Here I thought that this was going to be about support for the out of the closet liberal running for PotUSA.
I had my lesser of two evils speech all ready.
Oh fucking A. Just like every other election I’ve ever encountered. If you think this is as bad as it’s every gotten, then you are (as other posters have often suggested) living in some alternate reality that the rest of us do not share.
Oh, what a brave man, hiding behind the cover of others to make his point. If you think this election is like every other election, then you’re a clueless idiot — no matter what others say.
You were what…13? Didja march on Long Island with your mommy?
What the hell is the point of this thread anyway? Cause if it’s yet another attempt at showing how clever you are, it’s yet another flop on your face. Or is this the, “I’m completely non-partisan, look at me, look at me” shit again?
Well, for you, I’d say that it’s a place for blind maggots to crawl around in darkness and wonder what it’s all about. But for others, like Apos, Bienville, and so on, it’s a place to discuss erudite things — things that are none of your concern.
Aw, how cute…I must have hit a tender spot.
So Grandpa, how old were you in 1968?
OK, you’ve convinced me. I now no longer support lying and divisive Liberals. Happy?
Liberal, can you please offer some evidence that liberals (the real kind) dismiss the negative ramifications of the PATRIOT Act? 'Cause I have seen none of my fellow libs who doesn’t think it’s the first step on a very slippery stairwell towards the possible removal of our civil liberties and constitutional rights.
And as for:
Okay, so first you use one obscure definition of ‘liberal’ for your screenname, and now you find another to define Bush. Wouldn’t it be wiser, when conversing with the regular folks, to use the word’s widely accepted meaning? Or would that take away from your iconoclastic street cred? 
Puts me in mind of this famous bit from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass:
In any event, Bush and his administration/consultants are neither liberal nor conservative. They are best defined (politically) as neo-conservatives, aka jingoistic, hawkish empire-builders who spend money for military purposes like it’s going out of style, and who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about either social issues or the rights of other cultures to choose their own form of government. A bunch of them (James Baker, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, among others) are behind the creepy Project for a New American Century thinktank, which supports invading and “democritizing” just about every Middle East country except Israel, which they hold sacrosanct. (Not for love of Jews, mind you, although many of the earliest neocons were Jewish former liberals themselves.) This is also where Bush’s religious beliefs come into play. Research Christian Zionism to see why so many of the Religious Right looooove the neocon movement.
True conservatives should quake in their boots regarding Bush. And many do, to their credit. Blind loyalists do their beliefs no good, and their country even less.
“WONA”? “Principle”?
Stuff like this is seriously going to hurt your credibility.
Credibility? What credibility? He says shit like, “And you needn’t lecture me about 1968. I was there”, when he was only thirteen years old at the time.
What a silly little fraud.
Oh, bullshit. Since the 2000 election, liberals have done nothing but whine and lie about the man, every single chance they get, and the biggest lie they tell is that Bush lied.
It ain’t Bush that dropped the cleaver, dude. That fault lies squarely at the liberals’ doorstep.
I was there too, schmuck, in fact I worked for the Conservative Party of New York in 1968. (the NYC school strike gave me plenty of free time.) Lib is absolutely correct. People disagreed, strongly, but Richard Nixon, yes, Richard Nixon, did not besmirch Humphrey’s name. Even George Wallace ran a cleaner campaign than Bush is.
I disagree that Bush is a liberal, and I agree with you that Bush isn’t a conservative either. Bush has no consistent political philosophy that I can see. He’s driven by the winds of the special interests, his desire for power and revenge, and his religious conviction of divine inspiration. There are plenty of statists who aren’t liberals - Bush might claim not to be one, to appeal to conservatives, but it is obvious from the past four years that he is a statist through and through - with the dangerous addition of not wanting to respect any limits to the power of the state that he can dispense with.
“WONA”? You mean that someone actually uses the term “War of Northern Aggression” seriously? I thought that was a joke.
Well I’ve reached the point where I no longer give a fuck about his politics. The fact that he’s a pathological liar and probably a sociopath, who appears to be entirely incapable of sophisticated thought, is enough to scare the hell out of me. I can’t think of a single other president who was so entirely wrong for the job.
I’m very glad to hear that. Frankly, I probably shouldn’t form my impressions of modern liberals from some of the posts I see here. Your name invokes the familiarity of past kindness. I’m willing to take you at your word.
Perhaps. Then again, it might not hurt any of us to broaden our education and eradicate our ignorance about liberalism, its history, and its rich variety. Barring certain obvious exceptions, I am loathe to think of Dopers as just regular folks.
Excellent and compelling points. I believe that I was mistaken to characterize Bush even as a Rawlsian liberal.
Did you believe that the post I responded to deserved some sort of seriousness?
Actually, yes. My post seriously questioned whether you had lost all sense of perspective and/or had any background in U.S. history whatsoever. You made an unambiguous claim in your OP that the country had * never * been more polarized. I gave a few examples where the country had clearly been more polarized. I could give more. There were people who thought Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the devil incarnate – one of the most common phrases you find in his biographies on the web is that he was at once the most loved and most hated President. I’d call that “polarized”.
If you can’t even defend the first sentence of your OP, why should any of us give it or you any serious consideration? Your OP is a hysterical overstatement and your response to my post is an embarrassment.
FDR was the devil incarnate, who ruined everything accomplished by America’s greatest 20th century president, Herbert Hoover. Plus, I rebutted your examples. Though you will deny it, there is a difference between a division born of principle, and a division born of hate. There are, in fact, many differences, not the least of which is that people divided by principle may at least respect one another. Bush said plainly that whoever does not stand with him in his hegemonic quest stands against him. It is either or. It is patriot or traitor. It is Bush’s delusion versus the rest of the world. If you’ve seen this before, it was in China in the 1970s, or the Soviet Union in the 1930s, or France in the early 1800s.
That sure as hell looks like a plan to me. Where do I sign up, and which candidate has any shot in hell of winning in the next ten years?
“And you needn’t lecture me about 1968. I was there. Again, it was a separation born of ideology.” is not a rebuttal. At best, it’s a statement of opinion. For a guy who will devote pages to mathematical proofs on God’s existence, you have a mighty casual approach to debate.
Tell me how it was different. In 1968, people were protesting an unpopular war in which tens of thousands of US soldiers died. In 2004, people are protesting an unpopular war in which about a thousand US soldiers died. In 1968, one big issue was civil rights. In 2004, it’s gay marriage and civil rights. How is this not an ideological chasm? Tell me, if there are no principles involved in this election, then what’s the source of the hate? Did the President just wake up one day and say, “You know what would polarize the nation exactly 50%? Hate. Let’s do it.”?