Someone who was truly classy would do so regardless.
I have realized something, thanks to your post.
I had begun to think of you, Bricker, as more than just a conservative shill, as someone who actually cared about the nasty state of politics in this country.
Why did I toy with this idea?
I may not have said anything, but it was because you said you were considering voting for Obama, not because of his political stances, necessarily, but because you agreed that the dirty swamp of Republican campaigning had reached a low too deep to traverse. Having always been prejudiced enough to believe that conservatives enjoyed this kind of disgusting behavior, and reveled in the shit slinging, I was shocked and pleased, and began to re-think my own beliefs about the other side.
But, since I read your op, I realize what a fool I was. Despite your repeated assertions that you were pleased with Obama’s commitment to a clean campaign, and despite the fact that he has not wavered from that pledge, you have searched long and hard for some reason to discount this, and vote for the asshole once again. I see now you never had any intention of doing differently, and I am saddened to realize my initial ideas about Republicans were, in fact, correct.
So that settles it. Given my only reason to respect you, and by extension other conservatives, is a ridiculously naive pipe dream, it’s over.
I will vote for Obama, and if he loses I will be heartbroken again. Did you know I was saddened in 2000? I was. Did you know I actually cried when the results were announced in 2004? I did. I was shocked and hurt that the country I loved had begun to look at politics as no more than a sport, and was deeply afraid that people were doing no more than rooting for a team, instead of looking at the state of our nation and voting for what would lead us all in the best direction.
But, despite what’s happened with you, I do have hope again. And I promise if he wins, as I think and hope he will, I will not crow on this board, or anywhere. Because it isn’t a fucking football game. It isn’t my side against yours, and my vote for Obama is about helping this country go in a better direction, not about sticking it to Republicans. That’s petty and childish. If Obama wins, I hope other supporters do as I do, and act with kindness towards the other side. I think this is our only hope for bridging this gap in our country, and I wish fervently that we do it, and that when conservatives see the better state of our nation afterwards it helps to end these divisive politics. people like you tarnish that hope, but I have a lot of faith in our nominee, and I still believe we have a chance. And if McCain wins I will be saddened because I think his policies are bad for this country, and I think his party his mainly populated by dickheads like yourself, but I will continue to work to improve my community because that’s what’s important to me.
But, and I think I speak for many others here, as far as having respect for you, either as a poster or as a person? Nah. I was a fool to think it could be any other way. I see that now. Thank you for showing us your true colors.
No, but there is a secret handshake.
Wow…well…seems to me you missed it.
In the past weeks you have occasionally decried the ranting Obamaniacs. Each time myself and some others asked you where this awful behavior was. We looked at the thread, even looked at some other threads of yours, and found no consistent evidence of it. Were there the occasional spouts of mudslinging? Sure, on BOTH sides. But by-and-large posters were adhering to the best forms of the SDMB. More to the point you NEVER responded or gainsaid us when we pointed this out to you (that I saw anyway).
And now you come here and have the balls to accuse us of being pig fuckers who are missing it? Look in a mirror my friend. Seems to me on the whole we were behaving as you claim to want and it is you who was missing it.
Your bullshit artistry here reaches epic proportions. Despite clear differences in our opinions I respected your intelligence and (generally) objective approach. Now I see that was all smoke and mirrors. Well, I still think you are intelligent, just delusional to go with it. That you allow some fringe loonies who shout loudest, and a MSM that has lost all credibility across the board, to prove to you that a campaign cannot be run cleanly, despite Obama doing that very thing with his own people, proves your delusion.
You were just aching to find a reason to go back to McCain if indeed you were ever serious about falling out with him in the first place.
I have no doubt that you really could not care less about my opinion but you have gone down several notches on this in my view for this stunt.
I think you might have made an error in cutting and pasting, because your link just goes to the Great Debates front page.
I’m afraid that truly classy people are both rare and lonely these days, given all that has taken place in this country since the counter-culture revolution of the late sixties.
Yes, if only we could get back to the '50s, when people had class and everyone was free and happy, and those damn liberal counter-culture types were confined to rat-infested coffee houses in the Village.
Indeed!
But of course all that had to be thrown out because we had racism. :rolleyes:
Yes, divisive race-based politics and a hugely unpopular war. Oh, and a Republican administration indelibly linked with paranoid, insular secrecy, scandal and corruption.
You’re being ironic, i know, but poor old Starving Artist actually believes that the archetype of American perfection was the 1950s. Of course, this belief is based on a completely skewed, and often wilfully and maliciously distorted view of history, but his belief does seem to be genuine.
You mean “Leave It To Beaver” was not a documentary?
Well, this view is more widely shared than you might think.
My older black friends often are strangely nostalgic for that era - and when I asked one of them about that, he mentioned quite sensibly that civil rights marchers in suits and Sunday dresses wanted to share more equally in the decent society that existed then, not share equally in a less decent society that followed.
Now, we can argue all day about whether that was possible, given all of the other changes that were happening at the time. But on the face of it, this sentiment isn’t a crazy one.
It has always been my contention that racism could have been fought just as effectively without throwing out the baby with the bathwater in all that was good about life in this country at that time.
Fought and escalated by Democrat administrations. But of course once Nixon (a Republican) got in office, the hue and cry for withdrawal was deafening.
The counter-culture revolution had already been in full swing for five or six years before Nixon’s contretemps (sans Watergate, which began in '72) became public knowledge in 1974 and later.
And now, as a result of liberal influence over the last 40 years, we have a rude, crude, combative society that dresses like high-schoolers; a pervasive drug culture (and with huge amounts of criminal activity involved not only in the sale but mostly in order to come up with the money to buy them); criminals roaming the streets and committing murders with thirty-five previous convictions on their rap sheets because prisons are “too crowded” and “crime is society’s fault anyway”; a music industry that produces huge volumes of nothing but filth, much of it misogynistic; twenty-five percent of teenage females with STD’s; etc., etc.
I could go on and on but what’s the point?
The fact of the matter is that the huge baby-boom generation came of age in sufficient numbers to alter the course of politics and society in this country, and with the short-sightedness and idealism typical of youth, were able to fuck things up completely.
And to keep this kind of crap reigned in is why, to the confusion of many around here who don’t understand why conservatives continue to vote Republican even though the party is a shadow of its former self, we continue to vote Republican anyway.
Early-to-mid-sixties, actually. 
This is because “poor old Starv” was well into early adulthood by that time and experienced perfectly well what life was like then vs. what it’s like now.
It wasn’t Leave-It-To-Beaver time by any means, but it was idyllic compared to the way things are now.
Considering that George W. Bush was born in 1946 and has conducted most of his administration with the sort of short-sighted idealism that believes there’s no need for contingency plans in case things go wrong, SA’s got a point about Baby Boomers fucking everything up.
Nixon
Nixon/Ford
Carter
Reagan
Reagan
Bush
Clinton
Clinton
Bush
Bush
I’ve noticed that. Some of those drug addicts actually managed to become radio talk show hosts who criminally seek out those drugs by going to multiple doctors, or married politicians who frequent male prostitutes while doing those drugs.
And some of those diseased females also end up pregnant, having engaged in pre-marital sax and all, therefore having to marry the boy after the fact, despite being taught the superiority of early-to-mid-sixties behavior as being the answer for all of society ills (I recently heard something about that, anyway).
This, in addition to it being proven that teenagers who are not given sex education having a higher rate of teen pregnancies and STDs, along with the fact that teenagers who are forced into oaths of abstinance are three times more likely to end up pregnant, or end up diseased or to engage in oral or anal sex.
Yeah, those stinking, hippy libruls caused all of that. I know you could have gone on, but what would be the point?
And it’s reined.
I knew that! :smack: Shows what posting in haste gets ya.
As to the rest of your post, thanks for the perfect illustration of the type of mindset that has allowed the ills of post-sixties America to flourish.
I prefer to think about it differently. His is the perfect illustration of how, thankfully, the deep ills of the 50s were finally overturned. I am very thankful that my elder brothers and sisters renewed a profoundly bankrupt society.
I’m not going to argue with you, not because i agree, but because i find it quite easy to believe that you consider that period idyllic by comparison.
If you’re someone who doesn’t care about racial and gender equity; who thinks that conformity and surface politeness and gentility are more important than actual respect for different opinions and for the idea of equality; who is happy to call anyone who disagrees with you a Communist; who doesn’t really care about crime and poverty as long as they’re confined to the bad neighborhoods; and who is perfectly content as long as everyone you know shares your prejudices and insularity, then the fifties and early sixties probably IS your ideal environment.