Nails.
Fuck the South? —I’m a ’Bama boy in something of a self-imposed exile, a Yankee throwback who still has strong opinions on grits, and I like a good rant as much as the next raconteur, but you know what? Fuck you. No, seriously: fuck you. There’s more than enough stars and bars to go around. Sure, that asshole wrote that thing where he cut off his nose to spite his face, but so what? Assholes like that have been writing masturbatory fantasies about strange fruit for years. There’s hardball, but there’s also letting them set the rules and pick the battlefield, and it doesn’t take a Sun Tzu to point out what a mug’s game that is.
Kos tells us Frank Rich nailed it—as yet another Canute spitting into the incoming CW tide about those pesky “values voters,” anyway. And Rich has his point, even if it’s thin and dispiriting. —But when I want some quality spleen-vent, I tap the source, and once more the pseudonymous skimble fails to disappoint:
As a Blue Stater, I am sick of being told how negative I am and that I hate Christians, or the American South, or heartland states, or gun owners, or people less educated than me, or families, or rural culture.
I don’t hate any of that.
I hate incompetence. I hate unchecked greed. I hate secrecy in public institutions. I hate discrimination. I hate the distortion of public discourse by giving common words coded meanings. I hate coercion. I hate disproportionality in prosecution and sentencing. I hate the theft of public property for private gain. I hate having my privacy violated, especially in medical and financial matters. I hate that members of this administration avoided military service but abuse veterans and send soldiers and reservists to their deaths—and still pretend to recognize Veterans Day.
All of these things reduce the choices available to our citizens. All of these things contradict compassion. All of these things reduce freedom. The bullshit versions of compassion and freedom exclude the real things from our lives.
That’s what I hate.
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Thank you for expressing my sentiment, no doubt better (and quicker) than I ever would.
I have similar thoughts about the "stupid voter/sheep" mentality. I have found that most people I meet wherever I go are not stupid, not once you get to know them anyway.
If only we could bottle that vitriol and put it to use somewhere productive, instead of watching it transmute to hate in perpetuation of a divisive cycle. If only.
(Psst. Thank skimble, mate. The eloquence up yonder is theirs, not mine.)
That Mike Thompson article make me want to punch him in the face so badly.
What really, really amazes me about the right is how they can put forth something so deeply and thoroughly drenched in hate, and then claim to be the side of morals, justice, and even harmony. And it's true that I want to punch him, but I'm not claiming to be a pacifist. Just more frustrated by hypocrisy and lies that destroy people's live.
It does make me stop and think because clearly shouting, "liar, liar" at the other side is not going to be a successful strategy -- but will anything be? The right has already created a mentality where merely having the gall to point out that you're correct and someone else is wrong gets your a label of snob and ivory tower elite... It's sad and frustrating.
Well, I do tend to buy the stupid-voter theory, but not because I necessarily think that everyone who disagrees with me is stupid, rather because the bulk of the Reagan-Bush-Bush voters have repeatedly voted against the values they claim to profess in an outrageous game of bait and switch. And I'm sorry, but when people vote for a guy who sends their kids and neighbors off to blow up civilians in a country they can't even find on a map, and for reasons which are demonstrably false, I think that's earned the label "stupid".
I don't, however, think there's a geographical monopoly on stupidity, as the many purple maps demonstrate.
As for fantasies of partitioning the country into the red and blue states, there's one factor nobody seems to consider: who gets the nukes? Karl Rove might just agree to a split as long as his boy continued to run the world's only superpower.
It's the stupidity, stupid.
But seriously: I don't think one can summarize the pro-Bush vote in some handy reductivism like either "moral values" or "stupidity." However, it's pretty clear that Bush has attracted a purblind allegiance to his style of leadership, which requires either avoidance of reality or some manner of circular logic that ultimately becomes bad faith. I am very much in the camp that holds Kerry partially responsible for his loss: he should have been able to make a more convincing argument that he is the more competent and thoughtful candidate. Yet even given Kerry's own footshooting ("I voted for it then I voted against it" was a gift, a big fat obnoxious gift that kept on giving, no matter how many times it could be explained; if you're busy explaining, the saying goes, you're busy losing), which gave the impression that Kerry's leadership model was lacking, it requires a combination of willful ignorance and self-delusion to posit Bush as the better alternative. Where Kerry may stumble, Bush has clearly leaped over the precipice and has greeted the abyss with a gusto reminiscent of Slim Pickens riding the A-bomb.
Oh, and: Nowadays less Tennessee stud and more puke-stained hausehemann.
k-- you do yourself disservice, and assume I don't know what I like :)
others-- It seems useless to me to claim that the majority of Americans are both "stupid" AND "misinformed" (which seems to be a given). I might concede "ignorant", which is at least correctable. I believe that the majority that voted Bush et al. into power for four more years do reason, within their own frame of reference - a frame strongly influenced by Powers That Be. Claims of intellectual superiority are only going to be seen as fighting words.
The Democrats' mistake this election (if we want to talk Game here) is the same one they made last time, which is they are trying to /almost/ outdo the Republicans at their own game. According to Political Game Theory, this means they should score everyone to the left of the Republican position. This is false for two reasons: 1) Politics have never been on a single left-right axis; this is a fiction especially convenient for the dominant party (AKA the Republicans); and 2) said Theory assumes everyone will play the Game. Setting aside (1), if the Democrats were to field a candidate that actually provided a choice on actual issues (aside from the dominant agenda) then those in the "middle" would have to actually choose, and not merely ratify a minor flavor change along the lines of brand proliferation. Then we might really see whether we are comfortable with our fellow citizens.
But now I've wandered too far off my cowpath..