I wrote here about helping with a campaign to pass a public school bond issue.
This is a majority Republican town, and this is the first time I’ve worked with the same group of people we usually work against in elections. I think The Committee for the school levy is made up almost entirely of Republicans because the leader of the effort is an executive at a manufacturer here and he’s a Republican donor, voter and GOP Party person. His employer has given him as much company time on this as he needs because it’s a genuinely local company, they’re privately held and they believe the school issue is important to their ability to attract sales people and managers. The (now-retired) CEO of this company asked the school board to request an evaluation by the state public school facilities commission on the feasibility of renovating versus replacing our schools in 2009 and the state came back with all but the high school as “replace” so that drove their decision to head up a new school building campaign rather than a renovation.
We meet in the company conference room. It’s nice to have this big local employer behind something I support (for once) with all these fabulous resources. I could get used to it. I now understand the lure of wing nut welfare.
I’m finding that the Republicans involved in the campaign bring up the fact that I’m a Democrat a lot more than is strictly necessary. I’m not clear why this is. My sense is it’s to let me know that while we may be working together on this there will be no concessions as far as Conservative Principles. After they tell me I’m a Democrat they bring up the Kasich tax cuts. I think they keep hitting on this with me to let me know that while they’re for this particular tax increase, they’re still solidly in the “job creators get huge income tax cuts so as to grow the economy” camp. Their argument is that Kasich cut income taxes so therefore people should support increased property taxes for schools. It’s a wash!
I don’t agree with it as a practical matter and I also think it’s a lousy campaign tactic. This is a school district where 40% of the kids qualify for free or reduced lunch. Income tax isn’t a huge issue for the younger, lower income “sporadic voter” parents we need to reach if we want a winning turnout, although it’s clearly a huge issue for the Republicans on The Committee. The fact is Kasich’s income tax cut won’t benefit those families at all and Kasich increased sales taxes, so the parents I hope to reach will pay more taxes, not less. In addition, we have lost 1.6 million a year in state operating funding for our public school system under the Fox News personality-turned-governor. Despite my concerns, they’re in love with this “it’s a wash!” idea, so hopefully it flies with higher-income Republicans like them because they’re not budging.
Although I think their tax argument is dumb and based more on partisan fervor than facts or voter demographics or persuasiveness, I don’t hate all of their campaign ideas. One thing they’re saying that appeals to me is that the schools we use now were built beginning in 1917, someone paid for them, and it wasn’t the people who use the schools now. “It’s Our Turn” is the slogan.
One thing I hate about modern conservatism is what I see as the dead-beat, moocher nature of the Republican approach to replacing or maintaining public assets. I’m baffled by people who rely on a public asset like a public school (or park or swimming pool or road or library) yet seem to believe those things spring from the ground spontaneously the day they arrive and then disappear the moment they personally and individually no longer need a 2nd grade classroom or a walk in a park or a swim or a route to work or a library book. I like this slogan. Harkening back to citizens of yore is also a good approach because local history is a hobby here. The newspaper does a monthly feature with photos from the Olden Days and there is a section of the public library devoted to town history.
I asked for suggestions on the campaign in the last post and The Committee picked up one of the suggestions I made (given to me by a commenter here) that goes to the It’s Our Turn idea, and it’s this:
scav says:
August 9, 2013 at 12:23 pm
Is there anything interesting to be gained from looking into, publishing past efforts the community made into building schools? When was the first one built, how many since, old photos of ground-breakings, graduations, etc. Schools did provide built foci for communities etc and emphasizing that historical and ongoing effort might help with some people. Might pull one or a few short priming newspaper articles out of it. An effort, a commitment rooted in the past and builing toward the future, that sort of thing. Dick and Jane through the periods and generations?
It’s about to get weirder because I’ll be working on GOTV with the woman who was the local volunteer lead for Romney’s campaign. I meet with her next week. I know her (slightly) and she’s a bona fide wing nut, so we’ll see how that goes.
Cacti
Speaking of Republicans:
Poverty in New Jersey has hit a 52-year high under Chris Christie.
Christie 2016!
Davis X. Machina
It’s an article of GOP faith, and one famously articulated by Thatcher, that there is no such thing as a ‘public’ — it’s a surd, an empty term, devoid of meaning. You can’t have ‘a public good’. Such a thing can’t exist, so it doesn’t exist.
Private property. atomistic individualism, and zero-sum competition. That is all there is. This is the holy trinity of the state religion.
All that is, can be bought and sold, and owned.
That which cannot be bought or sold or owned, is not.
Everything that can be bought, or sold, or owned, must be bought, or sold, or owned, in order to come to be.
Botsplainer
@Cacti:
Clearly, its the Negro’s fault.
Villago Delenda Est
These people, Kay, are just waiting to be tossed into the wilderness by teabaggers who believe as firmly about ideological purity as Andropov did.
Botsplainer
Southwest Ohio from Cincinnati to Dayton.
WereBear
How utterly fascinating.
Reminds me of when I was growing into my teen years in a Southern Christian Church and saw how HUGE the double standard was in actual practice.
For instance, women were supposed to stay home with children but if they had to work to feed those children it was okay as long as it was low paying, but anything requiring actual expertise which paid well was a “career” and now she was flirting with actual sins.
It was wrong to drink at all so everyone did it and hid it instead of enjoying a few in a social situation.
Divorce was wrong and so was adultery so a great many lurked and cheated and then drank because they were still so miserable.
Just reminds me of how wingnuts know exactly how everything is supposed to work and the fact that we don’t do it that way is a liberal conspiracy instead of the point that it, you know, doesn’t work.
Good luck, Kay!
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
I actually get along with the company guy. I think his thing is just to win. He’s taking this very seriously and seems up-front invested in winning, which is not how Democrats act here. Democrats here spend a lot of time insisting we will lose, to the point where I don’t think they even (always) believe it, they are just making sure they’re on record in case we lose, that they “called” it. Anyway, it’s a little different.
Baud
@Kay:
You’ve hit the nail on the head of one characteristic of Democrats I can’t stand.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
I object on behalf of Yuri Andropov, the first reformer the Kremlin saw after twenty years of Brezhnev stagnation and the man who elevated Gorbachev to high office in the first place.
(Though of course, I also denounce Stalin and broccoli).
Donut
Thanks for this post, Kay. The disconnect between the common good and how we pay for that many GOP voters currently harbor never ceases to amaze me. I admittedly live in total bubble: blue state, blue county, blue congressional district, in an overwhelmingly Democratic ward of an overwhelmingly Democratic city. Most of my neighbors are privileged and place high value on education. We have no problems, relatively speaking, getting funding mechanisms passed for ours schools’ upkeep. We just did a huge remodel of my kid’s elementary school last year, and the local middle school got a facelift this year. We have it so easy by comparison.
Anyway, the real takeway I am kind of getting from this how much the semantics matter when we are trying to convince our GOP counterparts to make public investments. Maybe you’ll come out of this with even better understanding of how to be persuasive. I doubt most Republicans will have a “John Cole” moment, and completely flip, but maybe they are persuadable on some issues.
hoodie
Unfortunately, there’s nothing particularly baffling about it. As JK Galbraith said:
As you say, they’re only interested in the school bond because of a perceived need to attract sales and management people using the schools. If you’ve got a 40% F&R population, I imagine your system is still probably viewed as “good” by the local GOP-leaning populace, especially if there is geographic segregation of that population and you don’t have a lot of private schools available. Hope you succeed, because it can become a pernicious positive feedback scenario when the balance tips. The schools start to be perceived as bad and disinvestment accelerates.
c u n d gulag
Obviously, there’s a WIFM, here – instead of a NIMBY.
When there’s something Conservatives see that’s in it for them and theirs, it’s acceptable – and they may even help to pay for it, because they see an ROI.
When they see nothing in for them and theirs, then it can’t happen in their back yard – ESPECIALLY, if the Liberals are for it!!!!!
Roger Moore
If there’s an important local businessman who says the measure is necessary so his business can remain competitive, I’d make a big deal out of it. If you can find a few of his Chamber of Commerce buddies who agree, get them into it, too. My gut feeling is that you should sell the measure based on the need for new schools, with all the stuff about paying for it as a counter-argument to the people who will complain about raising taxes. Focus on the positive, minimize the negative.
Keith P
I like to refer to Kasich as “Governer Badhair” to go with “Governer Goodhair” Rick Perry and “Governer No-hair” Rick Scott.
Donut
WordPress is really freakin sucky on any device running iOS
Chris
@WereBear:
That’s something about conservatives and especially the religious kind that I find endlessly fascinating – the double life/double standards that rule everything.
I dabbled in the local fundiegelical movement on campus and one of the things I’ll always remember is that so many of the members did the same things any college student would do – including drinking, sex, drunk driving, whatever – and were perfectly comfortable discussing it in small group, but it was all with a wink and a nod and a “don’t tell the pastor” understanding. (Not everyone in the congregation felt the same way, but they tended to be in the other group).
From that I figured that a huge chunk of the congregants in any fundiegelical church are there for the identity and the community, but don’t actually give a shit about the beliefs.
gbear
@Cacti: I read that article and then started reading the comments. Jesus. Big mistake. I know better than to do that, but I thought I’d just sneak a peek.
Kay
@Baud:
“Don’t get complacent!” if you say anything even mildly positive is one aspect. I think that comes from thinking people are motivated by fear and of course some are, but I suspect if you’re at “fear” you’re going to lose.
I’m not sure I believe in it at all. After the 2004 Prez election I saw a cartoon where the caption was “I didn’t vote hard enough.” That pretty much says it for me. I don’t know what to do with that, or whether it matters.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
He’s great. He’s retired but he’s now the chairman(?) something like that. He came to two of the meetings. It’s a good company, too. They’re union in the plant and they’re good jobs. They haven’t had even a lay-off in years.
TAPX486
Sounds about right. It all depends on whose ox is being gored. About 12-15 years ago my brother-in-law, a dyed in the wool rightwing Reagan loving anti-tax and spend republican suddenly saw the need for a property tax increase when the budget shortfall threatened his kids school district. So he helped lead a campaign to raise the taxes of all his neighbors, whither they kids in the district or not, because education is important. Nothing much about his worldview has changed in the past years as he is firmly opposed to big government spending esp. that socialist Obamacare while he lives on his military pension and gets his medical care paid for by TRICARE. (sigh)
Davis X. Machina
@Kay: Somewhere there’s a B-school grad in the pay of a private equity firm, going over that guy’s company’s financials, planning the asset-stripping, the spin-offs, the off-shoring and the shut-down.
And he or she is absolutely convinced what they’re doing will redound for the greater good.
WereBear
A lot of them were born into it and have no choice or perspective. And the ones who wink and nod are actually healthier, IMHO, because one of the problems with Christian fundamentalism is that it dictates strict adherence to a life no one is able to live.
For instance, as presently constituted, dating is discouraged, divorce is forbidden, and birth control is wrong. Imagine having lots of children with the first person you went out with in high school.
Imagine being happy in that scenario.
Ahh says fywp
@WereBear: That sinful career thing reminds me of the perverse modern Catholic notion that one night stands are preferable to a secure, loving relationship if that relationship wasn’t sanctioned by the church. Jesus never heard of ‘living in sin’ but to hear them talk…
Wow, how cruel to a family to deny a good paying job and job satisfaction over some industrial era sexist nonsense.
Jeremy
@Kay: Do you think the Dems have a good chance in the state elections in 2014 ? I saw a poll a few weeks ago from PPP showing Kasich struggling against his Democratic challenger.
Ahh says fywp
@TAPX486: It’s typical. His empathy ends at the castle walls.
Wingnut followers are driven by fear (leaders by love of power or the need for narcissistic supply) and fear has a way of shutting that whole empathy thing down
Villago Delenda Est
@TAPX486:
This, right here, is what infuriates me the most. People who rely on government benefits (to which they are entitled, btw) bemoaning “wasteful” government spending, which means spending on people who are not like them. Martin Niemöller was talking about guys like this.
WereBear
@Ahh says fywp: Nothing makes my blood boil more than the Catholic notion that women are supposed to stay in an bad marriage and “reform” the husband because marriage is sacred.
Except those who can afford it get their marriages annulled and go on to marry again. In the Church.
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear:
So now I”m praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive
‘Cause if I have to spend another minute with you I don’t think that I can really survive
I’ll never break my promise or forget my vow
But God only knows what I could do right now
I’m praying for the end of time that’s all that I can do
Praying for the end of time so I can end my time with you
MattF
You might sneak in the phrase ‘enlightened self-interest’. Used to be a conservative byword.
Kay
@Jeremy:
We had FitzGerald (the challenger) come out about a month ago and we had a meet up in a park where he spoke. They invited 50 and they got 40 (I did not plan it or do the work) which is a good turnout.
They were all telling me “you will like him” (I don’t know why ME, specifically) and I was actually pretty impressed. He did a good job. He’s really aggressive and has a lot of energy.
He looks impossibly young, although he’s mid forties with 4 kids. His campaign was flogging that PPP poll hard, because of course it’s great for him more than a year out. For THIS county, right now, I think it matters if they move on Right To Work. Kasich doesn’t want to, for just that reason, but one of them in the legislature couldn’t help threatening private sector unions last week, so let’s hope they keep bullying people.
IowaOldLady
Great post, Kay. You Democrat, you!
Roger Moore
@Chris:
I get the impression that even the hardcore fundies aren’t any better at following their rules than the rest of us are, and that the ones who are loudest in public about the importance of following a particular rule are often the ones most guilty of breaking it. I never really got that, until I decided that they think that public fealty to the rules is more important than actual observance. We’re all sinners, so there’s no real difference between somebody who sins a little and somebody who sins a lot. The big difference is your attitude toward sin. You can be forgiven for just about anything as long as you acknowledge that you’re a sinner. The worst thing you can do is act as if what you’re doing is not sinful, since that’s putting yourself above the rules. Because of that, they have a tendency to preach most vigorously against the sins they are guilty of themselves, even though that makes them look hypocritical to outsiders.
The Original Raven
um…I think this is a campaign headed for self-destruction. Sure you want to be involved?
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
It ain’t just in your neck of the woods, Kay. Think of any important issue for liberals and lefties. Think of the worst possible outcome. Then think of how the blogosphere lines up. It’ll be a spectrum that runs from “total disaster” to “worst disaster ever.” Everyone loves to predict disaster, and they will continue to predict disaster the next time even if their prediction for disaster fails this time. It’s become a way to show you’re a hard-bitten world-weary cynic and not a starry-eyed Pollyanna, and it creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop of defeatism.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: There’s some sense to this somewhere but it’s lost under setting up rules that aren’t really reasonable, bullying those who are most sincere in the ugliest way, and using the framework as a cudgel to bully others, which of course feels really good, and oddly (not really) never being called on that (deadly sin of pride, perhaps?).
The Authoritarians touches on these same issues–saying all the right things causes Authoritarian followers to trust you, whereas people who are not ruled by their amygdalas find your actions a little more … salient.
One problem with relying so much on profession and confession is that malingerers can say all the right things with the best of them (and, conversely, an innocent person will stubbornly refuse to recant!). In criminal justice, verbally accepting responsibility (“and pledging to sin no more!”) is no predictor of recidivism. We do have this totemistic notion that saying stuff and having epiphanies changes behavior but it really kinda doesn’t … witness the abject failure of 12-stepping.
I’m starting to feel more strongly about this b/c of my experiences with therapy. I’ve learned how to bounce back from depressive episodes, and it’s not a verbal, talk-yourself-through-it thing. It’s a sort of mixture of denial and just pushing through daily activities and just a lot of non-verbal stuff that my brain learned over time from doing this shit repeatedly.
The advice I would have is that talking by the depressed/suicidal/anxious person isn’t all that important. They just want to be heard/felt/validated. It’s another person reaching out a helping hand that’s important. Like with hoarders, if you really pay attention, just having someone there who establishes a relationship with them (like the cleaner–I’ve read Matt Paxton’s book, and he believes strongly in this, I think because he’s been there as an alcoholic and because it works) is more therapeutic than all the attempts to get them to gain insight into their behavior or to make them admit that they’re hurting their families and communities. (I do think the psychologists are pretty effective at helping hoarders break acquisition cycles by breaking apart and destroying all the irrational pieces, but since the root of the disease is the feeling of being rejected/betrayed/isolated, that alone doesn’t fix anything.)
It’s tough, of course. None of us want to waste our time caring for someone who just hurts us. Anti-social people are out there and sometimes they hide under a cloak of being helpful or helpless. But it is a little crazy to keep pushing “solutions” that don’t work and keep believing so strongly in this doctrine that just wastes everyone’s time and resources and often makes depressed/substance abusing/chronically ill people worse.
Another Holocene Human
@FlipYrWhig: So you’re saying there’s something to the “liberals won’t fight” meme and it’s not just an artifact of D pols and pundits getting their bread buttered by the corporatocracy and therefore not wishing to rock the boat and be, er, replaced?
Another Holocene Human
@WereBear:
I agree. I saw that in Catholicism too.
What I can’t stand are SBC types who sin and party hard in their 40s like they’re in fucking high school and seem to have complete arrested development in terms of how you treat other people, yet dress up every Sunday and lay snide, hostile glances at other parties at church… buncha fucking jerkwads.
Sin’s a relative term, of course, but in their case it means sleeping around (and lying about it), drinking too much (and being a jerk to service personnel), spending money that doesn’t belong to them or wasn’t intended for that purpose all so they can indulge in what the philosopher called “the pleasures of the pig.”
VidaLoca
Kay,
This is a very interesting post. Strange bedfellows indeed. I’m struck by a couple of things.
First of all, their arrogance — rubbing your nose in the fact that you are essentially the token progressive on the committee for the school levy is an assertion that the day after the bond issue is voted it will be back to a “business as usual” in which they rule as they see fit and you little people had better learn to accept it. It’s a way of marking their territory by pissing on you personally.
Second of all, this is all written in the first person singular. It’s all “I”, never “we”. Do you have any organization backing up your work on the levy committee that has a stake in this? I ask because you’ve mentioned in previous posts that you work a lot with the Democrats there and I note your comment that “Democrats here spend a lot of time insisting we will lose”. To me, that would be a really strong argument for ditching the Democrats and forming your own group. From everything I’ve ever read that you’ve written, you certainly have the leadership potential.
Why not pull some people together who can push back the next time you are getting pissed on?
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t know that I can function without a lot of gallows humor and defeatism :)
We all have our roles in groups, and mine is in response to that.
They told me they have 500 people identified who are enthusiastically “yes” which is really a very solid “base” (they need 3000 “yes” votes) so I said that and it just went around the room like wildfire. If I said that to Democrats here it would be “the HELL you say, it’s NOT good”.
I wouldn’t say it. It would just start a cycle of doom.
OTOH maybe they’re delusional, and it’s more Romneyesque where if you believe you’re a winner, you are.
Kay
@VidaLoca:
It’s fine. I’m really quite confident as the token. I don’t mind it at all. The fact is if it were just progressives we would lose. I had one of them come to the county Democratic meeting. Our county Democrats (those who show up to meetings) are heavily labor and they gave him a lot of shit for the Kasich-promoting. I honestly think he didn’t anticipate it but he knows now. It would matter to them that he came to “their place” and asked for support (they meet in a union hall), which is why I asked him.
The general plan is I reach the Democrats because we’ve canvassed here tons in 04,06,08, and 12 (it’s Ohio, and Democrats go bananas in Ohio) and the local R’s haven’t canvassed since Bush (04). I think “the Democrats” (generally) will support it if we can get them out. I hope so.
Chris
@WereBear:
Well, if this were Riyadh, I could understand that lifestyle, but… it’s not. This is America. It’s not as if their only two choices are “stay in the church and follow the rules” or “stay in the church and pretend to follow the rules in public while secretly breaking them with all your drinking buddies who’re doing the same thing.” If they know it’s bullshit, they can, you know, leave the church.
Certainly with the group I was talking about it would’ve been no skin off their nose – it was college, a fairly liberal college on the East Coast. It’s not like the church was filled with their parents and siblings and significant others and other people they didn’t want to let down. It’s not like the church was towering over society to the extent that leaving it would’ve meant severing all your social ties. It’s not like there weren’t plenty of other groups to join, other people to hang out with. I know. I went, attended for a while, decided it wasn’t my thing, left, and found other friends (one of the best of whom was a fellow soshulist who went through the same process at the same time). It’s no sweat.
I get the people who go fundiegelical because they sincerely believe there’s something there to try and live up to, but the people who think it’s bullshit (or at least have no intention of taking it seriously), who could easily leave any time they want, but who choose to stay anyway, I don’t get. Or rather, I have trouble coming up with an explanation for them that doesn’t entail “they’re kind of douchebags” at some point. Even if they do end up happier people than the True Believers.
TAPX486
@Villago Delenda Est: I have no objection to his pension or TRICARE. He was a 20 year Marine and he earned them. He had no problem if my wife, who had MS, received government help because she deserved it. He just objects to all those OTHERS!!!!
This always reminds me of the scene in My Fair Lady where the dust men is comparing the ‘deserving’ poor from the undeserving poor
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Well, and then again there’s that. That is pretty much orthodox evangelical teaching, although I’d take it even further – it’s simply a question of whether or not you’re in The Tribe, since only accepting Jesus (which in real-world terms means joining their church) can save you from your sins.
(Krugman pointed this out years ago in the outrage Republicans had over Clinton’s sins versus the lukewarm indifference with which they greeted Gingrich’s when he turned out to have done the same thing. It had nothing to do with “attitude toward sin” – Gingrich was in The Tribe, Clinton wasn’t).
Even within the community though the double standards are pretty huge, depending on the sin and the person who commits it. They may say we’re all sinners so how much you sin doesn’t matter, but in practice a homosexual would not have been treated the same way as, say, a divorcee. A woman divorcee, in turn, would not be treated the same way as a male divorcee. And whether or not it’s appropriate to rebuke a congregant for their sins varies based on the congregant’s status in the hierarchy… which all basically goes back to what WB was saying.
Al Swearengen
They bring up you being a Democrat all the time because being an immature peckerhead who just has to stink up every room with their noxious political farts is SOP on the political right these days. They’ve internalized 30 years of Limbaugh, Coulter, and Fox News, so having the emotional maturity of a snotty 12 year-old is the new norm.
There was a stupid meathead prick with a T-Shirt at the concert I went to last weekend with a shirt that simply said “Fuck Obama”. There were kids around. I felt like punching him until my hand broke.
kdaug
Dance, cowgirl. Got a family full of ’em. Don’t lose sight of the objective.
Kay
@Al Swearengen:
The Obama craziness has gone on so long at this point it’s just part of the scenery. My 11 year old had friends over yesterday and one of them apparently told him Obama tried to “take white people slaves” so they came crashing in from outside to settle the dispute by asking me. My 11 year old is a smart boy and so is (this) friend. I said “really? you believed that?” The friend told me “I said he TRIED” as if the plan failed, so we couldn’t call him out on it. No proof!
fuckwit
I participated in two school tax initiatives, the first one as the token progressive. It was driven by some true Galtian idiots, the real estate cabal that ran the town, who had for many years cowed the totebagger majority of the population into just being nice and going along. The Galtian’s strategy was classic Rethug voter supression: to run the tax campaign as a stealth campaign, and discourage likely “no” voters from voting. It failed spectacularly. I was involved only as a token, but while doing so I started privately pointing out to the more prominent NPR-listening totebaggers that voter suppression was both morally wrong and incompetent as a strategy. Well in the next few board meetings after the failed election, the Galtian real estate people were booted out of their position of influence. And over the next few elections, their representatives on the board got gradually replaced until, I’m told, none are left now (I don’t live there anymore but I hear from people there occasionally). The next school tax bond election was run as a proper campaign, in the open, with a lot more enthusiastic involvement from the progressives and more awarenes and leadership by a more emboldened totebagger contingent. It won by a narrow margin. In subsequent years, I’m told the school tax renewals have been a cakewalk and won by huge margins.
So, take heart, if this bond/tax fails due to incompetent leadership, make sure you are quietly pointing that likely outcome out to the people who are willing to listen, and do it privately. And be ready to step up to leadership if needed next time too. Next time will be different.
fuckwit
@Villago Delenda Est: My uncle is a Korean War Veteran, and also dirt poor. He has no money other than some SS and Veteran’s benefits. He has serious health issues, but is tough as nails. The VA hospital has been keeping him alive with very expensive surgeries and treatments, all of which cost him only the bus fare to get down there (he hasn’t been able afford a car in decades). Without the VA, he’d have been dead a decade or so ago. So what does he blather on about? How awful Obamacare is. I’ve had to pull him up short a couple times.
xian
@Roger Moore: fundamentalism has a built in forgiveness loop as long as you stay in the loop
Roger Moore
@Chris:
But I think that also has to do with the distinction between admitting to sin and acting as if something isn’t sin. If you admit to having gay sex, that’s something that’s forgivable, but wanting to live as an out of the closet gay is unforgivable because it’s challenging the idea that gay sex is a sin. That’s not to say that their rules aren’t abhorrent- the double standards, especially around sex are appalling- but there really is a thing about claiming to believe the rules being more important than actually following them.
rikyrah
Kay,
you rock. You are a good citizen. An involved, caring citizen.
Patricia Kayden
Kay, I have to bow down to you for being able to work with a group of Republicans. Good for you. Not sure if I could do that since I have little to nothing in common with them when it comes to principles. Good luck with that GOTV rightwinger.
FlipYrWhig
@Another Holocene Human: Nah, that’s not exactly what I mean. Plenty of liberals do fight: they organize, they work, they channel their anger, etc. But there’s a HUGE cohort of people with liberal/left politics who are POSITIVE that every setback is a disaster, every leader is incompetent, and all hope is misplaced. And I think those people find a perverse kind of validation in that mindset: it’s as though winning or even being hopeful is being a pawn or a patsy and being happy is always evidence of complacency. Take seriously the slogan “if you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention” and you’ve made it impossible to ever let go of your rage.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Botsplainer: Imagine how much luck I’m having trying to raise funds in this very geographic area, for a non-profit that helps unwashed deal with health issues that would never happen to job creators. All of which help is provided free of charge (and I’ve seen a couple of job creators at a program or two, but they aren’t exactly generous with their support).
To answer the question, not much. I’ve gotten more donations (beyond those corporate sponsorships that I personally finagled) from Balloon Juice and cashiers at my local Kroger than I have from Republicans I know. Thanks to all here who’ve been so generous.
Dead Ernest
Kay, interesting post (and I’ll add, it always makes me feel good to mention what a wonderful person you are.)
Can’t believe I’m the first to (whimsically) suggest the slogan be amended:
“It’s our turn because we did not build that“
The Original Raven
@fuckwit: this sounds like it could be one of those. Hope Kay makes it through and comes back for the sequel.
Kyle
I’m finding that the Republicans involved in the campaign bring up the fact that I’m a Democrat a lot more than is strictly necessary.
I find this with wingnut acquaintances and work colleagues on a regular basis. They have to constantly dig you with the fact that they’re the anointed good/saintly group (in their eyes) and you’re the scarlet-letter trash they sneer at along with Rush, but they are magnanimously lowering themselves to speak with you because they are so gracious.
I guess it’s easier to follow their diseased simpleton ideology when you dehumanize people into labels and tribes. To me it’s puerile bullshit that most of us left behind on a 5th grade playground.
debbie
Gotta love Ohio Republican thinking! This reminds of me of the rate increase AEP tried to push through late last year. Consumers’ bills would increase by 15% (and only consumers’ bills) and AEP would use the money to improve the infrastructure for their commercial customers, both current and future. Nothing about improving anything for us ordinary customers. The AEP rep actually said it was a win-win because it would ensure and strengthen “job creation.”
That phrase needs to be stricken from the language.
Eli Rabett
So what do you and the Dems you are going to canvass get out of this? These folk are bitch slapping you at every turn. Just stop showing up for a while.