After reading a few posts in which Brutus flaunts his pride at winning the election (with a personal flair, I may add), a question popped into my mind.
Are Republicans completely unaware of how absolutely terrified liberals are of the Bush administration? This is an administration that in its first term oversaw economic disaster, initiated an unwarranted war and flubbed the followup badly, wants to pass a constitutional ammendment restricting the rights of people, promised to spend government money on a specific religion, made a mess of the budget of social services (and education)… the list goes on. And all of that was done while campaigning for re-election.
This isn’t being afraid of something stupid like “the sanctity of Christian marriage being ruined”… this is afraid as in, “our country will be utterly bankrupt and militarily ruined with widespread deployment within 8 years”…
Republicans were afraid of Kerry being elected because… um… he’d try to do away with (some) of the Bush tax cuts.
Democrats were afraid of Bush being elected because he is the greatest threat to freedom and peace the planet has faced in 50 years.
Zagadka:Are Republicans completely unaware of how absolutely terrified liberals are of the Bush administration?
Of course not. They like it. Liberals have been so demonized in conservative circles that many Republicans now feel that if a liberal is scared of them, they must be doing something right.
This thread was titled in a way that seemed like a rational discussion of the fear tactics employed by both the right and the left. Instead it turns out that the OP doesn’t care to understand the opposing side.
I think most reasonable people know that there are a lot of Neanderthals on the left, right, and middle in this country (and any country). They are motivated by emotion more than intelligence, and most facts presented to them get magnified or minimized by their bias.
I personallly belive the ratios of Neanderthals to Homo Sapiens is equal on the right and left… and there’s no way to prove it, but I say 80% Neanderthal for both sides.
If you believe the fear tactics of your side, and hate the other’s… well… you’re in the majority.
Hey, I thought it was the conservatives that were voting out of fear? That’s what’s being argued right now in another thread.
I understand your fear of the Bush administration, but I think some of it may be the result of propaganda. For instance, this:
Is just plain ridiculous. When Clinton was re-elected, he ran on a platform that the economy was doing great, and yet almost every indicator was worse than it is today, or close to it. Inflation was slightly higher. Economic growth was lower. The unemployment rate was virtually the same. The deficit in constant dollars was close to $200 billion.
The new jobs report that came out yesterday showed 377,000 new jobs created last month - the highest rate in seven months, and much higher than Clinton’s average. GDP growth for the year will probably come in between 4-5%, which is higher than the historical average.
About the only really bad statistic in this economy is the deficit, but even that is lower than the highest deficits of the 80’s and 90’s, and it’s forecast to be cut in half over the next four years.
And the country isn’t going to be ‘militarily ruined’. The military is in better shape today than it’s been in since it was shrunk in the early 1990’s. Morale is high, the President has the political support of 70% of the troops, the highest it’s been since Reagan. Rumsfeld may have screwed up some stuff in Iraq, but his pet project is his modernization/restructuring program, and that seems to be a good idea long overdue.
And the things Bush wants to do in his second term all sound like good ideas to me - he wants a revenue-neutral simplification of the tax code (liberals should support this, because simplification removes loopholes the rich use to avoid taxes).
Most importantly, Bush is in a position in his second term to be able to take a crack at reforming social security - something John Kerry wouldn’t have been able to touch with the Republicans in control of the house and senate and his own constutuents against it. That alone was a good reason to vote for Bush - the earlier SS is tackled, the less of a shock the transition will be. And a 2nd term president who doesn’t have to worry about re-election is probably the only one who can pee on the 3rd rail of American politics. And Bush claims that he intends to do just that.
So instead of the gloom and doom and knee-jerk opposition, why don’t you start with an open mind and at least consider what he plans to do?
Social security is a nice example. Let’s debate it. Current system is that current employees pay for current retirees. Your parents paid for your grandparents. You pay for your parents. Someday, your children will pay for you. What happens if we give our children the opportunity to opt out of the system? Who pays for us? If you’re in your middle 40s, opting out isn’t an option for you as you wouldn’t have enough time to build a nest egg. But if you stay in, then who pays your benefits? Even if only a fourth of the younger workers opt out and invest outside SS, that is a major shortage in the Social Security fund. From where do you fund retirees?
Not only that, suppose you’re a young whippersnapper and invest your SS tax yourself. Things look good then say a nuclear terrorist attack and your fund tanks. And if you have a defined contribution plan rather than a defined benefit plan from your employer, you’re doubly screwed.
So I’m open to hearing details of Bush’s plan, and I’ll wait for the details before condemning it. To me the major problem is how you can pull this off without pulling the rug out from under current workers and soon to be retirees.
BLD: * To me the major problem is how you can pull this off without pulling the rug out from under current workers and soon to be retirees.*
Exactly. While I’m not opposed to more support for private retirement investment, I don’t see any way to “transition” SS from a pay-as-you-go to invest-for-yourself plan without having at least one generation of workers pay double, or else providing massive subsidies to make the transition. And where are we going to get those massive subsidies in an era of record debts and deficits?
Other problems, besides the investment volatility that Bob mentioned:
Higher overhead costs. SS currently has extremely low overhead compared to most private investment plans, because there are no stock picks or other investment decisions to be made. The more freedom of choice you provide in investment, the more it will cost for administrators to manage the accounts.
Lack of social insurance. SS at present is not a pension plan, it’s a “social insurance” plan: you pay premiums and, after you’ve contributed a certain amount of premiums, you get benefits. Some people (e.g., my father who died at 55) never get a chance to receive the benefits; on the other hand, some get out much more than they put in. And it really is a lifetime benefit plan: the pension for you or your spouse doesn’t stop when you get to the end of what you personally contributed. Moreover, SS also pays disability and supplemental benefits to some people who were unable to contribute to the system. What’s going to happen to all these people who can’t save enough money to provide benefits throughout the time that they need them?
You don’t understand. The fear that liberal have is real and justified. The fear that conservatives have is imaginary and unjustified. Get with the program!
My response is going to sound insulting. It’s really not meant that way, but here it is without pulling punches.
Most conservatives/Republicans are aware that many liberals/democrats say these things and may think these things.
I look at this list and I see hyperbole and incendiary rhetoric. I see an attempt to influence by fear. I see what looks like either a dishonest interpretation or a delusional one.
I am aware that many on the left share these viewpoints and believe these things. I’ve been aware of it with every article from Krugman over the last four years, the Moore and Franken books and movies, the media catering to this pessismistic and delusional viewpoint, and I’ve been aware of it in the countless attacks and accusations have that plagued this board, the public, the press for the last for years.
I am also aware that most people do not share your extreme viewpoint. I am aware that on election day we had unprecedented turnout, a better than 50% vote for Bush (Clinton never got 50%) and were voted greater control of both houses.
The right has been given an unprecedented stranglehold on politics. You beleive that it has happened in spite of these things you mention. I beleive that it has largely happened because you and the Democrats in general have decided to frame your politics in incendiary rhetoric, paranoia and through selling fear.
It didn’t work. People didn’t buy it. It cost you and your ideas representation in the government.
I believe that this viewpoint of yours has largely been refuted in the court of public opinion and declared largely irrelevant.
I believe that this country needs a loyal opposition, needs your ideas, and I beleive you have a duty to present them.
In order to do so I think you and your party need to regroup and reframe your ideas. We are not evil incompetant stooges. The majority of the country is not stupid or ignorant. We don’t like it when you insinuate we are, and we reject your ideas out of hand when you do so.
We are in a bad situation now. For all of us. We don’t trust you, and you don’t trust us. We don’t want to work with you and we don’t have to.
For better or for worse (and I think personally that it’s worse that my particular viewpoint has such unchecked and unbalanced control,) the loyal opposition needs to know where it stands in the most realistic terms. It needs to court and earn the trust and the ear of the right.
I think it can best do so, by being careful, accurate, nonincendiary and cooperative. I think it needs to stop framing ideas in terms of how evil and stupid republicans are and start framing their ideas in terms of how good they are and how they will benefit everybody.
Can we have a cite which backs up this assertion? I have no doubt that some liberals are “absolutely terrified” of the Bush administration, but I’d guess those folks make up 10% of the population. Remember that 40% of the people didn’t even vote, so even if ~20% of Kerry supporters feel this way, that’s still just 10% of the poplulation. And itt would be hard to take any of the non-voters seriously if they claimed to be “terrified”.
So, why should anyone really care that some small subset of the popluace is “absolutely terrified” of Bush?
I’m not entirely sure, but maybe one or two threads might have been made on the SDMB mentioning that support for Bush is not entirely universal. So yes, I think we might be vaguely aware of a certain unease.
But all seriousness aside, what Sam Stone said. If this looks like “economic disaster” to you, your standards are pretty exacting.
I am not sure what to say to you. If you really think the world is ending because your side lost a Presidential election, I can only reassure you that it has happened to me more than once, and somehow the country and I survived.
I suspect tincture of time for your remedy. This too shall pass. So calm down and realize that you ought not to be pinning your chance for happiness on the actions of strangers.
Huh. I voted for Kerry not because I was afraid of Bush. Yes, I see some of his actions as incompetent, but I think our democracy is too strong to be ruined by complete control by one party for a decade or so. I just thought Kerry, with a new perspective and a IMHO more realistic approach to governance, would be better. Especially if he was restrained by an opposition Congress. And there was no way, even with my straight-ticket vote, that the Dems were getting back the House.
Bush will have to clean up his messes (I only count these as the deficit and Iraq) and I still have a little faith that if he does screw up royally, he and his minions will be thrown out. In 1994, there was a “throw the bums out” movement that was quite effective at reversing the political momentum of the country. It could easily happen again in 2006 or 2008, if things don’t start turning around in a hurry. Especially if there is something like a currency crisis precipitated by the deficit or Iraq erupts in a conflagration.
I think I voted for Kerry specifically because I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t going to let fear of terrorism get in the way of what I thought the best solution for the country was. Apparently, most didn’t agree with me, and I accept that.
The only thing that makes me afraid is the post-election “moral values” spin. I’m not sure how much I believe it right now; after all 21% or something answered a perhaps ambiguous question in an exit poll (and we know how reliable those are…) that their reason for the choice was “moral values.” I’m not convinced that this is some kind of landslide change, and I would like to see comparable numbers from previous elections, if they exist. If it is true, and it represents some unstoppable evangelical resurgence at work, it changes my perspective on this country. My parents left South Africa when they were my age (with a 3 year-old edwino in tow). Their grandparents left Lithuania and Poland in the 1930s at my age. I never thought I would ever consider leaving America. I still don’t seriously consider it. But, if this moral values trend is as the media seems to be telling us, I can start to understand my parents’ and great-grandparents’ motivations. I was raised Jewish and was told through my life that whenever Jews get too comfortable in a host country, things go awry. But America was different. I am not comparing America to these situations, nor am I saying that I am ready to leave. But I can begin to see a direction in which it can move which would be very unpleasant to me. I can now imagine a scenario, which seems less sci-fi to me, in which I could be considering emigration to Europe or Israel.
It is a reminder that most of the people whom I count as friends, who surround me in my life at home and at work (I am in academia), have views profoundly opposite much of America. Much more than with my Jewish background, it makes me feel “other.” Because, IMHO, I perceive so much of the “moral values” motivation involves limiting my rights and those of my friends (whether it be limiting stem cell research, criminalizing abortion, pornography, enforcing prayer in school and decency in the media, or whatever), I have grown a little warier. This makes me very sad.
I love the way Republicans can shrug off the lives of a million people. After all, that is the difference you’re talking about when you’re talking about 1/2 of one percent of working people.
Certainly I will be challenged. “For half a percent of people to equal a million people,” you will charge, “there have to be 200,000,000 people working in this country. And you know that the workforce is less than 160 million!”
“I’m not a dimwit,” I respond. “But the populace of the country is not made up only of those who work. Our’s is a country that is rapidly becoming a state with enormous differences between those who have and those who don’t. And sadly, I think you think, we can’t kick out the poor. They’re not all Mexicans and Haitians.”
“And whenever anyone has a child in this country, whether they are a citizen, a legal alien, or an illeagal, the child is a citizen and we, the citizens of this country, bear a responsibility for fostering that child. Every American Citizen, after all, should have no reason to hate this country.”
“You love to speak of the importance of children. But I consider you a hypocrite. You think we ought to instill American values only in ‘your children.’ If they’re not white and play soccer by the time that they’re 6 years-old on turf, bought from the best, mowed by brown workers, who can’t afford homes nearby the fields they tend, then they’re not worth spending money on.”
In the end, I don’t think you really care about children. I don’t hink you really care about immigrants. You don’t even care about poor people in this country, I suspect. There’s no difference, after all, between 5.2 and 5.6 percent unemployment. Those people, to you, seem insignificant.
When the Republican Party recognizes that it must care for people to become a Party of the People, it might become a real party.
But right now, as with the numbers above, you’re just faking it.
If you are addressing this to me, I have never been a member of any political party, and in fact I can’t stand political parties. What’s more, I have never voted for a Republican for president in my life (I don’t have any prohibition against Republicans, I just have always preferred one of the other presidential candidates). If it’s any of your business, I voted for Nader in the latest election.
I do, however, have a peculiarly journalistic interest in facts. Facts have a damned habit of getting in the way of biases and emotional arguments, don’t they?
