# Why the left alienates voters **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 4, 2004, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073 "2004-11-04T22:51:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/61 "2004-11-05T16:28:45Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > So, lets get some sort of calibration here, **Lonesome**. Is intellectual snobbery, as dreadful as it is, worse than lying to start a war? Got any pictures of kids with thier limbs blown off due to liberal’s intellectual snobbery? Those flag-draped coffins they’re unoading…and will continue to unload, since you guys got your mandate…those are the result of lefty intellectual snobbery? Think Mr. Hoffer and Mr. Orwell would agree? > > Well, its yours now. Congratulations. You had the choice, and you ratified it, gave it your official okey-dokey. Now it belongs to you. Right now, somewhere north of a thousand. What do you think? 2,000? 5,000? 10,000? Of our best and brightest? > > We tried, you wouldn’t listen. It belongs to you now. Ah, yes, I can hear her now, the sanctimonious, hypocritical, blubbering preacher’s wife on \* The Simpsons \* : “Won’t someone please think of the children?” Well, inasmuch as they’re pulling children’s corpses out of the mass graves they’re digging up in Iraq right now, and considering that thousands of Iraqi children were dying of disease and hunger due to the massive corruption in the Oil for Food program administered by the wondrously virtuous United Nations, I’m pretty damn sure that a lot fewer Iraqi children are dying today than when Saddam was still in power. Try to understand something: _No matter what the United States decided to do or not to do about Iraq, children were going to die as a direct consequence of that decision._ Now, could you please quit trying to play that ridiculous “dead Iraqi children” card? It’s every bit as ridiculous and stupid as the “poor murdered babies” card that the pro-choice crowd is always trying to play. Or perhaps that’s a fact you wanted me to leave out of my calibration? The exasperating thing is that you actually think the rest of us are so stupid and spineless that we’ll be intimidated with your cheap moralizing and your overheated rhetoric. And you’ve got the gall to accuse the right of lacking any grasp of subtlety and nuance! ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/62 "2004-11-05T16:35:20Z")
> [@faithfool](#): > > I, too, have a question for **Lonesome Polecat** and I truly don’t mean for it to be in the least pejorative. If it comes out sounding that way, then I apologize. > > So, here goes nothing. First you say this in regards to another posters political leanings… > > Which had been proceeded by this (bolded emphasis mine)… > > And then finally followed up by this… > > Now, it’s possible that I truly don’t understand your initial observation about there being “a very ugly tendency towards intellectual snobbery on the left.” Especially when juxtaposed against the statements that _you_ made in response to others. Is there a different standard applied to one group rather than another? Am I missing something or does this not come off as exactly the same thing you are deriding? Or is it because it’s justified in return if they do it first? I’m again baffled. Can you help me understand this one point and explain your position more in full? I’d really appreciate more insight than I already have. > > Thank you. Perhaps you could explain what is that you don’t understand? Because I don’t understand why you don’t understand. It’s perfectly plain, simple English, and I don’t see how anyone who isn’t a simpleton could have missed the point. Perhaps you could try for some clarity in your own posts? ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/63 "2004-11-05T16:56:36Z")
> [@danceswithcats](#): > > Before making comments about the KKK, you’d do well to educate yourself about them. The Fiery Cross by Wyn Craig Wade is an excellent text, tracing the Klan from 1865 to 1987. My education on the subject is limited to UK TV reports, and a few Internaet sources. The book you sited has fairly poor reviews, but from further research I must offer an appology to Dopers here. It seems the KKK originally opposed the Republicans and their _Union League_. So my assumptions may have been wrong. But I stand by my belief that there are nutters on both sides of the political spectrum, but maybe not the particular KKK brand of nutters. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/64 "2004-11-05T17:02:30Z")
Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/65 "2004-11-05T17:10:49Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > As I said, read Eric Hoffer and George Orwell, or just use your common sense, assuming you have any. Only a fool would demand a cite for it. Do you even understand what “common sense” is? There’s nothing profound or absolute about it, it’s nothing more than shared experience. Here in America it’s common sense to drive on the right side of the road but in England that is pure foolishness. Clearly you and I don’t have enough in common for “common sense” to cover this issue. ## If you are going to hang out here in Great Debates you should learn how to argue. It’s not my job to go out and read material to prove your assertion. If someone can’t support a claim despite claiming it is painfully obvious then they aren’t likely to know what they are talking about. Now, can you cite your claim or not? Because if not then common sense around here tells us that such unsubstantiated crap goes in another forum. Perhaps IMHO is more your speed. Or the Free Republic. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/66 "2004-11-05T17:26:30Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > Do you even understand what “common sense” is? There’s nothing profound or absolute about it, it’s nothing more than shared experience. Here in America it’s common sense to drive on the right side of the road but in England that is pure foolishness. Clearly you and I don’t have enough in common for “common sense” to cover this issue. > > ## If you are going to hang out here in Great Debates you should learn how to argue. It’s not my job to go out and read material to prove your assertion. If someone can’t support a claim despite claiming it is painfully obvious then they aren’t likely to know what they are talking about. Now, can you cite your claim or not? Because if not then common sense around here tells us that such unsubstantiated crap goes in another forum. Perhaps IMHO is more your speed. Or the Free Republic. It doesn’t need a cite. It really doesn’t. You can insist otherwise all you want, but it doesn’t need a cite. It was a post on a message board, it wasn’t a doctoral thesis on political science or sociology, and the demand for a cite was not merely inappropriate, it was positively asinine. I can’t prove something to someone who doesn’t want it proven, and I refuse to waste time trying to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/67 "2004-11-05T17:50:54Z")
> [@BlueGarden](#): > > It’s the point I’m trying to make (although maybe not very well). Politically I fall in the middle. My liberal friends think I am conservative, my conservative friends think I am liberal. I decide each issue on it’s own merits and up until this year I voted for the person not the party. It is events like this that push those of us in the center towards the right. What aboutthings like Ed Gillespie saying that the Democrats had to hold their convention in Boston because they “wouldn’t dare have it in America”? It’s a strategy of the Republican party to label those who disagree with them as un-American and contemptible. It’s not a strategy of the Democratic party. This picture is an example of one person reacting in anger to a perceived injury (what it is is not evident from the photo). It’s nothing like what the Republicans are up to. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/68 "2004-11-05T18:08:39Z")
Well, gosh, **Lonesome** , color me confused. I didn’t know we went to war to save the Iraqi babies, I thought we went to war because Saddam was a threat to us. Sure seems like that was it, what with all the things The Leader was saying about “mushroom clouds” and “vast stockpiles” and stuff like that. But what that really means is “Iraqi babies in mass graves”. Well, son-of-a-gun! I had no idea thats what it meant! Must be my intellectual snobbery, huh? Makes it so I think that the plain English definition is the actual one. Where were you when we needed you? We needed a GeeDubya Translator, and you were the man for the job! But there is a bit of a problem: the dead babies in the mass graves that you are so wrought up about, they were already dead. The fresh corpses we are minting now, they weren’t. Until we got there. So, you think a man in Fallujah, who’s kid just got shredded, he’s going to blame Saddam? You think? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/69 "2004-11-05T18:28:59Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > We needed a GeeDubya Translator, and you were the man for the job! Why is it that I can manage to refer to every single Democratic politician by their actual name? Senator Kerry. Senator Kennedy. Senator Daschle. President Clinton. Senator Clinton. See? And this is not just specially generated for this post. I’ve been a member here for nearly five years. This is my normal practice. In contrast, you, and others on your side, use “Shurb,” “GeeDubya,” and the like. And here we are discussing this question in a thread called “Why the left alienates voters.” ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/70 "2004-11-05T18:35:08Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Well, gosh, **Lonesome** , color me confused. I didn’t know we went to war to save the Iraqi babies, I thought we went to war because Saddam was a threat to us. Sure seems like that was it, what with all the things The Leader was saying about “mushroom clouds” and “vast stockpiles” and stuff like that. > > But what that really means is “Iraqi babies in mass graves”. Well, son-of-a-gun! I had no idea thats what it meant! Must be my intellectual snobbery, huh? Makes it so I think that the plain English definition is the actual one. > > Where were you when we needed you? We needed a GeeDubya Translator, and you were the man for the job! Wow! From zero to total absurdity in two posts! I didn’t say that saving the children was the reason for the invasion. My point was that you don’t give a damn about the children of Iraq and never did. You’re like that bimbo on \*The Simpsons \* who keeps sqauwking “Won’t someone think of the children?” It’s a blatant attempt at emotional manipulation, not reasoned argument, and only the naive and gullible would fall for it. > [@elucidator](#): > > But there is a bit of a problem: the dead babies in the mass graves that you are so wrought up about, they were already dead. The fresh corpses we are minting now, they weren’t. Until we got there. > > So, you think a man in Fallujah, who’s kid just got shredded, he’s going to blame Saddam? You think? Problem here is, those kids were dying right up until the U.S. invaded and would still be dying today if we hadn’t. One more time: _No matter what the U.S. decided to do or not to do about Iraq, children were going to die as a result of that decision._ There was no painless or bloodless course of action. No matter what we did–even if we just washed our hands of the whole business and walked away from the Mideast entirely --there was going to be bloodshed and suffering. So quite blithering about the poor Iraqi children, Lucy. You don’t care about them, and you’re not fooling anybody with a three digit I.Q. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/71 "2004-11-05T18:53:46Z")
You’re a telepath? You can peer into my soul and inventory the contents thereof? I think not. But of course, you don’t really believe that, do you? You’re just saying that to undermine my argument by impugning my character, yes? But…OK…you deny that you were making any such argument. Fair enough. What argument _are_ you making? You didn’t say we invaded to protect Iraqi children, and I hold that to be commendable honesty. But you leave a hole there, an absence, yes? If it wasn’t in self-defense, and it wasn’t to protect the children, then what, in the name of Bleeding Jesus, _was it for_! To what end did we sacrifice 1,000 of our best and brightest (so far) and a gazillion dollars (so far)? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/72 "2004-11-05T18:55:29Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > …and you’re not fooling anybody with a three digit I.Q. Wel, yes, I do. I didn’t intend to provoke your envy by flaunting it. You have my apology. ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/73 "2004-11-05T20:01:14Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > It doesn’t need a cite. It really doesn’t. You can insist otherwise all you want, but it doesn’t need a cite. It was a post on a message board, it wasn’t a doctoral thesis on political science or sociology, and the demand for a cite was not merely inappropriate, it was positively asinine. ## I don’t demand a cite. I merely asked if you could provide one. If you don’t care to take the crap that comes out of your mouth seriously it is no sweat off my nose. I’ll just do the same. Again, allow me to recommend the Free Republic. Your clowning would fit right in. ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/74 "2004-11-05T20:24:53Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > Perhaps you could explain what is that you don’t understand? Because I don’t understand why you don’t understand. It’s perfectly plain, simple English, and I don’t see how anyone who isn’t a simpleton could have missed the point. Perhaps you could try for some clarity in your own posts? Well, I’ll certainly give it the ol’ ‘simpleton’ try. I seemed to sense in what you wrote (evidenced in the quotes I pulled out of your posts above), that you felt that liberals were patronizing, condescending and arrogant (that’s all paraphrasing by the way, which I why I wanted your own expressions to speak for themselves – but if I’ve got the intent wrong, I apologize, and would like you to set me straight), yet you exhibited the EXACT SAME BEHAVIOR, in basically the same short breath, that you condemn others of. Doesn’t that strike you as a wee bit hypocritical, disingenuous, something? That was what I was remarking on. And in fairness to my usually garbled manner of putting my message across, perhaps I wasn’t clear. I hope this helps and you don’t feel in normally necessary to belittle those who are politely engaging you in conversation. I truly was aiming for civility and respect here. Again, if I missed the boat, I’m sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/45deac/32.png) [@Evil\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_One)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/75 "2004-11-05T20:35:15Z")
I would be willing to bet that none of the nitwits in the link provided by the OP would be capable of holding a political conversation on the level that goes on in here on a daily basis. To actually hold up one of those signs and expect to be taken seriously indicates a huge amount of naivete. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/76 "2004-11-05T20:43:44Z")
Elucidator > [@Bricker](#): > > Why is it that I can manage to refer to every single Democratic politician by their actual name? Senator Kerry. Senator Kennedy. Senator Daschle. President Clinton. Senator Clinton. See? > > And this is not just specially generated for this post. I’ve been a member here for nearly five years. This is my normal practice. > > In contrast, you, and others on your side, use “Shurb,” “GeeDubya,” and the like. > > And here we are discussing this question in a thread called “Why the left alienates voters.” ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/77 "2004-11-05T21:20:19Z")
You think I should speak respectfully of this man? He stood there and told me he was absitively posolutely _sure_ about Saddam’s evil designs and dreadful peril. Good people are dead as a result. What has this man done that I should accord him anything but my contempt? He is a firm and unwavering leader? So was Custer. He imagines himself another Churchill? Does the word “Gallipoli” ring any bells? Truth be know, “GeeDubya” is actually pretty gentle, considering my true opinion. I scorn him lightly, so as not to confer any undeserved dignity. He has led us into a disaster, and his only solution is that we “stay the course”. He may well be right, it may well be that the only way out of this shitstorm is through. But it didn’t have to be this way, a bit of patience, a bit of doubt, and all we would have suffered is embarassment. But ask yourself this: is there no point at which you would throw up your hands and say “Enough! Cut and run! Get the Hell out of Dodge!” How many of our best and brightest are you prepared to sacrifice? For a cause already shown to be empty? I was a young man during the 'Nam years, and I swear to you, as God is my witness and Jesus my best buddy, this is _deja voodoo_ all over again, those who will not learn from history condemn the rest of us to repeat it. This is you guys baby now. We tried, you wouldn’t listen, so it’s all yours. Did you see that movie about Robert McNamara, reflecting over his past from the vantage point of great age? A man in the unenviable position of having to hope there is no God, no Judgement, for fear of having to answer? My personal ethics forbid coerced compliance, so I wouldn’t, even if I could. Despite what may seem to be intemperance, I have no standing to demand, to insist. I beseech, I implore. Nor do I imagine that I do. _We are wrong!_ And we are just about the only people in the whole world who don’t know it. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/78 "2004-11-05T21:20:20Z")
From the linked article on the riots: > [@](#): > > We’re a little more tolerant of others… ,’’ Schwab said. “Middle America doesn’t hold the same values.” From the link in the OP: > [@](#): > > FUCK MIDDLE AMERICA I swear, you can’t make this stuff up as fast as the Left makes it real. What’s that A-with-a-circle-thru-it thing? Is that for atheism? It was on a poster or flag or something about “No Gods, no Masters” or something. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/79 "2004-11-05T21:23:38Z")
Yeah, sure, **Shodan** , all the irrational nuts and weirdos, they’re all on our side. Backing Israel in order to hasten the Apocalypse, this is reasonable? This is rational? Who do you think Jack Chick voted for? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073/80 "2004-11-05T21:24:50Z")
Oh, the A in the circle thingy is for “anarchy”. What, you don’t got kids? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-left-alienates-voters/273073.md?page=5)