Myspace of all places. Whoever runs my highschool alumni page has been blasting out anti-Obama bulletins for the last few days. I left a comment on the main page basically asking when it became a political blog and my comment was deleted and I was removed from the friends list. It’s not just him or her, either. Many of my friends have been posting anti-Obama glurge for the last few weeks and it’s really peaking yesterday and today. Finally, after biting my tongue all year, I posted this bulletin a couple minutes ago:
I grew up in the bible belt so I’m sure >50% of my friends list are McCain supporters, but I felt like this needed to be said.
Notes:
[1]I’ve been on Myspace since 2004 and have never once said anything political
[2]I have not seen one iota of anti-McCain glurge though I know a lot of my friends are strongly pro-Obama
I am very tired of that sort of stuff too. I don’t care if you like McCain, or Barr, or Nader, or anyone other than Obama. I respect everyone’s right to vote for who they want. But the unbelievable amount of blatant lies and misinformation being spread about Obama is pretty disgusting, really. Especially when you, like me, have encountered scores of people whose only arguments against Obama are:
he’s a muslim
he’s a terrorist
he is not a US citizen
he’s gonna raise everyone’s taxes a lot
he’s a socialist/communist/etc
and they don’t listen or care when you present stuff like Snopes links or at least somewhat less partisan links that debunk these things. All they seem to want to listen to is Huffpost, Drudge, Breitbart, National Review, Fox News etc. I haven’t personally encountered any Obama supporters that are this way. They don’t hate on McCain (they do on Palin, because she has done enough things to deserve criticism, most won’t argue that) they just say “I like Obama better, I trust him, I believe he will do his best” and they agree with his policy and vision. I’m not saying there are no Obama supporters that suck, I just have not met any, and I know and I’ve met a LOT of Obama supporters and talked to a lot of McCain/anti-Obama people too.
But I found trying to tell these people their main arguments are untrue is like slamming your head into a wall. They just don’t give a fuck.
I know exactly how you feel. Recently on Facebook I added my high school to my profile on the advice of someone who suggested that I do so, raving about how all the friends you lost touch with would suddenly turn up like magic. And so it happened, and all was well until election season… and suddenly everyone’s individual status is “Obama will destroy the Moral Fabric of this Country” [sic].
On second thought, I’d like to remember my erstwhile Boy Scout buddy as a gawky, shy, friendly teenager instead of a renovated Jesus Nazi. I guess some folks fade out of the picture for a reason.
I’ve been getting obnoxious anti-Obama spam all week from my Texas inlaws.
Look. I know your son was born in Texas. I know he avoids sharing his political views with you, so perhaps you can delude yourself about him. But what in the name of all that is holy makes you think this damnyankee Californian would vote for McCain? I was raised by two proud former hippies within spitting distance of NYC and now live in what might be the most left wing place in the country. Did you miss my atheist draft-dodging Dad and all the gay people at the wedding? Why would you think I was conservative?
They’re my inlaws. I can’t alienate them. Mostly I’m astonished by their level of denial. And I was counting down the days until it stopped.
God, I hope it stops. I suppose if it doesn’t then I can send some polite “let’s focus on unity” email. Ugh.
I had a debate with two of my friends tonight, the thing is, I’m generally Libertarian with a Left bend, and they’re pretty right. As such, I agree with them on a lot, but will very, very easily give ground if someone makes a good enough point or something isn’t working (hence why I voted for Obama and I have a left bend, mostly on economy). We usually argue a lot over this stuff and it’s kinda nice, I make a point, they make a point, one of us concedes and moves on. I don’t know if one of my friends was drunk* but he was:
Thinking McCain could pull an overnight victory a la Barack with VA (remember how it looked McCain and then at the last second switched over at 97% precinct?) with almost every state.
Calling Obama a Muslim and a Socialist, which he never even hinted at believing before.
After I beat him on those (which he finally conceded, kinda), I worked on convincing him to be realistic about Obama’s victory, because denying it won’t get him anywhere. And attempted to show that Obama and McCain really weren’t all THAT different to comfort him, addinga little smiley at the end. And I said “just to show the world hasn’t ended.”
He says “It hasn’t, in Canada.”
I tell him how pretty much the ENTIRE FUCKING REST of the West IS socialist, and how we’re right of their conservatives for the most part.
I get this, which made me feel a little ill, because I had no idea (and this is copy+ paste):
:eek:
Another one of my friends (this one I knew was a bit racist, but I thought in a small enough quantity to overlook) went on a tirade about how the Black Panthers are considered to have been a “Black interest group” where as the KKK is “unfairly demonized for doing the same thing.” Which may have an interesting basis for debate buried somewhere in there, but the mere fact that he managed to apply this to Obama winning stymied me a little.
Fun fact: Friend A once called Friend B’s brother a racist bastard for saying Lando Calrissian wasn’t black because he had a job. I thought he was joking about that exchange even happening… now I’m certain that actually occurred.
I’m seriously having internal conflict over whether to evens stay FRIENDS with these people at this point, it’s sad too because otherwise they’re great people. But this election has brought out and amplified some demons that may have been better off repressed in the dark where it’s not doing any real harm.
*Underage, but I’m fairly certain he started drinking ever since he tried it in Germany.
It’s not exactly “Myspace” drama. After all, they’re not just a bunch of random people. Of my ~200 friends, I know every single one of them in real life. They’re former classmates, co-workers, and family members. So it’s “real life” drama. And I tried really hard to wait until the election was over and no one gave a fuck anymore, but the shit reached a fever-pitch the last two days and I had to say something.
One of the other managers here was joking with some of his crew and said something about “nigger in the white house” with an exaggerated, stereotypical black voice (whatever that is, but you get the idea).
One of the owners saw my rant on myspace last night about overhearing someone call Obama a muslim (he doesn’t know it was his sister-in-law that I heard) and he started teasing me about it in a non-offensive way. Then the above-mentioned manager started with his shit, saying “Frank Perdue will move in to the White House because Obama needs his fried chicken.” I just sat there, biting my tongue. The owner could see the look on my face and knew not to keep pushing it, but offensive manager kept going!
I’ve been seeing PLENTY of this same exact type of bullshit on Facebook…and a damn good amount coming from people my age (22-ish) and also with bachelors degrees, like me, from similar institutions, etc. Educated young minds… Actually seems like at least my MySpace friends without Facebooks don’t give much of a shit either way and aren’t saying much.
Here’s a sample of Facebook “statuses” from the last day:
BLANK is amazed that any Christian would vote for Obama who openly supports the killing of innocent, unborn children. Hypocrites. Justify it how you may…
BLANK for one does not welcome our new Socialist Overlord. (my boyfriend’s roommate)
BLANK “a democracy is nothing more than mob rule where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49”–Thomas Jefferson
BLANK is were gonna get bombed, and I don’t mean drinking… this is not good. Putting Obama in office is like sending a preschooler to highschool.
BLANK is woo hoo - when do we start spreading the wealth??? i didn’t want to work anyways - thanks in advance to those who worked their asses off to pay my way!
And all the pro-Obama ones are pretty much like this:
BLANK is CONGRATS to OBAMA/BIDEN- you guys earned it!
BLANK is excited that my vote counted!
and ones that say congrats and express either: how they liked McCain’s nice speech, or how amazed they were at shit-slinging at Obama still.
No indeed, and we’re quite happy up here. In fact, this morning’s Globe and Mail had an article that stated that, over the past 50 years, the average annual return on the S&P 500 have been 5% higher under Democratic presidents than republicans. However, for Canada’s TSX composite index, the out-performance is even more pronounced; a 10% higher average annual return under Democratic presidents.
So woooooooooo!!! Obama is going to help me with my retirement!
Now that you know who these “friends” are, you’ll have to judge for yourself if you share enough values with them to remain friends. In my case, I would let them drift.
And isn’t there a saying about the strong light of day being a good disinfectant? I think that it’s good that their racism is exposed where all can view it.
The amount of misinformation I’ve heard people who I know perfectly well have the ability to think critically have chosen to believe is pure ridiculous. The attitude today is “well we have our first Communist president” and I swear they believe in 4 years we’ll be speaking Arabic or Spanish (maybe we’ll revive the dialect of al-Andalus). I think they firmly believe he’s going to staff his cabinet with former Black Panthers, Weathermen, al-Jazeera reporters, a cast member or two from Good Times and the occasional ELF, Nation of Islam, or former KGB wild card (any one of whom could probably do a better job than Michael Brown or most other Bush toadies) they’re going to be astonished.
At work, the atmosphere was cool - no frigid and we’re usually pretty friendly here.
I decided to send this out:
*Now that we’re all purple (red + blue), I’d like to invite whoever’s interested, to order lunch together today and maybe share a peaceful meal in the name of harmony. Conf room 2 – 12pm-1pm
Chinese anyone? Menu at my desk.*
About 10 or so of us, including the boss, had a nice lunch together.
One person’s response:
“Spend your EARNED cash while you still have it!!!”
