Judgment seems to be a big issue to the republicans this year.
Since of course they have NO legs to stand on when it comes to real issues like the Iraq Occupation, the tanking economy, health care, $4 a gallon gas (though you can bet their buddies in the oil business will miraculously find a way to lower prices before the election) or stuff like ya know, torture and spying on your phone calls and e-mails. Or really, any solutions to any of the many problems that we face. They have no vision for the future except more of the same lame crap that has gotten us to the sorry point we are at now.
And yet the race is tied.
It is tied because the Republicans have managed once again to make this election about morality. The Culture Wars, they call it. But the culture war is really a morality war. The republicans define themselves as moral. Thus do they define Democrats as immoral. Church and state, gay rights, abortion, crime and punishment, and of course ‘activists judges,’ since they want to appoint their own activist judges
The Republicans want to define morality for the nation.
While John McCain wants to kill more Iraqis. While he wants to continue the economic policies that are causing foreclosures, bankruptcy and high unemployment and inflation that hurt every American so that the rich can get richer. While he lives in his seven homes as veterans live under bridges. He panders to the Religious Wrong with his Palin pick, the folks who want to tell you what you can do in your own bedroom, and with who.
Is this moral? Does this show good judgment?
Where do these folks get off trying to portray themselves as the moral arbiters for all of America, and what can we do to keep them from continuing to impose their hypocritical morals on the rest of us? When did political power become the power to impose their morality on the rest of us? How do we make this shit….stop!?!?
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from giving them deference to their alleged moral authority?
Is that the REAL reason the Dems don’t fight?
and about how quickly can it be brought.
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I have officially put this puter…On Notice!
It starts up sporadically and then freezes, I have a couple of more things I can try to stop the flashing question mark at startup (mac OSX) but I might have killeded another puter. Apparently I ride these beasties hard!
If I vanish at any time, you know why.
It might be time for a Pre-Anniversary Spectacular Laptopathon!!! But hopefully one of the solutions I am about to try will work, so cross your fingers!
The Republican base, to a good extent, has what one might call a ‘middle ages’ (or earlier) outlook on life. They don’t see any problem with authoritarianism, after all they are rabid religionists (priest based, which is authoritarian). We shouldn’t be surprised that their base goes along with whatever their bosses tell them to do. It’s what they’ve be taught to do since birth.
but part of the way through, stephen makes a really good point: (my transcription might be off a little 😉
…he wraps it up in a nice ‘acid flashback’ The Word segment, where he calls the ’60’s ‘the gift that keeps on giving….it’s very clever..
but i think he makes an important point
revolves around their theory that the surge worked and Obama was wrong about getting out of Iraq.
Their judgment is precisely not judgment. It is based on a temporary lull in violence in a place where they caused the violence in the first place. Gates said as much today.
Is any judgment evident in their handling of the economy? Daily we are reminded not.
Is any judgment evident in their handling of the government? Again, daily, no.
Is any judgment evident in how they are going to pay for these wars? Not so much. Their refusal to even discuss the many many fuck ups they have caused? Crickets.
Judgment? What judgment?
…I don’t know how it is that I keep having to tell you this, but politics aren’t top-driven. The Republicans haven’t the slightest desire to define morality for the nation. The Republicans want to win, and defining morality for the nation is one way to do it. Which is why you also see the Democrats defining morality for the nation. What are the rants against Hummer owners, outsourcing corporations, and the religious right if not a definition of morality?
Contempt for the out-group is equally present in the left and the right, although the left often manages to conceal its contempt behind other factors more successfully. More fundamentally, this may be a required aspect of disagreement. Robin Hanson has written a great deal about the meaning of disagreement, and has concluded that disagreement itself is a form of disrespect. I don’t entirely agree with his analysis (he overestimates how certain we are of our beliefs, IMHO), but the truth is that all of us are inclined to impose our morality on the rest of us.
Their moral judgments(sic) have only “power” as their goal.
Republicans don’t know the meaning of the word “win”. Or of the word “moral”.
Republicans are idiots, for the most part.
Paul Krugman in this week’s NY Times.
as i wrote in ordinary americans, we can’t make a case to people who think we think they’re stupid. we can’t convince people of our truth when we have so much disdain for them. because, well, they’re stupid. not to mention that we are bearers of bad news. yup. we want to tell these people how we will save the world, what they must do to comply with this agenda, and btw get the fuck out of the way.
but we continually refuse to step back and understand WHY we, so smart and concerned and fucking moral, can’t convince people most fucked by Bush’s policies that, in fact, they are being fucked.
David Kuo. David Kuo. David Kuo. perfect case study on how it works.
until we admit we haven’t a workable strategy for reaching the right-leaning, we will continue on this road to hell.
this isn’t troll hugging. this is realism. we need them. they need us.
Buhdymon I say let it go. It is not going to change and there is no fighting it at the system level. you’ve got to get inside it deep. or underneath it, or way over it. The first one is dangerous and has little promise of success, the latter two take you out of the game entirely, and enjoyably.
I say the whole thing is kaput. Right now we are just watching it fall apart, the currency inflate to nada, the rich get so rich no one else can eat, so they find ways to kill us off (bioengineered flu, whatever). I’m voting third party just to piss them off. Pelosi took the Constitution off the table, the Big Oil/Pharma/Military Industrial Complex runs the economy with Goldman Sachs as CEO. Everything else is just TV filler.
we won’t make it stop, Budhy. there might be some change ahead, but the crux of all of this, imo, is Roe v Wade, circa 1973. that’s when religion high-dove into politics and swamped factions that were earlier drawn by lines between ‘pullerup bootstraps’ and ‘feed those damn Jones so they don’t steal my cows’ sort of debate. (at least, in my family.) my extended family lived, ate, drank, fought politics at every reunion. oh, the fights! they were legendary! 😉 one aunt refused to speak to me until i’d read “Atlas Shrugged” and made me read it again when i didn’t fall into Ayn’s camp. ha. she damn near disowned me. (and i have fantasies about only leaving $$ to my nephew, not my nieces, because he’s the only damn progressive in the bunch! lol!)
my sibs were liberals. they had the gene that Edger spoke about. my parents split between the two parties, split on religion as well. then 1973 happened. a goodly portion of my large extended family shifted right and there they stay, there are only a few ‘true blue’ left. (puns, ouch)
churches jelled around opposing abortion. the right found their base, and it’s been about sex ever since.
i’ve had these discussions, as i’m sure most if not all of us have, with family and friends, about what defines morality. the Impeachment Folly was an excellent case-in-point. did Bill’s “rising tide lifts all boats” morality (and to some, that was/is a moral issue) trump him dicking around? nope. because the poor had been taken out of the equation by then. it’s just about sex, now. the elephant in the room is abortion, i think.