Look, here’s the deal: Both sides have their wingnuts. It’s unavoidable. The opposition always has a vested interest in downplaying their own wingnuts and trying to make the other side’s wingnuts look like the voice of the party and the real force behind the other side. That’s what political operatives are paid to do.
The right has its birthers and extremist militia types. The leftist has the Marxist World Worker’s party with their message of violent revolution, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, and other extremists. Some on the right use iconography of revolution, such as the people carry the signs about the tree of Liberty and ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ T-shirts. The left has its own iconography of revolution: Che Guevera T-Shirts and signs, the hammer and sickle, The pumped fist of the black panthers, etc.
The fact is, neither the mainstream of the left or right is defined by its extremists. What is different now is that the Democratic party is going out of its way to play up the extremist angle on the right. Pelosi’s performance the other day was disgusting. The New Yorker and Esquire have cover stories next week on the ‘hate’ on the right.
Say what you want about Bush, but as far as I can recall he did not engage in this. His answer was consistent whenever someone tried to bait him and get him to say something about the protesters and extremists on the left: He’d simply say that all Americans have the right to free speech. Now, maybe I missed some time when he or his administration went off on how dangerous the left was and how much hate was brewing on the left, so maybe someone can correct my memory. But I don’t recall anything like the concerted effort to tar the Democrats and the left in general with the actions of the wingnut fringe.
And Obama hasn’t faced anything like the level of vitriol that Bush took for at least six of his eight years in office.
As for the Republicans embracing blowhards like Limbaugh and Beck… Can anyone remember who was the Democrat’s invited guest to the State of the Union speech one year? Michael Moore. As big an incendiary gas bag as anyone on the right. Democrats love Keith Olbermann, and he regularly has a feature where he calls out the worst person in America, and it’s invariably a Republican. Air America was set up specifically to counter Limbaugh and others, and was every bit as bombastic.
The only problem with these attempts to have a Democratic Limbaugh is that they simply can’t get enough people to listen. But if you had someone who could draw an audience like Limbaugh can, something tells me you wouldn’t be wringing your hands over the coarsening of political discourse.
Sam, why do you keep pointing this out like it means something? George Bush already gets more civility and respect than he has any right to. If everybody in America spit and cursed whenever they heard his name, it would be more respect than he’s due.
People’s Exhibit number one is dead people, somewhere north of one hundred thousand innocent people who would not be dead were it not for George W. Bush.
George W. Bush is no more worthy of the respect accorded the Office of the President than a pedophile priest is a man of God.
Huh. When did you throw in the towel and join the dark side?
Your entire response boils down to holding up fringe individuals who do NOT represent the left as a whole, and comparing them–using them to justify–the systemic, nearly monolithic policies and practices of the most powerful voices–not the fringe–the most powerful voices of the right and their followers.
I don’t think a Democratic Limbaugh will help. Limbaugh-style crap can not be taken seriously by serious people.
What we need is to acknowledge that we have not won, the left is not dominant, & not mistake the DLC for our own. They are changelings, they are false friends.
Therefore, we need to do what the Conservative Movement did when it was out of power. We need a Wm F. Buckley. Someone committed to rational discourse who will find persons of grace on the “other side” to debate. All the time running the show with his own slant of course.
This is where I disagree, unless you mean “on the right” to mean only those in power. Though, in a way, those in power are also desperate. Obama was a blow. The demographics of the US are a blow.
The level of vitriol is being spurred on by desperation. The Limbaughs and Becks are aided by it. Like I said above, I think people are angry and looking for someone to blame, but them being wrong about whodunnit doesn’t make their anger dissipate.
Yes indeed he is. However, he has some odd ideas about the Canadian health care system, and has posted some interesting things about it (ie doctors in Canada are not “free” to determine the standard of care). Didn’t reply to my post about it though.
I disagree. While the left hasn’t won, the left is winning, so it’s time to stop acting like the right is in power. This thread is a prime example of thinking as if the right has fearsome amounts of power because some fatheads scream a lot.
Let’s stop buying into the myth. Overestimating the opposition is just as big a problem as underestimating them.
I don’t think it’s even disputable that the lies spread by the rightwing hysterical press–and the idiots who took up their gauntlet and disrupted any attempts at intelligent discussion at the various townhalls–succeeded in preventing an open, honest airing of the actual pros and cons of the Obama healthcare plan. The debate became focused on the imaginary pros and cons.
And now Obama’s had to throw out quite a lot of baby with the bathwater the shouters and liars succeeded in getting tossed out.
While we kept to the high road, the hysterics of the right have been measurably successful in sabotaging any real attempts at constructive progress.
Your position, jsgoddess, strikes me as exactly the position the rightwing propagandists would like us all to take. It will make the fulfillment of their agenda that much easier.
While to me, your position is exactly what the right wants. They want to be feared; you fear the hell out of them. You’re thinking about them before you act and worrying and posting threads about shadow governments.
The left’s hope that Obama and the Dems were going to reform health care instead of just giving sacks of cash to big insurance/pharma was (and is) as silly as the right’s fervent pleas to not insert government into their medicare.
I’ve asked repeatedly and never do get an answer. Is the summary of this argument basically that our government is just one giant clusterfuck of corruption and ineptitude all the way around?
…Do you honestly believe that? What system would you have us scrap this one, in favor of?
I’m not, you know, America… fuck yeah!!! about it, but I just don’t really have much of a grasp on your position. Do you actually have ideas about how to restructure the American government for better efficacy, or are you just one of those “why bother voting, it doesn’t matter anyway” sort of cats?
One of the reasons I think the left is winning. (Elucidator always warns about anti-cootie protocols, but this is the Washington Times, so douse yourself with DDT and wear a body condom. When the Values Voters got together and voted about “issues of concern to straw-poll voters”:
The article says that in 2007, the same-sex marriage numbers were at 20%. I think this is a great illustration of how passions can be fired up and then wane, especially when the positions aren’t really important to people’s day-to-day living–and for most conservatives, same-sex marriage barely touches them.
But run this through a real world filter: in the abstract, yeah sure. But their activities are effective and must be addressed; we ignore them at our peril.
Your position seems to place the abstract quality of being too good to take notice of them over the practical difficulties of cleaning up the mess they actually make, in the real world. There’s principles and there’s practicals; practicals trump principles ever time.
Well, you know, come up with solutions and maybe they can be used, but I don’t see any answers that make sense. And I don’t see any point to talking about shadow governments and completely blowing everything out of proportion. It’s not about being “too good” to take notice. It’s about there being no point in fussing over what you can’t change, especially when there are things you can.
YES, they went all apeshit and hysterical. YES, they yelled and screamed and threw tantrums. And now, the hysteria is dying down. No one can maintain that level of frenzied fear. It burns itself out eventually. If we shriek around in response, I don’t think it is a solution to anything.
You keep saying it’s naive to think they have less power than they used to, or to say that they have harnessed a lot of hostility but haven’t managed to do much with it. But they didn’t win the Presidential election. They lost seats in Congress. Their darling Palin stepped down. None of them can keep their pants on. Michael Steele heads the RNC, but is powerless in the face of Limbaugh, and Limbaugh is always moving on to the next yuk.
I think it’s pretty remarkable how far we’ve come, ideologically, in the past 20 years. Not far enough, but pretty far.
Again, the solution is improving people’s lives so that the cries of fearmongers and shitstirrers fall on uninterested ears.
The entire destructive force of the right wing is arrayed against any practical attempt to make good on that wish.
So, on a practical level: exactly HOW do you go about “improving people’s lives”?
That’s the point of this thread: what are the concrete policy strategies that will work in the face of the massive campaign of sabotage being waged by the rightwing hysterics?
Do you honestly believe it can be achieved without challenging the lies they tell, lies that have a *practical *effect on their audience? If so, how, please, would you achieve that? Practically, real world. I know what the wishes are: improve people’s lives, etc. What are the actual strategies to build results out of wishes?
You ignore the shrieking and pass legislation. You stop worrying about what they will say. You stop fretting on messageboards about “shadow governments” and otherwise playing up the bogeyman. I don’t know how much clearer I can state it.
