As someone who considers himself a progressive, left leaning Democrat, it is easy for me to point the finger at Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly, et al. and ascribe to them the blame for taking us down this road. But that would not only be unfair, but self-fulfilling. Oberman, Maddow, and Stewart are certainly giving as good as they get. And although I bemoan the loss of civility, I confess to thoroughly enjoying the tape of Barney Frank comparing a conversation with a shouting protester to a discussion with a dining room table. And I allow myself to hate Glenn Beck.
So how did we get here? Is it the internet? Did convenient forums enable some nuts to spew their crackpot views, which in turn, validated other nuts to come out of the woodwork? Faced with rantings of these few, did their opponents naturally respond with mockery and derision? Which in turn led to allegations of media bias? Is it infectious? Does it have to keep getting worse?
As we say in Family Court, it takes two to tango. And we should keep in mind that the phenomena (the loss of civility) is not limited to Democrat vs. Republican issues. Witness the tone (and volume!) of discussion on BMG one month ago about Gates and Crowley and the Arrest that Shook the World. Nasty language, accusations of racism, stupidity and hidden agendas abounded on these pages. That particular debate made strange bedfellows, as I found myself on the same side as JohnD and MCRD. The arguments raged on for a couple of weeks. I suspect that no other isolated event has generated more comments in BMG history.
And so what happened with Gatesgate? Did the sky fall? Although some credit must be given to our President, the reality is the incident was not the big deal it seemed at the time, based on the firestorm of commentary it generated (I am NOT saying that racism isn’t a big deal, or that we don’t have to keep a close eye on rogue cops). Professor Gates joked about it two weeks later on Martha’s Vineyard, Crowley stayed away from talk radio, and both men won credit for how they handled the controversy. But here, on BMG, we allowed ourselves to be enraged. We said nasty things. I found myself hating Ryepower12.
The point? Like in the marital wars, there is a benefit to keeping a cool head. If we give in to the anger (or often, the fear) and strike out with our words and actions, we can expect more trouble, not resolution. Each of us has the duty to keep the tone as civil as possible. We can model good behavior for others. BMG is, relatively, a shining example of this in the greater blogosphere.
There is another similarity to marital breakdown. Bad divorces almost always have, at their root, a financial crisis. If the economic situation is difficult, everything else starts to fall apart. I think that is a big piece of what is going in the country now. The debate is angry because people are scared. Scared people have a difficult time getting to the resolution of anything. We need to be cognizant of this, hold our tongues when we can, and take the high road when possible. Especially because, financially, things may get worse before they get better.
So, keep cool. Be as tolerant as possible of your clueless neighbor. Try not to ratchet up the debate. Use those 3’s and 4’s judiciously. Enjoy Labor Day.
Try to catch Tom Friedman on Meet The Press today. Probably on-line.
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p>He said one thing that I agreed with totally that we need someone to step up and say to phony controversies such as the President speaking to school children that the controversy is “Just Stupid…Just Stupid.”
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p>In addition, everyone has direct access to some form of wide communication be it You Tube, Facebook, the Internet, Blogs and of course but not least Right Wing Talk Radio.
That access amplifies and exaggerates any issue to the level of general public comment.
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p>Don’t know how we return to a state of balance without some sort of thought control which I find abhorent. But I guess we who have reached a state of perfection just have to make our voices and thought heard on that same stage. This site is a start, small puny and restrictive and most often afraid of its own shadow but a welcome start. đŸ˜‰
And wonderful advice.
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p>
A few thoughts.
We won’t always play with you: this can cause an unusual dynamic, too.
And the issue that vexes me the most (amongst the many):
Why is it that most of the folks that do the bleeding and the dying for this country are the ones who cling the tightest to their bibles and rifles? There has always been a dearth of “liberals”/ “Progressives” etc at the induction centers—yet they are the first to comment on what war is “just” and what war is “unjust”. They wail the loudest and rend their garments when the “other kid dies.”
The level of hypocrisy is pretty amazing in both camps.
If I was asked to point out the one point that seperated both camps—I would say that conservatives believe that enabling a problem and giving to the undeserving only creates larger problems and that compassion, although commendable, more often than not, will come back and bite you in the ass.
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p>Just saying.
Opposing unjust and illegal wars, and then if we do embark on such a war being upset and angry when people die fighting it –Â even if those people have different political philosophies –Â is hypocrisy? How do you figure?
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p>As to your last point, well, liberals, godless though some of us are, might reply that, as a certain long-haired hippie of a Jewish carpenter made famous in a number of folktales many conservatives claim to be fond of would have said, we don’t necessarily have the ability or the right to judge who is or isn’t “undeserving.”
Take a long look at the excrement that we have running for public office. Citizens no longer run for elective office to serve their country—they do it to line their pockets.
How about CHARLES RANGEL, TRAFICANT, EDWARDS, Pelosi and her milions, Fienstien and her millions, Reid and his ever increasing purse, Gingrich and Cheney are not collecting unemployment, Bush I & II and both Clintons are not staying awake at night worrying about bankruptcy.Congress and government—- local, state, and federal are now magnets for men and women who have only one thought in mind—how much can I steal without getting caught? Our founding fathers warned against it—-we have arrived at their worst expectations and far exceeded it. There is a revolution or a civil war brewing —-we’ll see how it plays out.
All I’ve read is that the rank and file — not the generals who play Risk, but the men and women who “do he bleeding and dying” are Democrats more than anything else.
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p>PS: If people were shooting at me, I’d cling tightly to my rifle as well, and any holy book I thought could help me survive.
There was a reason Al Gore wanted all the overseas absentee ballots disposed of and that the military absentee ballots are intentionally delayed or not counted and challenged.
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p>You have a convenient short memory.
which I drag out from time to time:
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p>”listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.”
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p>http://www.fleurdelis.com/desi…
If everyone followed the advice in that poem, the world would be a much better place.
When was the last time Olbermann, Maddow or Stewart (or any liberal/progressive commentator with an audience remotely comparable to O’Reilly’s, Beck’s or Limbaugh’s) called conservatives fascists, or said they want poor people to die so long as rich people get richer? And yet any objective consideration of the tactics of left and right, and the substantive effects of their respective policy preferences, clearly shows there’s a lot more evidence to support those claims than there is to conclude that President Obama is a Communist and/or fascist who wants to institute “death panels,” hates white people, and wants to punish success.
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p>There is no parity here. Pretending there is just helps move the “center” even further right.
In reading johnmurphylaw’s diary, I had a similar reaction. I think what you’re claiming here, smadin, is correct, but it’s very difficult to prove. For example, I think Boehner and McConnell (not to mention Frist and Delay) make statements much more outrageous and counterfactual than Pelosi and Reid. Likewise, I think that for every crazed statement on the Right, you can find someone just as crazed on the Left, but again the crazed person on the Left will be farther out on the margin than the crazed person on the Right. Comparing, say, the Teabaggers and MoveOn.org shows that Teabaggers to be quite a few furlongs away from reality than MoveOn ever was. (In fact, MoveOn was right on Iraq back in 2002-2003.)
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p>Proving all that to a skeptical conservative with opposite intuitions is a difficult trick.
For Pelosi and Hoyer on Town Hall protestors…
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p>Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has termed those who show up at town hall meetings and speak their mind…
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p> We really should stop the rhetoric and debate the actual facts. Debating “who” is the worst offender (left vs right) does not advance the debate.
You’re saying drowning out opposing views is an American value?
I am talking about how both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of “offenses” which contribute to the title of this diary How Did It Get To Be So Ugly? . Steven Lynch was “shouted down” yesterday while trying to speak to the crowd at the Healthcare rally. Was the crowd acting “un-American”? I don’t think so. They were exercising First Amendment rights and sending a message to Lynch that they weren’t happy with his position (or lack there of) on healthcare reform.
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p>I don’t think the name calling of Reid, Pelosi, Mcconnell or Boehner help “we the people” understand the facts any better and simply add to the invective and are feeding red meat to their ilk when they do this.
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p>My response was not a condemnation of her statement (which BTW I do) but simply replying to KBusch that “all” sides are responsible (and IMO equally) for this ugly talk.
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p>Just a “side note” on the ugliness aspect… I watched Law and Order Criminal Intent last night which focused on a “anarchist” and his daughter who were planting bombs, robbing/killing financiers… in New York City called “Revolution”. During the show they talked to each other about how their deplorable and cowardly terrorist’s (my words) actions were being recognized and supported by unhappy Americans on-line and “inferred” that activities like “tea parties” were sprouting up linking “tea party” protestors to terrorists/anarchists. I think this attempt to link terrorists… with “tea party” protestors was revolting and adds to this ugliness which continues to permeate MSM.
These two things are not equivalent:
One the one hand, it’s good, just and fair to be aware of when people on your ‘side’ engage in behaviors comparable to those whose tactics you criticize on the other ‘side’. But it’s important not to get caught up in false equivalences because, as the parent notes, it concedes territory.
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p>Jon Stewart is a case in point. Biased? Yeah. Liberal? Sure. But unlike his brethern on the right, he’s actually pretty civil toward those he disagrees with when they appear on his show, even as he skewers them (one of my favorite quotes, during an interview with Betsy McCaughey: “I like you but I don’t understand how your brain works”). And he does his thing with humor that is not predominantly mean-spirited. I’d argue that he’s rather the opposite of Limbaugh et al. in terms of tactics as well as ideology. And I bet he knows how to spell “oligarchy.”
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p>Somewhat off-topic- last spring at work we interviewed a intern candidate who had, in previous summers, worked in Cheney’s office and for the Colbert Report. After verifying that he understood that Colbert was satire, he noted that Stephen Colbert was in fact a very down-to-earth, pleasant person. Which is refreshing to hear.
I’m in agreement with most of the post in that the hysteria is to be avoided, but also to be avoided is the old canard that the arguments and behavior are automatically assumed to be equal and symmetrical, exclusive of the evidence. “Obama is not a Nazi” can’t carry equal weight in a reasoned debate as “Obama is a Nazi”, to the extent that anyone is interested in arriving at the truth, or even some shared assessment of the situation.
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p>Don’t let the fact that Olbermann and Maddow use sarcasm and ridicule mask the fact that they don’t lie to their audience like O’Reilly, Beck, and Limbaugh do. That’s a distinction between sides that’s more important than the similarity in styles.
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p>Here’s a case in point that illustrates how pervasive this “one the one hand…on the other hand” thinking is. Friday afternoon, the automated phone message system for my town’s school system — to be used for communicating with parents about bomb threats, gym teachers who get arrested for possession of child pornography (this happened), student arrests, etc. — was activated with a message about the president’s school message broadcast. Obviously, Fox/Beck/Rush had got to a few parents and they called in. The spineless superintendent caved, of course, saying “We listened to parents on both sides…”, etc.
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p>Here are the two sides they took into equal consideration:
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p>1. The president is not running for office, and only wants to encourage students to stay in school and study hard, not send a political message. In his position of leadership, he has the opportunity to encourage and inspire students to achieve.
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p>2. The president is a socialist, and I don’t want him trying to indoctrinate my student with his propaganda.
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p>Vanilla? Chocolate? It’s so hard to decide!
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p>If several of us called in to the high school and let them know that there was an imminent zombie invasion, would they have activated the phone system, saying “We listened to parents’ concerns on both sides, etc.”? One hopes they would dismiss our “concerns” out of hand. That’s an option they need to keep on the table.
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p>We have to be able to recognize and call out extremism without being accused of extremism. For example, we have to be able to at least have a preliminary, history-based discussion of whether current events mirror events during the rise of fascism in other times and places, without the Godwin’s Law card being played. If we’re waiting for the jackboots, brown shirts, and armbands before we have this discussion, we’ll never have it before it’s too late.
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p>The fabric of society is held together by agreed-upon truths; those we can agree on are dwindling by the day. The majority can still agree on which direction the sun comes up, but beyond that, it’s getting dicey. At one point, we all couldn’t agree on a president’s policies, but we shared the basic assumption that no democratically-elected American president could really be a Nazi/socialist/terrorist/whatever.
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p>One of the few weapons we have against this ideology creep is to call a spade a spade, and not play that “on one hand…” game — which has the unintentional effect of enabling the migration of extremist ideas into the mainstream — where it doesn’t apply.
Democrats also tend to be intimidated too easily and this rewards over the top rhetoric. This item on Politico just popped up on Google news: Titled “Beck takes credit”, it quotes Glenn Beck:
Since the Right even thinks of Hillary Clinton as radically liberal, these guys no doubt do think they have a lot of work cut out for them.
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p>I, personally, blame a public school system that failed to keep up with the diversification (polarization?) of American families. That sounds bizarre, I suppose, but I think it gets to the root of the problem: Americans are not taught to think independently or critically and they’re certainly not taught to combine the two. America has become a nation of identities. The original effort to celebrate our differences was no doubt designed to celebrate the melting-pot quality this nation is so proud of, but these difference became, instead, a means of separating us. And once your group becomes disrete, well, then, all bets are off. Are you a hyphenated American? Are you conservative Christian? Are you liberal or progressive? Are you Latino? Are you black? Are you an immigrant? Are you secular or atheist? There’s a creed for you. Here’s what WE believe. And, in true American fashion, adherence to that creed is to be true to your true beliefs and culture or heritage.
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p>That’s a recipe for identity politics that will take years to undo. The nation that celebrated diversity is now the nation that can’t have a civil conversation at supper.
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p>And who had the opportunity to make inroads into this parochial thinking? Educators. But they have failed–miserably, because they, too, have lost sight of their mission as a profession and their identity in society. Indeed, they are bred from the same stock as the rest of the nation.
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p>I go to school every day and love every minute of it. I never get to the point where the petty bullshit of charter schools, MCAS, or the demands of interests groups get in the way of my primary challenge and duty: to teach students to think, read, and respond critically–in English. But I’m in the minority. It’s hard to hurdle the obstacles placed in front of kids and adults these days. The pervasive anti-intellectualism of American society is like a cancer. My creed above all else.
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p>Rational and reasoned thinking is the only cure. But there is little to no modeling of this type of thinking anywhere in American popular culture. The American public finds it way to hard, way to labor intensive, to try to figure out a rational response to our challenges. Indeed, they haven’t been taught the skills (“my” fault) so that’s no surprise, is it? I believe we are consigned to long periods of what we have now. Periods where the president is the enemy, science is evil, and open-mindedness is weakness. Cheers!
Hate seems far more rampant here too. As well as segregation, by race, education, socio-economic conditions.
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p>In California there is far less of a divide in all of those categories. People from million dollar homes dine with people who live in trailer parks. There is no such thing as a “white neighborhood”. Waitresses are just as respected and valued as nurses.
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p>If you happen to still carry the ethnic slant of your parents voices, it’s OK, and is met with curiosity not ridicule. Instead of “who the hell are you?”, it’s “hey man, where you from?” Differences are celebrated in California.
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p>Dealing with “you’re not like me, therefore, I don’t like you” mentalility has been the single most difficult adjustment I have had to make since I moved back here. Other than the long obnoxiously cold winters.
One of the things I really liked about living in the Merrimack Valley was that almost everyone was ethnic. Many many people were intermarried, and their parents were too. We always asked about it and enjoyed the conversations. When you met someone whose family had founded the town, or who had Native American blood, that was fascinating too.
I moved to Mass. from the Bay Area years ago, and I love living in New England, but there was a definite adjustment period (I don’t mind winter so much). Most of the time it’s more subtle than outright hatred, but there’s definitely the “townie” vs. outsider thing. I’ve accepted the fact that, even after living here 23 years — longer than I lived anywhere else in my life — I’ll never be from here.
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p>I also lived in the deep South in the 1960’s; I can’t put the Northeast at the extreme end of the spectrum because of that experience.
“townie vs outsider”….exactly right!
My point of disagreement is I moved here from Texas and remain shocked by the racism and racial separatism here. Non-whites are much more part of everyday life where I come from.
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p>Totally get the townie thing. Living in East Cambridge helps a lot, there. It’s a different vibe than say, Charlestown. My partner is a Medford native. They’re actually more suspicious of him. đŸ˜‰
I grew up in suburban Washington, DC. in the fifties and sixties, moved here in 1974.
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p>The racism, against blacks, here was palpable, and far worse than anything I experienced in DC. Since then, some superficial aspects have changed. The underlying problem has not.
This line buried toward the end of your first paragraph reminded me that there is a common creed for all Americans as well. It goes something like this:
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p>”We hold these truths to be self evident – that all men(sic) are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
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p>Every American, regardless of other background, should believe at least that much and act on it. In the United Church of Christ we speak of having “unity without uniformity, diversity without division”. This should be the goal of our country as well.
the actual statement. Let’s look at what that might look like:
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p>
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p>Unless you are homosexual or in some cases brown or black or atheist. The average American loves this idea until he or she is forced to actually operationalize the concept. Large swaths of the U.S. have not internalized the notion of equal rights in a meaningful form despite their love of the language.
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p>
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p>Unless those rights include things like running for president if you are an American black man born in Hawaii from a Kenyan father, getting married to a person of the same sex, walking around the streets with a loaded AK47, or controlling one’s own reproduction, for example.
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p>In other words, the very words that defined this nation have become what are called commonly in rhetoric glittering generalities. These are notions, code words that we seemingly can agree upon, but upon closer examination, are ideas and notions that mean very different things to different people.
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p>
…when people who believe as you describe above imply that WE are the ones who are not American – as if! The dream of MLK “that this nation shall rise up, live out the true meaning of it’s creed” definitely is still a work in progress for some.
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p>I must say though, I’ve heard a lot lately about how “racism” drives opposition to Obama, and I have tried so hard to come up with another excuse, but I’m starting to wonder what went wrong. I grew up believing/assuming that true racism was a thing of the past, that I was born too late for Jim Crow and well after Brown v. Board of Ed, Loving v. Virginia, Montgomery bus boycott, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, etc. I’ve never doubted that whenever a group like the KKK announced a rally, that they would be overwhelmingly outnumbered by the counterprotesters, or whenever swatiskas appeared spraypainted on a synagogue that the community would turn out for a vigil to show solidarity and say in no uncertain terms that hatred was not welcome in their community. I’m sorry to say that I’m running out of other reasons for the visceral hatred that seems to go beyond simple disagreement with Obama’s policies. Now I’m wondering where I went so wrong in what I believed about my country.
As where we all went wrong. As a society, we don’t have a very sophisticated understanding of how racism, sexism, homophobia and other prejudices work. It’s comforting to think that there is such a thing as A Racist –Â someone whose very identity is defined by hating other ethnic groups, a Bull Connor, a George Wallace, a Nathan Bedford Forrest –Â and that to be A Racist is a binary thing: you either are or you aren’t. But that’s not really how prejudice and structural bias work.
Please don’t just slide over the whole “endowed by their Creator” bit….that right there leaves out the millions of us who don’t see a Creator endowing us with anything.
You too have certain unalienable rights listed herein, whether you personally acknowledge a Creator or not (and notice that’s about as generic a term as you can get). Jefferson could have just as easily said “endowed by Providence” and meant the same thing; that is the language that generation understood. All it means is that those three concepts are obvious and universal human rights. Methinks thou dost protest too much and fall into the trap set for us by the right which tries to co-opt “Creator” for a very narrowly defined Judeo-Christian God.
of the United States scheduled for October via mandatory bio-weaponized swine flu shots then I’ll talk.
You will never see anyone, I repeat anyone on this blog-including the most honest KBusch, admit that the left is the main culprit because they started all of this after the Bush election in 2000. And to make the statement that BrooklineTom does further on in this blog that people like Olbermann deal in facts is totally absurd. Or try this quote from above, “Don’t let the fact that Olbermann and Maddow use sarcasm and ridicule mask the fact that they don’t lie to their audience like O’Reilly, Beck, and Limbaugh do. That’s a distinction between sides that’s more important than the similarity in styles.”
I will ask again what I said over a year ago: why do people on this blog act like clones? why do they think that they are having a real conversation when do nothing but agree with and reinforce each others beliefs?
Let your attacks on me begin. I am a registered Democrat who is not impressed with bullshit, from the left or from the right.
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p>
Edgarthearmenian writes: “to make the statement that BrooklineTom does further on in this blog that people like Olbermann deal in facts is totally absurd”
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p>Please offer a link where Mr. Olbmermann or Ms. Maddow skewer the facts in a way remotely comparable to common and frequent practice of Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. O’Reilly, Mr. Beck, or that matter, Mr. Steele, Mr. Inhofe, or Marc Morano (of Senator Inhofe’s staff).
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p>There is nothing wrong or inappropriate about citing or even cherry-picking facts and truth to support a strongly-held opinion — that’s what “rhetoric” and “debate” is. There is something wrong and totally inappropriate about lying — making objectively falsifiable and false statements, especially when their untruth is known to the speaker at the time of the utterance. When have Mr. Olbermann or Ms. Maddow stated anything comparable to the lies about Barack Obama’s citizenship, the death panels, Mr. Obama’s religion, and so on?
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p>Rightwing spokespeople do the latter all the time — it is a staple of rightwing manipulation. I invite you to offer evidence to support your above assertion that it is “absurd” for me to state that Mr. Olbermann and Ms. Maddow demonstrate different behavior.
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p>I’ve not attacked you before, and I’ll not attack you now. I do, however, assert that you have made an objectively incorrect statement. It is not an “attack” to invite you to support that statement.
award from Olbermann? C’mon, Tom, you certainly can’t be serious about defending the nightly hijinks on Olbermann. I’ll give you that Maddow is fairly open in her thinking and approaches. The difference between us is that I don’t defend the lies and stupidity of the right. But how can you ignore the foolishness of the left? They got it all wrong on the cold war (I know that you consider the “Red threat” to have been a tool of our military-industrial complex-tell it to the hundreds of thousands of families whose members died or were tortured in Siberian work camps).
I watched Olbermann a couple of times, have watched O’Reilly a few times and I don’t like Hannity. So I can’t document for you the misstatements or nonfactoids of any of them. But for everyone here to pretend that the “left” is somehow purer than the “right” on this issue is an exercise in self-deception.
opinion from fact?
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p>Of course Mr. Olbermann’s “most evil person in the world” is an expression of opinion.
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p>That isn’t what you claimed, though. You claimed it was “absurd” for me to assert that he relies on fact and truth rather than invention and lies in his reporting. If you can’t document “the misstatements or nonfactoids of any of them”, then why on earth do you expect to be respected when you make false accusations based on your resulting unawareness of what they actually say?
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p>I didn’t say “pure” — I said that Mr. Olbermann and Ms. Maddow generally speak from facts and truth, in stark contrast to their counterparts on the the right.
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p>You have so far offered no rebuttal or support for you assertion to the contrary.
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p>Oh, and I don’t remember saying or writing anything about the “military-industrial complex” or the cold war. I would appreciate your responding to what I actually say and write, rather than whatever projection you choose to impose on me.
“Having a large, scary, aggressive, and therefore very dangerous bogeyman to fear makes a population far easier to control. The right wing, through the efforts of Saint Reagan, propped up the “Communist” bogeyman for as long as possible (Reagan’s vigorous anti-soviet posturing kept the Soviet government alive for as long as a decade after it would otherwise have fallen).”
I am sure that you can rationalize your contempt for Reagan’s most successful foreign policy towards the old Dustbin (known as such, or the “Sovok” by all who lived through its evil). Reagan was, indeed, considered to be a saint by the majority of the soviet population in the 80’s, whether you like it or not.
Our areas of disagreement are few in number, so don’t paint me as a neanderthol rightie.
You raised the “cold war” red herring, not me. You chose the word “absurd”, not me.
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p>My words that you quoted are fairly specific, I think — they refer to the period between 1980 and 1990, during which the former Soviet Union collapsed. My claim, correct or incorrect, was that Mr. Reagan’s efforts prolonged the former Soviet Regime by providing a pretext for a final burst of “defense” spending on their part — a claim that, even if you might disagree with it, has some support from historians. The “domino” theory pertains to a much earlier period, and is widely discredited. The claim was that US security was threatened by Soviet expansion — frequent comparisons were made to Hitler’s early expansion throughout Europe. The implication — often explicit — was that if we didn’t “stop the communists” in places like Viet Nam, we’d be fighting off the Russian hordes in California and Maine. That claim (and the fear that it was created to inspire) was and is utter rubbish.
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p>In any case, I have certainly not been painting you as a “neanderthal rightie”. Instead, you have been attempting to squeeze me into the nice neat “the left is as bad as the right” box that you have attempted to construct. Your construct is, in my view, a failed one. In any case, our perhaps differing views on the cold war have nothing to do with the topic of this thread, which is the flagrant and frequent lies and dishonesty that spews from the right-wing smear machine whenever the GOP attempts to set an agenda.
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p>There is a difference between “true” and “false”, “factual” and “not factual”, “truth” and “lie”. Whether or not we extrapolate such distinctions to the moral plane (“the most evil person in the world”), these fundamental distinctions do exist and the left is starkly different from the right along such dichotomies.
All right, you got us. I admit it! Us lefties are entirely to blame for the coarseness and polarization of political discourse in the US, because of our shameful insistence that a questionable election seeming to throw the victory to the candidate who got fewer total votes due to voting irregularities in the state where his brother was governor ought to be carefully examined and investigated. In fact, our perverse and unAmerican insistence that the rule of law matters was so socially corrosive that its effects traveled back in time, causing the bitter divisions and right-wing insanity of the Clinton years, too.
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p>Yes, it’s all true. For example, the whole Joycelyn Elders shitstorm? MoveOn.org’s fault.
Yes, it was actually the Democrats who sold arms to the Iranians to fund an explicitly illegal war in Central America. It was actually the Democrats (and not Richard Mellon Scaife) who funded the lies of Paula Jones.
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p>It was actually the Democrats, and not extremist rightwingers like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who formulated the failed doctrine that the prior administration relied on in our 2003 invasion of Iraq. No doubt a nuanced and calculated double-bank shot, calculated to embarrass the GOP. Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr. Perle were actually dupes of those evil scheming Democrats.
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p>Oh, and of course Mr. Wolfowitz’s White House connections had absolutely nothing to do with his subsequent appointment to the presidency of the World Bank and the vital State Department position arranged for his girlfriend, working for none other than Elizabeth Cheney. Those arrangements were all masterminded by yet another Democratic party conspiracy.
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p>Oh, and there is simply no truth whatsoever to the dastardly lies reported by Rachel Maddow about “The Family” and its “C-Street House”. More liberal lies.
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p>When you spend enough time blowing enough sh*t around the walls hoping to make some stick, the place is eventually going to stink.
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p>Now that folks are belatedly starting to scrub some of the walls, I have very little patience for complaints about the stench from the right wing — especially when they continue to spout it at every opportunity.
I almost wrote a reply asking you to prove your assertions that Democrats were responsible for these things, then I reread your comment, realized the links supported what I thought to be true, and changed my mind. Anybody who wants to read more about this should read “The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton” by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons.
Yes, though the literary scholars among us might want to distinguish “sarcastic” from “sardonic” or “ironic.”
the right’s attempt to use the Monica mini-drama to its political benefit which is the real culprit and driving force at the beginning of this “internecine warfare” (to use an old literary cliche). You cannot deny the hatred that emanates from both sides of the spectrum because of these events.
Of course I can deny your absurd “both sides are equally bad” construction. Indeed, I do deny it. Vigorously.
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p>You claimed that “the left … started all of this after the Bush election in 2000.” I made no claim about the origin of partisan divisions (though I’ll note here in that in their more or less modern form they date to the Wallace era and the Southern Strategy, but have their roots in conflicts between hierarchical/conservative/regressive and antihierarchical/liberal/progressive philosophies that date back to well before the founding of the United States), I only demonstrated that your claim was pathetically obviously false.
an ingrained leftie says is going to change your opinions; and so be it. All you have demonstrated is your bias for leftist tendencies. Sleep well, my son.
I usually find you reasonable and even-handed.
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p>I’m not sure what it is about this thread that pushes your buttons, but I hate to see you digging yourself so deeply into this hole. I see nothing — absolutely NOTHING — in smadin’s comment to warrant silly outbursts like “ingrained lefty” and “bias for leftist tendencies”.
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p>At the moment, you seem to be allowing your own bias to overwhelm the analysis and rationality that you so often demonstrate in your comments elsewhere.
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p>Why is it so difficult for you to admit that the rightwing is, in fact, lying? Why do you insist so adamantly on your notion of “balance” — in the utter and complete absence of any evidence? I asked you to offer some, and you said — in essence — “go pound sand”. Why, then, should any of us listen to you any further?
I am only saying that the hard left does the same thing. What I can’t understand is how you can be so sure of your own side’s purity in this discussion. Do you think that I approved of the attacks on Bill Clinton in the late nineties? Or the total foolishness of the birthers recently? But I think to blame Bush for every negative event that has occurred in the world for the last 8 years is also foolish, and to accuse every one who doesn’t agree about climate change of being a “denier” (tar them with the holocaust deniers) is wrong. I also don’t like the left’s penchant for calling people who disagree about national security policies unpatriotic–in the same way that the right uses the term against those who don’t agree with them on the same topic. I use the term “ingrained” because it is rare to see anyone change his/her thinking on such topics. I have changed my mind on many topics over the years, for good or for bad; I don’t see that same willingness to see another point of view in too many participants here. (or anywhere else for that matter)
No one has to “listen” to another view, but I do. That’s why I enjoy this blog. The last thing I want to do is to die with the same mindset from which I sprang, or even had at different stages of my life.
Who here has ever claimed that liberals/progressives are “pure,” or that no one on our side is ever guilty of lying or fearmongering?
Who has ever done that – here or anywhere else?
Who on the left?
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p>When I think of highly visible far-right-wing pundits/commentators who have (or in some cases recently did have, but don’t seem to as much anymore) significant influence in our public discourse, I can come up with lots of names: O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Malkin, Coulter, Liddy, Dobbs, Buchanan, Rove…
If I try to think of anyone in the mainstream media, or indeed anyone in the public eye in any way, who has a similar sized audience and similar influence on the national political conversation, and who is roughly as far to the left as the people I’ve mentioned are to the right? I come up completely empty.
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p>You keep trying to claim that both sides are equally bad, but that’s simply not a creditable claim even if both sides lied the same amount, which they don’t, because they don’t have remotely equal influence.
doesn’t fit. As the old cliche goes, talking to you is like talking to a……. It must be wonderful to have all of life’s answers, especially at such a young age.
All I’m asking is for you to support any of your claims.
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p>And I’ll thank you not to make any further snide remarks about Robert Frost.
Are you pretending to have presented “facts” somewhere? If so, please enumerate some of them. By the way, when did Robert Frost become an avatar of the left? Enlighten me.(please)
I don’t really know what you mean by that. I think that one can interpret much of Frost’s work as carrying a vein of liberal thought, but it’s poetry – I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone else what to make of it. But I didn’t appreciate your swipe at my .sig, insofar as Frost was a great poet and “Mending Wall” is one of my favorite poems. Its presence in my comments is meant to indicate only personal, not political, significance.
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p>It’s interesting to me that I have pointed out specific unsubstantiated claims you made and asked for support for them, while you in return demand both that I repeat the claims I’ve made and show the evidence for them. Was it just too much work to go back and look at my earlier comments?
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p>No matter: I’ll help you out, since I’m a nice guy.
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p>OK then: I’ve gone first. Let’s see your evidence.
I have already admitted previously on this post that I overstated the left’s reaction to the Bush victory in 2000, and I agree that the conservatives made much, too much about Monica; for that whole business with the impeachment the right deserves shame, not just blame.
For your second point, the George wallace phenomenon was really a race-based effort. Just because someone wrote a book about it to claim that he was appealing to conservatives means not more than the fact that someone wrote a book about it. I think that there are many historians who will disagree with Dan Carter. On this claim, individual conservatives can speak for themselves.
For the third point, how would you like to be called “the most evil person on earth” by that kook Olbermann? You are not going to tell me that this guy is not out in left field? Actually, I agree that Maddow is not bad as a journalist and I watch her occasionally when I am channel surfing. But you have to be honest and admit that Olbermann certainly is a left as Beck is right.
I also admire Frost. I’ll go you one up: I have personal correspondance in the form of a letter which he wrote to me in 1961 (rather I must be honest and say actually written by his personal secretary and signed by him) after his inauguration appearance with JFK.
No, of course I don’t “have to admit” that, and it wouldn’t be “honest” to do so, because it isn’t true. If Olbermann were as far to the left as Beck is to the right, he would be calling for an end to the legal fiction of corporate personhood, for rape to be classed as a hate crime, for massive reparations for slavery to be paid to black Americans, for immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, for the slashing of the DoD’s budget and quintupling of public education budgets, for the federal decriminalization of at least marijuana, for full federal recognition of same-sex marriage rights, for a single-payer health care system, for the electrical grid to be 100% powered from renewable sources within ten years…I could go on.
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p>You’ve said you don’t watch Olbermann, Hannity or O’Reilly much. Do you watch Beck? Do you know what kind of things he says? He eagerly promotes the idea of a coming second American Civil War. He acts out assassinating members of Congress. He calls the President a racist, a socialist and a fascist, with no apparent awareness that these are incompatible things. There is no one in mainstream public discourse who is anywhere near as far to the left as Beck is to the right.
Merely repeating your assertion that “the hard left does the same thing” doesn’t make it true. Nor does attempting to divert the discussion to things that haven’t been said or claimed (“blaming Bush for every negative event…”).
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p>You say, explicitly, that “the hard left does the same thing”, yet when asked for supporting evidence, you answered:
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p>It seems difficult for you to appreciate the illogic of your position. You stake out a position with a claim that you have no evidence to support, and that this audience disputes. When asked to produce evidence, you acknowledge your unfamiliarity with those you so readily attack. Rather than backtrack, and say “perhaps I was mistaken”, you instead come on stronger — when your unsubstantiated claim is disputed, you label US “ingrained lefties”. Just how do you think debate is supposed to work? On what basis, other than your own biases and prejudices, would you have a question like this decided?
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p>The evidence, offered all around you every day and freely available from sources including Mr. Olbermann and Ms. Maddow, is that the rightwing has been lying, fabricating, and using those lies and fabrications to advance its own cause for generations. I appreciate that you find this (a) distasteful, and (b) difficult to believe. Nevertheless, that is the evidence. You’ve offered no rebuttal evidence.
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p>Sorry, Edgar, but “the left” does not do “the same thing” as the right. Like it or not, that is the simple fact of the matter.
Where were you when the right was telling lies during the last health care debate? Where were you when the right went so far as to accuse President and Mrs. Clinton of ordering a hit on Vince Foster? Where were you when the right decided to impeach Clinton for telling a little white lie about a consensual relationship? I could go on, but the right did not accept the legitimacy of either Clinton’s or Obama’s election, while the left worked with Bush despite real questions as to how he got elected.
Joe McCarthy, anyone?
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p>Actually, it started when two Neanderthal families were living in adjacent caves. The family on the left, having perfected hunting and discovered fire, offered to share a cooked leg of the beast they were eating, in an altruistic gesture of community-building. The head of the family in the right-hand cave, who saw this as a threat to his individual freedoms, hit his neighbor over the head with the leg, ate it, and in a spontaneous display of entrepreneurial spirit, promptly enslaved the family next door and declared himself the first-ever “self-made capitalist”.
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p>It’s gone downhill from there, obviously.
for an example of less media driven discourse, a little mind you but still for illustrations sake. “They”, politicians have to be so into the mainstream, that mainstream of course being a total lie.
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p>You can however rise above both by realizing things are global now and governments are very much ants in the scope speed and response time multi-nationals take make work arounds for these governments. You can do that and not mention the “hattery” of Bilderberg,CFR or the Davos set!
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p>Don’t get the shot!
http://cognitivedissonance-kol…
Human beings, despite all our technological advances, are basically the same beasts today that we were thousands of years ago. We’re subject to the same emotions and triggers. If a few fringe-right wingers bringing guns to town halls is a surprise to you today, bear in mind our country was founded on the basis of angry mobs bearing guns. Sometimes those reasons can be warranted — in the vast majority of cases, though, it’s not (for example, at health care town halls). The same goes with spirited debate.
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p>BTW: It is bizarre and patently false to suggest Rachel Maddow is as bad, nearly as bad or even on the same planet of bad as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, et al. Almost the same can be said of John Stewart, especially given the fact that he’s a comedienne. Both Rachel and Stewart offer plenty of opportunity for the opposition to get their full, uninterrupted word in. Rachel pleads with Republicans almost daily to go on her show and when they do, she provides them with all the opportunity and initiative to say whatever is on their mind, giving them far more time than she’d offer to her liberal guests.
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p>While KO does not typically have Republicans on, at least he’s intellectually honest, which is far more than Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck could ever say. While he’s crossed the line a few times, generally whenever he out-and-out rails against the right wing in a special comment, it’s with good reason. George Bush was stripping constitutional rights and attacking basic liberties — under those circumstances, you do not throw him a tea party.
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p>Hating is the least productive human emotion that exists. You hating me won’t make me change my ways because I don’t even know you. All it does is cause yourself additional frustration and stress. When you find yourself hating others, my advice is for you to let it go and try to be productive. And, finally, if you want to write a blog about being tolerant, may I suggest writing about your hatred seriously undermines your credibility?
I just hate your tone.
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p>From just one of your comments on Gatesgate: “when I checked my email today and saw that press release [Obama’s], I nearly lost it. What idiocy!”
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p>”Also, I’m 99.999% sure at this point that Crowley is a complete douche bag”
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p>”That’s patently obvious to the parts of the country with a brain, but it would have become patently obvious to those who don’t when it happens in a city like Cambridge to a guy like Gates”
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p>This is what I was writing about. And you tell me to “try to be productive”?
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p>And my “bizarre and patently false” comment about Maddow et al (“give as good as they get”) was just an attempt to emphasize that there are usually two perspectives on issues. Something that often escapes you.
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p>The first paragraph of your comment was insightful and will help me better understand/accept the anger I observe as time goes on. Thank you.
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p>Please get back to me when Rachel Maddow fails to give more than ample opportunity for other perspectives to make their point freely. It’s perfectly reasonable for a show to have a perspective — in fact, having a perspective can help move points and a show along, sharpening questions and a personal interest in a matter. Rachel is beyond reasonable, beyond kind and absolutely begs for people with different perspectives to come on her show on a near daily basis (and even then, mostly because she she’s only on air 5 days a week).
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p>As for the Gatesgate comments, surely I’d wish a few of those back. I am not immune to frustration. One of the things that can frustrate me is stupidity. The president weighing in was a stupid thing to do. When characters do stupid things in movies, I turn them off, even if the movies themselves are quite good. A politician weighing in on things having nothing to do with a campaign (or politician’s) message makes me go absolutely irate. It can only hurt you. The fact that Obama continued to weigh in, trying to make it better, instead of letting it blow over, damaged his efforts for several weeks. Hence, idiocy.
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p>If you were truly committed to a peaceful dialogue, you wouldn’t have taken a shot at me in your post. That’s not a good example of reducing the ugliness. The fact of the matter, whether you realize it or not, is that you’re not interested in peaceful dialogue. You’re interested in watered-down dialogue (or, in other words, less dialogue), because spirited debate discomforts you. Believe it or not, you shouldn’t always be nice to other people. If someone’s trying to squeeze all the blood out of you, asking them nicely to stop probably isn’t going to help. That was the past 8 years and that’s what the current national GOP would like to do again, if we let them. The GOP is currently trying to protect the health care industry’s right to kill people. And you want us to throw them a tea party. Maybe we can just all talk it out? No thanks. That’s why we lose these fights year in and year out. I’m sick of Democrats bringing knifes to a gun fight.
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p>Yes. What good did it serve to attack me personally in your blog? You could have made your point without it, you chose to draw me in and do everything yourself that you’ve just preached against. It’s beyond hypocritical and shows to me, in all actuality, you’re not interested in civil debate. You’re only interested in your kind of debate. The kind of debate that’s watered down and lets our opponents walk all over us.
Thank you.
You would like to invite Karl Rove over for tea? Perhaps the two of you could come up with some kind of grand compromise? And if only we reasoned with Kerry Healey when she filmed that disgusting ad, maybe she’d have apologized or something… Really, the problem with Democrats is we haven’t been differential and nice enough… /snark off
for a diarist who seemed to be very concerned about antagonizing posts, you don’t seem to at all mind antagonizing others without addressing a single one of their points. You, indeed, have helped me make my point.
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p>Thank you,
Wow I’m in. Nah, they would kill me first.
I’d argue that we human have a regrettable, but nevertheless persistent tendency to demonize each other, and that such demonization has been a feature of American political culture all along. The dominant forms of communication have changed, that’s all.
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p>Think about the portrayals of Lincoln in the Southern press before the start of the Civil War, anti-immigrant and nativist rhetoric in the latter part of the 19th century into the start of the 20th century, Father Coughlin neo-fascist radio broadcasts before the second World War, or the extreme rhetoric employed by those for and against the Vietnam War during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
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p>As long as the vituperation is focused on influencing the political process, it’s all part of what democratic society is about. Those of us on the left have to make sure we show up, counter misinformation with facts, and make as much noise for our side as the other guys and gals, that’s all.
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p>When we should worry is when disagreements break out of the structure of the political process – when it’s red shirts versus brown shirts, or Sunni versus Shiites, or Union versus Confederate – and are fought in the streets with live ammunition.
In this thread i suppose these remarks were addressed to me.
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p>That’s what scares a lot of libertarian/conservatives. We are often reminded you think we’re all uneducated simpletons when often we are not, and don’t feel the need to be cared for by kindhearted intellectual elitists.
which I think influence the discourse are:
peak oil and
climate change
the returning disabled veterans, especially those with mental as opposed to physical issues
the number of people in jail
the unhealthiness of our food supply
etc.
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p>All these things are like tigers behind the door: they will pounce. We are anxious every way we turn, even if we are born-again and waiting for the Rapture.
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p>It’s not just the economy and the media
When my neighbor asserts that bringing down Saddam Hussein will stabilize the ME region, my neighbor is clueless.
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p>When my neighbor asserts that President Obama is not constitutionally qualified to be President, my neighbor is dull (as in boorish).
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p>When my neighbor asserts that atmospheric CO2 cannot cause global warming “because there’s so little of it”, or asserts that there is no scientific evidence for evolution and therefore it should not be taught in public schools, or asserts that the founding fathers were Christian and America is a “Christian nation”, then my neighbor is ignorant.
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p>An important and fundamental difference between Mr. Olbermann, Ms. Maddow or Mr. Stewart and Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. O’Reilly, Mr. Beck et al on the right is the former rely on fact to skewer their opposition. There is a difference between truth and lie, between fact and not-fact, and between rational and not-rational. I reject efforts to blur those distinctions in the name of “harmony”.
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p>I try to welcome informed debate and try to be respectful to those who see facts differently from me. I feel absolutely no need to do the same for those who cannot or will not speak truth, inform themselves of fact, or show people around the same the same respect they demand for themselves.
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p>I’ve been listening to ever-increasing right-wing whining about “respect” and “tolerence” for nearly thirty years, ever since Ronald Reagan took office — whining that can be counted on to reach a crescendo whenever their own outright lies and flagrantly self-serving greed are publicly demonstrated. Their cries of “self responsibility” and demands that perpetrators be “held accountable” are strident and loud, until their operatives are shown to be selling weapons to terrorist nations to fund an illegal war, torturing and murdering kidnapped “enemy combatants” from all over the world, or standing before the UN and Congress telling bold-face lies about mobile weapons labs.
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p>We’ve just been through a summer filled with right-wing funded lies, manufactured “astro-turf” uprisings, “teabaggers” who are so ignorant of cultures they seek to oppress that they didn’t even understand the street meaning of the word, and nothing but non-stop, relentless, official obstructionism from GOP political leaders in the guise of “bipartisanship”. GOP spokespeople call for “bringing down” President Obama, and then demand “bipartisan” consideration. Right-wing agitators like O’Reilly call for the murder of abortion providers, identifying Dr. Tiller by name, and then self-righteously whine when fingered for responsibility after the deed is done.
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p>I’ll be more receptive to calls for “civility” when they come from the right and are preceded by a demonstrable change in behavior. It is often difficult to believe that an attacker really does intend harm.
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p>I’m done with pretending that right wing is anything different from what their actions, words, ideology say they are. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, it is a duck.
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p>When the right-wing stops walking, quacking and swimming like dull, ignorant, bigoted, selfish, insecure, hostile and dangerously violent thugs intent on taking away from my children, loved ones and myself the things that truly matter (such as our basic human freedoms), I’ll start listening to arguments that they aren’t “really” like that.
William F. Buckley Jr. and Antonin Scalia come to mind.
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p>However, when we see polls saying that up to 40% of Americans take the Book of Genesis as literal truth, or 25% think the President wasn’t born in the US (and a portion of that does think he was born in Hawaii, but doesn’t think Hawaii is part of the US), or hear people screaming that they don’t want government taking over Medicare (a government program, after all) then it is rather difficult to not look down our noses.
but you’ll never find me looking down. I’m right here beside you, reading, thinking, writing, arguing, sometimes agreeing. Rational discourse is less likely to occur if from the start I’m considered handicapped intellectually because of a label I’ve chosen to describe my political leanings.
Great subject and very timely… unfortunately.
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p>I would guess we all would agree that people trying to discuss differing views of a subject would tend to get “fired up” and cooler heads do not always prevail. As I said in my subject line, I am an offender of this.
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p>Recently I have been made aware of the definition of Rational Discourse (which is Rational discourse requires intellectual honesty, the suppression of ones biases and following the facts wherever they lead, taking care not to avoid evidence which may contradict ones preconceived views). I can say to you all that I have “not” been participating in this because I clearly have violated all three tenets in the name of “winning”. The funny thing is even as I write these words my mind is telling me to start “defending” why I do these things and maybe “that” is why we do it… we want to win (at all costs).
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p>The above diary is honest and forthright and the first few people start agreeing and then you can even read people starting to spin the story a little and begin the blame game. You can even read the way people phrase remarks of remorse sprinkled with rationalizing “why” they do it. There also are attempts to dispel examples of equivalence and this IMO is often showing people’s biases in not being to recognize similar if not exact situations.
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p>I’m all for honest debate. I’m all for debating the facts and we really should acknowledge all the facts and not use the facts which support our side of the argument. Republicans should acknowledge there are no “death panels” and Democrats should acknowledge the Republicans do have alternative bills for Healthcare reform… I’m afraid this post could go for pages showing examples of our intellectual dishonesty… on both sides.
Started last week with Wilson (Joe), then came Williams (Serena) and now West (Kanye). Who’s next, Willie Wonka?
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p>The question is, what will we do about it? My guess, nothing.
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p>Why not have the Senate and the House enact new rules defining exactly what is and is not allowable for addresses to Congress.
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p>Cheering and booing— OK.
Standing or staying seated— OK.
Speaking out (in favor or in opposition)— NOT OK and punishable by Censure, removal from committees and some financial support (or something else meaningful).
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p>Thank goodness George W Bush has remained civil.