Diatryma @ #94,
Too true. Nobody likes being attacked, and when you get attacked enough, you tend to develop a defensive response, and suddenly you find yourself amping up that response until you're "armed" to the same level as your "opponent" in the "war" of ideas.
An unfortunate and recognizeable cycle in our modern life; at least in the U.S., where secularism and Christian religiousness are very much locked in a battle for domination and control of our public and private lives.
Somehow, I think Jesus would not approve. But that's just me.
Oop. I wrote "face" when I meant "faith".
Typo.
Personally, I never understood the obsession many U.S. Christians have with needing to jam reality into the box of Biblical literalism. All this 'dinosaurs on the Ark' stuff, and other outright denial of geologic and fossil evidence, really smacks of deliberate obtuseness.
In the end, what does it mean to have faith? And if your entire religious paradigm rests on your belief that a multi-translated, oft-edited text is the literal and absolute word of God, what does that say? That you have more faith in Him? Or that you place all your face in an object written and created by men?
I grew up in a pretty religious home, fell away as a teen, and came back to my faith when, experientially, I had some things happen that caused me (for me) to doubt my teen-era materialist paradigm. At no time was this internal evolution ever chained to my believing that my religious text(s) were total and absolute truth, down to the last letter, without the slightest chance of a mistake or allowance for certain Bible passages as mere metaphor.
Rather, much of it was based on feeling.
Also, I didn't feel compelled to promptly trot out and start whacking other folk over the nose with my feelings, however strong they might have been. I shared them with those whom I thought would understand, including the woman who eventually became my wife, but I didn't make it my mission to convert the known universe.
Too many people, believers and atheists alike, feel threatened when they run into folk who are from the Other Side of the equation. The atheist wants religion quashed and rubbed out of public manifestation, the Christian wants his faith to dominate all arenas of public and private life, etc.
I long for a day when we can leave each other the Hell alone. And yes, I think it can be said that Christians are the #1 culprits, no denying it. The militant atheists merely mirror the worst in militant Christian behavior.
Re-posted from a different thread.
I love this one so much...
The Kitten Maneuver
Put simply: if you make this choice (A) which I do not like, or engage in this action (B) or activity (C) which I disapprove of, then you are automatically to blame for the horrible things (D) that will happen because of the actions or decisions of an entirely unrelated, different person (E) over whose agency you have zero control.
The Kittens Maneuver is used quite a on both Left and Right.
Examples: if you were a Nader voter in 2000 you are therefore guilty of electing George W. Bush, and if you vote for Democrats you're therefore guilty of killing unborn children, etc, etc, etc.
It's basically a device for black/white paradigm people on the extremes of the conversational spectrum who hate middle-grounders or people who deny the black/white paradigm.
(e.g: you're either with us, or you're with the terrorists....)
All,
I think I'm done standing up for the philosophical rights of us third-partyists; at least in this thread. I've been repeatedly and unfairly tarred as a Bushie and I've had my fill, thanks. If some of you look at the world and think, "If you're not WITH US, you're WITH THEM", then that's fine. My mind and soul do not work that way and never have, and I can't argue you all into thinking or feeling differently any more than you can argue me into believing that I'm being lazy or a latent Bush fan simply because I couldn't vote for Kerry.
Bush sucked. Kerry sucked. I am not obliged to pretend that Kerry didn't suck, simply because Bush sucked more than Kerry sucked. I loathe the idea of having to choose the lesser of two evils, to use a phrase. Americans, I believe, deserve better.
There. I am done.
Have a good weekend everyone. I hope the Dems come up with a ticket I can respect in 2008. I really, really do.
Greg @ #407,
I guess we're just going to have to disagree. This is obviously a philosophical debate about how votes ought to be cast, and for whom, and why. And while I sort of understand your POV on this, I can't make candidates faceless enough to put them on a tiered list like in Consumer Reports. If I think both Option 1 and Option 2 are not viable, I am seeking an Option 3, or an Option 4, or an Option 5. The system might be set up so that I am "throwing away" votes, but that just means the system has a problem, not that I have a problem.
Thanks for sticking with me on this debate. I know I get heated. I've been arguing more or less about third-partyisms and "voters throwing away votes" since my dad and I both went third-party in my very first national election in 1992.
Greg,
I don't give a !*@*%$!! what the swifties said. I never paid attention to their advertisements and I don't base anything I say or how I voted on what the swifties said or wrote.
So please, stop shoving the swiftboaters in my mouth.
Here is how it went down:
1- Dem primaries were held, and Howard Dean fell on his face. I was very surprised at that, and was curious to find out who John Kerry was.
2- I happened to be at drill shortly after that (we now call it Battle Assembly, for reasons I know not...) and we had some retired folk come because one of their young relatives was being promoted, and they were pinning her. Several of us got with the retirees prior to the pinning and someone brought up Kerry. These two men, whom I learned were both retired and Vietnam draftees and more or less Democrats, both said they thought Kerry was an opportunist and a bad choice for the party, and they were pretty sure they wouldn't be able to vote for him even if it meant Bush might win.
3- When several of us asked why, they said they felt like Kerry took a piss on everyone who ever served in Vietnam, but now that he wanted to be President, he was trying to play himself as some kind of war hero. They thought it was 100% pure political bullshit, they hated the idea of Kerry riding into office as some kind of hero after he'd contributed to Vietnam vets coming home and having a bad reputation, and they suggested that all of us younger Soldiers go look up what Kerry said, see the clips, and then we'd know what they were talking about.
4- Myself and a few others did just that. And I was forced to admit that these two retirees were not without warrant in their sour feelings for John Kerry. By his own words, he did a lot more than just criticize the war or the White House. He gave the unknowing public the general impression that attrocity was S.O.P. for soldiers in Vietnam. And I don't know about anyone else, but I've yet to meet a Vietnam vet, regardless of political affiliation, who enjoys having himself portrayed as a rank-and-file war criminal.
After this, I payed a lot of attention to the Kerry campaign, and the more I saw of it, the less I liked the guy and the more I had to agree with the grumbling chorus of current and prior servicemembers I knew, few of them Bush voters, who thought Kerry was a sham and a vote-mongerer, and they were pretty bitter than the Dems couldn't come up with a more consistent, less empty man to run against Bush.
Again, I think the onus is on the Democratic Party to come up with better candidates; not for all of us voters to hold our noses and Vote the Democratic ticket simply because Republicans suck.
Let the record show that as of today, I am making a minor alteration in my alias, in accordance with JESR's having pointed out that my experience in non-profit radio does lay more with community stations, as opposed to public stations per se.
NOTE: the e-mail has not changed.
Thank you.
I'm not sure what else I can say on this, other than:
1) Not supporting Kerry doesn't automatically equate to me 'supporting' Bush. That kind of patented black/white, either/or logic is why America is locked into two parties, often for the worse. I demand the right of a third option if I think the first two options are terrible. And in my opinion, Bush and Kerry both were terrible. You might have thought Kerry was an awesome candidate. I disagree. And I was not alone. And nobody has the right to tell me or anyone else that we had some sort of moral or ethical obligation to vote for Kerry just because Bush is an asshole.
2) Which brings me to ethan's rhetorical device. I like to call it the Kittens Maneuver. You've all seen the endlessly copied picture, right? Anyway, the Kittens Maneuver basically goes like this: if you make this choice (A) which I do not like, or engage in this action (B) or activity (C) which I disapprove of, then you are automatically to blame for the horrible things (D) that will happen because of the actions or decisions of an entirely unrelated, different person (E) over whose agency you have zero control.
We see this ploy used a lot in our popular culture. Like when pro-lifers tell you that you're an accessory to murder if you don't vote for anti-abortion Republicans. Same exact argument as ethan's, "People will DIE if you don't vote the way I think you should vote!"
In some cases I think this trick is effective, otherwise nobody would keep using it. Me? I've heard and seen it too often, from various zealous groups, to be cowed by it. George Bush's sins are his own. And especially when I did not even vote for the man, you can't make me responsible for him, or the death's in Iraq.
3) Regarding Kerry and soldier-maligning, the two retired Army men I am thinking of in particular, one an officer and the other enlisted, both expressed negative opinions to me long before the whole swiftboat campaign began. I didn't know much about Kerry at the time, but I remember these two men quite well, and how they disliked very much that Kerry was now running as some kind of war hero, when his past actions following Vietnam seemed to show that he held his own service and the service of other Vietnam veterans in contempt. Again, if some of you want to keep making apologies for Kerry, go right ahead. All I have done is express my opinions and those of a few people I know. If you think we're full of it, I don't really care. Kerry was the wrong man for the Democrats in 2004. And those of us who couldn't stomach him or Bush had no obligation to hold our noses; especially since all of Washington State's electoral votes went to Kerry anyway. WTF are you complaining about when our 'conscience' votes didn't even affect the overall outcome? We did our civic duty as expected of us by the Founders. If that's not good enough for some people, fuck them.
One more note before bed.
Ethan @ #341:
If you're up in arms because I didn't hold my nose for Kerry, I can't help you. I know retired Army guys who were Vietnam draftees and lifetime Democrats and they couldn't hold their nose for John Kerry. John Kerry's failure to reconcile his Soldier-maligning of the 1970's with his "war hero" persona of the 2004 election, is nobody's fault but Kerry's.
And no, the whole, "But people are dying, man!" rhetorical trick doesn't work with me.
Hopefully, Dems will field a better team in 2008. Bush has made it virtually impossible for the Dems to lose.
Since all of Washington State's electoral votes were guaranteed to be blue in 2004, I felt like I had nothing to lose going with a 3rd-party name in 2004. I just couldn't take Kerry, and I wasn't going to vote for Bush, and I wasn't going to not vote, so there we are.
Gotta go. Evening is drawing down upon me.
Bob @ #327:
Here are the problems I saw with Kerry:
- His opposition to Iraq was of the "Johnny come lately" sort.
- His record in the Senate proved this.
- His Vietnam-era testimony before Congress/Senate badly damaged his credibility with other Vietnam vets, who felt maligned.
- His 2004 attempts to highlight his "Vietnam heroism" did not jive with his Vietnam-era anti-war language.
- His wealth kept getting in the way of his attempts to attract the American Everyman.
- He didn't bring enough concrete ideas for the future; no big or inspiring plans.
- He was not terribly photogenic.
- He was also not a terribly inspiring speaker.
Now, one might argue those last two points are weak and it shouldn't factor into it, but they are actually quite important. Part of what made Reagan so tough to beat was his actor's charm, speaking skills, persona, etc. These qualities matter in elections. Was it impossible for the Dems to find, somewhere in their ranks, a man or woman with a more consistent record on Iraq, less waffling, combined with a better stage pressence and no contradictions on account of a military record that is at once denounced by past testimony and then propped up for vote pandering at a later date?
Maybe I am being too hard on Kerry. He'll never get another chance at the White House, and I suppose this eats at him badly when he thinks about it. But even so, I don't feel obliged to vote for the empty suit with the DEMOCRAT label just because Bush is a doofus.
As to my alias, I used to fool around in public (or should I say, community?) radio in my younger years. Three different stations, from 1992 to 2002, either as a paid employee or a volunteer. I had to quit when I got back from active duty in 2003 because I was a dad at that point, and we'd moved too far away from any real public (community?) stations, even if I'd still had the time.
I choose not to disclose a partial or full name because you never know when making comments on a blog will come back and bite you in the ass. Especially when seeking employment.
JESR,
When I was at the big college/public radio convention in San Francisco in 1996, I thought KAOS and KBOO both offered terrific t-shirts. I was student program director for KSVR at the time, and we didn't even have t-shirts, poor backward and neglected little 100-watt station that we were.
But yes, I suppose we must differentiate between Public and Community radio at some stage. I cut my teeth at KRCL-FM in Salt Lake City, and virtually all of us at KRCL used the words "community" and "public" interchangeably.
It would be nice if my wife and I could move back up north and have access to either KSER or KSVR again, alas, housing prices along the I-5 corridor, especially north of Seattle... YECK! And Olympia is too far to drive in the other direction..
Without belaboring the point any further, not just a few registered Dems that I know were upset with how Gregoire won, if only because they felt like it left a black eye on Washington Democrats for Gregoire to win the way she did. Gregoire's campaign basically kept telling the vote-counters to go back and do it again until they got the "right answer", as it were.
Anyway, if you trust the results, I can't change your mind. Like you said, you've been paying attention to the politics of this region a lot longer than I have.
My hope is that we don't ever see a repeat of 2004, whether Dems win or not.
JESR,
I'm 33 years old, and must admit to having a guilty pleasure: C89.5 FM, the disco station run by the highschool kids. That is a *FUN* radio station.
KUOW does indeed have some good political and news coverage, but it gets pretty dry after awhile, and besides, KUOW (and KEXP and KPLU) is PINO: Public In Name Only. It's not accessible to the average would-be volunteer, and you have to range up to Everett (KSER, my former home) or Bellevue (KBCS) to find a station that operates along more traditional, bona fide community radio lines.
Where Gregoire is concerned, I only ask because I have noticed that most Gregoire voters I know who are up in arms about Bush's wins in 2000 and 2004, seem to feel like Gegoire's win constituted some sort of "revenge". I find this attitude disquieting because it seems to imply that a great many Democratic voters (in the I-5 corridor anyway) are perfectly content to see an election rigged, just as long as it's the Dem candidate who gets the W.
IMHO voter tampering and election rigging is an outrage no matter who wins. And I think regardless of how KUOW reported the Gregoire win, the legitemacy of her skin-of-the-teeth-three-recount victory will always remain in shadow. And rightly so, between the dead voters, the double voters, the voting dogs, the addressless and P.O. box voters...
If Rossi had won this way (and he almost did!) it would have been a sham.
That Gregoire won this way makes it no less of a sham.
JESR @ #285: Pray tell, did you vote for Gregoire?
Alan @ #287: To me, Kerry seemed like just another rich white guy who wanted to be President. Like too many Dems, he had a record of supporting the Iraq invasion when it seemed politically expedient, then he claimed to oppose the Iraq invasion, again when it was politically expedient. He possessed no grand visions nor grand sense of purpose, beyond his own desire to sit in the oval office and be The Man. And I don't know about anyone else, but I am done throwing my vote towards rich white guys who simply want to be President because they can. See my comments below, regarding nose-holding.
Bob @ #288: see below.
Greg @ #290: you seem to be of the either/or mentality, where Kerry is concerned. Either I had to love him because he was the Democratic man in 2004, or I was a Bush stooge? Please. Plenty of people I know thought Kerry was an empty carton, and either held their votes, or did a 'conscience vote' like my wife and I did. And it's not about back-patting or feeling special. It's about forcing the Dems to be an altogether different and better kind of organization than the Republicans are. Again, see my analogy of the diner menu from my post #279.
The bottom line is that I am not obligated to "hold my nose" when I fill in the scan sheet on poll day.
Kerry was ambition without substance, plain and simple. Just another rich white guy who found himself placed within striking distance of the White House, so he took his shot. It doesn't matter if Republicans swiftboated the man. He was swiftboatable. That's my whole point. Why the Dems couldn't come up with a better, more bullet-proof front runner in 2004 is something that still astounds me. And no, it can't all be blamed on smear tactics and bad press. There was smearing and bad press enough on both sides in 2004, and Bush still won. Had the Dems fielded a stronger candidate with a stronger platform, I think a lot less of the right-wing smearing would have stuck.
Again, I am not obligated to "hold my nose" for ANY candidate, nor make apologies for that candidate and his weaknesses simply because he's a Democrat. I think Americans need to halt this kind of vote-think altogether, otherwise neither party is ever going to feel much pressure to improve how they function and how they govern.
Paula @ #292: like CosmicDog, I fear to admit that I am somewhat at a loss when it comes to comprehending the full scope and intent of your posts. Suffice to say I don't think even Bush is whacked enough to launch nukes before 2009, and I believe Bush's tendrils extend neither so wide nor so deep as it might seem. At least in the military. Based on scuttlebutt around Ft. Lewis, most of us in the Army are just looking at our watches and waiting for 2008, so we can find out who the next President will be, and get on with the business of withdrawing from Iraq and healing many of the internal military wounds that have resulted from scraping the Army and Marines over too much bread.
albatross @ #297: very nice post, I agree with virtually all of it, save for a few things in the final paragraph. But overall, a very sound picture of the elections, their results, how these results were arrived at, the Republican chances in 2008, et cetera. Kudos.
Regarding voter tampering and election fraud,
The only time I have seen this happen, up close and in my area, the person who "won" was a Democrat. And it took the initial popular election results being a practical 50/50 split for tampering to even have any effect.
And to be honest with you all, I just don't see any Republican candidate out there getting 50% or more of the popular vote in 2008. They'll be fortunate to get even 40%.
But that is beside the point. What concerns me is that we're getting to a place now where the automatic assumption is that when 'our' team wins, it's the will of the people, and when 'their' team wins, it's vote fraud.
Sorry. I think that's a too-convenient way of thinking. Mostly because it removes a lot of the responsibility for the Democrats to a) communicate to voters, and b) come up with solid candidates who c) push a solid platform.
IMHO the Democrats' handling of the 2004 Presidential election was pretty slipshod. I mean, John Kerry? As a man with a lifetime voting record that is 70% Dem, I was so thoroughly put off by the Kerry candidacy that I had to make a 'conscience vote' and go with an obscure choice. My wife did the same.
And no, just because Republicans and Bush suck, that's not a good enough reason for me to just automatically hand someone like John Kerry the car keys. If voting my conscience and refusing to lend my support to an ambitious empty suit, just because he has DEMOCRAT next to his name, means I have an "agenda", then so be it.
Part of the reason we only have two gottdamned parties in America is because people keep using the logic, "Well, I think Candidate A sucks, but Candidate B is worse, and I don't want to throw my vote away and let Candidate B win, so I am going with Candidate A."
In this scenario, Candidate A never has to do much work to be much better than Candidate B. And from where I sat in 2004, Kerry didn't look much different from Bush. What I saw was yet another ambitious and fabulously wealthy white guy who wanted to be President, not because he had this massive internal drive to make America better, but because he saw an opportunity, as a career politician, to be top dog.
If I speak heresy to some ears, I care not. I'm mad at the Democratic Party because it's taken Bush totally screwing up in Iraq and taking all kinds of liberties at home to put the Dems in a position to win. Why did it take Bush being a clusterfuck President for the Dems to make progress with voters?
I feel like a customer at a diner and when I open the menu, I have two options:
1) Shit sandwich
2) Shittier sandwich
If I have an "agenda" it's in wanting a third option on the menu! Or wanting to have the ability to demand that my shitty sandwich be upgraded to at least an OK sandwich, preferably a good sandwich.
Republicans can't steal elections if the elections aren't close. So why in the fuck was 2000 even close? What problem did the Dems have overcoming Chimpy the default Republican candidate? When that whole thing went down, I was less mad at Republicans than I was at the Dems. Dems didn't do a good enough job communicating a clear vision and solid leadership to average Americans. That, and I think Gore was tainted by Clinton's shenanigans.
I don't care how many people think Clinton did nothing wrong when he let Monica blow him. Clinton was a stone around Gore's neck because of how that played out, and we can argue until we're dead about how Americans are dumb for caring that Monica blew Bill, but the fact remains: a lot of swing voters obviously cared enough to make it a close enough election that Bush could win in the electoral college.
This would not have happened had Clinton handled himself better. Republicans shot themselves in the foot with a failed impeachment and they STILL got Bush close enough for an electoral college win.
Instead of always assuming vote fraud, we should be demanding of our Democrats a higher standard. Better candidates, clearer message, more spine. No more John Kerry empty suit presidential offerings. Get people up there who can pull in the 'purple' vote to such an extent that no amount of Republican meddling via Diebold can possibly make up the ground necessary to win.
Again, if this is a heretical position, I'll be the happy heretic.
It's late and I need to get to bed.
Look, all. Bush and Cheney are gone in 18 months.
18 months is going to fly by.
There will be no sinister coup. Not even Bush or Cheney are thinking there will be one.
Barring the emergence of a true third party, or some fantastical Republican maverick, the Dems have the White House in the bag in 2009.
By 2010, Iraq will be largely over.
Much of the GWOT excesses will be rolled back, thanks to Dem majority through two of the three branches of government.
As for the Supreme Court, they don't get to govern by fiat any more than the other two branches. If they're doing their jobs, a Dem President and a Dem House and Senate should be able to keep even a terribly conservative court mostly in check.
Have a little faith in the durability of the system, folks. Founders knew what they were doing when they built it. It's stood up to a lot worse than this current bullshit.
Goodnight. Hope everyone had happy fireworks.
Randolph,
Sorry, no way in Hell does a Republican even come close to winning in 2008. It would take a re-revolutionary candidate from within the party to capture enough popular imagination to even come close to recovering some of the ground Bush has lost.
1) Republicans are no longer the Small Government party, and everyone knows it.
2) Bush has chained Republican fortune to Iraq, and Iraq is going badly.
3) No Republican candidate can fully denounce Bush and retain party support; but they cannot fully support him either.
4) Bush pisses off the conservative base with his handling of the Mexican border.
5) Believe it or not, the war has also divided the conservative base; they just don't like to talk about it.
Right now all roads lead to a blue white house in 2009. I would bet large on that. Even with thumbs on the scales, the Republicans can't tip things back in their favor when all they have are a few dried up pieces of dog shit, and the other side is loaded down with fifty pounds of granite.
And again, there will be no coup d'etat. Nobody who carries weapons in this country will support it. Not the secret service. Not the military. Not the police. Not even the many NRA members who typically vote Republican.
Jim,
I'm not suggesting people do nothing.
I'm suggesting that cool heads would be a great change, considering the hystrionics and hair-pulling of the Republicans and their media mouthpieces over the last 15 years.
If you're in a heated debate with someone, and they're always being a hyperbolic jerk about it, is the answer to simply become a bigger hyperbolic jerk?
(GIANT DISCLAIMER: that was a rhetorical question, so everyone warming up their "Who are you calling a hyperbolic jerk?!" replies, just stop now, because I am not talking about anyone in particular on this blog...)
Maybe I can only speak for myself? But I am totally pegged out on hyperbole right now. Since about mid way through the 90's, the shit has been getting out of hand. Nobody speaking politically differentiates between large and small problems anymore. Everything is always the fucking end of the world all the fucking time, and pretty soon I find myself ignoring both sides of the debate because neither side seems capable of discussing national problems or issues without going from zero to 200 MPH and setting my hair on fire in the process.
We need national leadership that can correctly prioritize. We need national leadership with a long view. We need national leadership with perspective.
Dems need to be thinking out loud about life after Bush, about how they're going to be doing things in 2010, 2011, 2012. Not about how outraged they are that Bush used executive privelege to spare one of his minor aparatchiks prison time over a sideshow like Valerie Plame.
Tilting at the Bush/Cheney windmill, especially when we have Dem control of House and Senate and Bush/Cheney are only 18 months away from being gone, regardless of what happens, seems about as productive for America as the Clinton impeachment. (e.g: not very productive!)
Yes, I am sure it would make for great TV and would have a sizeable number of Americans calling for Bush's head and eagerly awaiting the drop of the gavel. Alas, I think Bush has as much chance of being removed from office as Clinton, and that's just not a good enough chance in my book for us to waste time with impeachment.
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