We've been having a rousing discussion in the comments to the previous posts about the Karl Rove electorate manipulation--I mean, Bush victory. Too much of it has centered on whether the left is "too angry" and will turn off yahoos, when it's obvious that the Republicans won by channeling and redirecting mass rage. The issue to keep in mind is: Bush started a war against a nation that posed no threat to us. To fight it, he is using systematic torture and indiscriminate bombing. It is another Vietnam. 59 million people just endorsed that. The certainty that the left (and paleoconservative right) has that this is a failed enterprise has not spread to the general public. Events may soon prove Bush wrong more conclusively, but in the meantime it's important that we keep discussing, ridiculing, and even...horrors...hating the administration's foreign policy bungling. I believe the liberal left is innately better at getting out such memes because there's more creativity here, even though I wasn't that impressed with this year's political ads. Michael Moore, however, rules.
I seem to recall that some surrealist said something like 'the best way to fight against fascists and totalitarians is to viciously ridicule them in public'... I can't remember who said it.
Ridicule is a very powerful force in American politics. It did in Gore. It turned Perot from a potential force into a small joke. Despite protestations of the rediots, I and others really didn't spend much time ridiculing the simple agrarians of the heartland, until just after the heartbreak of the 1% man-date. My ridicule has primarily been directed to the boy king and his entourage. And they are still a pack of liars and fools.
Now that they got him elected, the "keep the government out of my wallet" crowd appears to be ready to turn on the boy king to reign in his apocalyptic foreign policy.
I agree that now is not the time to let up the pressure, or ridicule.
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We've been having a rousing discussion in the comments to the previous posts about the Karl Rove electorate manipulation--I mean, Bush victory. Too much of it has centered on whether the left is "too angry" and will turn off yahoos, when it's obvious that the Republicans won by channeling and redirecting mass rage. The issue to keep in mind is: Bush started a war against a nation that posed no threat to us. To fight it, he is using systematic torture and indiscriminate bombing. It is another Vietnam. 59 million people just endorsed that. The certainty that the left (and paleoconservative right) has that this is a failed enterprise has not spread to the general public. Events may soon prove Bush wrong more conclusively, but in the meantime it's important that we keep discussing, ridiculing, and even...horrors...hating the administration's foreign policy bungling. I believe the liberal left is innately better at getting out such memes because there's more creativity here, even though I wasn't that impressed with this year's political ads. Michael Moore, however, rules.
- tom moody 11-06-2004 11:05 pm
I seem to recall that some surrealist said something like 'the best way to fight against fascists and totalitarians is to viciously ridicule them in public'... I can't remember who said it.
- Abraham Kalashnikov (guest) 11-07-2004 7:25 am
Ridicule is a very powerful force in American politics. It did in Gore. It turned Perot from a potential force into a small joke. Despite protestations of the rediots, I and others really didn't spend much time ridiculing the simple agrarians of the heartland, until just after the heartbreak of the 1% man-date. My ridicule has primarily been directed to the boy king and his entourage. And they are still a pack of liars and fools.
Now that they got him elected, the "keep the government out of my wallet" crowd appears to be ready to turn on the boy king to reign in his apocalyptic foreign policy.
I agree that now is not the time to let up the pressure, or ridicule.
- mark 11-08-2004 9:27 pm