BobLibDem- I’ll concede your point as well, and accept that the Democratic convention was far, far less nasty than the Republican convention.
And as for violence- Two months ago I would have placed money on the idea of one or the other Presidential candidate being assassinated by some outraged partisan by this point. I’m still kind of surprised it hasn’t happened.
Feh. I see no disagreement there. I agree strongly that Bush has fucked up in a lot of places, and I accept that some areas where you think he fucked up are simply issues you and I have vastly different opinions or priorities on.
And therein lies the rub- you state that I’m free to disagree with your position. I do- I don’t think those pretenses were false, or perceived as false at the time, and I think there’s a big difference between lying about the reasons to go to war vs. not looking too closely at the reasons to go to war. But I, likewise, accept your position even as I disagree with it.
Of course you should be passionate. But it’s the first sentence that’s really the difference- you’re not assailing and maligning Bush’s supporters or all Republicans in general as idiots or bullies or nazis.
The problem isn’t people who believe something and feel passionately about it; that’s a very good thing. It’s the people who believe something and feel that they have to malign everyone who doesn’t feel the same way in order to prove to themselves that their opinion has worth. We’ve had three threads started in the last week on whether Republicans are evil/immoral/stupid or not. That’s not a discussion of policy; it’s an ad hominem attack so that certain partisans can gloat to each other about how ‘moral’ they are. And don’t think I’m just singling out the anti-Bush people; it’s much more common and acceptable on this board, but I’m sure over at Free Republic there are plenty of people attacking Democrats in just the same way.
The question is, how do you stop that? I wish I knew. I used to try and deal with it by rationally explaining my position and trying to logically refute points, but Jesus I’m tired of dealing with people whose main goal seems to be to insult me.
Of course, it is unreasonable to claim that all Bush supporters are all stupid or evil, but the fact that, according to you, a lot of people support someone who
is a TERRIBLE president
whose actions have been a disaster for this country
whose administration is evil
has to have *some * influence on how you view these supporters.
You can’t divorce your opinion of people from their views on issues.
If you don’t feel passionate about how bad a certain belief is, then it makes sense that you can just agree to be civil and friends with people who hold that belief.
But, if you feel very passionate that a certain belief is horrible and a disaster, then how can you be friends with or respect people who hold that belief and say “we can agree to disagree”.
No matter how “good” someone is, if he says he believes that all Blacks and Jews should be murdered, then I can’t just politely say “we can agree to disagree” and be friends with him or respect him.
So, it makes sense that some people (who feel that Bush has been and will be a disaster, both for the U.S. and for Iraq, and the world at large) will not be able to just be polite and friendly and have a high opinion of people who support him.
To repeat, it is impossible to divorce how you view people from the opinions they hold. If they hold horrible (to you) beliefs, then it is unreasonable to expect you to chalk it up to “matters of opinion” and respect them.
The same argument holds for both sides, of course.
Gee, that would be a pretty convincing argument if it weren’t the exact opposite of the truth. But go on living in your fantasy la-la land anyway. Reality is overrated.
I side with all the optimists. Democracy is messy, so what?! Bring it on! We are doing it right, or pretty close to. Look how the rest of the world sucks. In Russia, for example, sitting President refuses to debate his opponents.
I think some of the sources of overheated partisanship are indeed attributable to a particular party. But in the interest of not fanning the flames of the debate over whether Bush is evil (well, duh), I’ll mention two that are more technical:
**1) Partisan redistricting. ** Both parties are complicit in redrawing the lines to create lots of ‘safe seats’ on each side. The result has been a much more divided, much more partisan House of Representatives, one in which the political center has been marginalized. And in a way, it seems to have reversed the pecking order of the two houses of Congress: the House is clearly the Senate’s daddy these days, and my take is that it’s mostly because they’re more shrill and driven than the Senate.
**2) The revocation of the Fairness Doctrine. ** Broadcasters can afford to give airtime to sharply ideological voices, knowing that they don’t have to give equal time to their opposite numbers.
Shoot, that’s easy: make your selections on a touch screen. It prints out a ballot on card stock with your selections. You check the card to make sure you’re voting for the people you thought you were voting for. You feed the card into a machine that reads (and keeps) the card and tabulates your votes.
For me, it’s hard not to be nasty when I feel that Bush is truly taking away the rights and freedoms of others and of myself, and that he is making religion into policy. It is very difficult not to be nasty when he tries to legislate anti-gay policies, or tries to hamstring Roe v. Wade. I feel truly threatened by this man. I may call him dumb but unfortunately that is not true. He is deliberately doing these things, and I find that bone chilling.
So please accept my apologies for being emotional about this year’s election, but I have never in my life felt threatened by the government before, and for me it is truly scary. I imagine it is something akin to what people who live in countries who don’t have the protection of the constitution feel. I can sympathize with liberals and democrats who call our president names. I imagine conservatives and Republicans have their own reasons to call Kerry names. I just want to point out that for some of us, this election could literally mean a life of marginalization or death.
Dude, the FCC abandoned the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, so don’t pretend that this is anything new. Both Presidents Bush and President Clinton have had the advantage of not having to share time.
I don’t think he’s claiming it’s anything new. This raise in the ire and the demonization of opponents has been ramping up for 30 years now, at least. The repeal of that certainly is part of it.
I think it really makes Zev’s point when so many of you can’t even have a rational discussion about why this election is so nasty without throwing in your own partisan attacks or defenses of the candidates.
That’s ridiculous. If I publish a comparison of Bush and Kerry, picking only the negatives from one of them and the positives of the other, it’s true, but it’s still partisan.
And how can you possibly say that “I blame the right-wing media – specifically, the unholy trinity of Limbaugh, Coulter, and O’Reilly, who’ve taught an entire generation that name-calling and shrillish yelling is an acceptable substitute for political discourse.” is objectively true and unpartisan? Political name-calling and yelling have been around as long as politics.
No, she’s not. While it’s very easy to roll your (general you) eyes when someone brings up any concern that smacks of an accusation of fascism, this administration has earned those concerns.
It’s hard not to be at least a little paranoid when your government starts looking like it thinks fascism is a pretty good idea. No, I’m not that far gone yet, but damn, it’s a bit eerie.
My main issue is Iraq. We shouldn’t be there, we never should have gone there. The anger I have comes from the seeming callousness of those who, well, seem not to be concerned about the innocent men, women and children killed for no good reason.
If people get a bad impression of me because I’ve gotten angry in other threads, it’s nothing compared to the impression I’ve gotten from people who don’t care about the dead innocents.
I thank Zev for starting this thread. He spared me the trouble, since I most assuredly could not have done nearly as good of a job as he did.
The thing that gets is that there are plenty of people on this board who have been transformed into jackasses because of these issues, yet somehow they don’t recognize that they’re jackasses, or else they defend being jackasses (because their side is “right,” of course). It is just amazing.
Well, 1987 wasn’t yesterday, but IMHO the present level of rabidness in our politics dates from only a few years after that, and a certain radio “entertainer” and his imitators have had a lot to do with the current state of attack politics. I remember the bile he aimed at Clinton in the 1992 campaign - “draft dodger” (IOKIYAR), etc.
Right now, the GOP is airing ads and passing out leaflets in Pennsylvania, trying to make the impression that Congressional candidates Lois Murphy and Ginny Schrader are in bed with the Taliban (movie clip) and Hezbollah (pdf), respectively. The Dems aren’t playing at anywhere near that level of slime - and when they point out someone’s connections to Halliburton, Enron, or Tom DeLay, those connections are usually actually there.
“Bad impression”? I’d say more like “no credibility.” So much so, I’d warrant, that they simply tune out anything you have to offer, including any cites you might offer.
But who cares when you’ve lost credibility because of your behavior? As I said on another thread, some probably are saying to themselves, “Who cares what she thinks? She lost her credibility a long time ago.”
Even worse is when they hijack a non-political thread as an excuse to fling shit on the walls. If we’re talking about cute fluffy bunnies, I don’t fucking care if they remind you of this or that candidate’s testicles! Ya wanna talk politics? Fine, there’s thirty billion fucking threads on this board that are all filled with the sound and fury signifying nothing that you can go jerk off in to your heart’s content, so don’t sully ours.
Look at it this way—you put up cites. Perhaps they are excellent cites. But when they come from someone who has behaved in such a way so they have ZERO CREDIBILITY, those very nice cites will be ignored.
Is that what you want? Yes or no? Could you just focus for a second here?