I can see taking it wrong at first blush if you’re inclined to want to think ill of Kerry. But that second blush makes all the difference.
You realize that by digging up these isolated tu quoques that stand out mostly as exceptions to the norm, you’re only indicating your own unwillingness to engage this thread constructively?
This is only true if someone exposes the lie. Which is the heart of my OP.
No. It’s true whether I’m found out or not.
If I can’t sell my ideas truthfully, I’m selling something other than my ideas.
I’m sorry, jsgoddess, but that’s just not real world. You seem to be suggesting that if someone gets elected to office based on lies, then THEY’LL know they lied, and will probably lose sleep over it, and that’s good enough, karmically speaking. Sorry. Karma doesn’t cut it when lies help achieve power over others.
I’m saying if you lie to combat liars you’re just a liar and not worth supporting. I don’t care what your (this is a general you) goals are or how noble they are or whatnot, if they require lies to sell, they are shitty.
If fighting Limbaugh and Beck requires lies, it’s not worth it.
To be clear, most of the lying is going on by Republicans. They don’t seem to have a problem with lying, and that’s one of the reasons I don’t trust them. We can’t lie and still expect to be trusted.
No, wait, you’re right, that wasn’t the same kind of death threat as the ones against Bush. This guy brought his gun along when he was making the threat, which is an obvious and clear sign that he wouldn’t have actually gone through with it-- I know that if I intended to kill the President, I sure wouldn’t bring a gun along.
Oh, and it’s also obviously different because a lot of folks in politics and the media have been proclaiming this guy as a hero, so he obviously must be heroic, as opposed to the Bush-threateners, who almost everyone regarded as just plain nuts.
It wasn’t that isolated. I’m sorry, but hearing about how coarse the conversation has become now that you guys are in power, is pretty nauseating. Especially to those of us who spent the last 8 years on the receiving end of your ‘civil discourse’.
Somebody definitely needs a hug.
I don’t think there’s a single post in this thread that has suggested otherwise.
Can you point out some coarseness in this discussion?
At any rate, here’s one of the major differences as I see it:
Although you can, as always, ALWAYS point out a few fringe individuals on either side, the “discourse” from the Democrat side, over the last eight years, was overall characterized by an attempt to highlight and document the actual truth. It’s by now pretty well established fact that most of the Democrat positions in re: Bush’s justifications for the war–which is at the heart of almost all of the objections to his administration–were in fact demonstrably correct. The opposition during his tenure, in other words, though it had some shrill voices in the chorus, was not built on lies but on truths that continue to be justified with each new revelation.
While on the other hand, the rightwing hysterics that this thread is trying to address are willfully and explicitly distorting the truth, up to and including whole-cloth fabrication, more in order to sabotage the current administration for purely political reasons than to achieve any actual positive goal: their strategy seems to be, NOT “let’s build this house together,” but “let’s tear this house down so we can build our own without them.”
Your isolated examples, Sam, serve more to prove the rule as exceptions than to prove any systemic similarity of process. In fact, even you do not highlight them as examples of Democrat skullduggery so much as defensive examples of how some individual Democrats took their political cues from Republicans: you only say there are Democrats who are just as bad, which only emphasizes the bad behavior of Republicans, and in no way mitigates it.
You seem to suggest destructive politics is just as good as constructive politics, as long as there are individuals on each side who practice them.
Bullshit.
Then why did you say my comments weren’t “real world”?
I’ll restate, since I’m not being clear.
You can’t beat the current crop of Republican pundits at their game because their game is dishonesty.
What you can beat them at is improving people’s lives. And that’s the goal anyway. The point isn’t to have so-and-so elected; it’s to have such-and-such goals realized.
So, ignore the wingnuts other than to point and laugh on occasion. They aren’t all-powerful. They’re just dudes. Work on fixing the issues that are giving them traction–right now that’s the economy.
The left is winning. It might not always look like it, but it’s true.
Sure, I’d be glad to:
Then there was jsgoddesses attempt to be ‘reasonable’ and ‘understanding’ of the right wing point of view. She grants that they may actually believe the stuff they’re saying, because you know, some are stupid and ignorant, some are racist or xenophobic, and some are simply ‘desperate’.
I guess you’re so used to hearing your fellow liberals talk this way that you no longer realize just how divisive and coarse it really is. That you would challenge me to find examples of coarse rhetoric in this thread is really telling.
Absolute nonsense. Even if I grant you the Iraq war debate, have you ever seen a protest against the WTO? Ever seen an animal rights activist throw paint on someone wearing a fur coat? Anti-globalization protests are just as spittle-flecked as the Iraq war protests were. When right-wing commentators are asked to speak at colleges, they are often shouted down by lefties who hate them. Conservative campus clubs have had their offices vandalized and their handbills ripped down and their newsletters stolen.
You want to believe that the outrageous behavior on the left is coming from a tiny handful of extremists, but that the same behavior on the right is indicative of the mindset of everyone opposed to Obama. I would suggest that you stop getting your protest updates and pictures from Daily Kos, and try reading the right side of the blogosphere for another perspective. Because I’ve read lots of first-hand reports from the various tea parties, and they look like pretty damned normal people to me.
Here, read this report from Matt Welch at Reason. Welch HATED Bush. He’s not a Republican. I think he may have voted for Obama - certainly several editors at Reason did. He went looking for the crazies, and found a few. But only a few. Lots of over-the-top rhetoric and the typical bumper-sticker sloganeering you see at every political rally, but not much else.
And like I said, I can point to equivalently bad behavior from the left on many subjects having nothing to do with the Iraq war.
First of all, opposing the spread of government can be an end to itself. Why would you assume that reasonable behavior must include some expansion of government, and that we just need to compromise on how much it should be expanded? The historical role of conservatives and libertarians has been to try to stand up against the ever-growing maw of government and yell ‘stop!’. It’s a perfectly honorable position to take.
Second, if you want to talk about lies, how about we start with Obama’s claim that government health care won’t add to the deficit, won’t affect anyone’s coverage that they currently have, and that there will be no rationing of care for the elderly? Next, we could all have a good hearty laugh at his claim that the system will be self-financing through the reduction of waste, fraud and abuse. He’s said this AFTER the CBO said that it would in fact require a trillion dollars of new revenue.
The left has its own lies, and plenty of them. To me, it’s shocking how duplicitous Obama has been - how many promises he’s broken, how many outrageous claims he’s made. Remember the administration’s original claims for economic growth, which pretty much every economist outside of the White House thought was outrageous (and which in fact turned out to be outrageous)? The whole ‘green jobs’ charade is an attempt to mask a huge wealth transfer as a technological economy improvement. The guy who promised the most transparent administration ever is running the least transparent administration in my memory. I could go on.
I do not think destructive politics are good. I’ve been fighting on this board for a more civil tone for almost a decade now. And I never said anything about how they were ‘just as good’ as constructive politics. My whole point was to simply dispute the characterization of Republicans as being uniquely mean spirited and coarse, and that what they’ve engaged in is somehow more virulent than what the left has practiced. That’s the real bullshit.
What does this have to do with lefty politics?
I have a difficult time understanding these concerns. As I’m sure you’re well aware, we already spend a significant amount more than any other country with far poorer outcomes. Is our government just too grossly incompetent or irretrievably corrupt to manage the job that every other western industrialized nation has managed to pull off? Do all those countries just win at politics and health care management over the USofA?
Also, maybe you’ll clarify a point for me. Some of your posts sound as though you’re speaking as a Canadian, and some as an American. Purely for perspective, where do you live?
Well from the info on the IMDB it does not seem to be a ‘Call to Kill GWB’, which is what people are implying. It seems to address they way we respond to terrorism and how would the country react if the POTS was killed by an Islamic Terrorist.
To me it seems on par with Bill Clinton ‘appearing in’ Contact.
Um, no, cream pies would be nice. Civilized, actually.
It’s the attempt to drum up an assassination attempt on false premises that’s worrying.
There are those on the left who’d consider that sort of thing. (I’m one of them, but I’m a former rightie, a fan of Machiavelli, & a student of revolutionary politics. I think more like Glenn Beck or Ann Coulter than most of the left does.) But most of the modern left are more about big grandiose shows of statement than about Machiavellian ruthlessness. Actually, so’s most of the right.
As a former Teen for Life, I gotta say, the Religious Right has done this kind of thing (the country clubbers are too hoity-toity to bother, they just buy elections) & things worked out all right. As long as it isn’t violent, it’s just annoying, & we can complain about it without having to flee the country.
Apparently you haven’t heard of George Tiller, who was killed by an anti-abortion extremist. Or is political violence not political if only the killer is political?
Some guy crashed his small plane into the White House when Clinton was president. It was during Clinton’s presidency that the block of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was closed to vehicle traffic because of a gunman. So what? There are always crazy people out there who attempt to assassinate the president. Bush’s presidency was unremarkable in that respect.
This is a credibility killer right here. Administrations since Nixon have generally gotten less transparent rather than more, but it is hard to imagine an administration more inscrutable, more message-controlled, and more secret than that of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Don’t accuse others of viewing things through partisan-colored glasses when you’re making your own bifocals yourself.
What’s going on now with the perpetuation of hysterical fear and suspicion is just more of the same from the election. Remember the crazy lady during the McCain rally who said that Obama was a secret Muslim? The old canards that he was born in Kenya, went to a madrassa in Indonesia or hates white people (a la Reverend Wright) are still around. Glenn Beck has been active and direct in perpetuating the last one. Unfortunately, all of these lies are coming together to form a perfect storm of bullshit that is driving some people over the edge. They don’t trust anything he says or any economic package he proposes or even supports because to these people he’s already pretty much become the anti-Christ.
OK, Sam, thanks for the cites. And you have a point.
But Bush got us into war. What has Barry O. done to deserve this noise?
(And I think Kerry was probably speaking metaphorically. Clearly he hasn’t killed W.)
What should we do? We need to build an actual progressive party in the USA. The reason so few people self-identify as progressives is that they don’t know it’s an option. We should run progressive candidates, split the Democrat vote, & force the Blue Dogs left in Congress to pick between us & the GOP. We can replace the present leadership if we make that an objective. We need a Dem leadership that is ideological & committed. I don’t want it to be DeLay-style, where we start dictating to lobbyists. I’m thinking more like Hitler (or a bit like Gingrich), where we shut down Congress until we have the leadership.
Yes, I just Godwined the thread with an approving reference to Hitler. It’s that bad.
ETA: Or I’m overreacting. I just read post 50. jsgoddess makes good points.
The government is funded by the country. Taxes in the USA are too low for a welfare state, & it is politically easier to raise taxes to pay for this than to abolish the welfare state. The least we should be doing if we’re simply being conservative is expand Medicaid.
Bullhockey. You have no real-world basis for assuming that mismanagement of a new entitlement program would be worse than the present regime. You have no familiarity with US bureaucracy nor with the present health regime. As for losing your autonomy to an unacceptable degree, if socialized health insurance is so unacceptable, why do so many accept it, including you? Why don’t you move to Montana if UHC is unacceptable? Clearly, you are not using “unacceptable” clearly, because you accept a system far more radical than what is being proposed here, simply by virtue of staying in Canada. If you love America so much, Sam, why don’t you move here? If you hate socialism so much, Sam, why do you stay?
Who are these ‘rich’ in British-form scare quotes? We have real rich in this country, Sam, they could buy & sell you six times before breakfast.
The cold, hard fact of the matter is that in a capitalist system, the rich–not the ‘rich,’ but the real rich are enriched by the labor of others. A little socialism is the price they pay for stability.
And also cut costs. Which undermines your first objection.
The NIH is perfectly capable of being the main source of research funding. It’s really government action that drives public science anyway. I’ve pointed this out to you before.
These are the same argument. It’s an excuse, & it’s not even quite true. People are still going to be responsible for taking care of themselves in an active sense–they’re just going to be subsidized. Much like students in school, who have it paid for by others but are responsible for studying themselves.
Public health is like public education. It doesn’t take away individual responsibility, it just subsidizes those who want to take care of themselves.
Of course they aren’t all quite like that. But I’m from southern Missouri, putz. You really want to tell me that racialist undereducated hillbillies aren’t at least part of the GOP base? Why don’t you come down here & meet my rightie friends? They’re not really bad guys, just a bit bamboozled. I used to try to listen to Limbaugh (another Missourian) & got sick of his content-free, brain-dead noise. That he has a base says something disturbing about my friends & neighbors, & that needs to be acknowledged, though it hurts.
Desperation is real for some of us, friend. Frankly, though, few people on the right are really that desperate. They make stupid signs as a lark, they march on DC as an outing. But lynches were outings once too.
College kids do stupid things. Note that the establishment left does not do these things. But what if the right were Mussolini-esque? Would it be justified?
That seems plausible to me. When I was in the pro-life movement, I was embarrassed by some the things my fellow protestors would say or draw. When I became active in the Democratic Party, I learned to deal with Truthers gently.
But in between, I left the GOP partly because the crazies & bigoted asses were taken seriously as leaders, & by, “crazies & bigoted asses,” I really mean one man–Limbaugh.
Not all conservatism is Goldwaterian. But it’s a position. You call it honorable, Eisenhower called it stupid. I think it’s a bit simplistic, apparently self-serving, & short-sighted. But in any case, why isn’t communitarianism (along, say, classically Judeo-Christian lines) also an honorable position to take? How do you expect us to respond to those who call our attempts to help them “creeping Stalinism”?
A trillion over how many years, Sam? That’s not a one-year number, now is it? The Bush tax cuts are set to expire anyway, that’s the only way W could claim to be moving toward a balanced budget. That’s the source of the funds, Sam, the surpluses we should have been running. I know you’re foreign, but try to keep up.