What is it about politics that makes otherwise normal people go batshit?

Granted, I wasn’t around here for '00 so if this is a four year phenomenon, I’ll just have to sigh and try to ignore it. Just about the time one thread dies and moves off to the archives, here comes the same poster or another proselyte with the same old bucket of swill, revised and edited, presented with breathless zeal, because it’s NEWS! Yeh. You betcha. I believe the front pages of the papers in the supermarket checkout, too. :rolleyes:

It’s a fairly safe bet that those readers who plan to vote for Bush won’t be swayed by what they read here, and the same applies to those who favor Kerry. Anybody who is on the fence and makes up their mind from these diatribes probably sent money to that nice Nigerian gentleman who sent them an email.

A quick recap of the last 30 or so threads sounds like a couple of kids in the schoolyard:
Your candidate ducked his service. Oh yeah? Your candidate got his medals out of a grab machine and then threw them away. Oh yeah? Your candidate was a bum and his daughters are bimbos. Oh yeah? Your candidate is a Catholic wannabe and his wife is a snobby Portuguese hooker. Oh yeah? Your candidate led the country into war. Oh yeah? Your candidate couldn’t lead flies to shit. Oh yeah? Your candidate is a doofus. Oh yeah? Your candidate licks bird crap off stopsigns… and on and on, ad nauseam.

Since we’re supposed to be about fighting ignorance, can’t both sides lay down their vitriol, stop the foaming at the keyboard, and give it a rest? There’s over a month to go for Og’s sake.

If that’s not a reasonable suggestion, then feel free to resume the flinging of feces.

I wasn’t here for the 2000 election either, but I bet this will happen again if the SDMB is still alive and kicking in 2008. And $10 says it’ll be mostly the same people, too.

I won’t take that bet, Lord Ashtar. I don’t want to lose.

It’s getting to the point that I completely avoid political threads. But what makes me really crazy is when we’re talking about, say rap*, for example, and someone comes along and says

“Well, you know, when we re-elect Bush, there won’t be any rap anymore.”

I mean WTF? Come on, I hate Bush too, that doesn’t mean my every thought is focused on him!

*disclaimer: I don’t like rap. Reggae is OK, though.

Whoah! One of these things is not like the others…

I don’t give a rat’s ass about the petty stuff, but there are some very serious issues at stake. This is an important election, and it goes beyond partisan squabbling this time. Whether you agree or not, a lot of us are of the opinion that Bush not only led this country into an unneccessary and extremely costly war, but that he lied to the American people in order to do it, and is still lying about it to this day. Not only that, but all the billions and billions of dollars and all the American lives lost have been diverted away from the real war on terrorism.

So kindly don’t lump the “led the country into war” charge with all the insignificant stuff. I can live with a president who got a cushy gig with the guard so he didn’t have to go to Vietnam, but I have a serious problem with 1000+ American soldiers dead, a quagmire in Iraq, and a bankrupt U.S. economy, and the lies that got us there. This is not business as usual.

While people can go seriously fucked-in-the-head over this, isn’t national politics the most important issue there could possibly be? I mean, we’re talking about decisions that actually lead to people living or dying. You could make a good argument that nothing is more important.

I was here in 2000, and while I don’t remember the rhetoric being this angry prior to the election, hoo boy, a totally different story afterwards. People went absolutely ballistic.

Nowhere in the OP did I state that the election wasn’t important. Nowhere did I state that people weren’t entitled to their views on the candidates.

My question was and is: What are you accomplishing by starting twenty-three goddam threads all of which saying that you don’t like candidate x and won’t vote for him? Jeebus!

I have opinions about a multitude of things but see no sense in effectively whacking other Dopers over the head by continually stating and restating the same stinking thing.

Free speech is vital and I’ll defend to the death your right to disagree with me, but once you’ve spoken your piece, let it the hell alone. Either that or get a job writing for the National Enquirer. :rolleyes:

Actually, things were not this bad during 00’. The sheer amount vitrol is rather new. The Pit itself has tacken a particularly bad turn this last year.

Price. Tea. The PRC. Thanks.

Same recollection on my part. Sure there were your to-be-expected licks at W’s inarticulateness and Al’s inanimatedness, bewailigns of George not knowing who was PM of Pakistan and of Gore claiming he invented the Internet, rejoinders on both sides about their fund-raising practices, insinuations of a coming Judiciary Dark Age and recriminations of Bubba Clinton’s 8-year party… but it did not seem to have the supersized side-order of Nasty.

Maybe war and terror just have a way of getting people agitated.

Hypothesis about a contributing factor: In '00 we still had Bill Clinton sitting there, and let’s face it, like him or hate him, Al and George together weren’t half as interesting as Bill on a mediocre day, so we kept focused on still arguing the merits and demerits of Clinton and gave the two a pass. Now, OTOH, both competitors can get our undivided attention.

What in Og’s name makes you think anyone here is normal? :wink:

I can’t remember another election where Americans were so completely, nearly murderously angry at their fellow Americans on the “other side”. I’m very seriously considering writing in “None of the Above”.

I can’t stand Bush, I mistrust Kerry even more than I dislike Bush. But to me, the OP nailed the key issue on the head. It’s not enough for those on either side to try and get their point across. In fact, in the few threads I’ve ventured into, it seems as if the point is less “whose man is the worst” than how many nasty names, and how much of an idiot you think your opponent is for believing in “his man”. And more to the point, how much you can drive home your point that your opponent is a moron for wanting to vote for “his guy”. I really don’t remember seeing that before.

Now, I wasn’t a member of SDMB back during the last election. But this hatred of Americans by their fellow Americans just because of who they are giong to vote for is apparent out in the real world as well. And that’s something I honestly don’t remember seeing to this degree before.

The problem with the OP is that I am not “otherwise normal”.

False dilemma. :smiley:

Yeah, it definitely wasn’t this bad last time.

But it’s not just here, it’s IRL, too. I got in a real, live argument (as opposed to a civil debate) with my own father over this shit, because I said Bush lied. Which automatically made me a Kerry supporter (not true) whose opinion would no longer matter. Or something. It was bizarre and hilarious and just very sad all at the same time.

I don’t get the people who put political stickers on their cars. IMO, those people are just begging for it. Too many crazies on both sides for me and, while I’m “on the fence” (actually, I can’t really see anything decent in either candidate), I wouldn’t dream of risking my windshield just so I could tell the world that I <3 Kerry/Bush/whoever. What about the woman who got fired because of her sticker? WTF? It’s heated this year, that’s for sure.

As in, no longer living

As in, no longer breathing

As in, no longer hugging their wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, children, siblings

Dead.

Really dead.

For nothing.

For a lie.

Sorry if that makes me angry. People are too fucking stupid to care about the economy, the loss of civil liberties, the loss of our regard around the world and a million and one other things, fine.

You’d think they’d care about the lives Bush has needlessly thrown away.

But no, not even that.

It’s a sick, sick world.

There have been elections this heated before, just not in recent memory. This election is not as bitter as 1860. No states are going to secede if Bush or Kerry wins.

This election was going to be bitter from the beginning. The bitterness started with Florida and the recount debacle. Bush has been a very ideological president. The democrats struck back with the wooing of Jeffords and the temporary control of the Senate. Then, “9/11 changed everything.” The 2002 midterm election and Bush’s march to war. The Republicans using Osama Bin Laden on ads attacking Max Cleland. The Democrats, angry over their losses, attacked Trent Lott and forced him to step down as Majority Leader. Of course, Iraq has been a mess.

However, don’t forget that the economy plays a big part too. Ohio and the Midwest are hurting. Ohio’s unemployment rate keeps going up. Even in Franklin County, the unemployment rate has doubled since 2000. These numbers don’t reflect the *underemployment *rate which is significantly higher.

2000 was a boring election until the recounts. Let’s face it, war and recession are likely to make people more passionate than a Social Security lock box or prescription drug coverage for the elderly.

Equipoise,

I think you can differentiate between what the OP is driving at and your hatred for Bush. Or maybe not, I don’t know. People are pissed off, murderously pissed off, at the people who oppose them, but in the end refuse to see that no matter who wins, we’re still fucked.

Bush isn’t the first American president to send troops into an ill-conceived ‘police action’ and he won’t be the last. The underlying, and unspoken principle of the military is that young men die, and old men decide when and how, you’re going to have to live with that, or move.

What’s more, we’re living in an open age. There are few or no secrets left. Everything is out in the open, and I’ve got to believe that’s not always a good thing. Happens here today, you know about it there tomorrow, and it’s a topic on a message board the next day, and the whole situation is an extrapolation of something that was either very minor, or utterly meaningless to begin with.

People can care about the fate of their nation, without turning into rabid, jabbering partisan hacks.

I think part of the problem is the personal attacks.
I don’t hate Bush. He’s tackled his alcohol problem successfully, raised a family and comes across as personally charming.
I do think he’s a disastrous President, who led the US into an unjustified war, and took the UK into the mess with him. (And his Attorney General’s attitude to human rights is appalling.)

Are you serious?
The lies about Vietnam included that it was just a ‘police action’.
Iraq is still claimed as a war. Tony Blair still won’t admit that there were no WMD’s.
As for your crass final sentence, allow me to rephrase:
“The underlying, and unspoken principle of the terrorist is that young men die, and old men decide when and how, you’re going to have to live with that, or move.”
I don’t want to live with terrorism, and I don’t want the US + UK to invade to get control of oil supplies, or distract attention from the unsuccessful hunt for Bin Laden.

I don’t get this.

It’s shorthand for “What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”, meaning it is irrelevant.