Blindly supporting the President ...(101 for Freeps) (warning: long)

[baby_mouse]

... or any other leader in a time of war or at any other time is the disease of the populace of countries that are NOT America.

The thing that makes America special is that its populace gets to decide whether or not its funds and soldiers are being used effectively. It's tin-pot dictatorships that expect blind and childish allegiance to symbols, Chairman Mao, Stalin, Saddam and the like, they are the people that demand unquestioning obedience, not the President of the United States. He's supposed to be above that.

America is *supposed* to be BETTER than that. America is supposed to be FREE. It's the American PEOPLE that are supposed to be in charge of America, that's what democracy's for.

And one of the reasons America is supposed to have this freedom is to prevent it getting into stupid wars that serve not the people but the country's leaders.

Give a leader carte blanche to do what he wants and you have thrown away the very thing that makes your being American worth something. BE the sort of person who gangs up with compatriots in groups to blindly support a symbol and you run the risk af attracting the attention of unscrupulous individuals who will exploit your loyalty to further their own ends.

Support the president if you wish, but KNOW WHY. And if someone shows you why they think it's wrong and you have no good answer other than that they should shut up or just follow and be happy then you have no real claim to being American. Nor have you any real reason to support the President other than childish embarassment and egotism. If you have good reasons why the support of the president is necessary, state them, but do not be BLIND.

This is a FREEDOM, the freedom to participate in a country that is aware of itself. The reason Americans have this freedom is to prevent exactly the sort of mess you are currently in.

Freedom of speech is necessary so that the people can bring information about the state of the union to its citizens, precisely so that America, if on the wrong course, can CHANGE COURSE.

Suppressing dissidence is only practiced by people who have their own interests above those whom they represent.

Bush is not King. He is not "America".

Bush is President. He REPRESENTS America, and is not doing so correctly. He is not adequately addressing the concerns of the left, who make up a substantial chunk of the country's populace.

THEREFORE -

Talk of liberals "whining", or being over critical is un-American. Dismissing your opponent's opinions SIMPLY on the grounds that they oppose the current policy to a degree that you find distasteful is unproductive as a political tactic and inadmissible as argument. This I guarantee: no liberal will buy it. No liberals will be converted. It's just hypersensitive babyish nonsense. What is being discussed on the boards across the country are the *forces which will govern the future of your lives*. Sitting behind a keyboard and posting "Oh, you guys, you whine so much" is lazy thinking and a waste of text, WHY do you think liberals shouldn't be whining?

None of the right wing pundits have any business claiming to be able to establish the existence of some arbitrary scale with which to judge certain political opinions as being "extreme" relative to some entirely imaginary "centre". If they believe they do, they have no right living in America. The metaphor is specious. Politics is not a neat little line.

If they do, THEY SHOULD LEAVE. They should move to a tin-pot dictatorship and start spreading their rhetoric there. IT'S IN THEIR OWN INTERESTS TO DO SO. THEY ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO BE SUCCESSFUL.

[Oversea Visitor]

1. The baby mouse

got a mighty pen :)

[Wetzelbill]

2. I like this.. do you mind if I link it to my blog?

Good stuff. Nominated!

[baby_mouse]

3. I would be most honored!

Please do!

:-)

[Wetzelbill]

6. Cool

[Pool Hall Ace]

4. That's good reading, baby mouse!

:hi:

[tabasco]

5. Great post. I'm afraid it will go over the heads of those to whom

it is directed.

I have come to accept that there will always be those who support the likes of Mussolini and GW Bush.

It takes more intelligence and energy to be a good citizen in a democracy. It means objective questioning of politicians and not blind loyalty to a party.

Our imperative is to constantly challenge our Democratic leaders as we do republicans. This is seen as a weakness by the right wing. They are so easily united and we are a herd of cats. But what they see as a weakness is our greatest strength - the ability to criticize our own leaders.

[woofless]

7. The mouse that roared!

Super post. Thank you.

Woof

[Jade Fox]

8. Garrison Keillor recently said....

That Freeper types, who listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, are people
who are fundamentally uncomfortable living in a free society. They
listen to Rush and others to have their beliefs given to them and then
endlessly repeated.

[baby_mouse]

11. If they don;t wake up PDQ

They are in for some nasty surprises.

Blind allegience is DANGEROUS, way more dangerous than asking questions.

[mwb970]

13. Whatever Rush says becomes the day's talking points for them.

No matter how wrong he is, the dittoheads just repeat whatever he says. It's a total abdication from the responsibility of citizens to be informed.

[baby_mouse]

17. And partly a conscious one at that.

If they are sufficiently comfortable materially they can bury their heads in the sand as far up their necks as they like, they figure. It's all a game to them, a matter of image and appearance and what things look like rather than what they really are. That's why the trolls here and the posters on FR are so obsessed with DU LOOKING silly, it's all deep, murky school-yard fear of humiliation and being laughed at, they aren't interested in reality.

If you told them they'd look silly for not jumping off cliffs, they'd form a queue, wave a bunch of flags with stylized lemmings on them, shout: "MY CLIFF, RIGHT OR WRONG!" and form a nice big puddle of freepy mess at the bottom of the nearest chasm. Whilst lurking on www.anticliffjumping.com, trolling it incessantly and saying that anybody on it that's able to string 2 sentences together "looks ridiculous".

I wonder if they have any idea how they look to us? They probably think the mutual amazement at each others views is neatly symmetrical.

It's not...

[Jade Fox]

19. Check out this post from yesterday....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1932996&mesg_id=1933128

[baby_mouse]

23. sam sarrha is bang on

Limbaugh perpetuates the mental hogtying of his listeners.

He's got their minds tied up and squirming on the ground. They are his *victims*.

[Old and In the Way]

25. They are Republicans 1st, Americans 2nd.

Somewhere along the way, they've been brainwashed to believe that a minority of Americans represent America. Republicans have appropriated the symbols of this country, primarily the flag, as their own. Their followers have happily bought the illusion.

I know one thing. If the political labels were switched and it was the Democratic Party responsible for the political/social/legislative agenda of the last decade, I'd have switched my Party affiliation a loooong time ago.

[baby_mouse]

26. They are the true partisans

The weird thing is that they genuinely believe their own self-contradictory rhetoric. There's a big crack across them. It repeats itself over and over again, they're getting to the stage where their ideology is so self-contradictory its starting to look like it's a sort of weird mental allergy to reason itself that they're suffering from...

[Mythsaje]

28. I love this!

snip

If you told them they'd look silly for not jumping off cliffs, they'd form a queue, wave a bunch of flags with stylized lemmings on them, shout: "MY CLIFF, RIGHT OR WRONG!" and form a nice big puddle of freepy mess at the bottom of the nearest chasm. Whilst lurking on www.anticliffjumping.com, trolling it incessantly and saying that anybody on it that's able to string 2 sentences together "looks ridiculous".

snip

Excuse me while I :rofl:

Good job!

[liberalla]

37. Is that all it would take??? Let's DO IT!!!!

"If you told them they'd look silly for not jumping off cliffs, they'd form a queue, wave a bunch of flags with stylized lemmings on them, shout: "MY CLIFF, RIGHT OR WRONG!" and form a nice big puddle of freepy mess at the bottom of the nearest chasm."

Finally!

A Solution!
:evilgrin:

[baby_mouse]

39. Like bungee jumping

But faith based. The lord will catapult you back up to the cliff edge away from the ground if your faith is strong enough. If not, you splat and go to hell.

It would work.

[DemonFighterLives]

9. Good Job Baby Mouse

Now if only we had a way to get the information through the thickened skull.
:thumbsup:

[Wetzelbill]

12. Ha! good luck with that

You'd have to ban Kool-aid for one thing.

[DemonFighterLives]

22. That would be hard

They feed on talking points and chase it with koolaid.

[baby_mouse]

24. It's a cognitive addiction

They have nothing else to compare it with. The addiction is practically teleological, it prevents any other ideology even coming in CONTACT with it. It doesn't exist to counter liberalism with facts, it exists to leech off liberalism simply by locking step with it in permanent opposition. It has no positive ideation of its own.

This is understood by politicians who seek to exploit the addiction, they must identify and project the cognitive failings of their own system onto the liberals as rapidly as possible so as to deflect legitimate criticism from the left by making it look like "copycat" criticism.

Edit: The second paragraph links to the first through the "liberals have no original ideas" argument.

[DemonFighterLives]

27. The ones that I attempt to converse with on another site

only try to change the topic and talk about Clinton. It is very hard to get an actual comment and God forbid that they should ever question their great leaders. I've really tired of trying, especially when their smugness and piling on starts.
The newest thing is the supposed improvement in the deficit. Wow, it will only take 5 years to halve the deficit which never existed when Howdy Doody took office.

[baby_mouse]

32. That's because

They see the thing as a clash between personalities, between "gods".

To them it's not really any different from WWF. They don't really get that it's a discussion about how we all live together. If they obviously don't believe that having such discussions is worth anything then:

a)

i)They're either extremely safe in their own lives and don't really *completely* connect with the idea that the planet has other human beings on it with their OWN problems and ideas, OR

ii)They're just uglyhead children who are unhappy with themselves and trying to divert attention away from their own faults ("Clinton, Clinton, Clinton," who CARES about Clinton? He hasn't been in power for YEARS. He's irrelevant.)

AND

b) it's probably worth waiting until they're a bit older / better educated before attempting a real conversation.

Remember that a lot of these people genuinely are are REAL frustrated teenagers who aren't mature enough to establish their *own* views as distinct from a tribal mind-set. The ones that aren't teenagers generally haven't engaged in any active political thought until after 9/11, probably STILL don't get the idea that the only truly constructive political thought requires a certain level of intellectual self-discipline, have high-school politics and need to do a lot of reading on BOTH sides before they can catch up.

How one approaches such people is a matter of personal choice, if you enjoy laughing at them and have a quick wit it can be a gas playing the "you're side is a bunch of losers!!!" game, but be supplied with a large number of exclamation marks and insults. Also, you generally have to have some genuine dislike for such people, I do and have no qualms whatsoever in insulting them. I see no reason why I should be polite to people who aren't going to the effort of being polite to me. Having said all that, it has a certain "junk food" appeal, but it isn't really a *tremendously* satisfying way to use your brain.

If you want to establish some sort of meaningful discussion with them, you can play the first game up to a point and then trick them into it, but it takes a little thought and preparation...

If they demonstrate a real ability to respond to ideas, I do my best to be as courteous as possible and even give them a little leeway when they're being unconsciously offensive.

Many times I have seen sensible, intelligent people driven away from a debate because their innocence (not ignorance) of the asymmetrical nature of knowledge of the experience of minorities makes them come out with things that someone on the other side can't let pass without reacting emotionally... I won't say that the reactive rejector of bogus ideation is necessarily WRONG, as if you let these things pass they cement themselves in place, but I think there's a way of going about it that works better than just calling the opposition names.

Not that calling the opposition names doesn't ALSO have certain tactical advantages... :-)

Right. I'm posting this as thread... :-)

[DemonFighterLives]

34. You've got great ideas

Most of the folks I'm talking to are not that young. Some are mid 40's and one is a lot older. In this case the younger ones have a slight libetarian perspective that makes them approachable, but still resort to the Clinton reflex when talked to. I have not figured out the older one but expect he is somehow profitting from the war and thinks "strong" military is the way to go. Even as far as thinking nukes are a good idea.

It is painfully obvious to a lot of people that the "w" experiment of trying to kill off sovereign countries, is not working. They have only created more enemies for the US and have nearly destroyed the love other nations had for America and Americans.

Thanks for the discussion, it is interesting to try to diagnose the neocons. They have a strong steadfast 30% but act as though they are in the majority and their mandate allows them to do whatever they want.

:dem:

[Wetzelbill]

10. Ok, I put this up already, here's the link to my blog

http://www.livejournal.com/users/billwetzel/

[gollygee]

14. Excellent!

Great read!

[nittygritty]

15. It'll take a whole lot more than that

to get through to any freeps.

Their twisted psychologies start in early childhood and only years of psychotherapy could even begin to penetrate their egos.

If this administration and/or the republican party goes down in flames as the result of all this, these neocons who are having their whole false realities come tumbling down will do anything to stop it. Facing the pain of being wrong is their worst hell and they will do anything to avoid that trauma. Even violence.

The ratio of serious neocons (read:nazi fascists) to your average naive republican joe (who voted for *, but now has buyers remorse)will determine if this country can heal...

[baby_mouse]

16. I agree partially

It is their egotism and fragility of personal esteem that drives their pathology.

I think you're right, I think if the administration collapses there will be gun-type denial.

[Career Prole]

18. "This I guarantee: no liberal will buy it. No liberals will be converted."

You can say that again, baby m!
:yourock:

[baby_mouse]

20. This the bit they just never get.

"Your opinions are EXTREEEEEME!!!"

What, do they think that we go out of our way to think weird things?

Maybe if they expressed an interest in WHY we think the way we do (instead of making up their own reasons based on their own reactions to reality) they'd get more of my respect.

[hfojvt]

35. they are not trying to convert the liberals with that

but just to pull the majority further to the right. We discredited Goldwater as an extremist so they had to come up with new ways of framing things and now apparently there are too many people who do not think that Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are extremists but Howard Dean and Jello Biafra are.

Okay, maybe Jello is, but Howard? Unfortunately much of what we say is not very convincing to the right wing either. Lots of our people take the attitude of "screw them, they will never be convinced" which is certainly true for many of them, but we need to convince a few of them to win some elections and make sure the votes are counted accurately.

[johannes1984]

21. i said it earlier , gonna say it again

that's why america is great .because people get to be above falling in line .But good luck with changing those who dedicate their life to just that , they're on their way to bringing down a greatest of nations .

If one day america and it's dream is stuff left to academics ,for the nation itself has died at heart , they will be to blame .

[kliljedahl]

29. Well done baby_mouse

& a belated welcome to DU :toast:

First of your posts I've seen, I'm gonna do some searching now. If you have any others as good as this I'll be REALLY impressed.


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[baby_mouse]

30. Thank you!

:toast:

[kiki]

31. Good angle...

Next time some RW brain donor says "Why don't you support the president", just say "Because I live in a free country. If you don't like it, go and live in Iran / North Korea / (whichever country will most get a rise out of them)"...

[baby_mouse]

33. Bang on!

Complete smackdown and completely legitimate!

[PittLib]

36. Excellent post, baby_mouse!

Very well said. I would like to tie this to an issue that is very personal to me. Here in PA, we have a candidate running against the despised Rick Santorum who was selected by higher-ups (DNC, DSCC) for his "pro-life" socially conservative positions and name recognition. Prior to his running, we had several potential candidates that were progressive, well-known, and admired. Then word came down that Bob Casey was selected, and that effectively wiped the slate. No candidate with any wish for a political future was going to fight this decision, so they had no choice but to support Casey. There are two other Democratic candidates at this point (one just announced) who have no political background, per se, (one is a professor, the other a lawyer) but have decided to jump in this race. They get no press coverage, have been left out of polls pitting Casey against Santorum, and are generally ignored as viable candidates. I should amend that ... one has been ignored - I am hoping that now that the other has announced, they will get more attention.

Casey has been planted in the public consciousness as the only man to beat Santorum, and while big names like John Kerry, Howard Dean, Gov. Ed Rendell, James Carville, and Move-On have chosen to endorse him ... he has done very little to define himself. We have only been able to glean stances from prior campaigns and speculate where he stands. What frustrates me, is not "pro-life" Democrats who are throwing themselves behind Casey - people who share similar ideologies. It is the progressives that are willing to compromise their social values, and refuse to acknowledge the candidate that might more accurately represent their beliefs. They are falling prey to marketing and undermining the ideals of democracy by allowing our "representatives" decide for us - by skewing what should be a legitimate primary. And it is all justified by the loathing for Santorum.

Here's my point: If we allow this, and are so willing to compromise ... are we any better than the blind Bush supporters? Or Republicans who vote for the (R) even though the candidate is a far cry from representing the true ideals Republicans claim - people who vote against their own best interest based on party loyalty? People are not thinking past the election. They are so thrilled by the notion of Santorum getting tossed on his ass, that they are not considering where we will be after. They certainly are not seeing the big picture. It is appealing to the lowest common denominator, a tactic best left, IMHO, to the Republicans. Selecting a candidate is tantamount to saying "you've proven yourselves to be to stupid and/or uninformed to exercise your right, so we'll give you a hand" and I believe they overshot with Casey. While, given the results of the last election, I can see where they are coming from but we should not be okay with this, if it limits our access to candidates and therefore our choices. The Casey backers are hurling admonitions at those of who are not accepting of this strategy ... relegating key issues to trivial concerns. I feel this "blind support" is not limited to Bushies alone. I could also tie this into "framing the issue" arguments as well ... but I'll spare you that much for now.

I agree with and enjoyed your post ... please forgive the soapbox rant - I just think we need to look at our own foibles as well as those of the other side. We really should be (or at least strive to be) better that this.

edited for sloppiness

[baby_mouse]

41. Skimmed this, so a little light...

...but I'm not completely convinced that it's the same kettle of fish...

It does sound very unhealthy but I think this is a party politics structural problem rather than the kind of slavering, embarassing worship demanded by the Freeps for their sweet, humble Georgie-diddums, which seems to me to be driven entirely by obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Still, not good. How would one go about drumming up popular support for alternative candidates? Where would they get their funding from? Worryingly unfair.

The DNC are also politicians, unfortunately...

[PittLib]

43. No - not quite the same ...

but it applies to a certain extent. Perhaps the difference is blind loyalty based on self-righteousness/fear/intellectual laziness vs. blindered (is that even a word?)loyalty based on desperation and the willingness to accept someone who represents merely 50% of claimed ideals (damage control). Honestly, I think self righteousness and entitlement are a huge part of this, particularly with Republicans. If I can manage to string together a coherent post to convey my theory on this ... I will, but at a future time. I'm too burnt out right now, and I've got a party to plan (which is my answer your question about drumming up support ... you plan a house party, invite the candidate, inundate local progressive groups and outlets with invites ... then badger the media to cover it. Hey, it's a start).

[Swamp Rat]

38. Dat's right cuz!

:hi:

[baby_mouse]

40. Your ratty eyes see clearly...

Rodents are not easily fooled... :toast:
:-) :-) :-)

[azoth]

42. BRAVO. This:

"Suppressing dissidence is only practiced by people who have their own interests above those whom they represent."

is SO on-target.

Well said. Thank you. Take a bow.