Foul Festering Rot At The Heart Of America

44 thoughts on Foul Festering Rot At The Heart Of America

1. Damn good analysis.

2. You know, I consider myself a fairly hardcore liberal and I can’t say that I don’t have a real disdain for most of what the right-wing stands for or advocates. But does anyone really think that demonizing them, the way they do it to us, is going to make them go away?

   They compare pro-choice people to Nazi holocaust workers, so we have to compare them to 19th century slave owners. It’s really not a fair statement on either side.

   I know it’s tempting to want to see a larger, conspiratorial bent to the world and talk about things like the “festering rot at the heart of America” but things just aren’t that simple. I don’t believe that everyone is “good at heart” or some other cliche bullshit like that but I think that most people make the best choices they can with the information at hand. Period. People believe what makes sense to them at the moment.

   Change the information and you change the person.

   But I also happen to think it’s this kind of over-the-top condescension and condemnation that has cost the Republican party their recent hegemony but has cost us even more than that for so long.

3. Seems to me it’s just a lot of RWAs in the clutches of a few particularily sociopathic SDOs. I also think that the really hateful people in the base and the really greedy sociopaths in the ‘leadership’ (cough) are probably a vast minority. But there are a lot of middling people who are being pulled along with this evil shit. I always wonder if education is the answer, if it’s just ignorance and various horrible dominator society crap that’s been drummed into everyone’s head being amplified by hard times economically and a lot of FEAR! FEAAAAAAAAR! brainwashing from the media.

   But then again, it seems like there are always some determined bigots who will just resist the hell out of every step away from the Same Old Brutality And Hate(tm). There are, after all, still holocaust deniers out there. But they are in a vast minority, so I hope that the majority are reachable. It usually is just a few really bad apples and a lot of people who could go either way.

4. This history here is pretty wrong. Problem is, there is so much wrong that I’m have a bit of trouble gathering together the thoughts that would throw light on the matter. Slavery was an orginal sin, but so were indian extermination policies. The nation started as a kind of dual regime, one based in the North and one based in the South, but the southerners has NEVER been anti-statist. They only cry states rights when their natural perogatives and privileged status, originating in the 3/5th statute were threatened, as it was when the MidWest and West boomed in population (and people who didn’t want to compete with slavery).

   The 27%’ers, as you refer to them aren’t really the problem in the way you might think of it as. To put it bluntly, full civil rights for blacks/hispanics/asians and women was not really envisioned until the 1970’s for a majority of people in this country. Most of that time, only a *very* small minority of the voting public thought it would be a good idea. Even now, rights for women/minorities is only mouthed by a majority of whites, mostly because the appearance of egalitarianism is needed for some reason (or in other cases, it is economically usefull…women’s primary reason for having most of the economic rights granted to her is due almost entirely to the fact that it’s profitable to exploit women encumbered by the patriarchy by using choices)

   To put it simply, change only happens either when the dominant party consents, or is overthrown (and the dominant party usually will only consent to its *advantage* or *fear* of being overthrown). Yapping about 27%’ers (whether it’s about “reaching them” or otherise) is entirely missing the point.

5. How do you discredit their influence in the GOP? They’re extremely useful to the loot&plunder wing, who will work hard to keep their opinions relevant.

6. There is no bargaining with these people; there is only consigning them to the dustbin of history.

   And how is that to be accomplished, exactly? Ignorance, hate and fear are three of humanity’s oldest renewable resources. There will always be a sizeable percentage of our fellow citizens who, actively or passively, allow these base passions to rule them. Rather than focusing on some futile attempt to exorcise them from the body politic, I think our time would be better spent exposing and excoriating the cynical politicians and faux populists who stir them up for fun and profit.

7. Pingback: Posted At Feministe: Foul Festering Rot At The Heart Of America « PhysioProf

8. I wish to hell I could say you’re wrong, PhysioProf, but you’re not.

   The leading anti-Federalists did not want to see a strong national government, because they feared–rightly so–that a strong national government would put a damper on their way of life based on depraved brutal exploitation of other human beings.

   Yes. What a lot of people don’t understand about Ronald Reagan is that he had success with his incessant railing against government—how evil it is, how it has to be treated as the enemy—because he appealed to a lot of bigots whose mentality was, “Duh guvmint ain’t letten us keep down duh nigras.”

9. Wow, the one feminist who actually is hysterical turns out to be a man, proving feminism right the whole time.

10. Oh man, this whacked guest blogger is the foul festering rotten core at the heart of the feminist blogosphere.

11. by European descent, I think yu really mean Anglo descent.
    Italians, Greeks, Serbo-Croations, Hungarian’s (especially Hungarian Jews) etc, etc,
    are othered often enough to not qualify as “white” to the country club set.

12. Yikes. The last sentence sounds like “Lets exterminate these bastards!” Chill out, yo. Most societies on earth have an ignorant and backwards element. America is by no means excluded. Any political decision (or compromise) has to take into consideration the world as it is at present, especially if you want to change it. Many of our foreign policy decisions (both the good ones and the bad ones) take into account ignorant elements of other countries’ societies. I can understand why the existence of these people frustrates you, but, um, the solutions you seem to be proposing sound kinda scary.

13. “There is no bargaining with these people; there is only consigning them to the dustbin of history.”

    Jawhol!

    You’re right. We should just kill them all. That would save our democracy.

    /seriously, if you really think they’re untermensch, then what *are* you going to do?

14. I agree with Christopher’s sentiments.

    Can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen rants like this on both Conservative and Liberal forums. And honestly, what good does it do? You alienate (and insult) those with different ideas, different values, and then you expect them to subscribe to your way of thinking. Anyone who’s 55% Conservative/45% Liberal and reads this kind of stuff up top is going to vote for George Bush again and again. No mo’ fence-sitting.

    I think the truth is that most Americans don’t swing hard to either the Left or Right; they’re political identity is composed of a variety of beliefs. Out there somewhere is a black woman who owns a gun and believes women should have the decision to choose. Standing next to her is a Cuban immigrant who thinks we should allow gay marriage and should send more troops to Afghanistan.

    Not everyone sleeps beside the “How to be a Good Little Liberal/Conservative Handbook.” This is the way it is. And I’m living proof.

15. Well, I’m not sure whether rants do any good with respect to social change but I must admit, I’m at the point where I don’t think much else is gonna do it either. We can blame the politicians and the parties all we like, but unfortunately, we can’t stop leaving out the part where SOMEBODY, enough somebodies, votes for the asshats. Which is what makes them the politicians and the parties that we can all then say have taken all the power and left us without any. It just can’t always be that someone else, someone we don’t know, is responsible for this. I’m more than ready to see some of the blame and shame levelled at the voters and also, at the ones who haven’t cared enough to even bother voting.

    If the political system has been taken away from the people, surely the people bear some of the blame. Since America is not Soviet Russia with Stalin in charge. People have taken huge risks, throughout history, to obtain their freedom. It just might be time that we start thinking about that in the West.

16. These are the people who were willing to fight to the death in a devastating war to protect their right to own other human beings.

    That seems to be true too of people who just don’t get feminism at a basic level. They’re unwilling to let go of the idea that women exist to serve (take care of their) man. Reason doesn’t work, because they don’t want to change. At some point you just have to walk away. Or start swearing. Or Both.

17. Btw, PhysioProf, I really like seeing you blogging here about the things that fuel my own interest and in this case, rage. May I add one more rotten carrot to the soup? It starts with a beautiful slogan: “Illegal is not a noun.” Not one single person was ever born an “illegal.” Each and every one ‘s illegality is a deliberate decision by the US government , born in overt racism against non-Nordic people that’s gone back to the 19th century, maybe earlier.. A delibrate decision. I hope immigration will be the loose thread we can pull on to unravel this foul blanket . I say this in part because I have 4 beautiful little nieces-in-law who I fear somebody will decide they’re the wrong color. Let’s start there or let’s start with Hillary or Michelle, but let’s start somewhere.

18. Now I intend to turn disagreeable. Despising Republicans is faulty aim. Don’t despise what they are, despise what they do. Don’t despise the collectivity: there are some vicious bigots out there who will shrug it right off. They’re libertarians, not those trailer trash Republicans. And there are some beautiful people out there who proudly claim to be Republicans and conservatives who hate religious and racial and gender and the other bigotries as much as we do, if they’ll see them. And they will if we show them.

    Clinton tried to kill bin Laden with missiles fired at a training camp. He missed. And so will we if we shoot a huge missile at Republicans or conservatives or Christians or Alabamians.

    Since most of us have been inoculated against using our moral judgments by jeers at “PC”, it won’t be easy. But it can be done (I hope; I have to hope): the tools are already at hand: mockery and, for the most persistent disbelievers in humankind, insisting that they answer one simple question: about the things they do and the things they propose: is it right or wrong?

19. This post accurately describes my reasons for leaving behind most of my connections with the Republican party in 1988. The few of us who saw this and opposed it were shouted down in those few instances we were allowed to speak. Remember Mrs. Carmody, the christian prophet in The Mist? Her sermons echo both sides of Georgia politics at the active member level.

20. If this were a piece of satire, I would be laughing but I assume it’s not, so instead, I’m sad. As I suggested in my previous comment, you can find the exact mirror image of PhysioProf posting all over freerepublic.com, wackaloons who prefer fact-free rants to cogent arguments.

    I hope if I become old and senile one day I live in the world described in this post. It would be better than the effect of any drug known to man.

21. As I suggested in my previous comment, you can find the exact mirror image of PhysioProf posting all over freerepublic.com, wackaloons who prefer fact-free rants to cogent arguments.

    And suggested, and suggested, and suggested. Jesus, Sensible, have you tried not reading PhysioProf’s posts? Barring that, could you try not commenting on them? Because all you do is derail the discussion before it can even start by turning it into one long dull-as-dirt tongue-clucking about how lousy PhysioProf is and how unfair it is that Feministe didn’t ask a nice sweet Sensible person like yourself to be a guestblogger instead (and don’t think everyone can’t tell that that’s the axe you’re grinding, because truly, everyone can tell).

    It’s tired and we get it already. Give it a rest.

    As for the “this won’t reach across the aisle and build bridges” stuff, well, no shit, really? I was unaware that the purpose of Feministe was to get out there and win more souls for the Democrats. If that is its purpose, it’s been doing a poor job of it, because I can’t send anyone to the right of Harry Reid here without my inbox filling up with butthurt about how not ALL Republicans this, not ALL Republicans that, and why can’t I be a feminist and still think abortion is kind of sad sometimes? Or why can’t I be a feminist and still support the 2nd Amendment? I gave up referring centrists here ages ago. I love Feministe, but I can’t kid myself that it’s here to do outreach or missionary work and I can’t buy that anyone else believes this either. Come ON.

22. You know, I consider myself a fairly hardcore liberal and I can’t say that I don’t have a real disdain for most of what the right-wing stands for or advocates. But does anyone really think that demonizing them, the way they do it to us, is going to make them go away?…I don’t believe that everyone is “good at heart” or some other cliche bullshit like that but I think that most people make the best choices they can with the information at hand.

    I don’t think PPs point was that calling the Reich Wing out on their bullshit is going to make them go away. They’re going to fade away on their own accord, like most reactionaries have since the Enlightement. I totally get, and agree with PP’s point. There’s no point pretending we can have a civil disscussion with the 28% dead enders who think Bush is doing a great job. These are people who believe in torture, believe in the oppression of blacks, women, and gays based on dubious and whacked out theological grounds. (Did you see that Republican primary debate, where the crowd erupted in applause, when Gulliani and Tancredo were dueling over who would torture more?) These are people who spent a trillion dollars to invade a country that didn’t have WMD or ties to al qaeda – and to this day none of them will fess up to making a mistake, let alone apologizing. We are fully within the bounds of rational behavior to dismiss these people as the whacked out loons they are. Its our moral duty to call out bullshit and and immorality. What’s going to make them fade away ultimately, like most reactionaires throughout history, is that there ideas and “principles” are so abhorrant and backwards. They don’t have any ideas, that why conservatives suck at governance. And most people eventually figure it out. Privitization of Social Security, and wholesale deregulation just don’t sell. They achieve power by exploiting racist, sexist, and homophobic biases. By exploiting wedge issues.

    If you haven’t read John Dean’s book on authoritarianism, the Readers Digest version is that a substantial part of the population of our country (or any country for that matter) is comprised of authoritarian personalities. Most of them psychologically are authoritarian followers. Looking for that Daddy authoritarian figure to obey .

23. Sorry, but I have to say it.. this sort of garbage is the reason the majority of American women have come to view the women’s movement as irrelevant. You represent the same type of above the glass ceiling mindset that the neo-cons do.. disinterested in reality, disconnected and protected from it, incapable of clear, linear thought. You are the sort of person who helped bring Hitler and the nazi’s to power, specifically because your head has been up your ass so long, everything takes on the stink that comes from your festering, squalid heart.

    I’m a woman of color, I live in the real world. Here in the US, we have a declining pool of jobs. The outsourcing started in the ’80s, and has continued ever since. It picked up steam in the ’90s after Clinton (who I regret ever voting for) illegally forced through NAFTA. Illegal because the so called treaty never achieved the 2/3 majority vote the constitution requires. Clinton signed it any way. Millions of jobs, that kept American citizens, and they are black, brown as well as white (a fact the neo-leftist fascists want to pretend isn’t the case). Those jobs went to Mexico, which now a large and thriving middle class, many, many billionaires and millionaires, a housing boom, and is the 14th wealthiest country in the world. There is no hunger or starvation there, the wages are lower, but so is the cost of living. Those that come to the US, do so to earn dramatically higher wages, so they can buy suvs and hummers and other luxury items.

    There is no worker shortage in the US, no jobs Americans won’t do. Millions of working poor American citizens, again black, brown and white are severely under & unemployed. It’s the reason millions of them are being evicted from their apartments and losing their homes. When you can’t work, you can’t support yourselves or your children. When the healthcare crisis is exacerbated by untold millions of people here illegally, to the point that it’s going to be impossible to resolve it, poor Americans, black, brown and white (I feel that you’re one of those who need to be reminded), sicken and die, when you can’t feed your children, let alone yourself, when you are facing the reality that as things stand there is no future. That is the reality that exists across the entire US, in your own backyard, yet you are either ignorant or indifferent to that fact. Malnutrition and anemia, vitamin deficiencies among poor American children worse than during the great depression. Rickets is now growing once again, because poor Americans (again, black, brown and white) can’t afford to provide adequate amounts of milk for their children.

    All this because you think that you somehow validate yourself, by punishing America symbolically by discriminating against working poor and lower middle class Americans, black, brown and white, by supporting their displacement in the jobs that haven’t been able to be outsourced.. which is, corporate welfare. You wouldn’t do the hard work of demanding the wealthy in those wealthy countries south of the border raise wages, that weathy Mexico raise taxes on their top 2% as well as on their middle classes to create more opportunity.

    Like the US Chamber of Congress, and Business Roundtable (the historical enemies of the minimum wage, wage standards, workplace and environmental protections) your “activism” is in aid of creating what is slavery. The “xenophobia” you imagine, is citizens speaking out as the constitution gives them the right to do, to petition their country, seeking redress. They need to work, support their children, and keep a roof over their heads. It’s a violation of their civil rights to be discriminated against because businesses and corporate interests want to drag down wages. Perhaps if your beloved illegals truly were hard workers, they’d be demanding their home countries do more for them. What you support is rationalizing the status quo in Mexico, etc.. and in the third world, as well as imposing that same status quo here. Here’ s one more newsflash for you, airhead, what you rationalize would ultimately achieve is trapping your beloved illegals in a far worse situation here. Far worse because there would be no US standards that were single handedly responsible for setting standards of human rights considerations around the world.

    George Bush alone can’t be blamed for this, regressive pigs like yourself not only ignore it, some of you claim that the poor in America “have it easy”. This is the reason why more American women consider feminism a joke, it’s been reduced to a narrow minded country club for bored, rich, far leftist extremists who care about a few single pet issues. Fat, and lazy people like you, sitting in luxury with every comfort have it easy.. you wouldn’t survive a day suffering the way poor Americans do.

    BTW, before I continue, here’s a history lesson for you, Hispanics ARE Europeans.. even the brownist of the brown Hispanic is European. Go to Spain and Portugal and educate yourself out of your desperate need to promote revisionism. There is no such thing as a “Latino” or “Mestizo”, both are attempts at creating a catch-all, in the game of “let’s sweep our dirty history under the rug” that Hispanics like to play.

    Hundreds of years before the first Englishman set foot in what is now called the US, the Spanish invaded the lands now called Mexico, Central and South America, and committed genocide that is only matched by what the Nazi’s, and Marxist scum like, Stalin, Lenin and Mao are guilty of. They slaughtered the indigenous peoples of those lands, and very few remained afterwards.

    To continue raping those lands of gold and other resources, the Spanish decided to borrow a page from the book of their Arab trading partners, slavery. The Spanish invented the trans-Atlantic slave trade, to fuel their continued pillage of those lands, and they spread that slavery up into their colonies in the southeastern parts of what is now called the US. Try talking to an Afro-Latino and see what they have to say about the racism, the hatred and oppression practiced by those Hispanics who like to claim that their ancestors lived in “peace and justice” with the native peoples and their black friends.

    Slavery is still legal in many Arab countries, especially child slavery, and Africa still rationalizes it’s own enslavement of it’s own people as somehow being benign. I’m sure you do as well.. after all, you do not respect the rights of anyone not like to you think and decide for themselves.

    Those like you, aligned with the corporate elite, want the working poor and struggling middle classes to shut up and accept being reduced to the status of slaves. You demand that the realities of poverty in the US either do not exist or that the poor here deserve to suffer because they are American. The facts are that Americans aren’t to blame for the poverty that exists in the world. The corporate elite and corrupt foreign governments you want to bend over for IS.

    You talk about “homophobic”, but you can’t quite grasp the fact that what you rationalize doesn’t protect equality.. you actually are advocating for there being no equality. The Arab and Muslim world believes homosexuals should be slaughtered, they believe women who do not accept third class status should be stoned, raped and murdered. They demand censorship, torture and murder of those who will not bow down to their rigid dogma.

    The sort of society peope like you would create would be one that is authoritarian and despotic, because you are so entrenched in your own hatred and ignorance, that it could only produce something mentally unstable and bleak. You are racist, sexist and exploitative, you are the sort of person who rationalized slavery, the holocaust and genocide.. any means to your end. You’re part of the problem and very regressive.

24. Jenny’s post is a perfect, and frightening, example of how the divide-and-conquer strategy works. By pitting working-class Americans against “illegal aliens,” the Republican corporate overlords, aided by the Lou Dobbses of the world, distract attention from their own rapaciousness.

25. actually, i think jenny’s post is a perfect example of right-wing astroturfing. “neo-leftist fascists” being the talking point and all.

26. I don’t understand Jenny at all… she is suggesting that leftists want the poor to be slaves and are sexist and racist. This blog is always advocating better living and working conditions for the poor, and the ending of racism and sexism. The people she’s describing are actually Republicans.

    I guess she has an issue with a bad decision Clinton made and she’s decided that all feminists and leftists support that decision.

27. PhysioProf, I, in broad terms, agree with you about the modern 27%. But I definitely in disagreement with you over their origins. The anti-federalists are the reason we have a bill of rights, and their fears and predictions have largely been proven right. The centralized government we have now is the threat to freedom, for all genders and ethniticies, that they predicted. Democrats and Republicans both share equal blame for allowing this to come to pass.
    It also, I feel, a bit intellectually dishonest, to smear the advocacy of decentralized power and a weak central government with saying its rooted in slavery. If slavery had somehow been “off the table”, there would still have been anti-federalists, and they still would have been right.
    The federal government is not your friend. The state government is not your friend. The local government is not your friend. If you would like corrobation on this subject from recognized feminists, might I suggest Emma Goldman and Voltrine De Cleyre?

28. It’s always ironic the hate that drips out against people who “hate”. This as nothing more than thinly veiled ethnic bigotry, spouted by someone who doesn’t know who the hell they’re talking about. There’s a lot I could say in response to this, a lot that I would want to say as the descendant of working-class Scotch-Irish from the South who never owned much in 300 years, let alone a plantation, and who never had a higher education until the middle of the last century.

    I’ll just suggest a good book: “Deer Hunting with Jesus”, by Jim Bageant. It’ll go some way to explaining “What’s the Matter with Kansas”, and a lot of other places, for the Democrats and the Left in general. That, and reading this post and many other things in the same vein. And asking yourself if you personally would support and vote for people who claim to want to look out for your economic interests, but regard you and all of your family over the last three centuries as nothing more than a “a foul festering rotten core at the heart of the American polity.”

29. Where is the ethnic bigotry, Tom? Nowhere does PP suggest that all Scotch or Irish or English people are evil. Right now Americans vote for people who hate many ethnic and sexual minorities and many here would like to vote for people who do not.

30. Bushfire, if a politician or public figure rails on about “welfare queens”, or “border jumpers”, or “youth predators”, they haven’t explicitly mentioned ethnicity either. But it’s pretty clear who they’re talking about, and who they want their listeners to envision.

    There is a long history of ethnic and class prejudice against “certain types” of white people in this country. You know exactly what I’m talking about. “White trash”, “trailer trash”, “rednecks”, “hillbillies”, “crackers”, “peckerwoods”, etc. When I read this, I saw exactly that just between the lines. It’s not okay.

31. Well, I’m not an American, so I may be unaware of what particular American politicians are saying about whom, but I have noticed a tendency among Republicans to speak of “welfare queens” and of Democrats to support welfare. There is certainly class prejudice against many working class people and generally the Democrat position is that class differences are unfair and that the gap should be narrowed. As for race prejudice against white people, I don’t know where you’re getting that, because the people with political and economic power are overwhelmingly white, so you seem to be saying that white people are prejudiced against white people. It’s not a race issue, it’s a class issue.

    I don’t know who Physio Prof votes for, but I’m going to assume with a lot of certainty that’s he’s Democratically aligned. Only he can speak for himself, but I don’t think he would be supportive of prejudice against working-class people. He hasn’t said anything to suggest this.

    When Physio Prof talks about Rebuplicans you read in “trailer trash”, but Republicans come in all socio-economic backgrounds and in all races. Until he suggests otherwise, and he hasn’t, we can assume that PP realizes that.

32. The problem with this post–aside from declaring 27% of Americans “sick fucks” who are “beyond contact with the tools of human reason and compassion,” among other things, and the cartoonishly wrong history, which other commenters have addressed–is that it absolves those of us who identify as leftists of any culpability for injustice, because we are the good guys. It actually calls us “innocent bystanders.” This is nonsense.

    The people PhysioProf is talking about–the “serfs” (at least the “stupid deluded shits” among them)–tend to be working-class and not very well educated. Outside of the voting booth they have little power. “Well-meaning” liberals–who largely comprise our investment banks, corporate law firms, universities, think tanks, and, of course, the Democratic party–are vastly more responsible for social injustice, and benefit from it much more, than PhysioProf’s “fearful angry hate-filled motherfuckers.” You cannot escape that by heaping contempt on a bunch of people you’ve never met. No one is innocent.

33. Bushfire, I don’t know where you’re from or what the general social situation is there. There’s something of a long, largely-unspoken, and very ugly intra-white class divide and prejudice in the United States, which is mostly culturally and educationally based, and that has something of an ethnic tinge to it as well. Up until about 30 or 40 years ago, the old Democratic “New Deal” coalition from FDR until Lyndon Johnson overcame some of this and held the coalition together, between urban ethnic working classes, educated liberals, minorities, and rural working-class whites. That fractured in the 60s, largely over civil rights, but also other issues, like guns, the moral wedge issues the Republicans use, and perspectives on the country and on patriotism after Vietnam. The working-class whites, largely but not entirely in the South, got written off as “Bubbas” and “Archie Bunkers” by the Democrats, and generally either scorned or forgotten. They became Republicans eventually, even if the Republican party wound up screwing them personally and culturally as badly as ever, largely on the argument that “at least they pretend to respect us and won’t take our guns away”. Since then, the Democrats have won 3 of the last 10 Presidential elections.

    Right now, the working-class whites I’m describing are getting screwed as badly as ever: seeing their kids die in Iraq, losing their homes in the mortgage meltdown, unable to afford the gas to go to work, and getting sicker and older and fatter as health care, pensions, Medicare and Social Security rot.

    These are people in serious trouble. Yes, they are in many ways responsible for their own bad lots. They’re mostly poorly educated, frightened, and they keep voting Republican because, as I pointed out, they haven’t been given a reasonable alternative. That isn’t mostly their fault, though, having been abandoned or vilified by Democrats and the Left and hoodwinked by Republicans. They aren’t the people who hold power in this society, nor even hold very much power over their own lives. They work at lousy, poorly-paying, threatened jobs are are so heavily in debt to mortgage and credit-card companies that they have negative wealth.

    The Democrats have finally, since 2004, started to wonder what they can do about this situation, at times asking “What’s the Matter with Kansas”. A lot, but the bigger question is “What’s the matter with the Democrats and the Left”, being perennially unwilling or unable to approach these people in a respectful, realistic, and honest way that might change things. Barack Obama and his people might care, but even he had trouble months ago with that condescending “clinging” speech, to a group of very wealthy San Francisco donors, no less!

    And this post takes that attitude all the way to the extreme: rather than mere condescention to outright hatred and vilification. Of people who are poor, desperate and angry. And might, under better circumstances, be as solid and reliable a Democratic bloc as their parents and grandparents were.

    It’s not very smart, and it’s not okay. People with these sorts of sentiments in their hearts, whatever justification may lie behind them, need to open their eyes and hearts and stop playing to the same stupid caricatures and bruised egos they’ve been nursing since 2000, or 2004, or whenever. Or else they need to just bite their fucking tongues. Hard. Otherwise, the GOP will use these people to win elections again and again. Or else we’re all going to have to worry about a lot of very desperate, angry people and what they might do, say, if there’s another national emergency or some sort of Waco-style screw-up somewhere and these people can be convinced that Obama is some kind of black-power Muslim radical and is sending the SWAT team after them.

34. This thread has some classic examples of concern trolling. The “why can’t we be nice to conservative republicans” plea is something I’ve been seeing for years.

    Look, there’s no point being civil to people who approve of torture. There’s no point pretending that people who supported a trillion dollar war on bogus information (and continue to refuse to apologize for their mistake) are anything less than raving lunatics.

    I’ve been warned a million times by concern trolls to “be nice to republicans”, or else there will be backlash and the Democrats will be clobbered. You know what I’ve noticed? Ever since Democratic activists and the leftist blogosphere finally decided to start fighting mean and dirty in the last few years, the Republican brand name has been decimated. The very word “republican” has become an embarrassment. Two time Bush voters are running for cover at full sprint. Former republicans are now self identifying as “independent conservatives”. PP’s post is spot on. Calling out the bullshit on immorality and incompetence is not only our right, its our duty.

    The republicans won elections for two decades by being mean and dirty. The concern trolling suggests to me that they don’t want their own tactics finally turned against them. No one is saying ever single individual republican is evil. What most of us are saying, is that the fringe right, crony capitalists, theologically driven party that the GOP has become is an affront to american values and ideals. And if we on the left had been acting like Joe Lieberman, and pretending we can get along with these people, then the republican brand name wouldn’t have become a laughing stock like it has in the last three years.

35. Having scrolled quickly thru the comments, let me say this:

    If you DON’T STAND UP TO THE EVIL, it wins.

    And standing up, means you beat the SHIT out of them, on every issue, on every thing they say, on every belief they hold.

    Cuz if you don’t, yer losing, and for Christopher, and the others, tell me just WHAT the fuck you wusses have done over the past 30 years to PREVENT what’s happened?

    This thing, this evil, this erosion of our constitution, knows no boundaries, no Geneva Conventions, no ‘fair fights’, and they’ve proven it!

    So, whatta ya gonna do, let them kick you on the OTHER sides of your soft fat asses?

    Or will you for ONCE in your defeatist lives, stand up and fight for yourselves, if no one else?

    Physio, I SWEAR some of these commenters MUST be fronting for Liberty and Regent College’s and the entire 27% that’s as evil as evil can be.

    Humans learn these lessons, early, on the playgrounds of the schools.

    Some one is a bully, there are ALWAYS bullies out there, in your lives. And no matter WHAT you do, how much you creep into the background, and hide, your time will come, to be bullied.

    So you MIGHT as well step up early, and protect someone getting pounded, and beat the SHIT out of the bully, beat that bully so bad, it has NO desire to ever bully again.

    You can’t legislate bullying, you can’t police it, you can’t educate it.

    You can only beat. The. Shit. Out. Of. It.

    Every day, in your life, that it goes down, at work, at home, in school, on the streets. Beat the shit out if it, and if you don’t, yer as bad as the bully.

    But to confront that bullying, one would have to be willing to be bloodied, and GET others bloodied. And this country has gone soft, chickenshit and cowardly, so the bullies are running yer asses over.

    The have’s of course, will agrue relentlessly from their stature that violence is wrong, and getting along is all that’s needed.

    YOU folks, have sold our asses down the river as much as the white man sold the blacks in their day.

    Yer cowards. And bullies, in your own rights.

    Rock on PhysioProf, it appears to be an ugly bunch of commenters in here, certainly not progressive or liberal, in ANY sense.

    Frankly, in the fight to reclaim our country and constitution, they should be rounded up and sent to a southern state to eek out their miserly existence with their like minded handlers. (spits)

    Fucking Harumph.

36. Peter, you’re talking about two different groups of people, and conflating them. If you mean Republican political operatives and Administration figures, then you are on point. If you mean each and every person who voted Republican, over 100-odd million people in 2004, then you’re off base. And when you consider that the Democrats have only held Congress for a year and a half, and a pretty slow year and a half at that, it was the Republicans’ own failures and arrogance, rather than anything that Democratic activists or the blogosphere did, that put the Republican party in the state that it’s in.

    Look, Obama is probably going to be the next President and the Democrats in power, at least for the next 2-4 years. Obama won and Hillary H. Humphrey lost because even most Democrats were sick of “politics as usual”, and wanted someone who actually seemed concerned with the country as a whole rather than grinding old partisan axes. There’s going to be a lot to do in setting the ship of state aright. If the primary concern of that Congress and Administration, and the party that it represents, is in doing that work for the welfare and in the best interests of the American nation and it’s people, and in promoting those “American values and ideals” that you claim have been so affronted, then that state of affairs probably has a chance of lasting longer than 2-4 years. If the primary concern is in settling scores and in claiming, rather than proving, superiority and the fitness to rule, then it probably doesn’t.

    Your call.

37. Obama has a sub zero chance of being president so get over it. His swanning around Iraq right now is ridiculous, given the fact that his media prancing is one more self humiliation of American prestige. The fringe lunatics here don’t care, of course, but the electorate is rather more discerning. Hilary was the ONLY realistic chance we ever had.

38. Obama as a Muslim? No one believes that, except the apostatepakistanigirl – apg, who is tearing through the mainstream blogosphere railing against Obama and his ‘ pro Muslimah feminist allies’. Sad. I assume she is banned here. Why does she do it? She is blogging for General Musharaf, rather than Hilary by the way Apg hates Obama because she functions like a member of the South Vietnamese government. For her, the Pakistani military dictatorship she relentlessly defends-Obama in power spells total doom. But the misleading LIE that Obama is even a proto Muslim should definetly be confronted in my opinion.
    Apg- armed with ‘conclusive’ evidence that Obama is “Muslim” based on his 1982 trip to Pakistan and Hyderabad. Apg, political serial liar, total loser and timing her new LIE to coincide with the election, so so so South Vietnamese!

39. Seriously, I think a lot of you need to lighten up. You act like this one blog post is going to bring down the Democratic party. Talk about overreacting.

40. And asking yourself if you personally would support and vote for people who claim to want to look out for your economic interests, but regard you and all of your family over the last three centuries as nothing more than a “a foul festering rotten core at the heart of the American polity.”

    Please point out where any major Democratic candidate has treated any possible voter in this way.

    I think you are overly sensitive here. Nobody is attacking your family here. Nobody even knows you on a personal basis here.

    Guess what? I’m an Irish gal with Southern roots. But unlike you, I’m not using my background to cry discrimination and mistreatment. Why? Because nobody has done so. Get over yourself.

41. You act like this one blog post is going to bring down the Democratic party.

    Goddammit! I told you to keep my nefarious plot a fucking secret!

42. I’m a very leftist and educated woman. This tin foil hat rant is still absolutely incoherent. Do better.

43. I don’t know your experiences PhysioProf, but in my experience teaching (a very little bit) at various levels, the % of “unreachable” sick fuck wackaloon true believers is actually quite small — let’s say, less than 1% of people. Most students, most people, I’ve met at any level aren’t filled with hate or consumed ignorance; a large number of people are reasonable, but if you hear certain things for your entire life, by the time you’re 18, by the time you’re 25, by the time you’re 50 – and on — you’re going to have a lot of stock in them. We’ve taught our students that the US is infallible, slavery was a sleight slip-up in an otherwise ever-rising glory, inherited wealth is less dominant than the mythical self-made-man, and that behind every great man is a great woman — not because she’s unfairly sleighted but because a woman’s greatness is not as great (or is best expressed in helping a man be great).

    I see in my students the fact that no one’s going to be convinced by anything in a day — or a week, or a month, or maybe a year — it takes years of debates and conversation and exposure to alternative interpretations before the average person (left or right) can synthesize a new world view, especially one that’s more complicated and sinister and unjust than they’d been led to believe. (One of my students thanked me for opening her eyes, but felt saddened and unfortunately discouraged by her new, more accurate imho, view of the world as one with so many problems and sins by the great US.)

    The people who won’t even change after years of give and take are the vast minority — and they are not the festering rot, either (though they must be avoided and ignored — despite the fact that the cable news channels try to give as many of them shows as possible). The festering rot is the *legacy* of slavery and the Native American genocide, military intervention and adventurism in Latin America and elsewhere, the elite-written and written for elites Constitution (Electoral College, no explicit rights for women, 3/5 of a man, only the landed being able to vote at first). The rot is the infrastructure itself — the core beliefs of egalitarianism and justice that are promulgated by the Constitution’s rhetoric was never meant to extend to their (logical) conclusions as they are today, and we are trying to deal with that rot. That rot is what infects the average, otherwise reasonable wackaloon who believes the rhetoric and doesn’t see the elite substructure surrounding it, that rot is institutional racism and sexism, nativism, elitism, classism, and more. That rot is the American Lie/Dream that all we need is our own self and each should fend for their own, in direct contradiction in a reality where we won’t make it if we’re all together and that justice can’t be achieved while simultaneously serving avarice.

    The rot is the ghost in the machine, and some can’t be saved — but most can. Blaming all the rest for the rot there before they got here, the rot placed there by the 1% of super-rich elite mostly white males of each previous generation, is to confuse the symptom for the disease. Most can be cured — to quarantine them, forget or ignore them is to lose the battle and let the disease deprive us of what we hold dear. (I was going to try and work in a gangrene analogy, but couldn’t pull it off.)

44. Long story short, I love your rants, but you’re way off base in left-wing wackaloon territory here PP =]

Comments are currently closed.