He was also well-loved over here. Like Thatcher, a very polarising figure.
I thought you better than that.
What’s wrong with despising him? Plenty of people have good reason to.
I recall a San Francisco gay talk show host got in trouble for singing “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” on air when Reagan died.
Nope. I’m a pacifist, but I’m not a saint. I take great joy in the suffering of my enemies, sometimes. I’ll probably regret it next week, but this week, I dunno - I’m feeling uncharitable to all the old White men (and women - let’s not forget Maggie) who’ve fucked us all over for too long. Right now, I’ve got New Model Army’s Vengeance on, and I’m feeling my oats, so to speak.
You can despise someone without wishing them active ill.
And I don’t know anyone apart from Quartz (and a few people too young to actually remember him) in the UK who admires Reagan, but then I move in fairly moderate to left-wing circles.
We’re not saints but we’re better than the communists and the Islamists.
Why can’t both conservatives and liberals separate politics from personal like or dislike? Plus does this mean you would not mind if I for instance said it was good that Jimmy Carter died?
Because politics heavily involve morality, and quite often the political opposition is corrupt or outright evil.
What did Carter do? If you could give an actual sensible reason, no I wouldn’t care. But where are his victims?
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This is really funny.
How adorable.
And how is it that these “old white men” have accomplished this feat? By getting jobs that increased in responsibility and influence as they got older? Or by running for office and getting elected by a majority of the voters?
But you’ve apparently seen through these evil folks Dibble. Did you peek into the window of their mansions they “built on the backs of their victims” to see them lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills?
People that want to turn to racism to blame others for the world not being the way they want it to be amuse me.
Which is exactly what Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck would say. Both sides’ extreme partisans believe that their political ideas are utterly infallible and wise and it must be imposed on all. Where are the 1950s politics where people on the opposing sides did not hate or scream at each other and just thought “Maybe they are wrong but we can compromise with them.”
I was merely using an example.
:rolleyes: Yeah, the era of McCarthyism and segregation was known for its tolerance of opposing viewpoints.
McCarthy ended up being censured by the Senate and both parties (other than the Dixiecrats such as Thurmond and Wallace) supported desegegration. This was the age of pragmatic centrists like Eisenhower, Nixon, Lodge, Rockefeller, Humphrey, and Johnson.
Well, in the case of St Ronnie, Dick Cheney, Maggie Thatcher, and their supporting governments, it was supporting the Apartheid government in South Africa in the 80s, over the wishes of the majority of their own people and even Congress. So yeah, “majority of the voters”, counts for so much:rolleyes:
It’s perfectly OK to blame people when* the thing you’re blaming them* for is their racism, and you have the evidence to back it up.
So you don’t think anyone would have been justified in calling McCarthy a dick?
It’s detrimental to political debate. If you think so in private than it’s fine but if it’s said in public debate it’s uncivic.
What about calling them communists?
That is a political label and not inherently an insult. For instance you could call McCarthy a paranoid, an authoritarian, a fascist, and etc.
So calling Ronnie a racist and an enabler of worse racists is OK, then.
At the point where McCarthy was essentially implicating people as Communists or communist sympathizers at random, and often thereby destroying their lives and careers, we were already long past “political debate”.
McCarthy’s career came crashing down but the careers of plenty of those who supported his “work” did not - Brent Bozell and William Buckley, for example.
Non-American human life. Apparently Americans will come and save me from my barbaric life as part of their role as the saviours of humanity, bless 'em. American lives are cool, it’s the deaths of us primitives he brushes off as “minor diplomatic incidents.”
Although that will mean you’re really no better than Joe McCarthy yes it’s fine I suppose.
William Buckley was a fairly pragmatic conservative-a light-year away from Sarah Palin.