The GOP’s problem is made quite clear in the NYT piece, “Ailing G.O.P. Risks Losing a Generation.”

Americans identifying themselves as Democrats outnumber those who say they are Republicans by 10 percentage points, the largest gap in party identification in 24 years.

The gap has widened significantly since President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, when it was a mere 3 percentage points. But by the time Mr. Bush left office in January, less than a quarter of Americans approved of his performance.

These days, 38 percent of Americans say they are Democrats, 28 percent call themselves Republicans, and another 29 percent identify as independents, according to an average of national polls conducted last year by The New York Times and CBS News.

This has nothing to do with the post but:

EVERYONE WHO HAS A DIFFERENT OPINION THAN THE AUTHOR IS A FUCKING IDIOT BECAUSE AUTHORS ARE ALWAYS RIGHT AND IF YOU DON’T AGREE THAN YOU’RE A TROLL

and every person who has the power to ban those who disagree must have an enormous e-penis

Somebody’s got more back issues than Harper’s!

Watching it on YouTube…tax the churches!

Shorter O’Hannahan: “I’m a troll, wheee!”

oh look, a troll with bad grammar. how not shocking.

...guy calls himself “Creams” and then complains about somebody else’s “e-penis”.  Ookay…

And, of course, the irony is coming in here and acting like a troll in a thread about a whole political party made up of trolls.

***

What really pisses me off is our system, as goofy as it is, requires two competent political parties to challenge each other and act as checks against social, political, and economic decline.  We saw what the last 8-years got us when there was not a functioning opposition party.

While I’m happier with the Democrats in control under the current circumstances, I still worry that it’s too easy to insulate yourself from reality without a good (but not insane) opposition party.

The Republicans seem dedicated to making the future an evil combination of Idiocracy and 1984, with maybe an unhealthy sprinkling of Psycho...

That’s because it’s like goign back into Plato’s cave, gorobei.  Those still chained think you’re crazy for pointing out the shadows on the wall are shadows.

Just finished watching the whole thing.

It’s pure politics of fear and resentment.

One of the things that kept striking me was that I, as a gay atheist, have FAR more to fear from the people shown in this video than they have to fear from President Obama.  The sneering racist, misogynist, anti-gay, anti-poor, anti-urban, anti-modern “we’re real American” nonsense they continually spout is simply stunning in its overwhelming FAIL! 

What’s amazing to me, as someone who comes from a rural working class background is how much they assume that urban people don’t work.  It’s just so stunning to watch the batshit insanity. No hunting?  Where?  From whom? 

There’s a class politics thats bound up in it, but the enemy somehow becomes gay people and people living in cities, not the fuckers who are actually winning the class war. The sense of delusional anti-cosmopolitan resentment is amazing.

My bleeding heart makes it hard not to pity them on some level, but the last guy in particular kind of pissed me off.  He complains that the government isn’t there for him when he’s presumably been voting Republican (against government help for the poor and middle class) for a good, long time.  What did he think was going to happen?  But he’s got to make sure those immigrants don’t have special rights.

He complains that the government isn’t there for him when he’s presumably been voting Republican (against government help for the poor and middle class) for a good, long time.  What did he think was going to happen?  But he’s got to make sure those immigrants don’t have special rights.

And he’s going to weep because white supremacy isn’t the rule of the land anymore.

seriously, the last guy was like the narrarator for the end of white male privilege.

These people are dinosaurs soon to be extinct.  Look at them—most of them are middle-aged or older, still fighting the old divisive culture war issues of the 1960s (socialism?  really?).  In a decade, most of them will be gone or at least their population significantly diminished and our political culture will the better for it.  That alone fills me with hope.  The future belongs with the Millennials and roughly 70% of them voted for Obama.

It’s sad to watch these people. These aren’t the GOP elite. They look like they’re all totally broke, most of them talk like they barely got through high school, and (given where the red districts are) they’ve probably got no prospects; I’ll bet they barely made ends meet when the economy was good. Now that it’s tanking, they’ll be hit harder than anyone. 

—which I imagine is why their Republican governors are toying with turning down federal funds to help them out. Right now, the plan looks to be to keep ‘em as miserable as possible and blame everything on the Dems, and these people—the GOP’s shrinking base—are only too happy to do the latter. But what happens to that base if the Dems pull it off, actually do the rednecks some good? It’ll be one more nail in the Rs’ well-hammered coffin.

“But what happens to that base if the Dems pull it off, actually do the rednecks some good?”

Unless the Democrats mount an effective pr campaign the Gopers will proclaim they were the ones who did the rednecks some good or just use the same old tired old debunked garbage to get the base riled up again.

“Right now, the plan looks to be to keep ‘em as miserable as possible and blame everything on the Dems”

The ads running in certain states proclaiming Rush to be the leader of the Gop appear to be one small step in countering that.

Just ran into someone today who until today had been employed and was wondering how the hell I got food stamp money and why they couldn’t get unemployment benefits. When I told them that the state they live in is one of the few that doesn’t look at your entire work history and just your last job you held for less then a year they thought that didn’t make a lot of sense since they had paid into unemployment for close to two decades.

What did he think was going to happen?

You’d be surprised at how much people are willing to endure to exact costs on someone else. There something hardwired in certain individuals’ psychology that would allow them to see their own lives go to hell as long as they can make those who they perceive as enemies miserable.

I’m sure we’ve all met those types. I know I have. They don’t care that they’re slowly circling the drain. In fact some KNOW they’re circling the drain, but if them attaining a better station in life means that some liberal or minority or woman also gets a lift up…well…we can’t have that, can we? We saw this during the whole stimulus debate. If things aren’t going the GOP’s way, then dammit, it’s not gonna go well for ANYBODY!

That crying guy was the most powerful illustration of privilege I’ve ever seen. It’s easy for me to conceptualize that white men feel threatened because they are slowly losing power and minorities are slowly gaining power (trying to reach equality, of course, not the domination that white men have had for the last…ever). Sure, of course that’s threatening to some people, I get that. But seeing that man literally brought to tears about it made me really get it in a way I never have before, especially because I’m pretty sure grown redneck men find it more shameful to cry than the average grown man.

These people are terrified and lost. They feel powerless because, even though they still have more social power than any other group, they have lost power. I can’t feel too much sympathy for them, because the rest of us have always been powerless and terrified, but this clip does help me understand their mindset in a way I didn’t before. I’ve always just been sort of like, “These people are INSANE, what are they even THINKING,” and now I see what they’re thinking, and it’s sad, really.

My bleeding heart makes it hard not to pity them on some level, but the last guy in particular kind of pissed me off.  He complains that the government isn’t there for him when he’s presumably been voting Republican (against government help for the poor and middle class) for a good, long time.  What did he think was going to happen?

Actually, if anything, the guy at the end is the person I felt most sorry for.  Not because I think he’s a good guy or has his head in the right place - he doesn’t - but because I think he epitomizes the “useful idiot” of the Republican Party.  Here’s an obviously very uneducated southern guy who grew up in a world where, whenever bad things happened, he was told that it was because of the blacks, the queers, and the “furrners”... and he bought it.  I don’t think he has money or has ever had money, and I think he’s frustrated by his conditions.  He IS the guy that Obama was talking about when he spoke of people clinging to guns and religion, because they don’t know what else to cling to.  What he doesn’t get is that Obama’s characterization wasn’t meant to be an insult or an attack on these folks, it was meant to tell them, “Hey you!  Country boy!  You are being used as a pawn by these rich elitist Republican assholes who don’t give a shit about you other than to get your vote!”

The GOP tells him that if the colored fella wins the election, things are gonna get really bad for him, so he better vote GOP.  So he votes for the GOP candidate, and things remain bad for him.  He doesn’t get why things are still bad for him, and he hears that GOP fairy whispering in his ear, “it’s because of the dark people, vote GOP” and he stays stuck in the cycle.

He’s pissed off because his life sucks ass.  What he doesn’t get is that part of the reason that his life still sucks ass is because he isn’t voting in his own best economic interest, because he has been conditioned to believe that if it weren’t for people who don’t look like him, then all would be well.  So he goes out and votes for the assholes who wave flags and make neat symbolic patriotic gestures and talk up a great game about how “pro-America” they are… but they don’t really give a shit about Cletus the NASCAR fan.  And he still hasn’t figured that one out, because his xenophobia is soooo deeply ingrained that it is nearly impossible for him to imagine how a party that embraces diverse people could also be a party that would embrace him, too.

I don’t hate the trailer park folks who support the GOP.  I don’t think they are the real evil of the party, because I honestly don’t think they even realize how much they are being used as pawns.

I pity them.

They feel powerless because, even though they still have more social power than any other group, they have lost power.

Almost any other group.

There’s still one group who has more social power than poor white men… rich white men.

And the distinction is important.  These guys are actually suffering economically largely because of the party that they vote for, but the problem is that they can’t, or don’t, or won’t see that fact.

Part of the reason they are losing power is because the poor in America are getting even poorer, and that includes poor racist trailer trash who vote for Republicans.

I think the tears and anger - while directed at the “evil immigrants” - are really the feelings of a person who is having the internal cognitive dissonance of realizing on one hand that the party who said it would look out for him hasn’t lived up to the deal, and on the other hand, still wanting to blame it all on the “furrners”.

Progressives will never give this man what he wants as far as hanging onto his notion of white supremacy, but they’ll probably help him get out of the trailer park a lot faster than conservatives.

It has to be some pretty painful reality for the poor racist man when he starts realizing that the party that he thinks cares about him doesn’t give two leaping shits about him beyond wanting his vote.  I don’t think this guy is there yet, but I think subconsciously there has to be some turmoil going on.

Could we drop the trailer park bullshit please?  This is why we get called classist and elitist.

You know what? Most of these folks are probably either home owners or people who are getting screwed in the mortgage crisis.  A lot of ‘em are blue collar folks who are part of the middle class, or at least were until it started contracting because of deindustrialization and the shrinking wages of the past 30 years that led to these debt crises. A lot of ‘em are probably small business owners or middle-managers.  The grilling with the RV at a NASCAR event is a hell of a lot like tailgating at an Ohio State-Michigan football game.

Could we drop the trailer park bullshit please?

I genuinely wasn’t trying to come across as classist and elitist…

I honestly thought that the guy in the video who was crying was being videotaped inside a trailer park.

I believe he was in a parking lot full of RVs at a NASCAR event.  When you look at the prices of RVs, imagine the parking and other fees of NASCAR, and think about those two things for over ten seconds, you might come to the conclusion that those men there aren’t poor by any stretch.  They’re probably less wealthy than a few years ago, but still not too close to being poor.

I saw this just yesterday, and considered storing it somehow in case it came in handy, and lo, we get O’Hannahan!

When I told them that the state they live in is one of the few that doesn’t look at your entire work history and just your last job you held for less then a year they thought that didn’t make a lot of sense since they had paid into unemployment for close to two decades.
tootiredoftheright on 02/28 at 09:24 PM

Even in California, a state that doesn’t pull that crappy trick as far as I know, when I tried to play the “Hey, I’ve been paying into this system for 15 years!” card while frustrated with the limits of the system, the state worker I was talking to corrected me:

Legally speaking, it is the employer who pays into Unemployment Insurance. The workers pay for Disability Insurance. That’s how the tax code is set up.

Now actually I think it’s reasonable for workers to have the impression they pay for it all, since it all comes from the funds employers are willing to pay for wages. But aside from bureaucrats being able to put irate clients in their place, the way it is set up is also designed to hold employers accountable by varying their tax rates by the track record their company has in retaining employees. A new company starts out with a generic rate, and the more former employees show up and file claims, the higher the rate goes, to compensate for the higher rate of payouts. Vice versa, if fewer than average show up at the Unemployment Office, the company’s rate goes down.

I learned about this stuff in a tax preparer class I took at a community college, so I should have known what the state employment office person reminded me of. The reason I don’t know if California looks at any job but the last one you held is that in my case I’d had the same job for 15 years, so the issue did not come up.

I believe he was in a parking lot full of RVs at a NASCAR event.  When you look at the prices of RVs, imagine the parking and other fees of NASCAR, and think about those two things for over ten seconds, you might come to the conclusion that those men there aren’t poor by any stretch.  They’re probably less wealthy than a few years ago, but still not too close to being poor.

Not necessarily.  A lot of these hugely expensive RVs (or boats, or fancy recreational equipment) aren’t owned outright.  They’re mortgaged or financed, or put on credit cards, or “purchased” from a Rent-a-Center at a cost approximately five times what they’re worth.  As soon as the breadwinner loses his/her job, the recreational vehicles and equipment (and the nice furniture and the electonic equipment back at the house) will be repo’d because the family is literally living paycheck to paycheck.

There’s still one group who has more social power than poor white men… rich white men.

And these people need to realize they have more in common with minorities, women, and gays than they do with rich white men on Wall Street.

I just watched the whole thing, thanks so much posting on this.

I live in Kentucky (the state where those poor toothless, drug addled people from a viral video during the campaign gleefully used the “n” word). In addition to the whole documentary in five parts, I also watched Alexandra Pelosi’s interview on Rachel Maddow’s show. They had a good debate about the whole two nations meme—Maddow contending that we are one nation and Pelosi insisting that she go on a road trip with her through the South before “drinking the koolaid.” I think that they both do and don’t get it—I’m in a Southern City and we are a blue bubble on a red sea. Upstate New York, rural New York, looks a heck of a lot like rural Ohio. This isn’t THE SOUTH vs. civilization, its rural and urban politics at a head, with a mixed suburban lot thrown in.

Sure, the Republicans have been able to convince white rural dudes that hate of the “other” (did you see that one guy in section 4 who claimed that women getting to vote was too progressive for him?)...hate of the other is the unifying force that will keep them in power. Of course, its all a con; Republicans primarily stand for the rights of hypocrites. Ted Haggard, Mitch McConnell, David Vitter, etc. they like to pass laws that limit reproductive freedom of women and girls, yet they are drug-using, prostitute abusing fucks and notice two out of three of those hypocrites are still in power. They like to talk about energy independence while pushing policies that create tighter and tighters cycles of dependence and eventually war and chaos. What the people get, it really is just empty flag waving—these people are incurious, pissed off, fearful, bigots. Those girls singing and dancing to patriotic music, the little boys crying when the results came out, they know as much or as little it seems as their parents who are of age (and who should seek out information when making an election choice, but don’t).

Its not the South, though there are more per capita in the South—its rural America. Bakersfield, CA has these same people. Its willful ignorance coupled with a sense of lost privilege—which guess what folks, you never really had it. Yeah, a poor or working class white man was higher on the totem pole then a working class black man by far, but the rich white man who owned the factory or the farm land owned you all.

Its not the South, though there are more per capita in the South—its rural America.

I’d just like to point out that Obama did better in South Carolina (lost by eight points) than McCain did in the “swing states” of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire (lost by eleven!)

The guy in sunglasses and blue shirt displays a total lack of self-awareness.  Or maybe just an overabundance of male/white privilege.

Here’s a clue Mr. Blue Shirt, if people tell you that you are an asshole, maybe you are.

This isn’t THE SOUTH vs. civilization, its rural and urban politics at a head, with a mixed suburban lot thrown in.

The documentary wasn’t all filmed in Redneckistan.

There was a lot of urban and suburban areas in the documentary, and some of the video footage was shot in major cities - part of it was shot on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis (on par with some Ivy League schools) from the Vice-Presidential Debate.  There was also footage shot in Columbus, OH and Phoenix, AZ.

There is a definite geographic division - the hardcore conservatives are most typically found in rural and exurban areas, the staunchest liberals in the urban areas, and the inner suburbs tend to be the most diverse in their makeup - but lunatic fringe racism isn’t entirely exclusive to the boonies.

DTG, the reason this year was such a blowout is the Democrats won the inner and middle suburbs, and split the exurbs. It’s the reason places like NC and IN turned. College educated whites live in those areas, and people shown in the film scare the shit out of them with their crazy.

nuance note:

Poor southern rednecks do vote their interests.  Well, about as much as anyone ever does.  The real problem in the South is the rural gentry.  There is a reason communist totalitarians generally tries to eliminate the species.

Despite many people in that clip having no idea what socialism is (and dropping the term ad nauseum), I truly see a lot of what was shown as being part of a vigorous democracy during an election year.

Its willful ignorance coupled with a sense of lost privilege—which guess what folks, you never really had it. Yeah, a poor or working class white man was higher on the totem pole then a working class black man by far, but the rich white man who owned the factory or the farm land owned you all.

That’s really the saddest part of all of it.

These people vote for Republicans under the false delusion that it’s in their best personal interest economically, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The guy in the white pickup truck in one of the videos was a great example - he’s whining about getting hit with higher taxes if Obama wins, and Pelosi points it out to him that not only will he probably not be impacted by the increased tax rates, but that he’ll probably benefit from reduced taxes, and then his response is that he doesn’t want any help from the government and he drives off angrily.

What he doesn’t seem to get is how much he literally contradicted himself - he says he won’t vote for Obama because he doesn’t want to have to pay higher taxes.  Which means that he wants to keep more of “his” money.  When presented with the fact that he will, in fact, get to keep more of “his” money under Obama, he decides that he no longer wants it.

What?  That was the whole premise of his original argument about why he opposed Obama.

DTG in STL—I went to Wash U for my MA, thanks for calling me Ivy League (tee hee). You are right that there are hardcore conservatives everywhere, but I think that they think that they represent the “heartland”—even if its in New York and by heartland, they mean the working class white man, non-union.

Now, by the way, Wash U’s student body is typically liberal or at least center left; having a rally in a community like Saint Louis, where the deindustrialization of American has hit particularly hard, on a convenient campus doesn’t represent the urban student body and I think that its disingenious to suggest that it does.

Whether the lunatic fringe lives in the burbs or the country, its still the lifestyle they imagine is typical for the rural areas (and heck, suburbs were created to cultivate that mythos—you can have land and access to jobs).

I think this myth that there is a a real America and then the rest of us liberal commies, minorities, gays, etc. is the biggest bit of bullshit they’ve been running on for a while. Guess what—I’m part of America, Gays are part of America, Minorities are part of America, Undocumented immigrants are part of America, and so are blubbering rednecks who want to enjoy their titty bars and bambi killing—we’re all America.

A lot of these hugely expensive RVs (or boats, or fancy recreational equipment) aren’t owned outright.  They’re mortgaged or financed, or put on credit cards, or “purchased” from a Rent-a-Center at a cost approximately five times what they’re worth.

The right wing has a really great scam going here, because they can convince their poorer supporters that they’re entitled to all the material goods the rich folks have, and then when it goes bust, the wingnuts talk darkly about “the bankers”, which is another way of saying city folk/jews/Others. It’s like convincing someone to walk off a cliff and then whipping up their families to burn down the college because gravity is a conspiracy of physics professors.

Years ago when I went door to door for Kerry up in New Hampshire I knew at once that if I encountered a certain kind of guy, and he told me he watched Fox news, that there was simply no reaching him. That is not only because Fox news has a very strong propaganda arm but because Fox and the whole TV lineup were seen by these guys as reliable friends. Sometimes you meet people, going door to door, who are lonely and disconnected from society—I met plenty of those people too, like women who were home caring for disabled husbands—but these people can be very open to discussion and to changing their minds about political things. In effect when you come to their door to talk about politics you become a new friend and a new source of interesting and possibly true “facts” that they can share with their real life friends.  But if someone has really been watching Fox twenty four seven there simply is no room in their life for alternate sources of information. And, of course, one reason for that is that Fox has a long history of creating a sense of urgency, fear, and alienation among its viewers. By the time you show up at their door, or a new poltiical figure like Obama shows up in their town, they have *already been warned* a thousand times that people like you are out to get them, people like you/democrats can’t be trusted. In fact everything you say, or Obama says, will be slotted into a ready made set of beliefs and rage inducing frameworks that makes the entire interaction pointless.  These guys are simply too well defended.

But the prescription is really ready to hand. Either you break the back of Fox news by making it not worth Murdoch’s while to continue the attack—take away the public mouthpieces and the guy in front of the TV set has no where to get his opinion. Or you wait until they marginalize themselves, as Limbaugh and Beck are doing, because they can’t increase their listenership/viewership into the growing non white or youth demographic.  Eventually these guys become as unimportant as their voting demographic.

aimai

“It’s like convincing someone to walk off a cliff and then whipping up their families to burn down the college because gravity is a conspiracy of physics professors.”

...I wanted to laugh at this…and then I realized that if Limbaugh told them gravity was a IslamoLibrul plot to hold them all down (pun intended) all too many of them would believe it…

I truly see a lot of what was shown as being part of a vigorous democracy during an election year.

Vigorous?  Perhaps.  But what democracy can be truly healthy when so many participants are so ill-educated that they don’t actually understand what they’re voting against?

“will be repo’d because the family is literally living paycheck to paycheck.
“

You would be surprised how many trailers have 40 inch tvs in them that were gotten from the Rent to own places. The repo people are indeed busy and several have recently been killed or killed somebody trying to stop them.

Upstate New York, rural New York, looks a heck of a lot like rural Ohio.

I can testify to this.  Though I now live in The City, I grew up in Camden, NY, a town in the Syracuse area that has the population of an NYC office building on a slow day.  There’s country music on the radio, pickup trucks in the school parking lot, and huntin’ in the fall.  People use the n-word freely (though some try to justify it with the old “there’s black people and then there’s niggers”) and complain that the teachers are overpaid - though, to be fair, teachers do earn more than the average person, who is hoping that his or her job at the last remaining copper wire mill (in my childhood, there were four) doesn’t go away.  You sometimes find chaws of terbacky in textbooks, and as many as a dozen girls out of a graduating class of 150 might be pregnant or even have children already (said children having been born when they were as young as 14). 

Hell, people still ask me if I’m from the South because I have a drawl. 

Why, yes, they do vote overwhelmingly Republican (and against those portions of the school budget that they get to vote on, too).

Mr. White Male Privelege Redneck has to know, on some level, that he’s full of shit. Can’t hunt any more? WTF? Certain unsportsmanlike practices have been outlawed, but hunting is still a thriving pastime. And when has going to ‘titty bars’ ever been approved of by the general public? I would think that the liberalization of culture would allow strip cubs to flourish and to be even more titillating. It’s a ‘liberal’ interpretation of freedom of speech that allows Mr. W(hi)MP(e)R to see women dance nekkid. Eh, he’s probably a lousy tipper, any way.

I’ll bet that incoherent “redneck” is like a dentist or something. I just posted on it, because it’s sad the way these idiots have been able to convince the rest of the country that they’re working class when they’re often quite well off.

Amanda:

If they can convince someone who’s making $25K a year not to raise taxes on the rich because America is the land of upward mobility (it isn’t anymore), then convincing someone making $150K a year that they’re really salt of the earth blue-collar is a piece of cake.

These people are terrified and lost. They feel powerless because, even though they still have more social power than any other group, they have lost power. I can’t feel too much sympathy for them, because the rest of us have always been powerless and terrified, but this clip does help me understand their mindset in a way I didn’t before. I’ve always just been sort of like, “These people are INSANE, what are they even THINKING,” and now I see what they’re thinking, and it’s sad, really.

Considering of them are similar to the working-class White town residents who have often shouted various kinds of slurs and even attempted to pick fights with anyone who was non-White and/or a student at my undergrad…..I also cannot work up much sympathy.  Remember, these were some of the same jerkish types who harassed me on the street for speaking Mandarin with a group of Chinese students and on occasion…threatened me with physical violence because I happened to be non-White. 

Not sure how we could help them when so many are bent on harassing and victimize so many of us merely for existing….

Poor southern rednecks do vote their interests.  Well, about as much as anyone ever does.  The real problem in the South is the rural gentry.  There is a reason communist totalitarians generally tries to eliminate the species.

Agreed….though it wasn’t really for the sake of the exploited workers and peasants as their propaganda liked to portray it so much as to eliminate any challengers to their hold on political power….present and future.

Yeah, the Commies went after rural gentry for the same reason they went after independent labor unions—can’t have any center of power outside the party!

Now, by the way, Wash U’s student body is typically liberal or at least center left; having a rally in a community like Saint Louis, where the deindustrialization of American has hit particularly hard, on a convenient campus doesn’t represent the urban student body and I think that its disingenious to suggest that it does.

Yeah, I should have been more clear about that… my main point was that the documentary wasn’t being shot exclusively in the backwoods, and that some of the settings were in very urban areas (technically Wash U. is suburban, it’s 50 yards outside the St. Louis City line).  I doubt many of the loony McCain/Palin supporters filmed there were students.

And yes, Wash U. definitely leans leftward compared to St. Louis as a whole.  It’s not an Ivy, but it is a really, really good school - #2 Med School in the country just behind Johns Hopkins (and just ahead of Harvard, though it changes year to year between those three).

I have a couple friends who have MSWs from Wash. U. (their Social Work School is also top ranked in the country), one works as a child victims’ rights advocate for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals here in STL.

What did you do your grad work in while you were there, out of curiosity?

>>>>Vigorous?  Perhaps.  But what democracy can be truly healthy when so many participants are so ill-educated that they don’t actually understand what they’re voting against?

Well, it’s everyone’s responsibility to educate themselves on issues - this, as opposed to being spoon-fed talking points by pundits, and swallowing them without question like zombies.

All I can do, is be responsible for my own mind.

But if others accept anything they hear from the Drug-Addled Gasbag or Slanthead Hannity, there’s nothing I can do about it.

While I’m happier with the Democrats in control under the current circumstances, I still worry that it’s too easy to insulate yourself from reality without a good (but not insane) opposition party.

I sometimes fantasize about living in a country where we have the same two-party system the US does now, except the two oppositional forces are Pete Seeger warm fuzzy hippy folks who are pacifist vegetarians and want teach the world to sing, and on the other side Che/Malcom-esque hardened realist leftists who are in the trenches fighting it out for the oppressed by any means necessary.  I’m not actually sure that this would be better than what we have now, but I think it would at least be a lot more fun and probably meet more people’s needs.

Not sure how we could help them when so many are bent on harassing and victimize so many of us merely for existing…

I’m not so sure we can do very much to help “them” if we’re talking about the middle-aged village idiots in the video, at least I don’t imagine we can convince many of them to have any sort of serious change of heart.

It’s their kids that I worry about.

I don’t think that people are born as ignorant, mean-spirited, anti-intellectual racist, sexist, homophobes.  They learn it.  Unfortunately, it comes mostly from their parents, but it also comes from the education that they’re getting, or perhaps not getting.  And so long as we have the GOP out there telling the parents to either home-school their kids or put them in religious schools, it’s gonna continue.

We can’t kill the culture of privilege-based fear of the other, but we can kick its ass pretty hard, and education is our best hope.  Get young kids to see that the world is a place filled with all sorts of different and interesting people, and that these different people have the some wants and needs as anybody else, and they have a fighting chance.  It’s only one tool, but it’s a big one.  A huge one.

I have to believe that as a civilization that we are capable of making progress against prejudice and privilege.  But we need like-minded people with progressive views calling the shots from the halls of power, and we need to confront this plague as early as possible with the kids.

While I’m happier with the Democrats in control under the current circumstances, I still worry that it’s too easy to insulate yourself from reality without a good (but not insane) opposition party.

This. 

Though along with the concern of becoming too insulated, there is also the problem of the Democratic tent getting just too big from having to accomodate everyone alienated from the GOP.  We have more than enough DINOs, DLCers, and other types of people who’d be Republican were it not for the fact that the lunatics have taken over the party.  IMHO this absorption has done as much to pull our party to the right as any concerted effort by the Republicans or the DLC.

If the Republicans get whalloped again in 2012 they may move back to where they were in the 50s—a centrist party with the Democrats as the liberal party.

I was quite disappointed with that documentary. I wish Pelosi would have treated everyone she interviewed like she did the guy with “socialism” spelled incorrectly on his shirt and who couldn’t even define socialism (somewhere between fascism and communism? Yes, so are Republicans). People aren’t asked to define their positions. Even our political pundits don’t ask “What does that mean?” or “What evidence do you have to support that opinion?” Her only follow-ups were “really?” and “why?” Nothing of what she said inspired thought in the people she interviewed, and I do think they were capable of critical thinking. Even if she simply restated the opinions of the people she talked to, I think they would have realized how insane their opinions sound. She didn’t ask anyone she talked to or the viewer to reevaluate their positions. She also didn’t juxtapose the “bitter” comment made by Obama and the “real America” comments made by Palin. I doubt the same people who were offended by the bitter comment were at all bothered by Palin labeling people who live in cities as fake, elite, and not hard-working. So that documentary didn’t really do anything for me.

If the Republicans get whalloped again in 2012

Oh please oh please oh please oh please

“Howard Stern actually did it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9GespLQrM8
“

And you could do the same thing to a lot of McCain voters. I found far more McCain voters had no real idea what McCain was about and instead beleived lots of email urban legends about Obama.

“. I wish Pelosi would have treated everyone she interviewed like she did the guy with “socialism” spelled incorrectly on his shirt and who couldn’t even define socialism “

You may want to read her interview with Salon about the documentary. She in fact got threatended when her name was mentioned to the crowd. There was a lot more footage but it was more and more of the same things parroted by the McCain supporters. When she confronted the goober who had misspelled and was going to his phone to get the definition it looked like it was in a very public place and not a rally surrounded by McCain supporters.

A number of reporters got beat up or threatended with violence at the McCain/Palin rallies. Confronting idiots when they are en masse is not a good idea unless you have some firepower at your disposal it’s like dealing with zombies. It’s the horde that is the problem one or two at a time is not that difficult.

I think Hank Williams Jr. should stick to composing his 253th variation on the “Monday Night Football” theme song.

Mitchforth:

The left advocated against and ultimately secured a judicial ban on literacy requirements for voters (the tests were implemented in a discriminatory way).

That’s a little like saying that separate waiting rooms in Southern train stations were implemented in a discriminatory way.

“Literacy tests” were, to my knowledge, implemented nowhere but in the Deep South, and had no other purpose but to keep blacks from voting. Implying that they could somehow be used as a legitimate tool to keep the “wrong” people from voting is just absurd.

Nobody can win an election in a democracy without the support of stupid people.

Maybe not, but when a major party’s “base” consists of stupid people, that should tell us something.

... Pete Seeger warm fuzzy hippy folks who are pacifist vegetarians and want teach the world to sing, and on the other side Che/Malcom-esque hardened realist leftists who are in the trenches fighting it out for the oppressed by any means necessary.  I’m not actually sure that this would be better than what we have now, but I think it would at least be a lot more fun and probably meet more people’s needs.

Opoponax, have you visited my home near Seattle recently?  This sounds just like my debates with my 18-year-old daughter.  I’m the hippie-pacifist and she’s the young-inpatient-change-the-system -NOW one. Ah, to be young and idealistic again….

When I moved from small-town Arkansas to Seattle in 1980, I was shocked to discover that “redneck” was a state of mind, not a geographical location.  Washington is much like the areas noted above; very blue in the urban areas, very red in the rural ones, with the suburbs leaning one way or the other, depending on the economy.

And these people need to realize they have more in common with minorities, women, and gays than they do with rich white men on Wall Street.

But they aspire to move up economically (and become one of those rich white men) and won’t want to be taxed at high rates when they “make it on their own”.  Reality completely aside, of course; most will never get where they want to go.  But they don’t aspire to be gay, female, working-class, a minority - ie, Teh Other - and so don’t see that they have any interests in common, and believe Teh Others want to take way what is rightfully theirs.

” Lots of attacks on his age, and suggestions he was senile.”

Which were in fact plenty valid due to his medical history which he refused to fully disclose as well as many other indications.

As for the Manchurian Candidate that was indeed McCain. Sorry the McCain was the nastiest campaign and tried to relay upon but the so called liberal media didn’t see the nasty rumours as being a huge selling point since they were so laughably ridiclous only fox with it’s commited and I use the term commited for a reason viewerbase would still watch if they got aired.

Mitchforth:

The campaign was nasty all around, from the candidates themselves down to the grassroots.

I don’t know how old you are, but from my perspective (early 50s), this campaign was well below the nastiness norm for presidential elections in my lifetime. And history can show us lots of presidential campaigns that make 2008 look like a church picnic.

The uneducated and unsophisticated make up a pretty big chunk of both parties’ base.

They make up a bigger chunk of the Republican base than the Democratic one. And Obama enjoyed disproportionate support among educated people, especially younger ones. That tells me something.

Mitchforth, McCain DID NOT release his medical records to major outlets. ONE journalist was allowed access to them for a couple hours. This is not the release of medical records. Additionally, the doctor that he had speak on his behalf was in the employ of his campaign.

McCain’s medical records aren’t my big issue, but I do recall these details and I find your obfuscation of the facts strange and concerning.

Be on notice that if you’re going to lie on well intelligent, liberal blogs most likely you’ll be called out.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/100723/why_is_the_corporate_press_censoring_attempts_to_discuss_mccain’s_health_records/

I guess we’ll just having to have dueling sources!

I’m not into conspiracy theories or Palin’s baby isn’t Palin’s baby stuff, there’s a big difference between releasing records and what the McCain campaign did.

“The “John McCain is hiding his medical records” story was a false meme”

When it is 6,000 pages and the reporters don’t have time nor the medical expertise needed to examine it properly it is indeed hiding it.

That is the issue plus since they weren’t allowed to examine it properly they had no way to determine the authenticity or question what was in the records. Why not have some indepedant doctors examine the records and give them the weeks needed to examine them?

thanks for calling me Ivy League (tee hee).

WU likes to say that it’s the Harvard of the Midwest, a charming lack of modesty to be found in “Ivy League” schools IMHO.

They liked to have high SAT types like me on scholarship to balance out the “2nd choice” folks from the East and Midwest, not that I’m holding a grudge or anything like that.

“We know he has a history of skin cancer “

Not just that but other issues that make anyone looking at his bed see the Grim Reaper at the foot of it just waiting to advance to the head.

Actually the smoking gun could publish those things.

6,000 pages and no way to determine if it was accurate. Anyone could put out 6000 pages of medical history with serious ailments and other stuff in it if they had a team and no group of reporters would be able to detect the fix in the few hours they had to leaf through it.

BitterScribe, one mite correction to your assertion about literacy tests.  They were also the chief means of stealing land from illiterate whites—the laws were enforced against them as well.  Which resulted in legally dispossessive frameworks that hit all illiterates.  It can be convincingly argued that the primary purpose of literacy tests was land dispossession, and the whole hatin’ on black people part of it was just the populist angle to get it sold.

A modern day comparison is Prop 13.  The proponents were talking a big game about Granny being moved out of her home, but the primary aspect of the law to people who mattered was property taxes on businesses.  The fact that granddaughter couldn’t afford to live in California anymores was a cool too-bad.  In the end, the law was for rich people.

Always split the lower classes up, ethnic groups or generationally or what…

The guy in sunglasses and blue shirt displays a total lack of self-awareness.  Or maybe just an overabundance of male/white privilege.

The difference being…?

I’d like Alexandra Pelosi to go back and re-interview these people since

1. Barack Obama is now president
2. Micheal Steele is head of the Republican party
3. Bobby Jindal gave the Republican response

just cuz I think it would be fun to see their heads explode.

Get young kids to see that the world is a place filled with all sorts of different and interesting people, and that these different people have the some wants and needs as anybody else, and they have a fighting chance.  It’s only one tool, but it’s a big one.  A huge one.

Though I agree that education is the answer….it must start far earlier than it normally does.  By junior high/high school…it may already be too late.  :(

I’m not so sure we can do very much to help “them” if we’re talking about the middle-aged village idiots in the video, at least I don’t imagine we can convince many of them to have any sort of serious change of heart.

It’s their kids that I worry about.

I am also referring to many of those very kids as most of the working class White town residents who harassed and threatened those of us who were non-White, hetero, male, etc during my undergrad were in the 16-20+ age group back when I attended. 

WU likes to say that it’s the Harvard of the Midwest, a charming lack of modesty to be found in “Ivy League” schools IMHO.

They liked to have high SAT types like me on scholarship to balance out the “2nd choice” folks from the East and Midwest, not that I’m holding a grudge or anything like that. smile

There was a supposed story among my older undergrad classmates and some Profs that sometime in the past there was a shirt emblazoned with the following “Harvard: The Oberlin Of The East”.  Though many of them loved to tell it in a way to imply how high Oberlin’s academic rep was back then, there were plenty of musings among many of us as to whether that shirt was really meant as a smart-alecky sarcastic Obie joke on the whole college prestige one-ups-manship game practiced by higher ed institutions and the greater public….especially those in the upper/middle classes. 

Regarding college’s love of high SAT types, there has been a recent debate among my undergrad’s alums over whether catering to the US News & World Report ilk’s metrics such as SAT stats to raise its profile is worthwhile or whether doing so effectively undermines the college’s progressive ideals and values.