I may be bringing up a point long since gone since this post is up the page a bit, but I don’t really think the Clinton vitriole is an apt comparisan. As I remember it (and I could clearly be wrong here), the right wing attacked Clinton as faulty, immoral, evil, stupid, etc. While I think the attacks were pretty much idiotic and the attackers were pretty much off base, their anger was aimed at one person. As we have it now, it seems as if the left wing attacks not only the President but also anyone who votes for him or supports him. It’s the idea that the attacks move down the road into calling me stupid, evil, or idiotic for simply having a different opinion that leads to me tuning out anything substantive coming from the left because it is surrounded by so much hateful venom that I don’t want to waste my time sifting through the crap for the one pearl that exists.
If the attacks were focused on Bush/the administration I’d have very little issue with anyone being up in arms, resorting to name calling, or acting a little crazed once in a while. At that point, it’s essentially a tit for tat making up for how off the wall some right wingers acted during the Clinton years. But, once one side takes it to a more personal level with the other, that’s when the big barriers appear.
Just to expound on this one particular issue, it at least is consistent with something that this election brought home with a vengeance. I don’t particularly care if the president is getting hummers in the Oval Office because I don’t think it affects his ability to do his job. I support gay marriage, because I can’t see how it negatively affects society at all because for me, the so called “moral” issue is bunk. However, many, many people do consider these moral issues as important. They believe a president who is immoral is going to be a poor president. They believe that a society that allows gay marriage is in trouble. I don’t agree with them, most of you don’t agree with them, but here is what you are forgetting: They have the right to feel this way, and insulting them for it is never, ever going to make them change their mind. Read that again: They have the right to feel this way. One more time, I’m not sure it’s sinking in: They have the right to feel this way.
See, when you dismiss their beliefs as bigoted or ignorant or stupid out of hand and go from there, they’re not going to listen to what you have to say. If your point of view truly has merit, than you can meet in the middle, but you’ll never get there if you start by dismissing the other person entirely.
I read a post by a gay poster on these boards, I am sorry that I don’t remember who ATM, talking about the efforts he was making to convince people to vote against one of the gay marriage bans. He told of going door to door and talking to people, calmly and rationally about the issue, and he recounted that a lot of people, even though opposed to gay marriage when he knocked, changed they minds or were at least amenable to further consideration of the issue because he put a human face on the issue for them, and talked to them rationally. It made quite an impression on me, and I realized it was because he didn’t start from a POV of demonizing his opposition, he treated them like humans and acted accordingly. There is an important lesson to be learned there, and I hope the Democrats learn it, because if they continue down this path they’re on-the attitude “if you don’t agree with us, you’re an imbecile”, than they will marginalize themselves further and further out alone on the left, and that’s not a good thing, we need at least two viable parties to make democracy work.
Jodi - as always, you are both eloquent and accurate. I honestly can’t tell now whether or not these lessons are going to be absorbed by anyone that matters. On these boards - which is probably not a population that’s reflective of the Dem’s party leadership, but who knows - gobear has made some comments that alarm me, in the sense that if other Democrats start listening to him or emulating his approach, we in the GOP could be in for big setbacks in 2006 and beyond. But other than him, I am seeing more of the same on the boards here… as if vilifying the opposition as morons, hicks, bigots, fundies, and homphobes didn’t work this election, so the solution must be to call them morons, hicks, bigots, fundies, and homphobes even more vigorosly next time.
Not to brag, but I put my money where my mouth was at Tradesports.com. I had about $1000 invested in a Bush win for months. And the odds, as you say, were worse than 1:1 for me.
However, at the beginning of election night, after Drudge published the exit polls that indicated a Kerry surge, Bush’s odds dropped down to something like 3:2 my way, so I put another $500 in the pot. Never doubting myself…
And, as you can imagine, I’m happy I did that.
(I wonder how many of the posters here that confidently predicted a Kerry victory risked any of their cash?)
Who was that? I sure didn’t, though Weird with Words, the Hair Apparent, was convinced beyond doubt that Kerry would win. If I were to bet, I would have bet on Bush. (“Bite me, Baby Jesus! We’re talking cash here!”).
The master stroke? Tying in gay marriage, especially the beauty part, where people vote on that agenda at the same instant they vote for President. No, I don’t think the Pubbies are stupid and bigoted. But they are perfectly willing to exploit those for thier own political advantage.
Like I asked in the other thread: who do you think Jack Chick voted for?
Alive? My friend, I was old enough to VOTE during the Clinton years. As I recall he won both elections handily. He lost to George Bush Sr. because the economy was stalling and Clinton sought out and won the confidence of middle America. He easily won over Bob Dole because Dole had no personality to speak of and because Dole’s entire platform consisted of, “I’m not the evil, lying Bill Clinton.”
I don’t think so. You seem to think Republicans are generally bigoted.
You know our conclusions. I don’t think you’ve really examined and considered the reasoning and beliefs behind them. In all my unpleasant discussions with you, and there’s been many, I’ve never seen you attempt to make an honest inquiry into my beleifs. I’ve never seen you attempt to consider them in their own context and in their own merits. Your inquiries have never been anything other than that of a safecracker looking for an edge or weakpoint they can pry at to pull it apart. So no. You don’t really know me, or us. If you did, you wouldn’t argue against us in the manner that you do. Constructive criticism. Do with it as you will.
I don’t really get these two paragraphs. In the first one you talk about how you have lots of Republican friends whose beliefs you respect, and whom you like.
In the second you accuse them of knowing and negligent falsehoods sending troops into a meatgrinder, panders and promoters of racism, fiscally irresponsible, whom you oppose at every path.
Doesn’t really seem like “friends” to me. Doesn’t seem like respect. If you beleive that about them, how can you respect them, how can you beleive their friend. If I believed those things of somebody, I could not be their friend and respect them. How do you?
Do you really beleive these things of these people? Do you really beleive they are promoting these things? If you do, so you tell them what you really think of them? How can you call them friend?
This is the core of the problem. You don’t understand. You don’t know me, and you don’t get where I’m coming from, and you’re unwilling to make the effort to understand.
To me, you take what is the cowardly and easy way out. You just attack the people who’s ideas you disagree with. I can tell you with all honesty that your attacks on me make me smile. They confirm what I was saying before. It’s self-indulgent tripe. The easy and cowardly way out.
The disaproval of a man who’s earned my respect means something to me. That hurts me. Insults from a small man demonstrating intellectual cowardice are just pathetic.
You want to engage me with openness and courtesy and discuss ideas, and you’ll get the same from me.
Here your opening was to pretend respect and openness “willing to consider. Speak away” in an attempt to lend athority to your later insults.
Five years here, and what I’ve learned is that the self-indulgence of personal attacks on the internet is cowardly and meaningless. I think people who do it, are seeking an outlet for the frustrations in life that they do not otherwise address.
I think your posts towards me reflect a small and mean coward. Grow up.
Yeah, but rarely if ever do I think it comes down to the fact that we are selfish, bigoted oil and power hungry irresponsible and incompetant sociopaths, which, regrettably seems to be a common meme among more than a small minority of the left.
I have nothing to argue about what you just said. I agree with it.
I’m not saying this is exactly the same, but isn’t this the feeling that mirrors beliefs behind those who “hate the sin, but love the sinner”? I would elaborate, but first I’d like opinions and clarifications before I go off on some half-cocked idea of which I know nothing about. Just think it sounds extremely similar.
Scylla, I don’t want to get too deep into this anymore but that feeling of “hurt” you speak of- that sense of betrayal- that’s how a lot of people feel about this election. People who have posted here for years and befriended conservatives, conservatives who told them they supported their struggle for equal rights, who told them they abhorred the stupid prejudice and pointless bigotry in their own party, conservatives who claimed to respect them.
Those conservatives just went out and reelected a man who made gay people a target in his campaign, who painted gay people as an enemy who needed to be stopped and who wants to change the constutution itself to guarantee that they will never have equal rights.
There’s more than just a little bit of “how could you…” going on right now. It may seem like a small issue to you, a side issue, a nuisance, perhaps, but not important enough to vote against.
To more than a few posters around here, though, it was the most personal and important issue on the docket. They feel betrayed. They feel let down by people who said they cared.
I could say some things about Iraq as well. There is surprise there too. Maybe not a feeling of personal betrayal but a genuine surprise that a person like you who is obviously intelligent and capable of refelection and thought, a person who is not a mindless partisan, could swallow what seems like obvious lies to us and support what seems to us like a terrible war that has killed a lot of people.
Maybe we haven’t been good at articulating it but our opposition to war is not just a political pose or an intellectual affect. We sincerely abhor it and think that it was wrongheaded and destructive. It is puzzling to us that anyone with brains can see it any differently. Some of those who voted for Bush DO have brains so we are a little baffled. You’ll have to forgive us. We really thought in our heart of hearts that once the WMD lie was exposed that smart people would have to admit that the war was wrong. We were obviously mistaken and we still don’t know why.
I’m starting to feel like a broken record here, but… WHAT people who confidently predicted a Kerry victory? The only time I felt even remotely confident was the brief period Tuesday afternoon when all the exit polls looked so good.
There is a thread with a whole collection of predictions about Kerry victory. I got into a debate with Hentor the Barbarian about why, if he was so confident, he wasn’t taking advantage of the excellent odds offered to Kerry bettors on Tradesports.com, and he said he didn’t need to put down money just to prove his certainty. Does this ring bells? I can search for it; I’m confident (heh heh) that you’ll find plenty of examples therein.
Funny. I saw when Bush’s stock was down to $29, and I wanted to put down $290 because a) even though I supported Kerry, I didn’t think he was win and b) it was a win-win situation for me. Kerry wins, I’m out $290 and I’m happy. Bush wins, and at least I have $710 extra in the bank account to console me.
I agree that I don’t understand the Republican viewpoint, but not for lack of trying.
Why was it unimportant that the Bush administration was giving vital classified information to Chalabi, who passed it on to Iran? Why was it unimportant that the Bush administration accepted false intelligence about Iraq from that same Chalabi?
It seemed important to me; I never found out why it wasn’t.
Why did we send opium-warlords after Bin Laden instead of getting him ourselves? Why were we suddenly “not too concerned” about the man actually responsible for the 9-11 attacks? Why is the fact he is still out there threatening us a good thing for Bush?
I never found out.
Why do so many people in America still believe Iraq was connected to 9-11?
Don’t know.
Why did our government tell us that Iraq had WMD, then let the suspected WMD sites be looted before we got there? Would not securing the WMD be the most important thing, if one thought they were there?
Again, I never found out the reasoning behind this.
Why were our post-war plans in Iraq so bad? Did people really believe we would be accepted with open arms? Why are people who miscalculated so enormously the kind of people who should be left in a position to do so again?
… Don’t know.
How come nobody in the administration went after the leaks of undercover agents identities?
You guessed it - I have no idea.
How do same sex unions hurt anyone?
Well, this one I understand. I disagree with it completely, but I know where it comes from.
But all the rest is part of the many things I never found out.
I tried. I talked to Republicans I know offline - they told me things like “I hate Kerry’s wife,” which, while good to know, does not really give me much information about the Republican views on the issues.
So it’s true that many Kerry supporters don’t know the reasoning of Bush supporters, but I would contend that this is because that reasoning has not been made readily available.
Well you bring up a couple of interesting points. I think this feeling of betrayal is poorly placed on this issue. We need to face a couple of unpleasant facts: The subject of gay marriage was brought up seperately on numerous ballots and it was shot down by an overwhelming and presumably bipartisan majority. Secondly, John Kerry lest you forget was against gay marriage as well. He basically echoed Bush’s sentiments in the debate.
So, while you may have felt that this was the main issue in the presedential election, it really wasn’t. They were both saying the same thing. Clinton signed DOMA to. Gay marriage is not really being supported meaningfully by anyone of consequence in either party.
I think it got shot down as an individual issue on the ballots because of the way it was presented to the public. The first attempt at gay marriage was not a legislative one, it was a sneak attack. We had judges legislating and Mayor’s and such taking initiatives to try to ram it down the throats of the public. I think the natural reaction to this is hostile regardless of the merits of the position, and I think the backlash against it was caused by it.
So many people on these boards support gay marriage, both conservative and liberal. Why do you think that is? I’ll tell you why I think it works. I think it is an idea that wins and works. Why try to force an idea like this judicially when it works as an argument by itself, as an idea? Why try to demonize the people that oppose it? It’s a strong enough idea that most people can be convinced. They’re not going to be convinced by being attacked and called bigots though, or told that they are bad people.
The merits of the idea should be the message, not that people who oppose it are bad.
This approach worked during the civil rights movement, and indeed it works for most ideas if they make sense. This one makes sense. Argue the merits of the idea and it will win. Argue against the people who oppose it, call them names, demonize them, and they will never consider the merits.
This thing is going to happen because it is right. People will be convinced if they are exposed to the idea in a manner that does not threaten or attack them.
Hopefully we can disagree rationally, but again Saddam as a threat and posesser of WMDs was a pretty bipartisan idea. Bush had a mandate on this to use his discretion to enforce the UN resolutions. Kerry wasn’t against this either. He maintained in the debates that Saddam was a threat. His main contention is that he would have done what Bush did except smarter and better and more effective and with worldwide support.
Personally, I believe we needed to do what we did in Iraq, and I beleive it’s gone rather well. It went better than I expected so far. I know the costs are high. I expected it. So, I don’t see the failure of WMDs in Iraq as a lie. I think he was wrong. There were many reasons for invading Iraq. I think Bush’s failure and Bush’s lie was in taking the easy path and allowing the debate to be recharacterized as solely one of WMDs, and for stating as a certainty something that was not. That was a negligent lie.
I think he fucked up on this and made a bad mistake. I think the less of him for it. I would have voted for Lieberman or a centrist Democrat. I think Kerry was a very very bad choice. I think the mistake that the Democrats made was in not offering a palatable alternative. I think Kerry was very very liberal. I did not respect and could not support what I thought was a far worse lie than Bush’s, which was the betrayal of his fellow veterans and the lies he told while he was with VVAW. I did not think that Kerry was arguing ideas. I said a year ago his major campaign them was “Bush Sucks” and that he was the worst of the candidates presented by the Democrats. He never really argued what he stood for and wanted he wanted to do. I felt that he was saying things that he thought people wanted to hear, rather than his true feelings.
Take gay marriage for example. You say this election feels like a betrayal. Why? I think implicitly that you believe and many liberals beleive that Kerry’s stance on gay marriage was actually different from what he said in the debates and such. That he was coming out against it, because he needed to do so not to commit political suicide. Am I wrong to think this?
I think it’s probably true. I think Kerry is much more sympathetic to the issue than he states. That’s one of the reasons why I have a problem with him. What’s he going to do, pretend one viewpoint to get elected and once in do something different?
If I don’t know what he really stands for, how can I vote for him? Bush does have some unpopular ideas and some ones that I don’t like. On balance he has more that I agree with, but he is far from ideal in my eyes. But, I don’t think I have to be afraid that he is actually secretly for abortion, or doesn’t really have strong religious convictions. I think he argues his actual ideas. Disagreeing with some of them to me is less distasteful than feeling that I’m getting a con job to get my vote.
I think the Democrats could have won this election with a better candidate.
We can argue this, but if you want to know my opinions and what went in to my decision, there it is. I hope you don’t see it as a betrayal.
I’ll try to answer this as best I can. The war got recharacterized in terms of WMD as the main issue. It was originally one of many. The WMD lie started off as a legitimate mistake shared by many. The lie was making a certitude that wasn’t. The other reasons still remain.
It’s pretty clear that Saddam had ambitions with WMDS. We had been holding him off for a while, but given the opportunity I think he was going to get them. I think he was going to help terrorists. I think he was our enemy. He paid suicide bombers. He cheered 9/11. He was our sworn enemy. I didn’t see it really making sense to wait until our sworn enemy was tough enough to be a challenge before taking him out. I see no reason to be sporting about it. On top of that, he was a bad bad man, causing suffering to his own people. On top of that, we had to show that the world had changed after 9/11. We need to have a strong democracy in the mideast that works to counteract the extreme militant Islamic fundamentalism.
Things were getting worse over there. Like a surgeon cutting out a tumor sometimes we have to make things temporarily worse before it gets better. Can we fail? Yes. Does that mean the surgeon was wrong to attempt to remove the tumor and save the life? Not really. The surgeon can be incompetant. He can be thwarted or opposed. But really, once the decision was made to operate it serves everybody’s best interests to help things as much as possible, to support it in any way to give it the best chance of success. Terrorism counts on the propaganda effect. We lost in Vietnam because of propaganda. Our will was sapped. I am baffled by how anybody can oppose this thing once it’s begun. Onve it’s begun we have to be resolved and united to make it work. We sap their strenth if they sense we are wholly and firmly resolved and there are no chinks in that resolve. So I think we have to support it.
Even, and especially if you thought it was a bad idea, originally. Even if it turns out that you were right.
This thing has to work. We have to make it work.
So, I can’t understand how it can be opposed now. It baffles me. I feel betrayed and angry about the anti-war thing and sentiments. I’m not just saying that, either. It’s one of the very strong reasons why I can’t respect Kerry. He betrayed our best efforts.
I realize that not everybody agrees with me. I realize that you hold a different opinion on this, and I believe that you hold it sincerely and validly. I just think you’re wrong. And, at least most of the time, well, some of the time, I don’t take out my frustrations at our differences by assuming that you are stupid or evil or a bad person.
It bothers me though when others do it to me, and those who feel as I do.
Way to not hedge.