The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by zizka:

It's weird how hip, non-anti-Semitic people seem to think that it's funny to bring this kind of thing up. The whole Kerry thing was galling. By any but the Nazi standard, the story is simple: Kerry's grandfather was Jewish, Kerry isn't. But out of pure malice and cuteness people had to make a game of it.

And actually it is anti-Semitic. For example, one of my grandfather was Dutch and one great-grandfather was Welsh, but few people who know me know that. It just doesn't come up much, and who cares? But there's something about those Jews.

I think that this point is a lot more important than it seems. The blue-red split is almost two different worlds. The core of the right wing is people you never see, living in Cheyenne Wyoming, Macon, Georgia, Jackson, Mississippi, etc. Their lives are tied up in church, family, and business. Probably they have some gaps in their education even if they're very successful and trained in a profession, so maybe they aren't too articulate.

And maybe they believe that Martin Luther King was a communist, and that Armageddon will come soon and that that's a good thing, and that all Mexicans should be deported, and all queers shot, and we should nuke Iran, and so on. But you never run into them, because they're in a different social circle. (Some of them even have a policy of lying low).

The people we see on TV or hear on radio (Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Pat Robertson) are not these people, but they're pimping them. They're like vote contractors delivering consent. (When you hear people talking about "outside the beltway", you're hearing inside-the-beltway people who've taken on the pimping job.)

I'm not saying that every Republican or every conservative meets the description I just gave, but there's a big chunk of them, and sometimes they even get the President's ear. Rove is absolutely committed to keeping them on board.

Even though I live in a liberal city (Portland OR), I still run into these people, through neighborhood, co-workers, in-laws, etc.. And since I drew up in the boonies I know of others whom I don't see much any more.

These people can be very pleasant face-to-face. Since I'm white, not gay, no longer a hippy, and mild-mannered (believe it or not) in many situations, these people accept me if I don't argue politics. But when their political ideas slip out they can quite casually be utterly blood-curdling.

There's some kind of sick thing going on, where liberalism and everything to the left of it have been demonized and the most annoying, extravagently bizarre and unpleasant representatives of the left have come to be taken as typical. I know a lot of people who choose to be apolitical or snarkily right wing mostly because they think liberals are uncool. They really seem like dupes and fools to me, because none of them would really want to live in the world the right-wing is making a lot of progress in constructing, but they're going to let it happen because they're just too god damn cool.

My position is that all airports, theme parks, shopping malls, and ring suburbs are the same place. My idea of Hell is to spend my life going from one to the next forever.

Considering that nonlethal nonfinancial verbal support for a war is already pretty lame, nonverbal support is realy really lame. Like saying, "We promise not to openly oppose you", or even, "If we end up openly opposing you don't take it personal." We're approaching degree zero.

"Sorge ne cuthon": "Feeling no pain". That's what I'm working on. Cheers.

I also remember "US vows to defeat whoever it is we're at war with" about 9/25/01 or so. I really wondered if they could come back at all, but they came back quicker and stronger than anyone.

Franz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth was, among other things, about the psychological effects of torture both on the victims or on the torturers. The actual hands-on torturers were under military discipline and under orders. They usually did not choose their jobs and suffered symptoms for years.

Similiar stories have been told from Latin America (ca. 1975? --1990?.) The US was seriously implicated in the Latin American case, and based on a conversation with an acquaintance/friend in the US military, I'm not at all sure that we ever really renounced the practice.

I was specifically thinking of Jews in Germany. In what little I've read of the pre-WWII period I remember that some Jews really couldn't believe that Hitler was serious or that people would support him in his plans.

This breaks Godwin's law, and Bush is not Hitler, but all the trial balloons about theocracy, a Republic founded by God, etc., have a sinister flavor to me. Seeing the Forest (http://seetheforest.blogspot.com)has a big thing up on Scalia's religious interpretation of the constituion, which differs widely from that of the founders.

It is just plain false that MWO uses the worst tactics of the right.

Like many rightwing sites and media spokesmen, MWO is harsh and partisan. Those are not the worst things about the right wingers though.

Repeated, blatant inaccuracy which is never corrected is one of the worst things about the right wing. Accusations of treason and threats of violence -- sometimes veiled, sometimes not -- are two more of the worst things about the right wing. If you have ever seen these on MWO get back to me.

Being nice doesn't always work. Maybe basketball didn't use to be a contact sport, but it is now. You have to play the game the way it's played.

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