Ah, the Democrats got their thongs in a bunch this week because this column dared — dared, mind you — suggest President Barack Obama is not the epitome of perfection.
The emails that flowed over the e-transom were, shall we say, less than gracious. I haven’t been called so many names since my first marriage.
Some simply suggested I go to hell, go straight to hell and forget about passing “go” or collecting $200. Others stringed so obscenities together that I stopped counting.
You gotta love rabid partisanship. It keeps anger management counselors in business.
Of course, I’ve heard all this before. Got the same thing from Republicans about this time eight years ago when I raised questions about the love of their lives — George W. Bush.
How dare I attack their icons?. Who the hell do I think I am?
The fun thing about partisans is that they are so easy to rile. They become so myopic, so focused on the illusionary superiority of their singular point of view that they lose all sense of reality.
To the left, George W. Bush and Republicans are agents of Satan. To the right, Obama and Democrats are godless commies who want to drive the nation to socialism.
Both sides will scream to high heaven if you suggest they are partisan. They claim they question their leaders but then they usually add that the other side is worse. Even Democrats who complain now about some of the Bushian policies of Obama usually add the caveat that “he’s not as bad as Bush.”
Neither extreme view is true, of course, but truth has no place in a partisan world. To paraphrase an old cliche, truth is the first casualty of war and politics. Truth and its companion logic cannot exist in a partisan world where one-sided viewpoints must dominate and coalitions are for wimps.
If coalition-building and consensus became integral in today’s governing process, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz and other partisan progandists like them would be on the unemployment line like too many other Americans.
Rather than look for a solution, all partisans want to do is bitch and moan about the perceived faults of the other side. The other side must be demonized, not embraced. Differing opinions must be ridiculed, not considered and opposing points of view do not — in their minds — have a place, even in a so-called “free” society.
America cannot continue down this course of self-destruction. Americans cannot continue to ignore democracy while attempting to import it to other parts of the world.
We, as Americans, cannot resolve our nation’s internal conflicts until we resolve the conflicts within ourselves.
How do we do this?
First of all, let’s stop shouting at each other.
Then let’s start listening.
Can it be that simple?
Maybe so.
Maybe not.
But it’s a start.
17 thoughts on “New bitches & moans, same as the old”
From whence originated such a promise, eggplant43?
Yours in curiousity,
Issodhos
Then you want government control over the corporations? The corporations pay the government through Lobbyists to get contracts and approvals for their products. The law is broken when the congress accepts the bribes. The congress should be punished. I’m not certain that the government should have the right to approve of anything done by the corporations. The law is broken by the Congress which is our government. The government and the unions control the corporations and many are leaving the USA. Have you ever been aware in your work that your corporation is at the mercy of controls out of their hands?
I’m looking for reasons our jobs are melting in America and opening elsewhere. Running a business should not take authority from the city, country, state and then federal government. I’m looking for reasons why merchants are closing up due to the cost of permits, taxes, restrictions and insurance against just about everything. Everybody wants protection from others to such a point no business could ever open up in America. Big daddy watches who we hire, how much we pay, how many hours we need and even if we buy the building we have to upgrade to some ridiculous standard of safety. We cannot even sell products that people want when the stuff gets brought in from China at half the cost. I closed up my store as did 40% of the merchants around me.
I had no lobbyist to protect my rights but I do have a Lobbyists to protect my memberts of a charity from being stamped on by some religious extremist who does not want my people to be able to die with dignity.
There is another side of the coin when government is involved.
Sandy
Sandra, I am not proposing that we eliminate corporations, I simply point out that they have undo influence on our politicians, and that it must stop if we are to fulfill the promise of a democracy of the people.
I fought the fight for years as a Republican! My group in California were all Republicans. Your description of this partisan stuff is wrong! You assume things that are not true. In the past it was the GOP who wanted the government out of our social lives. It was Bush who decided we were going to be Christians. The agenda changed and most of us left the party. I quit fighting for freedoms until the separation of church and state is firmed up in our Bill of Rights. The churches are holding up all the freedoms and they should not have the legal right to this and continue the tax status they receive.
Even at Reader Rant I brought all the latest political stuff from the Medical Marijuana and it was accepted by the monitors and some action was found by the readers. A wave of religious folks ended up on reader rant and I left. The agenda of the GOP turned into a party of religious people and I don’t fit in that society. Reader Rant has begun to move away from this society but to me the major problem is jobs and getting our troops out of the Middle East. We can work together but it can be done without labels.
Sandra Price,
The question posed was:
We, as Americans, cannot resolve our nation’s internal conflicts until we resolve the conflicts within ourselves.
How do we do this?
I mentioned marijuana prohibition as an example of a cross over issue as a talking point that transcends party lines– not a cure all for the world’s ills.
That said, it is a fact that the people who support a war on marijuana use also support the wars in the mideast. The GOP have turned the U.S. into a a Police State, but it was “Slick Willy” who gave them the tools to do it.
In 1996 President Bill Clinton appointed a military commander, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, to oversee enforcement of the federal drug laws as the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
In the Clinton years, police overreach in the name of the Drug War shredded much of what remained of the Bill of Rights.
When Bill Clinton took office in January 1993, the violent crack epidemic of the late 1980s was already subsiding. Nonetheless, the galloping expansion of police powers and the prison system didn’t skip a beat, and law enforcement shifted to a new emphasis on marijuana. When Clinton entered office, the prison population-local, state and federal-was about 1.3 million. When he left office, that number has risen to over 2 million, the highest rate of incarceration-as well as the highest total number behind bars-in a democratic state in the history of the world.
It wa the Clinton Administration that developed of special drug task forces that combined the manpower of federal, state and local agencies-but frequently seem to operate without the oversight of any particular agency. These paramilitary police squads have racked up hundreds of assaults on innocent people.
There is a direct connection between the war on marijuana and the war on our civil liberties, which is why I have advocated legalization for decades. You can’t win a fight if you quit.
OK, I’ll toss my thong into the ring….
Doug is habitually negative. The scornful cynic who lived and ate at the trough of politics for a time and now writes his bitter diatribes as if they are part of some sort of twelve step healing process.
The rotor cuff destroying self agrandizing pats on the back for nanoskinned analysis are more worthy of a thrown shoe than wadded panties.
Total negativity does not make you right all the time. As the saying goes even a broke clock is right twice a day.
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