It's contagious!
Treating these issues as if they're serious intellectual questions is as bad as the "false equivalence" media...
Drum is apparently confused about the following glaring difference between republicans and Democrats: the former claims to believe that the election will be fair, while the latter believes the opposite.
Sheesh. What to think of this? Easy. One party thinks the other party is either run by, or composed almost wholly of cheaters and criminals. Recent events - LIKE OVER THE LAST FOUR FUCKING YEARS - back up this line of thought. Does Drum either not read the reports of republican election tampering - now up to about 10 states or so, or does he just not believe such reports? (I'll compile a link-list, if anyone wants it.)
Maybe it doesn't mean a thing? Almost 1/2 the electorate has no faith in the elections, and "[m]aybe it doesn't mean a thing"? There goes my idiot electorate again...
If Bush had lost Florida, the shoe would be on the other foot? There's that idiotic false equivalence media for you. Gore didn't *lose* Florida - it was stolen. The true equivalence would be if bush had Florida *stolen*, then the shoe would truly be on the other foot. But Drum trades on an ambiguity in his word "lost", in order to gin up a vapid equivalence between republicans and Democrats. Consider, for example, the following question to Drum: if Gore *simply* *lost* Florida, then why on earth would Democrats be skeptical of the fairness of elections?
What I can't figure out is *why* Drum would be so misleading - it looks far too blatant to be accidental. I generally greatly enjoy Drum's thoughts and analyses on issues (only one exception comes to mind, in fact).
Folks, don't treat stupid questions as though they're intelligent. Contrary to what your poitically correct teachers have told you, there really IS are such things as stupid questions, stupid issues, and stupid people. Also, don't treat cheaters as though they play by the rules.
[Enter historical soap-boxing]
This is the unfortunate part of the hippie-no-right-no-wrong-good-for-me-good-for-you legacy America has inheirited. And republicans have exploited it masterfully over the last 40 years, accelerating America's sliding into imbecility. In short, the hippie legacy has taken away from the normal American's vocabulary concepts like *truth*, *falsity*, and the like, and replaced them by weak, relativized doppelgangers.
Enter the southern christian right. While their initial beef with the hippies was niggers, fags, gooks, commies, and women (at least women got to keep a dignified name though), two things soon became clear to the brighter among our serpentine brethren. First, they weren't getting anywhere on the NFGCM tack. Second, they saw that the seeds of republican success were sown by the hippies themselves - in the very act of eschewing true-false-right-wrong distinctions. Americans, and rational people generally, don't put much stock in notions like "relativized truth", "your feelings are always valid", and so forth. And since the christian bigots never let go of the absolute notions, all they had to do was go underground with the bigotry, and watch America dumb itself down to the point where republicans could just spout the very words the hippies had thrown away.
Lo and behold, it worked like a charm. And now we're trying to fight back, but we've got a hand tied behind our backs - even the best and brightest of us (See Drum, above) have a world of trouble with concepts like truth, lie, evil, cheat, steal, etc. And it is precisely such concepts that are required in order to talk meaningfully about republicans.
At least Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann have caught on... Still waiting for the rest, in particular Krugman...
Hm. I'm probably going to need to delve into this in a great deal more detail to get anywhere on this... But that's at least a (disjointed) bird's-eye view of things...
Drum is apparently confused about the following glaring difference between republicans and Democrats: the former claims to believe that the election will be fair, while the latter believes the opposite.
I'm not sure what to think of this. Maybe it doesn't mean a thing, and if Bush had lost the Florida recount in 2000 the roles would be reversed.
Sheesh. What to think of this? Easy. One party thinks the other party is either run by, or composed almost wholly of cheaters and criminals. Recent events - LIKE OVER THE LAST FOUR FUCKING YEARS - back up this line of thought. Does Drum either not read the reports of republican election tampering - now up to about 10 states or so, or does he just not believe such reports? (I'll compile a link-list, if anyone wants it.)
Maybe it doesn't mean a thing? Almost 1/2 the electorate has no faith in the elections, and "[m]aybe it doesn't mean a thing"? There goes my idiot electorate again...
If Bush had lost Florida, the shoe would be on the other foot? There's that idiotic false equivalence media for you. Gore didn't *lose* Florida - it was stolen. The true equivalence would be if bush had Florida *stolen*, then the shoe would truly be on the other foot. But Drum trades on an ambiguity in his word "lost", in order to gin up a vapid equivalence between republicans and Democrats. Consider, for example, the following question to Drum: if Gore *simply* *lost* Florida, then why on earth would Democrats be skeptical of the fairness of elections?
What I can't figure out is *why* Drum would be so misleading - it looks far too blatant to be accidental. I generally greatly enjoy Drum's thoughts and analyses on issues (only one exception comes to mind, in fact).
Folks, don't treat stupid questions as though they're intelligent. Contrary to what your poitically correct teachers have told you, there really IS are such things as stupid questions, stupid issues, and stupid people. Also, don't treat cheaters as though they play by the rules.
[Enter historical soap-boxing]
This is the unfortunate part of the hippie-no-right-no-wrong-good-for-me-good-for-you legacy America has inheirited. And republicans have exploited it masterfully over the last 40 years, accelerating America's sliding into imbecility. In short, the hippie legacy has taken away from the normal American's vocabulary concepts like *truth*, *falsity*, and the like, and replaced them by weak, relativized doppelgangers.
Enter the southern christian right. While their initial beef with the hippies was niggers, fags, gooks, commies, and women (at least women got to keep a dignified name though), two things soon became clear to the brighter among our serpentine brethren. First, they weren't getting anywhere on the NFGCM tack. Second, they saw that the seeds of republican success were sown by the hippies themselves - in the very act of eschewing true-false-right-wrong distinctions. Americans, and rational people generally, don't put much stock in notions like "relativized truth", "your feelings are always valid", and so forth. And since the christian bigots never let go of the absolute notions, all they had to do was go underground with the bigotry, and watch America dumb itself down to the point where republicans could just spout the very words the hippies had thrown away.
Lo and behold, it worked like a charm. And now we're trying to fight back, but we've got a hand tied behind our backs - even the best and brightest of us (See Drum, above) have a world of trouble with concepts like truth, lie, evil, cheat, steal, etc. And it is precisely such concepts that are required in order to talk meaningfully about republicans.
At least Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann have caught on... Still waiting for the rest, in particular Krugman...
Hm. I'm probably going to need to delve into this in a great deal more detail to get anywhere on this... But that's at least a (disjointed) bird's-eye view of things...
posted by sherifffruitfly | 10:16 AM
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