the corporate takeover of our govt?
You mean those very same corporations that fund the GOP?
You mean the big Wall Street banks that trashed the economy, throwing millions out of work, and now are demanding “austerity” for the poor… while they got a secret sixteen TRILLION bailout from the US Fed?
If so, you are my kind of Republican, buddy!
I notice you didn’t argue with the “hate” list up at the top of the post…
…but more importantly, why don’t you google the words “secret sixteen trillion dollar bailout” if you think I’m making that up?
Harlock the Bard
@Samara Morgan:
“America is 70% self-declared christian. 50% of americans are conservative or conservative leaning. The 20% of americans that are non-republican, non-conservative christians ARE A MINORITY.”
Umm…you really need to learn more about statistics and/or Venn diagrams. That there is some overlap between the groups “self-declared Christian” and “conservative or conservative leaning” is patently obvious. But for your statement to be true, “conservative or conservative leaning” would have to be a subset of “self-declared Christian.” Theoretically, the group “self-declared Christian” could consist of the 50% who make up the set “neither conservative nor conservative leaning” with the remaining 20% pulled from the “conservative or conservative leaning” group. Unlikely, I will grant you, but it’s just as unlikely that every last member of the “conservative or conservative leaning” group was also a member of the “self-declared Christian” group. After all, I can think of few sects LESS likely to identify themselves as “liberal” than the Hasidim (or possibly the Ashkenazi, although I’m not sure they qualify as a “sect” per se…).
And that’s assuming that I agree with your (unsourced) contention that 50% of Americans identify as “conservative or conservative leaning” in the first place. There are just so many questions left unanswered by your lack of attribution. For instance: was this a four-point scale, then, that nobody identified as “independent/don’t know?” What was the sample size? How was the sample generated? If it WAS a four-point scale, what was the split between “conservative” and “conservative leaning?” Or for that matter, the split between “liberal” and “liberal leaning?”
Michael
@Citizen Alan: @Jordon Caccavalla:
Jordan, you’re exactly right. The interesting thing about it is that most liberals and conservatives agree on 80% of real life. We want the same things for our fellow citizens – good health, economic opportunity, individual freedom, educational opportunity, security in our homes and persons and so on. And when we raise our children, we teach them similar things – to work hard, to respect our friends and neighbors, to learn self-discipline and self-reliance, to set aside for a rainy day, to give help and assistance to those around us who need it, to get a good education, to practice forbearance, to develop strong relationships and practice the virtue of loyalty to our friends and loved ones, and on and on. Why? Because we all know that those things will bring great rewards and benefits to our children as they go through life. Those are the same things that our culture should be encouraging in the public policy that it adopts through its political processes. Those things are the traditional values of the American culture.
Then we come here and discover that liberals suspect conservatives of abusing their own children and hating everyone who doesn’t agree with them. What I suspect is that the 10% on the hard left and the 10% on the hard right do hate, but it’s not real adversaries that they hate. It’s the caricatures of their adversaries, the caricatures which are created by leaders of the hard left and hard right. John Cole himself has just added his own caricature of conservatives with the rant above and his absurd list of reasons that “They Fucking Hate You”. Plainly, it’s just silly.
Michael
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: Hold your horses. The original post that I responded to was claiming that the blue states support the red states. The clear implication is that liberals/democrats are paying to subsidize conservatives/republicans. I simply challenged that interpretation. Since blue states contain plenty of conservatives/republicans and red states contain plenty of liberal/democrats, it’s simplistic in the extreme to draw the conclusion that the original poster and people like Ezra Klein have tried to push. A proper analysis would determine the voting patterns of those who disproportionately pay in and those who disproportionately take out. The only thing I’ve seen along those lines was the one list that I found a couple of years ago and which I described. I spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon searching in vain for it – can’t seem to come up with the correct set of search terms – but I stand by the summary that I gave yesterday. It took me two or three hours at the time to go through the entire list of 100, then look up their most recent presidential vote, D or R. And the pattern was overwhelming, something like 80% D.
At any rate, I’m not gonna spend any more time on it. Someone else may have better luck with finding the list. It was definitely the top 100 cities or counties in the US in terms of federal welfare per capita. And the list that I used was in some fairly progressive publication, I think Mother Jones. The voting was from citydata.com.
SFAW
Shorter Michael @ 266 and 267:
1) Concern troll is concerned
2) I didn’t actually say what I actually said
3) There be persons of different political persuasions in every state
4) I read some stuff somewhere on the Innertubez, and I can’t find it right now, but trust me when I say I’m repeating it accurately. Or not.
5) I can’t refute Cole’s list, other than to call it “absurd”
SFAW
Shorter Jordon C:
I can’t really put forth a cogent and/or coherent argument, so I’ll just spout some useless talking points, sprinkled with some Mom-and-apple-pie-isms.
Michael
@SFAW: Items 1-4 dealing with the “red state/blue state” issue – I made my point and you can accept it or reject it as you choose. It’s no matter to me. But if you want to visit that topic further, there is quite a thread on it here: https://balloon-juice.com/2010/04/11/welfare-states/ Several contributors made similar observations about the oversimplification of that analysis. Don’t forget, it’s up to you to maintain the facade of liberals’ superior analytical skills and so forth.
On item 5, there’s not a single item in Cole’s list that I agree with and I’m quite conservative. Apparently there are a lot of liberals here who share in his distorted view of conservatives like myself. That doesn’t make that view any more accurate, though.
It appears from the previous items that you in particular are more interested in simple answers and trading insults than in dialog or in finding out what a conservative actually believes. That’s your privilege, but it’s not productive. Name-calling is childish and doesn’t advance one’s arguments.
Jennifer Harris
Ha ha, Obama loves Jesus, hates gays, engages in torture by rendition, assassinates without a warrant, led us into an additional war and is a millionaire. So it’s not just “conservatives.”
SFAW
You made your point – such as it was – and somehow neglected to “find” any of the alleged “data” you claim supported your point.
No, it’s up to you to show that “conservatives” are (A) superior in every way to liberals, and (B) prove that you can actually parse the “data” that you can’t be bothered to find.
Which is not especially surprising, because at least one study/poll has shown that a lot of self-described conservatives actually support policies best described as “liberal” or “progressive”. I attribute that to the decades-long demonization of Llllllllliberals by the Rethugs and other right-wingers. Sorta like calling oneself an “agnostic” because calling oneself “atheist” is anathema in this country.
No, I’m actually more interested in calling bullshit on commenters who, as Shakespeare or someone else said, “make shit up”. That would be you. And as far as dialogue with conservatives: that was tried for many years. The conservatives – or at least the ones attempting to make policy for the country – showed, time and again, that the only “dialogue” they want is one where liberals (or progs) say “Whatever you guys want is fine with us”. To your brethren, “compromise” seems to mean “give us everything we want NOW, and maybe later we’ll let you think you’re going to get something you want”. If the liberals pulled one-tenth of the bullshit that the Rethugs have pulled in the last 10/20/30 years, the shrieks from Rethugs would reach the heavens.
Michael
To clarify: Cole gave a laundry list of things, groups, etc that he/liberals respect and says that conservatives hate him/you/liberals because of that respect. But there’s not a single item there that I don’t respect as well.
THAT is what makes the list absurd and silly. I’m perfectly willing to discuss any of them if anyone is interested in the dialog.
SFAW
Re: Michael @ 270
Oh, and in case it wasn’t clear: of the two of us, I am the only one who has posted any kind of link leading to data which can be scrutinized. You have had multiple opportunities to do so, and have responded with …
the equivalent of “my dog ate my link”, and “it’s the finest link shop in the district (because it’s so clean, of course)”.
So, until you can provide the “data” which you allege exist, your whinings will get made fun of.
SFAW
As I hinted at a few minutes ago, maybe you’re not really a conservative after all, just call yourself one.
Michael
@SFAW:
That’s correct. You can accept the most simple-minded analysis or you can think a little more deeply about it. That choice is yours. But it doesn’t take much thought at all to figure out that treating red states and blue states as homogeneous blocks isn’t accurate.
First of all, I didn’t say that conservatives are “superior in every way to liberals”, did I? It’s difficult enough to carry on a dialog without making stuff up out of thin air. I don’t think conservatives are superior in every way. And (B), I did give specific ways in which the oversimplified interpretation of the red state/blue state phenomenon is misleading.
I’m not following that line of thought. Help me here. And I assume if someone calls himself an agnostic, it’s because he is one. I’m not. I’m a devout atheist.
You’re mistaken. I haven’t made anything up. I simply can’t find an article that I read two years ago. I’m sure I’m not the first person who’s had difficulty finding something on the internet that they read two years ago. That isn’t the same thing as “making shit up.”
Clearly, you should never, ever talk to any conservative anywhere on earth ever again in your life. Good luck with that.
Michael
@SFAW:
In the measured exercise of your brilliance, you should have noticed by now that I haven’t said anything else about that article, right? Absent that bit of data, I chose to approach it from a different angle, pointing out that the implication of the original poster was simplistic. And I offered a link to a thread here which had a number of posts about that as well. I suggest that you might want to look at it if your interest is in that subject. If you’re simply wanting to toss insults, that won’t be of much use to you, I suppose. But perhaps others might find it interesting or illuminating.
You’re mistaken again. Pretty consistent, that.
But yeah, I’m a real conservative alright.
SFAW
Michael –
Once again, your attempts at misdirection, and of denying your own words, fall short.
There is not enough time to correct every single misstatement, misconception, and willfully-ignorant comment of yours.
But, please, I beg of you, please Please PLEASE!!! stop with the “I read it two years ago and trust me that I’m telling you the truth!!!” bullshit, OK? That’s on a par with the “Not me” installments of “The Family Circus”. You insult my/our intelligence when you do that. Either spend the time to produce a link to the alleged “data”, or STFU about it.
Michael
@SFAW:
I did that a long time ago but you were too wound up to notice. Look, I’m a really nice guy, very amiable and congenial, all in all, and you keep whacking away at me for some reason. Wouldn’t it be more productive to explore that notion of false caricatures that I brought up, a comment on the original topic of this thread, BTW?
jummy
i guess the take-away from this is that john cole was a “wingnut” for most of his life because of his “fucking hate” for black people, gays and women and wanted them and liberals destroyed, but he’s all better now that he’s displaced this hate onto “wingnuts”.
James
You’re one to talk about hate! You made a blog out of hate. So you don’t agree with conservative principles that have been around forever, that founded this country. So that means they hate everyone? Go look in the mirror. Read some conservative blogs and see how many of them have multiple categories called “assholes,” and regularly insult and call for the demise of various people. You are the party of hate. You hate anyone who doesn’t agree with you. And you think it’s everyone else that hates. So out of touch it’s amazing you can make it through a day on your own.
Sarah
This is basic Balance Theory. (google it). Why are people stupid?
Michael
It looks a LOT like projection.
Keori
Having been the target of property vandalism, stalking, and “corrective” rape and death threats from conservatives for years (I’m a GLBTQ equality activist, among other cardinal sins), I can only agree with everything John has said here. No one hates so mindlessly and violently like a conservative.
I’m past sick and tired of well-meaning, clueless, insulated white liberals advocating for “civility” in political discourse and pleading with everyone to just “get along.” It’s impossible to have civility when one side just wants the other dead.
Bob
@Nicole: When you find an answer on how to get these people to wake up and smell the burnt toast, you’ll be the most sought after pundit on the tv circuit.
jummy
when i was a conservative activist, i was subjected to vandalism, stalking and death threats by progressives, and my activism was neither long-standing nor very effective.
i wasn’t subjected to “‘corrective’ rape”. not sure what that is. perhaps you can explain exactly what happened, but it sounds to me like some form of acquaintance rape, partially coercive, partially not, by someone who was known and close to you, and who was not, i’m willing to bet considering the context of the “glbt activist” identity you advertise here, any way shape or form of “conservative”.
Keori
“Jummy”: Use the Google, genius.
Michael
I kinda doubt that Keori was the target of conservatives. There’s no doubt that there are whackos on both sides of the political spectrum, but I don’t recall anything in conservative or liberal political philosophy that calls for physical abuse or aggression against political adversaries. I think there are jerks and assholes on both sides. But the focus of this thread is what the predominant membership of one political orientation thinks. John says that they (or “we” in my case) hate people because of [a list of people and ideas] that those people respect. Sorry, but John has become exactly what he’s condemning, and then a bunch of others have jumped on his band wagon. He’s created a flamboyantly inaccurate caricature of conservatives and then attributed attitudes to them. This whole process of his is bullshit. And then a bunch of people grabbed onto his bullshit and affirmed it, proving nothing except that there are a LOT of suckers out there browsing the internet and not with the ability to thing very well. And it’s important to remember, “If you don’t think well, don’t think a lot.”
Robert
They hate what see in the mirror. The election of BHO was a simple choice many months ago for many people following the example that Bush’s persecution of two wars, Katrina, etc ending with the collapse and bailout of capitalism. I’d like to give Bush credit for wall street collapsing but that would be giving him credit as an evil genius. When they look at Obama, the hatriots see the failure of their ideology across so many issues. His existence provides painful introspection that conservatives do not like to do. He reminds them they failed, their free market failed, their patriotism is bankrupting the nation, their God abandoned them. The problem can only be solved,in their eyes, if he is defeated at the polls. They are angry customers who would pay any price to do so even if it costs 3 times as much to do so. They are adult children so tell them this. “You know if conservative ideals and policies about national security, deregulation and praying to Jesus had really worked then McCain Palin should by your standards be in the White house. Our budget should be balanced. 911 should never have happened and the stock market should be at 30,000, and we should be an full employment. But that’s not how history unfolded, now did it?”
Brightshadow
@Napoleon:
In re: The Clinton impeachment. You’re quite right.
There were then – there are now – people who think it had anything at all to do with sex.
gex
Super late, but I might just win the right-wing hatred bingo game. Female, check. Brown, check. Gay, hell yeah. Atheist, ding ding ding! We have the perfect storm. I think I’ll be the first against the wall in the Santorum administration.
JWnTX
No, we fucking hate you because you listen to tin foil hatters like this loon and believe him. You’re a moron. You’re sheep who believe the very worst about your fellow Americans. You’re manipulated by this shit that appeals only to your emotions and fear. Part of me is sad–the other part is pissed as hell at idiots like this who are so desperate to advance their political agenda that they’re willing to tear the country apart. Screw you Cole.
permazorch
@JWnTX
I can’t help but believe the worst of people who think it’s okay to invade a nation for no reason; who think it’s okay to torture.
There are reasons Bush 2 was compared to Hitler.