We Are Becoming A Dingbat Nation

[TheMastersNemesis]

The fact that Romney is as close as he is in the polls must mean we are fundamentally a dingbat nation. He should never be within 30 points of Obama. And any GOP candidate should never be within 20 points.

It is disgusting that Obama is being blamed for all the carnage the GOP caused for 30+ years. The fact that Obama is being blamed for a slow economy that the GOP keeps trying to turn into another depression is beyond absurd. The GOP should be running in terror for their political lives. The fact that they are not is just nuts.

Anyone who votes Republican deserve every kind of disaster descending upon them. The rest of us don't.

[Zalatix]

1. What are the women voters doing? They can't possibly be supporting Romney

Not even 25% of them.

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. I Hope That Turns Out To Be True.

In the end I hope that its true. He should have 0% support even though I know that that would be impossible. I guess that I do not understand how any woman thinks what is being done to them is ok. It should be so obvious. And I also guess I do not understand why so many voters who are workers do not understand the obvious either. That includes seniors on Social Security and Medicare.

[PatSeg]

15. Maybe the women

aren't answering the phone when the pollsters call? I know, I don't.

[butterfly77]

2. I can't believe..

the President is now being blamed for what the secret service has done.

So,he wants them to not do their job so that his life will be in danger and the media is trying to sell this shit,and no one seems to be addressing this nonsense..

[hifiguy]

4. Becoming??

We are so far down the road of dingbattery that time to return to sanity is running out.

[RZM]

5. Stuff like referring to this country as a 'dingbat nation'

Is part of the reason Romney isn't 20 points behind. There are many other factors at play of course, but people are very sensitive to insults. There's a reason why so many politicians on both sides of the aisle speak in warm, friendly, and positive tones when talking about 'the American people' in the abstract. I'm not saying we all need to act like politicians, but the political class is quite attuned to what does and doesn't work when it comes to getting votes.

In asking why the 'dingbats' aren't supporting this side in larger numbers, you're partly answering your own question. Imagine a speaker addressing a hostile crowd with: 'Why don't you idiots love me?' It's pretty much the same thing.

[Cleita]

7. Oh, I see. It's our fault they are dingbats, not theirs.

Thanks for the concern.

[RZM]

14. That's not at all what I said

What I said was that the it's partly the constant barrage of insults and condescension that causes some of the 'dingbats' to turn away from the left and run into the waiting arms of the right.

And your accusation of 'concern trolling' is laughably off the mark. The best definition I've seen for concern trolling is: 'offering advice that, if taken, would actually be harmful to the recipient.'

The reason this accusation can be thrown around so much is that what would or wouldn't be harmful is a subjective matter. Different people have different opinions about it.

My opinion is that large amounts of condescension don't advance the progressive cause. It turns people off. You're never going to reach the right wingers no matter what you say, but you can reach people in the middle. The more you say that those people are stupid, the less likely you are to get their support.

So from my POV, what I said was the exact opposite of concern trolling. It was offering advice that would (IMO) be HELPFUL if taken. From an electoral perspective, I don't see how the potential gains of calling large amounts of people at a time stupid could possibly outweigh the potential drawbacks.

A real concern troll would say something like: 'You know what, fuck the people in the middle. I don't care one bit about them. Why should we waste our time trying to get their votes? If they are even thinking about supporting a Republican, they are stupid idiots who don't deserve our time or energy.'

And I'm not telling people not to be critical of others or of their beliefs. I'm arguing that it's counterproductive to go over the top while doing so.

[Cleita]

6. I cannot disagree with you. I wonder how this could happen and then

I think back to Nazi Germany. How did a whole nation, that was following a liberal path, become sucked into this national cult run by an obviously mentally disturbed individual, who told them what they wanted to hear and then twisted the message to his purposes. It seems Rush Limbaugh uses the same method and as a mouthpiece of the dingbat cult, gets the job done for them.

[TheWraith]

10. Because Germany in the 20s and 30s was an utter shithole.

Ever seen photos of people taking wheelbarrows full of cash to the store to buy bread and milk? That would be Germany in the 1920s.

[Cleita]

11. So we don't even have that excuse.

That really makes the dingbats extraordinary and dumbfounding.

[Gregorian]

8. Easy energy made us all kings. Lazy ignorant kings.

Even as far back as 1976 I had a girlfriend from Iran who said that Americans are "car crazy".

If one does the calculations, each American has the equivalent to 100 slaves working 12 hour days. I can provide a link to back that up.

So people became divided as they individually rode in their 2 ton sleds to work every day. And we began to disintegrate from communities who knew each other, to slurbs of subdivisions who were all anonymous for the most part. We devolved.

[MadHound]

9. Well, for one thing, the GOP isn't solely responsible.

Clinton's push for expansion of free trade, his deregulation of the financial sector both contributed heavily to our current economic problems.

Let us also not forget that the assault on civil liberties in this country has been a bipartisan affair as well. As is bipartisan effort to feed and care for the MIC at the expense of the rest of us.

Add in the fact that Obama has simply not fought for what is right and this is what you wind up with, a discouraged and disheartened Democratic base, leading to the current poll numbers.

[TheWraith]

12. Your logic is flawed.

You imagine that somehow the country was LESS "dingbat" at some time in the past. It wasn't. Go back to any era in American history, and you're going to find plenty of dingbat-ism, usually FAR worse than what we have today.

[RevStPatrick]

17. That's what I was going to say.

For example, the Teabaggers are clearly the spiritual grandchildren of the Know Nothing party from the 1850's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing

Actually, a case could be made that we are a dingbat species.

[DCBob]

13. I became aware of this in 2004 when a dingbat/war criminal was re-elected.

Its just gotten worse, Im afraid.

[dogknob]

16. An Important Message From Dupert Doomcock

[BlancheSplanchnik]

18. that's the thing of it...those assklowns deserve it

but we don't! That's the problem.

I am totally with you here.

Wish they could just take the state of their choice --maybe Texas or Georgia or something....and secede off to their own little jesusland.

[Cleita]

19. Washington wouldn't allow it. We'd have another civil war.

I wish they'd all go to Somalia and fight it out with the warlords and pirates to establish their own Ayn Rand paradise.