November 07, 2004
Well Said
I came across this blog while surfing through Blog Explosion. He is saying exactly what I'm thinking and feeling.
Consider This a Public Service Announcement
This blog has had a self-appointed "devil's advocate" (she has not called herself that) from nearly the beginning. Today, she has asked a question in a comment to this post. The answer requires more than a comment, as it will have to serve as a PSA to the blog as well since it applies somewhat more broadly than just one person.
Is it so difficult for W supporters to understand that people are genuinely upset about this election? It's not a childish snit, or disappointment over losing a talking point. People *genuinely* fear for this country with 4 more years under Bush. I know I do.
No, it’s not difficult to understand. It would, in fact, be impossible to miss. We just don’t care. At all. Not one iota. You’re upset? Too bad - get over it. If you can’t - that’s not my problem. Take you’re venting elsewhere for it won’t be tolerated here.
The comment acts as if this is a new thing while it is so old as to be completely boring. Liberals have been genuinely upset over Republican victories for as long as I can remember (and I remember a guy named LBJ being President). Liberals being upset is as constant as the sun rising and setting. I’ve had to listen to it for my entire life and it means nothing to me. White noise, as it were.
And you know what? It is most certainly a childish snit. Try it on for size:
If you voted for Bush, to listen to the Left, you are the following: a stupid, neanderthal slope-head, who beats your wife while keeping her barefoot and pregnant. You’re a homophobic idiot who beats up gay people before murdering them (all because you’re repressing your own homosexual desires). Don’t forget you’re in superstitious thrall to the charlatans who call themselves priests and ministers, and who tell you how to vote. As a rube, you have no sophistication or intelligence, nuance and subtlety are totally beyond you, and you wouldn’t know the correct wine to drink with the salad fork. You should also know you’re a fascist and a nazi, and you’re looking for the right moment to round up all the liberals, put them in a camp, all the while holding a book-burning where the first thing that goes onto the pyre will be the Constitution. Oh, and we’ll be re-introducing slavery at our earliest convenience.
There’s nothing new here, by the way. This is how liberals describe conservatives. I know. I’ve been living in liberal central for nearly two decades, I’ve worked for much of that time in the People’s Republic of Cambridge, and the rest of it in Boston proper. I’ve been called or heard those with my politics called all of those things at one time or another, and believe me, it is as insulting and offensive as it sounds. Sometimes it’s even my friends. Sometimes, politeness allows that I’m not like that, but the rest are. Right. One must develop a pretty thick skin which I can tell you is inversely proportional to that thin membrane which encases the typical liberal in these parts. (It need not be on my own blog, of course if I choose to shed it for a time.)
So you’re upset? Cry me a river while the world’s smallest violin plays for you. You’re afraid? Tell your shrink your irrational, overblown phobias. Because that’s where they belong. Latch onto the smallest thing, blow it all out of proportion, and then let it fertilize the next version. After a while, it bears no resemblance to reality and has become a self-fulfilling prophecy that allows the believer to stand with the forces of good and light all the time fulminating against the dark forces of the evil Ronald Reagan, or George H.W. Bush, or Bob Dole, or George W. Bush, or whoever it is next time. The boogey man is always on the Right.
And it won’t be tolerated here any longer. It’s not discourse, it’s not rational, and it adds nothing to the debate. The election is over, and if you can’t find it in yourself to admit we’re all Americans and we stand together (and that includes George W. Bush) then kindly take your paranoid ravings elsewhere. I would have given Kerry the chance despite my opposition, and he would have been my President. I did the same for eight years under Clinton. I’m paying for this microphone, and I won’t have fevered ravings on it anymore. Period. Those who insist upon it have marginalized themselves from the debate since they obviously have no capacity to view the other side as anything other than stupid or evil or both.
Dissent, disagreement, rational debate, reasoned analysis, evidence supporting allegations - these things are welcomed and encouraged. “I fear for this country under George W. Bush” is not any of these, because it is baseless slander and vicious nonsense that endangers the nation with each passing year. If it were a onetime thing, that would be different. But it’s not - it’s a cancer eating away at the Left and it resembles nothing so much as a mental instability. That fear is absurd when one looks at the history of revolutions. The revolutions of the Left: the French, the Russian, the Chinese saw people like me guillotined or shot and rivers of blood flowed from their utopias. The revolution of the Right: the American, saw the opposition sent home to their farms. Today, the Left views Bush supporters as un-American, and in their description they either separate them from the nation or themselves. In many cases, they use language that de-humanizes their political opponents. We are not all Americans in their eyes anymore no matter how much they protest - their deeds belie their words. The Left is inching towards a civil war and I’ll have no part of it.
Some advice - go lock yourself in a room and scream yourself hoarse. But don’t vent here about how upset and fearful you are. I don’t give a damn.
Stumble It!
