My wife got upset last night, after she heard about the Rand Paul supporters who tackled a progressive activist named Lauren Valle. One of them stepped on her head. Valle suffered a concussion. The technical term is aggravated battery.
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I told my wife the incident is resonating because it’s a microcosm of the midterm elections. The Right is stomping the Left’s head into the sidewalk with no governing authorities in sight.
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Psychology and emotion are a lot more powerful than facts. People enjoy feeling wronged. This is why Republicans refuse to believe (for instance) that Obama has cut their taxes, even when presented evidence. They need to preserve their sense of victimhood, so as to experience their aggression as self-defense.
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The man who tackled Valle to the ground wore a large button that said Don’t Tread on Me. His friend, who stepped on Valle’s head, was a county organizer for Paul. After the incident, he explained that he had to step on her head because he had a bad back. He said Valle should apologize to him.
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Two years ago, during the final days of the 2008 election, a young woman named Ashley Todd told police she had been robbed at knife point by a black man who carved a “B” (for “Barack”) into her cheek. She was being punished for her political views. She was a Republican martyr. But she hadn’t been attacked. She cut her own cheek. She so needed to feel wronged that she wronged herself.
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A friend of mine recently complained about his mother-in-law. She was going to vote Republican again. When he tried to point out that she’s voting against her economic interests, she assured him, almost tenderly, that she hates all politicians.
I said it might not be a great idea to discuss politics with her, because she’s not a rational actor. She’s an anxious person who wants to feel safe.
My friend said, “She’s not just anxious. She this got all this pent-up rage.”
He also wanted me to know that she’s a gentle and loving grandmother.
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Maybe it makes sense to regard the demagogues of the Right as emotional alchemists. Every day, they convert unbearable feelings into exalted ones. Powerlessness becomes fear which becomes rage which becomes righteousness which becomes heroism.
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We all yearn for narratives in which our role is essentially heroic.
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Most Americans have no sense of genuine heroism. We live in a cloud of entitlement. The government provides us cheap food, clean water, electricity, medication, roads, everything. We still feel helpless. We don’t know how to fix our cars or grow food or find enduring love. We wander giant emporiums like children, full of wonder and jittery need. Corporations fleece us, then convince us to blame the government for our problems. The worship of wealth perverts a nation’s soul.
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Seventy years ago, one of Steinbeck’s migrant workers, upon hearing of a man in California who owned 100,000 acres, pondered what a man would do with all that land.
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The Germans of that same era didn’t think of themselves as mass murderers. They were victims of the Jews, the Communists, the Allies. They projected their darkest impulses onto their adversaries and victims so they could feel heroic. They traded the sound of moral surety for a genuine morality.
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It may be that we’re on the verge of transforming ourselves from a guilt society to a shame society. In a shame society, there’s no such thing as moral self-knowledge. You do what you do because it’s expected of you.
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When I ask political reporters why they write about polls and fake scandals, rather than real crises and policy solutions, they say because it’s expected of them. Ask a Wall Street trader why he flouts regulations, or a soldier why he shoots at strangers.
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I have not had my head stomped by Rand Paul supporters. But I get a lot of mail from folks who describe themselves as patriots. Sometimes they threaten harm. Sometimes they insult my daughter. Once, after a right-wing blog posted my address, I got a few phone calls. One guy pretended to be a journalist, before melting down.
“Why are you shouting at me?” I said.
He was stunned into silence for a few seconds.
Then he started shouting again.
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It’s those few seconds I’m always hoping will win out. You can see it in the video of the attack on Lauren Valle. The assailant can’t bring himself to really stomp on her head. He’s conflicted. There’s a part of him that realizes stomping on the head of a stranger isn’t really right. But he’s caught up in this situation. Here’s this brazen leftist stirring up trouble, trying to tread on Rand Paul, trying to tread on him, his buddy is holding her down, doing his part, and so he lowers his foot onto her head. He does what’s expected of him.
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I hadn’t meant to go on. I realize the Rumpus isn’t a place for political invective. People get very touchy about it. But the undercurrent of violence in this election doesn’t feel political to me. It feels moral. It feels like a moment in which the political process is becoming divorced from its essential purpose. We’re not electing representatives to govern anymore. We’re rounding up a lynch mob.
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Here’s an exchange from my DIY book Letters from People Who Hate Me that tries to explain what I mean.
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Steve,
I’m actually proud that I served my country and If I was younger I would do it again. If you liberals get your way and let others take down our country I wouldn’t be sorry at all that you would end up in a work camp. With your comments I wish not to have a happy retirement.
Signed,
B
B,
I get the first part of your letter. You want me sent to a work camp. But the second part confused me. I think what you’re saying is that you’d rather feel rage at people like me (whoever it is you think I am) than spend your retirement years engaged in joyful activities with people you love.
Maybe there are no people for you to love, but I suspect it’s something more profound, that the very expression of such vulnerable emotions – whether hope or desire or mercy – has become somehow too painful or frightening for you to bear, and that you find it easier therefore to retreat into ancient grievances, to regard the world as a cold, hateful place, full of violent strangers with dirty bombs, or naïve nincompoops like me, who have the Communist Manifesto tattooed on our genitalia.
I suspect there’s nothing I can say to change your mind about any of this, Bill. I exist only as a momentary occasion for your outrage. By the time you read this, you’ll have forgotten what it is I said that made you so mad, because you’ve got dozens of trained media professionals for whom your sadism is a precious resource, truly brilliant men and women whose job it is to sit in front of a microphone day after day and find new reasons for you to hate. These people will never disappoint you, Bill. Because they understand that love is merely a form of weakness, that it is the duty of all true patriots, in these dark days, to beat ploughshares into swords. They will never ask what happened to you in the service or why you turn to hatred for succor. They will never leave you behind. They will never break your heart.
34 responses
Have you ever read Alicia Ostriker’s poem “Fix”? http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2008/04/17
Your description starting “Most Americans” reminded me of it.
as i’ve gotten older my anger has progressively been overtaken by sadness. i thought i missed the anger, but i realize i just miss the passion. there is an emotion close to apathy that i think overtakes us, as an emotion like anger is replaced by sadness. thanks, as always, for your talented, incisive battle cry for sanity. it is wonderful to be awakened and have at least some of the passion restored by the intellect rather than the anger.
wow. thanks.
I’m really interested in your idea: “It may be that we’re on the verge of transforming ourselves from a guilt society to a shame society. In a shame society, there’s no such thing as moral self-knowledge. You do what you do because it’s expected of you.” I think you’re saying that we’re acting a lot like children–because becoming an adult, or gaining moral self-knowledge, involves learning to make choices with respect to where you stand and then taking responsibility for your choices. Doing what’s expected of you isn’t taking responsibility for your own life or being socially responsible. I’m not sure, though, that I get how a guilt society would allow for greater moral self-knowledge (compared to the so-called shame society).
I like that you write about politics/social violence for The Rumpus–and that you do it with heart.
Thank you for this piece. It feels like evolution. A reminder that we’ve got more in our melons than the reptilian brain. There’s more to choose from than just fight or flight. Maybe the rest is just too starved to work right?
The desperation is palpable. It’s in my own flaming belly and red bottom line, but also in my own open hands. It feels to me like America is just getting disillusioned, like when you hit 25 and wonder about the validity of that dream you came up with back when you were 12. It seems like the US has hit its mid twenties and needs to rethink running solely on sludge and bluster and debt and piss and vinegar. We celebrate adolescent values and it’s doing us in. But tomorrow is here. Those items at the bottom of the to do list have been plopped on the doorstep like a blazing bag of shit. It will take villages, communities, cooperation, to put it out.
Growing up is, as the song goes, hard to do. In the meantime, growing some lettuce, maybe tomatoes, probably wouldn’t hurt. Better yet, zucchini, so there’ll be plenty to share.
The best evidence that Ashley Todd cut her own face: the ‘B’ was written backwards. She had cut herself while she was looking into a mirror.
It was a fake scandal but a real tragedy. She was so deprived of empathy that she couldn’t feel wronged by the injustice occurring to others all around her, all the time. In order to feel wronged she had to look at her own reflection.
If we all go to the polls next week and vote without any empathy, there may be a chicken in every pot, or at least our own pots for a short while. But it will be too late when we realize that the water was slowly heating up and we are the ones being served for dinner.
I think this writer is essentially right about this trend, but he seems to suggest it’s mostly the right wingers who are guilty of such bad behavior while the left wingers just sit and mourn the loss of civility. For every “head stomping” video outraging the left, there’s some equivalent on the right. And further, in using that cranky old head stomper (btw, there’s no way she got a concussion from that) as a representative for the entire right wing, Mr. Almond is inflaming the same itch to bitch as those losers he talks about on fox news. It’s actually slightly more annoying to hear this stuff from the left because they do so while claiming to be above it.
I’m glad you posted this, Steve. I’m glad someone is saying these things, clearly and eloquently. I think that this is an important topic, and I wanted to add something to the conversation, and I read the post twice trying to think of something to add, but you’ve already said it all. Thanks.
Liberals play the victim role just as often as conservatives do – if not more. Remember the histrionic knuckleheads who held a “funeral for democracy” after George W. Bush won the 2004 presidential election? As if Republican victory couldn’t possibly mean that the Democrats simply lost fair and square, but instead that democracy itself had been subverted and was now at an end.
Or how about those vicious libelers at MoveOn.org who called General Petraeus “General Betray-Us” in a full-page New York Times ad? They did that when it became obvious he was going to tell congress that a troop surge could bring victory in Iraq – which it eventually did. Tell me, Steve: How does a general giving his honest and professional testimony to our elected representatives constitute betrayal?
The truth is that there is a hyperpassionate subset of activists on both sides, and most of them will play the victim if given an opportunity. It’s more common in the party that’s out of power – Democrats in 2004, Republicans in 2010. And the reasons for it are varied; aggression-as-self-defense is just one of many possible motivations for assuming a victimhood stance.
I’m a registered independent – right-leaning on fiscal and foreign policy issues, left-leaning on social issues, and with a strong dislike for radicals from either side if the aisle. From where I’m sitting, the hypocrisy and histrionics of both the left and right wings is plain as day. And let me tell you, a leftist pointing his finger at conservatives and accusing them of victimhood tactics has got to be the most classic case ever of the pot calling the kettle black.
Rampant wealth disparity warping society. More anger, more demagogues, more racism and fear of outsiders, more inscrutable and endless foreign wars, more manipulation of the lower classes, etc.
@Jessica: Thanks for the link to the Ostriker poem. That closing stanza is a killer:
So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness?
What the hell is it? America is perplexed.
We would fix it if we knew what was broken.
@Steve: This bit about alchemy is fantastic:
“Maybe it makes sense to regard the demagogues of the Right as emotional alchemists. Every day, they convert unbearable feelings into exalted ones. Powerlessness becomes fear which becomes rage which becomes righteousness which becomes heroism.”
That is the path to an imaginary patriotism in a nutshell.
Sadly, this isn’t a partisan thing. We would like to think it is… but the “right-wing” can show you just as many examples of hatred, ignorance and rage committed by “liberals.” All you have to do is look at the comments section of the huffington post to see vile and mean spirited attacks against those who disagree with them. BOTH sides seem to think it is okay to throw a wide net of generalizations over any group of people who disagree with them. BOTH sides think they are smarter and more well informed than the other. BOTH sides want to label each other as evil. BOTH sides can cherry pick examples that support their theories and make them feel better about themselves and what they believe. The problem isn’t that one side or the other is wrong, or evil, or ignorant, or lost or feeling unheroic. The problem is that neither side is willing to listen to the other with an open heart and open mind. We spend so much time trying to prove a point, to prove we are right and justified in our own beliefs that we never stop to consider what truth might lie outside our own assumptions and our own comfort zone. This was a beautifully written piece – but all it does is reinforce the status quo. Was there anything new here? Did it surprise you? Better yet, did it challenge you? You know what would be really impressive? If Steve Almond would be willing to present, with respect and with an open mind, an opposing viewpoint and present it right along with his own. Now that would be inspiring!
I’m not a republican or a democrat. I voted for Obama and also voted for Clinton, and have also voted for Reagan. I’m not going to rag on your kids, you sound pretty traumatized already to me. Fifteen years ago, after learning first hand about politicians and their sense of entitlement, I decided to end my profitable job with a pharmaceutical company. I took a dramatic pay cut and have worked for a small public non-profit organization in children’s education. Learning to live lean, I’ve watched our two-party corrupt system become bloated beyond belief. Like many of my friends, my attitude has become one of voting for term limits by voting career politicians out of office, regardless of party affiliation.
If that sounds appalling or mindless, or ignorant to you, then you may want to assess your own tunnelvision quotient. Regardless, my vote is just as good as yours. May Democracy win.
Interesting that even in the comments we’re still focused on left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrats and Republicans. These are PEOPLE, he’s talking about. AMERICANS are fearful, doing what they should, etc. Regardless of your party affiliation, you’re a person. Are you following this fear trend?
Term limits!!!! YES!!!
I was horrified by the “footage” of that Rand Paul supporter stomping on that poor young woman’s head. I hope he was charged. I just voted EARLY yay! Can’t wait to see the results. We have some scary people running for office in Arizona. Did anyone hear the NPR piece on private prisons and the passing of SB 1070 in Arizona? Look it up on their website.
“The worship of wealth perverts a nation’s soul.”
Amen.
I moved recently, from a more liberal, less affluent, crunchy college town to a tony New Jersey suburb (which happens to be my hometown, or else we wouldn’t be here), where there is more money, bigger houses, and many more Porsche Cayennes. Mammon worship is more staunch here, and the difference in the communities is palpable. The houses are nicer here, and the cars — the THINGS are nicer — but the town itself, the general vibe, is markedly less nice. And it all stems from attitude toward money.
Fear of a black planet. Another irrational fear, but a harvest of centuries of racism. Anyone who tells you that they are not racist is lying to both of you. We all are; some of us are recovering from it and some of us are pretending we don’t need to. Fear of facing our class division and classism; afraid to admit that we think poverty is disgraceful and that people who are poor have “earned it.”
There’s no rational way to explain what’s happening, except as the humanly-logical consequences of the history of our country, and a difficult pass that we must navigate to get to a better place. I think this is an excellent reflection on some of the moral problems we are facing. Is the left “equally” at fault? I’d say no, but I’m not sure it’s a very helpful question.
What are we going to do about unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate access to health care? That’s the question — what are we going to DO, not just say. Steve, I was very impressed with the commitment you made to donating proceeds from your book. And I’m really glad you wrote this piece. Thank you. You set us a great example.
Hi Steve,
I’m Jennifer, my writer’s workshop with Laurel just had the skype chat with you tonight. I remembered you mentioning the Rand Paul incident and I was really curious to what you had to say on that matter. I remembered seeing it on the news the other and was appalled by the actions that had went on. I really enjoyed what you said and I agree fully on what you said. I look forward to reading more of your work.
Thank you again for taking time to chat with our class.
Jennifer
If “both sides” really were just as bad, this really would be a terrifying country to live in.
We should be grateful that there’s actually not even a whole “side” engaged in this kind of thing, as the radical-emotional child-brained faction of the “right” (but really of the “aging white”) is a distinct minority in a country where the average IQ actually does tick a little upward every year, testing shows, right along with the country getting a little less white every year, although there is surely no cause-effect relationship between these two facts.
We just need to survive as a society long enough for these old white people so scared of the now (not to mention the future) return to the soil. We could hasten the process by insisting everyone politically opposed to Medicare stop using it, let nature take its course. Or, far more tastefully, through more Silvermanesque “kids have a talk with your grandparents” events.
Thank you Greg, Heather and Norton for your comments – it’s nice to see that the political posts on the Rumpus aren’t just preaching to the choir!! Although, I still think that they mostly are!
It’s interesting to ponder why no other countries in the world seem to have the problems that the US has, at least not to the same extent anyway. We live in the most generous country with some of the greatest opportunities and the least obstacles and yet, still, we have the social problems that we have! Why? I don’t have an answer to that but I’d be willing to bet that it has a lot to do with perhaps being TOO generous and that generosity leading to cycles of dependence among families and generations. We as a society anymore do not know when to say, “NO, enough is enough, it is time to take accountability for your life.” We do not know where to draw the line anymore, it’s like we are incapable, and there are far, far too many people in this country who are willing to take advantage of that, milk the system, and we continue to let them! It’s not helping!! THAT I think is the biggest difference between the US and other countries with similar socio-political standings. And THAT is one of the biggest friction points between the right and the left; the right acknowledges this and is angry, angry, angry and the left seems to not only think it’s okay but actually proposes more of it! Now, I’m not against social services but at what point does the left realize that the high levels of social services and dependence upon them in this country don’t seem to be helping but in fact are hurting? Why do we continue to give, give, give and never ask for any eventual accountability in return? It’s not a lot to ask of a person to have a job, pay some taxes and take care of themselves – it’s really not, especially after getting a helping hand up, or two or three! It’s like the more social services there are the worse off we get (and I’m not just talking about the recent recession either)! At what point does that register for the left? Ever?? Ask yourself what happens to children who have everything handed to them on a silver platter and never have anything expected of them in return! They become spoiled and lazy and and can’t do anything for themselves.
And, I am so tired of people comparing Medicare to Obama-care. Pu-lease, the idea behind Medicare was that people who were no longer working (emphasis on working) get a helping hand with health care costs in retirement. But, for the most part, I think it was assumed that most of the recipients who benefit from Medicare would also be contributing through taxes (social security) throughout their working lives. Is that the case anymore? Doubtful! But that was the idea! I think it is a big jump to say that b/c we have Medicare it should be okay and acceptable to also have free (let’s face it, for all intents and purposes, Obamacare will be free or very close to it) healthcare for people their WHOLE lives. Sorry, not the same, not even close! Furthermore, health care for low income individuals already exists, it’s called Medicaid!!!! If you want to compare anything to Obamacare, it would be Medicaid, not Medicare!!!
These certainly aren’t the only factors that I think are affecting the well-being of our country, politics, etc. but to think that they aren’t major ones is ignorant and naive!
I’m sending in my absentee vote for Jack Conway over Rand Paul today, but I’m not optomistic. I’m from Louisville, which is a pretty liberal city, John Yarmuth (the incumbent opposite the guy who said the oppresion of women isn’t an issue) is our congressman and pretty popular with most Louisvillians. The thing with Kentucky is that the rest of Kentucky are people who are mostly poor and would benefit from a tax-break but are told by their friends and the news how the government will take their guns if they vote democrat.
I think this stems from the problems with bipartisanship: our government system has reduced itself to the same level as rival fans in a football game. It doesn’t even matter if you align all the policies, you wear blue or red and you hang the according sign or banner from your car, or in your yard, next to your Steelers or Pats flag. After the game, you go out in the parking lot and you key the cars of the rival fans, slash their tires, or stomp on their female fan’s heads.
I’m libertarian mostly, I think tax benefits should be stripped from the companies that are aleady rich to begin with, and everyone pays their ten-percent, regardless of how rich or poor they are. and I also think welfare is more of a give-a-man-a-fish program than a teach-a-man-a-fish kind of program. You could also call me religious, but I’m a firm believer of seperation of church and state, and most, if not all christian values have no place in government policy. But I also think everyone deserves life, and therefore a choice of free healthcare, just like the free school their offered, along with the (mostly) free tap water, if they can’t afford bottled (I stole that metaphor from John Yarmuth).
So, where do I fit in?
I vote democrat, because they are the closest, but they aren’t really all that close. If I want to contribute, though, I have to pick a side and wear a color, because no one is willing to listen if I wear white and sit between the home and away bleachers. No one is willing to change our system of government, because they fear the real work involved in changing and improving. It’s just easier to clog up Yahoo! blog comments full of anonymous hate and shame.
Re-thinking or revising our system would be admitting that our government system has fault, and our country can’t have fault, says fox news, says Bill O’Reily, says Sarah Palin. Becuase we’re #1, baby. “Don’t tread on me,” says the button on the shirt of the guy who tackled a young, unarmed female activist. We don’t need to change, says those who think they are right. Others do. Then hearts get bitter. Then people get stomped on.
Kindly ignore the awful spelling and grammar above. The heat of the moment made me hit “comment” before I went back in revised. Rookie mistake.
All the folks posting about how this hate is coming from both sides of the aisle–please provide a link to a liberal doing anything remotely similar to stomping on someone’s head. Thank you.
Sorry, it’s just not even close to being a problem on both sides. The guilty always start off with “but everyone’s doing it!”
@Greg: Just a quick note to check your history, man (but make sure you don’t read a book authorized by the state of Texas): W did not win in ’04. His position was secured for him by myriad means, including the manipulation of electronic voter data and intimidation of voters in vulnerable (read poor) districts.
I agree with DudeG. The screaming on the Right (Fox et al) is all about how immigrants/terrorists/socialists/Black panthers/flourideinourwater/Van Jones/Younameit are going to harm you, swindle you, GET YOU. So much paranoia. But who’s really in danger? All those white people, like down in the South? This shouting obscures the reality that nearly all the violent ideation and violence comes from the right. It’s not just McVeigh or the man who murdered George Tiller. There are plenty of voices of moderation on the Right, but they don’t have the moral courage to admit that their political ideology has been hijacked by demagogues making a fortunes off this ongoing campaign of displacement and projection. If folks on the Left begin behaving with such reckless disregard for the rights and health of fellow citizens, I hope I have the decency to condemn them, rather than falling back on some false equivalency. Grow a conscience or join the Tea Party.
Great insight. Disgusting truth. I hope to hell my kids emmigrate.
Always something to think about, Steve. Great job.
Funny, I think fuckyou@yahoo.com sent me a nasty email too. Oh wait, sorry, that was fuckit@fuckit.com, my bad. Maybe they’re related.
DudeG – That’s what I was thinking. I used to run with some seriously left-wing people – in fact, a lot of them identified as anarchists – back in 2003 and 2004, and I’ll tell you what, the rhetoric – as mean as it could be – never reached the levels of hate I see on the average news website comments section. I went to anti-war protests where protestors and passersby would shout abuse at each other, but as far as protestors pushing people down and stomping on their heads? Never once saw it.
I completely agree that political rhetoric has gotten stupid, mean and pointless in this country, but to act as though people on both sides of the debate are guilty of the same levels of hatefulness and violence is intellectually dishonest.
While I really don’t want to spend time digging around the internet to find examples of hatefulness, I also don’t like being told I am “intellectually dishonest.” I think looking at the political ads out this year will tell you all you need to know.
An analysis of advertising by the Wesleyan Media Project shows that Democratic candidates are running a higher percentage of negative ads and they are more likely to go after their opponents’ personal characteristics instead of their policy positions.
Data collected by the project show that 29 percent of Democratic House and Senate candidates’ ads are negative, up from 13 percent in 2008. By comparison, Republicans’ share of attack ads has dropped from 28 percent to 21 percent. Further, 35 percent of the negative ads run by Democrats are focused exclusively on policy. By contrast, Republicans were focused exclusively on policy 57 percent of the time.
So, overall the study documents a 2-1 ratio of Democratic personal attacks over similar Republican attacks nationwide.
http://election-ad.research.wesleyan.edu/files/2010/10/WesMediaProject_ReleaseTone_20101026.pdf
Great piece, Steve. It isn’t often that you come across genuine (thoughtful, reflective) literature on the web. You’re doing it though.
Also, for all you Tea Party apologists who want to draw some false equivalency between the Kentucky head stomper and leftist protesters–-you’re just trying to excuse your own misanthropy, and you’re not convincing anybody.
Heather — the info on attack ads is interesting, but it’s not really what folks are talking about. We’re talking about the active promotion of hatred and violence and where that’s coming from. If Dems were talking about “second amendment remedies” and trying to portray health care reform as a socialist takeover and blabbering about the coming days of white slavery … well, they’d deserve our derision as well. If you’re so turned off by negative ads, what do you do with an entire political philosophy that’s founded on inciting grievance.
Really.
What do you do?
@ dudeg & dwight: so you’re saying no leftist extremists have ever resorted to violence? that’s ridiculous.
the entire republican party isn’t out there beating people–a couple of dudes at a political event got riled up and did something really fucked up. they aren’t representative of the republican party as a whole, and this article is its own example of fear-mongering, is it not? “The Right is stomping the Left’s head into the sidewalk with no governing authorities in sight.” The three people involved in this situation suddenly become a paradigm for both political parties–that rhetorical move is the exact kind of thing Glenn Beck does and gets (rightly, I think) criticized for all the time. Doing things like that only undermines the legitimacy of your claims.
The problem is that both sides hate each other so much they’re not willing to engage in dialogue, to see the potential validity within the arguments of the other side. Instead of talking about why we hold the political values that we do, instead of discussing actual issues, we are pointing fingers at the other side, we call them aggressive, we paint them as threatening. This (smart, articulate) article engages in exactly the same tactics it criticizes.
katelyn —
i’m trying to remember the last time a “leftist extremist” stomped a head or blew up a building or killed a man in church. i’m thinking — what, maybe 30 years ago?
which candidate was it who talked about “second amendment remedies”?
the problem isn’t that “both sides hate each other so much they’re not willing to engage in dialogue.” obama has tried to do that over and over again. his health care and financial reforms borrowed heavily from REPUBLICAN ideas. he called them to a summit and begged them to supply ideas.
mitch mcconnell and boehner and now proudly chanting No Compromise to the delight of their supporters.
when i read notes like yours — shot through with false equivalencies and self-victimization — i often wish the left were as angry and blind to logic and basic reality as the right.
but if you want to do more than argue and feel sorry for yourself, you go ahead and talk about the issues that matter to you. and try to say more than “freedom” and “fiscal responsibility.”
oh, i also hope you’re really rich. because it looks like you’re getting a tax break!!
you want fear-mongering?
mitch:
I believe that people should get what they work for. I think when people get things they don’t earn, they’re less productive. I think you should have to pass a drug test to get a welfare check, every time. I think people who have the money to get and maintain acrylic nails should not have food stamps. I think food stamps should not buy twinkies. I think gay people should be able to get married. I think it would be nice if politicians had a job in the real world before they held political office. I think career politicians oftentimes don’t have the public’s best interests in mind. I wish the quality of a politician’s actual ideas contributed to whether or not he or she was elected to office more than his or her public-speaking abilities. I would like it if the bills that are being voted on were clearer and easier for the general public to understand, rather than in the confusing lawspeak we get now. Even though I myself would never be able to morally justify having an abortion, I think a woman should have the right to choose. I think the government bailouts were an abomination. I’m happy to talk about these and any other issues with most people.
I still think Steve Almond used the same rhetorical strategies he was criticizing when he wrote this article. I don’t see how that is an example of me victimizing myself (I have nothing to do with it), and I don’t think it’s a false equivalency.
We’re all just individuals. When George Washington started this country, he took care to choose his political cabinet so he would have advisors who disagreed with him as well as ones that agreed. This was in an attempt to best serve the people of the country. I think we’ve lost that. I think it’s the fault of both parties, and maybe even of the citizens themselves, or maybe it’s not anyone’s fault at all but it kind of sucks nevertheless.
The comment you wrote to me was mean.
You assumed I didn’t know anything because I expressed an opinion you disagreed with. Your response didn’t even address the actual opinion I posited. You said hateful things to me because you designated me as “enemy” based on a two-paragraph-long internet comment. I think that says a lot about the state of respectful political debate in this country.
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