One last thing, Elizabeth: Is it OK to be rude to the Devil?
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by Ken
I'm still feeling bad about our commenter Elizabeth, a self-declared "moderate" who likes to hear opinions from "both sides" but doesn't want to hear nasty insults like "dope," even when the opinions from one "side" are coming from dopes.
Why I'm feeling bad is this: I worry a lot that here at DWT we are only preaching to the choir. It's an important function for all of us to mutually validate the things we believe strongly to be true; those were some might lonely years, the first term of the Bush regime, when we felt mostly shut out of public discourse. But on so many issues I've spent my life thinking, if only we could get them to listen, and with that 40-plus percent of the country apparently imprisoned in brainlock, the ability to speak to those undecideds in the middle seems more important than ever.
Still, I don't know what to do about it. As I keep saying, the 2008 presidential election confirmed the Right's right to never again speak another word of truth -- except when voicing the bigotries and slanders that decency once required to be hinted at in codespeak. And I don't know how to speak to people who either don't know or don't care that from one side they are getting nothing except lies, obfuscations, and slanders.
That appeal is to emotion, not reason, and there doesn't appear to be any appealing the Reagan Rule: that all that matters about political speech is whether it makes the listener feel better. (And of course "feeling good" can also including being outraged and feeling terrified, if done correctly, because there are a lot of people who enjoy, or at any rate respond best to, feeling outrage or terror, and are most easily controlled that way.)
I was brought up to be polite, and I give people the benefit of the doubt about deserving politeness. However, there comes a point beyond which the right to politeness is forfeited, and the cretins and creeps have passed it with their savage and psychotic behavior while cheering on those demons Bush and Cheney and reviling and threatening anyone who even questioned their sainthood. Since the Right is so fond of mixing politics and religion, maybe I could ask: Is it OK to be rude to the Devil?
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Labels: centrists, right-wing bulllies
posted by KenInNY @ 10:00 AM
7 comments
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7 Comments:
Ken,
As usual great post.
On Saturday, we witnessed what being bipartisan means to people who choose to yell nigger at a real hero. And yell faggot to someone with the courage and conviction to be out in politics. You cannot reason with these people filled with fear about REAL issues (losing jobs,our economy etc)Its very primitive and its way to scary for them. So they choose to blame healthcare,BO and gay folks for all of our problems. One of the reasons I am a faithful reader here, is you don't put lipstick on a pig. Teabaggers,Boehner,Virginia Foxx and others are fucking nuts. And calling them anything else but dopes or meshuganahs would be even crazier.
it better bee.
emotion is the name of the game in the cult of "wordology", led by the high priest frank "the liar" luntz. why is the conserative messaging machine so effective. cause they narrow down the message to the most emotionaly triggering words. luntz admits that the wording of his message is meant to trigger the human fight or flight response. frank's analysis and choice of talking points is on every neo-republicans computer first thing in the morning, by afternoon these choice words are repeated all over the place. i know you at DWT can see this. democrates need to realize the power of this brainwashing and begin using effective, unified ,communication techniques to put everyone on the same page.
they need to agree on their daily talk points in order to inform and motivate thier base.
if you herd cats, at least talk cat talk.
We've heard it before, but it's still true:
You preach to the choir because that's how you get them to sing.
Now, and for the next few decades at least, getting the choir to sing by revving up real liberals to turn this conservative mess into actual liberal social reform is going to be far more important than trying to win over people who viscerally hate us and everything we stand for.
The latter is a waste of time, money and energy.
I think there are a number of different people, but I would point to MLK's Letter from the Birmingham Jail. In it he realized the enemy of freedom and whatever is good wasn't the KKK. They were too few and number and in many ways unreasonable.
The real problem is the professed moderates because they give legitimacy to the Klan elements when they say everyone's opinion is good rather than its good for everyone to have opinions.
Unfortunately, King's efforts didn't pick up great steam with the so-called moderates until the brutal death of Emmitt Till shocked them out of their stupor. The arguments and evidence were secondary to the shock effect.
I'll follow up my post with that of Haiti. Haiti was a dump before the Earthquake and no one but a very few dedicated people cared in this country.
There are still displaced people from Katrina and no one cares, but there was an outpouring during the shock. Arguments are almost irrelevant. I appreciate your efforts because I feel I learn from this blog, but I do fear preaching to the choir is what are you doing. At the same time, I've never gone whoa I've completely changed my mind. More or less, the arguments strengthened something I was closer to acknowledging or something I wasn't aware of.
And sometimes, the choir needs preaching because we think we're singing solo. I come to DWT because I want to read the provocative thoughts of people who think more about these things than I do, who know we're on the same page from the start even if we don't reach the same conclusions, and who challenge me to think in ways I might not. I need information--I have NO time to follow local elections around the country. I come here to know more. I read about forty political blogs a day--and I am silent on all of them but this one. Which should tell you something. I feel a little provoked by the anger. I sometimes roll my eyes at the clown make-up. I wonder about being coarse. And then I don't care. Which I suppose is why I comment here. Because you got me over my Southern niceness. Not a bad thing at all, I'd say.
"Get you behind me Satan; you are an offence to me..." - Matt 16:23. Boehner was deliberately inciting hatred and division Sunday night...
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