The GOP's Misplaced Rage

[Sisyphus]

Yeah, I know. I'm just making sure it really is as dumb as it appears.

[The Bear's Key]

More like an anti-socialist. The artist is quick to claim he only made the picture and did not label it or distribute it for political purposes(although the picture itself is a political statement, IMO)

I disagree about it being a political statement. The artist was only joking around (pun) on his computer's image editor. I would see myself doing the same to George Washington, John McCain, or Hillary Clinton without it being a political statement at all. If you have the talent and like goofing around, it's on the same level as doodling.

 

If a friend had made that image of a figure I happened to like, I'd congratulate them and find it humorous. Unless it were done as a political "anti" statement because they were driven to do so by politically twisted facts on wingnut media. It's one thing to support and champion your beliefs, it's another to support and champion fabrications of political media origin (calculated to draw your ire against their Number One political enemy).

 

And here I thought someone in the right-wing creative enough to draw that poster. :rolleye

(kidding on that last bit, I know some fairly creative right-wingers)

[Pangloss]

... could you imagine if this was a picture of Bush? Wow, the rednecks would be claiming that all who used the picture and protested were supporting terrorism.

 

There was no shortage of over-the-top presidential caricatures during the Bush administration.

[iNow]

There was no shortage of over-the-top presidential caricatures during the Bush administration.

 

Nor was there a shortage of rednecks claiming that protesters were unamerican, unpatriotic, terrorist supporters.

 

 

 

If'n ya dunt like it... why duncha just leave, ya commie! USA is the greatest nation on earth, and don't you ferget it!!

[Pangloss]

Indeed, and they're definitely back. It's very unnerving to visit conservative Obama-hater forums these days. There's another one of Obama's face replacing the face on a jar of Kool-Aid that I find particularly disturbing.

[The Bear's Key]

There was no shortage of over-the-top presidential caricatures during the Bush administration.

Definitely, although.....not within his first 7 months in office, and not pasted throughout a city (with a movement determined to take it viral nationally).

 

Furthermore, I think john5746 meant in the context of a Palestinian-American student doing it. The "ethnicity" part of its originator.

 

Also, just image if the Bush caricatures (which aren't even street posters) were labeled "Capitalism" underneath.

 

You'd have to imagine quite severely, because it's actually hard to find. No true Democrat is really against business -- only the unchecked corruption part, and environmental disregard, and waste, that some businesses view as entitled to over people's rights.

[bascule]

I think the Obama Joker is pretty cool. Whatever tard put Socialist on it is, well, a tard. That doesn't even make sense? The fact the original creator took flak for it is absurd.

[The Bear's Key]

I think the Obama Joker is pretty cool. Whatever tard put Socialist on it is, well, a tard. That doesn't even make sense? The fact the original creator took flak for it is absurd.

Yeah, I so thought about getting a shirt printed of it (minus the "socialism") but I'd have to ensure wingnuts don't mistake it as support.

 

Perhaps this under the image: "Obama, way cooler than Bush"

 

Just to piss off many of them

[Pangloss]

... and not pasted throughout a city (with a movement determined to take it viral nationally).

 

Er, if you say so.

 

Edited August 19, 2009 by Pangloss

[The Bear's Key]

... and not pasted throughout a city (with a movement determined to take it viral nationally). [/quote']Er, if you say so.

I do. What city did the Bush Faces image get pasted throughout? When I say viral nationally, it's real life (i.e. public walls and structures) I'm talking about, not the internet.

 

And the time period is off (i.e. not his first 7 months in office)

[john5746]

Not a fan of Barney Frank, but he handled this pretty well.

 

Barney pwns

[iNow]

This article really fascinated me. I thought I would share it here.

 

 

Johann Hari: Republicans, religion and the triumph of unreason - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent

Something strange has happened in America in the nine months since Barack Obama was elected. It has best been summarised by the comedian Bill Maher: "The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital."

 

<...>

 

Since Obama's rise, the US right has been skipping frantically from one fantasy to another, like a person in the throes of a mental breakdown. It started when they claimed he was a secret Muslim, and – at the same time – that he was a member of a black nationalist church that hated white people. Then, once these arguments were rejected and Obama won, they began to argue that he was born in Kenya and secretly smuggled into the United States as a baby, and the Hawaiian authorities conspired to fake his US birth certificate. So he is ineligible to rule and the office of President should pass to... the Republican runner-up, John McCain.

 

These aren't fringe phenomena: a Research 200 poll found that a majority of Republicans and Southerners say Obama wasn't born in the US, or aren't sure. A steady steam of Republican congressmen have been jabbering that Obama has "questions to answer". No amount of hard evidence – here's his birth certificate, here's a picture of his mother heavily pregnant in Hawaii, here's the announcement of his birth in the local Hawaiian paper – can pierce this conviction.

 

This trend has reached its apotheosis this summer with the Republican Party now claiming en masse that Obama wants to set up "death panels" to euthanise the old and disabled. Yes: Sarah Palin really has claimed – with a straight face – that Barack Obama wants to kill her baby.

 

<...>

 

The Republicans want to defend the existing system, not least because they are given massive sums of money by the private medical firms who benefit from the deadly status quo. But they can't do so honestly: some 70 per cent of Americans say it is "immoral" to retain a medical system that doesn't cover all citizens. So they have to invent lies to make any life-saving extension of healthcare sound depraved.

 

<...>

 

For many of the people at the top of the party, this is merely cynical manipulation. One of Bush's former advisers, David Kuo, has said the President and Karl Rove would mock evangelicals as "nuts" as soon as they left the Oval Office. But the ordinary Republican base believe this stuff. They are being tricked into opposing their own interests through false fears and invented demons. Last week, one of the Republicans sent to disrupt a healthcare town hall started a fight and was injured – and then complained he had no health insurance. I didn't laugh; I wanted to weep. <

more at the link

>

 

 

It's interesting to see British commentary on this, and how we in the US are being viewed right now... As a bunchy of crazy gun-totin' loons.

[Mokele]

Here's the latest chapter in the right's slide into the looney bin:

 

Apparently "Optional home-nurse visits" means "OMG Teh Gubment gonna take mah baby!"

[CharonY]

This is unbelievable. It is not even a spin or twisting of words anymore.

[Pangloss]

What a productive and insightful thread. Somebody grab a rope, I'll get some torches and sheets.

[iNow]

What a productive and insightful thread. Somebody grab a rope, I'll get some torches and sheets.

 

The emotions of disappointment and exasperation [math]\ne[/math] the emotions of rage and bloodlust.

[Pangloss]

What about the emotions behind predisposition and ideological preference?

 

I guess you're right, they're not the same either.

[The Bear's Key]

What about the emotions behind predisposition and ideological preference?

Wrong. No one's against reductions in wasteful spending, nuturing personal responsibility, and defense vs attack.

 

I hear plenty of "goddam wacko environmentalists" or "bleeding hearts".

 

Surely we all have.

 

Yet when's the last time you heard anyone utter: "goddam money savers" or "bastard defenders of nation"?

 

I'll wager you've heard it 0 times.

 

Your comparison has one major flaw: no one believes in or promotes wasting our tax $$, and leaving us either 100% defenseless or unable to mount a proper counter-attack vs an enemy strike, for instance.

 

Any true disbelief lies in whether the "conservatives" are really interested in following up on the 24/7 sweet-laced rhetoric (free enterprise, national security, personal responsibility, nation building), without the usual -- and totally opposite -- ulterior motives. Is it just bait for the suckered voters?

 

In contrast, the right-wing's "disbelief" is not on whether liberals intend to follow through on some needed action, but often on the validity of the scientifically-based conclusions driving the needs for such action. Their "disbelief" is most profound and fallacy-riddled when that action stands to cut into the right-wing's bread-and-butter: private corruption, the uneducated, war, etc.

 

Their "disbelief" is in quotes because it's often an act. They might know full well something's true, but intend to "disprove" it regardless -- especially if such interferes with their agenda, or even if it doesn't...but the idea originated from Dems.

 

You really think it's all equal on both sides?

 

Then here's an easy assignment...

 

Conservatives once persecuted employees of industry and the U.S. government, blacklisting many of their political opponents, abusing government power to cleanse the system of politics unfavorable to them-- illegitimately as well. It's known as McCarthyism.

 

Find us the liberal equivalent of that.

 

As extra credit, find the equivalent of the Prohibition introduced by conservatives and later shamefully withdrawn -- yet not before the explosion in organized crime...which incidentally, they made a promise to defeat as if their Prohibition actions had nothing to do with the problem's magnification.

 

Deja-vu to the conservatives' War on Drugs. Responsible for the supply/demand amplification of today's criminal drug enterprise, yet promosing to end it as if they weren't originally responsible for it.

 

(Sensing a theme here). And probably blame liberals for it all.

 

If you manage those, I've got a ton more for homework assingments

[Pangloss]

You really think it's all equal on both sides?

 

Yes, partisanship and ugly, indecent behavior is equal on both sides. Absolutely.

 

 

Wrong. No one's against reductions in wasteful spending, nurturing personal responsibility, and defense vs attack.

 

Conservatives once persecuted employees of industry and the U.S. government, blacklisting many of their political opponents, abusing government power to cleanse the system of politics unfavorable to them-- illegitimately as well. It's known as McCarthyism.

 

Sure, there's some nasty stuff in there, but it seems like you've changed the subject, or at least this is not what I thought we were discussing. And it should be pointed out that you've dipped all the way back into the 1950s for travesties committed by conservatives, but you blew by the liberal movement's own errors in ideology and common sense over the same time frame. They may not be as serious, but they do exist. Your statement about what "no one" is against may be mostly true today, but when applied to the liberal movement over the latter half of the 20th century of American history, as you did with conservatives, it just isn't the case. Maybe conservative offenses were worse, but just as liberal mainstream opinion has changed over time, so has conservative mainstream opinion. Most conservatives no longer see the sexes as unequal, for example, just as most liberals no longer see socialism as a good idea.

 

But this is beside the point because this is a different argument from the one I was responding to. I was challenging your opinion that conservatives are more vicious than liberals, but what you're talking about now is a larger statement about whether conservatives are good or evil. No offense, but I won't argue that point with you -- I won't defend conservatives -- because I consider the argument to be moot. I'd rather just point out that demonizing either side is futile and misguided, as I'm about to do through an obvious example.

 

This country has changed "hands" between conservatives and liberals numerous times in recent decades, and yet spending gets worse. Therefore, logically, it follows that wasteful spending is a problem in this country because BOTH parties participate in it -- neither side has an incentive to solve the problem because partisans exist who are willing to excuse one side or the other. It's just a question of which end of the spectrum won this year's election, and which end of the spectrum has the more talented crop of public demagogues haranguing away at the microphone.

 

So like I said, if you want to get the conservatives, by all means get a rope. I'm right behind you with the torches and pitchforks. Why stop with McCarthyism? Easily the most heinous acts in modern American history were those committed by conservative opponents of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. (Or did you forget about them because they were... drum roll please... Democrats? Oops!)

 

But when all the rhetoric is complete, we might remember that the two sides have been demonizing each other for three or four administrations now. How's that working out so far?

Edited August 20, 2009 by Pangloss

[iNow]

No offense, but I won't argue that point with you -- I won't defend conservatives -- because I consider the argument to be moot. I'd rather just point out that demonizing either side is futile and misguided, as I'm about to do through an obvious example.

Pointing to factual evidence and suggesting concern about that evidence [math]\ne[/math] demonizing.

 

 

So like I said, if you want to get the conservatives, by all means get a rope. I'm right behind you with the torches and pitchforks.

In my mind, this has nothing to do with a desire for bloodlust as you continue to suggest. It's about pointing to a problem, understanding what feeds it, and trying to resolve it. If you wish to equate that with lynchings, then you are simply mistaken, and illuminating your incredible bias.

Edited August 20, 2009 by iNow

[john5746]

But when all the rhetoric is complete, we might remember that the two sides have been demonizing each other for three or four administrations now. How's that working out so far?

 

Not very well and I am afraid it will continue towards making this healthcare reform a mess. The article below makes a good point in regards to medical professional shortages. I think many have this feeling that this "reform" isn't getting to the root of the problems, just adding another layer of options and hoping for the best. The optimist in me says we need to start somewhere and then continue to improve, but the pessimist says that just as with the car clunker deal, many will be surprised by the costs and demands on existing systems.

 

 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/20/pho.doctor.shortage/index.html

[Mokele]

But when all the rhetoric is complete, we might remember that the two sides have been demonizing each other for three or four administrations now. How's that working out so far?

 

Frankly, I disagree. 99% of the demonization, in the truest sense of the word, has come from the right. The right sought to make 'liberal' an insult, comparable to 'traitor', who rail against 'godless heathens' and 'tree-huggers' who are 'attacking our way of life. And that's not counting the eliminationist rhetoric, which encourages supporter to do everything from 'shout them down', and 'run them off' to open jokes about murdering liberal Senators and supposedly humorous references to hate crimes. And we're not talking about raving morons standing on streets, we're talking about radio hosts and TV commentators with million-plus viewers.

 

Now, look at the rhetoric from the other side. And given the far-left blogs I read, I see a lot of it. Sure, rhetoric gets thrown around - 'greedy', 'selfish', 'hypocrites', 'misogynists', etc. But the venom behind it is weak in comparison, and little if any of it makes it to the mainstream media.

 

 

 

Seriously, find me a liberal commentator who speaks with the sort of venom and eliminationist rhetoric. Keith Olberman, at his most pissed off, cannot hold a candle to the sort of hate spewing from Bill O'Reilly on a daily basis (more, if you count re-runs).

 

I dare you to find me a liberal commentator employed by a major news organization who has openly suggested murdering a conservative senator. Or any of them, ever, who have said anything half as venomous as what you find on the O'Reilly Factor on a daily basis. Find me a widely-known liberal commentator claiming that 'conservatives are everything that's wrong with this country', or calling merely *voicing* a conservative opinion 'treason'.

 

Read any of Al Franken's books and then read any of Ann Coulter's, then tell me "both sides are just as bad".

 

"Both sides are just as bad" is a cheap fallacy employed by those who can't stand to take a long, hard look at what the modern GOP has *really* become.

 

 

 

*Bonus points if you can find *any* liberal who has killed someone over a disagreement with part of the Democrat's public platform. Then compare that to the number of people murdered by right-wingers since abortion became part of the GOP platform.

[bascule]

Yes, partisanship and ugly, indecent behavior is equal on both sides. Absolutely.

 

I have to agree with Mokele on this. Where's the left's equivalent of Michael Savage? Glenn Beck? When did liberals show up to a George W. Bush event touting AR-15s?

[iNow]

Or, how about the fact that Obama and the secret service are NOT arresting these protesters, despite the fact they have guns, but people were arrested for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts and pins.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-07-23-bush-protesters_x.htm

http://maddowgateway.blogspot.com/2009/08/in-which-we-will-know-them-by-trail-of.html

[Pangloss]

Pointing to factual evidence and suggesting concern about that evidence [math]\ne[/math] demonizing.

 

In my mind, this has nothing to do with a desire for bloodlust as you continue to suggest. It's about pointing to a problem, understanding what feeds it, and trying to resolve it. If you wish to equate that with lynchings, then you are simply mistaken, and illuminating your incredible bias.

 

Saying I shouldn't support the GOP because of WW2-era McCarthyism is an example of demonizing. Saying that I shouldn't support the conservative movement because some conservatives are radical in their beliefs is an example of demonizing. And this thread is all about lynching, in my opinion. You feel differently, more power to you. I don't need to label your opinion "incredible bias" in order to express my own.

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

Regarding the previous three posts above, I'll give it some thought, but even if what you say is true -- so what? Like I said, you gonna get a rope or just stand there and complain? Yeah okay, some people on the right are a bunch of vicious, conniving sons of whores. What else is new? Yeah okay, there's more than one reason why the center bailed to Democratic candidates in 2006 and 2008.

 

Wanna keep 'em?

Edited August 21, 2009 by Pangloss
Consecutive posts merged.